Water facts

A recent Herald article delineated Monterey Peninsula's water supply-demand issues argued before the California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC); notwithstanding, there are critical facts the public has a right to know:

1. Cal Am's Certified Environmental Impact Report (EIR) confirmed the source feed water for its Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project (desal) would come from the freshwater Dune Sands and 180/400foot aquifers in the Salinas Valley Groundwater Basin (SVGB).

2. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act of 2014 preserves and protects the SVGB that is on California's Critically Over-drafted Groundwater Basin List.

3. The California State Agency Act precludes SVGB water from exportation outside SVGB's jurisdiction.

4. California Constitution, Article X, Section 2 requires aquifer water be put to beneficial use. Cal Am extracts SVGB aquifer water only to release it into the Monterey Bay with no beneficial use. Instead, Cal Am slant wells by design induce seawater intrusion, harming the SVGB.

5. The CPUC employed Cal Am's consultant to both test and monitor its test slant well installed in the SVGB. This slant well inventor/patent holder developed groundwater-level models that applied concealment fraud data tampering to persuade CPUC EIR certification.

6. To guarantee desal implementation, Cal Am obstructed Pure Water Monterey Expansion, caused a $250,000 twoyear SEIR upgrade and construction delay, while refusing to sign a Water Purchase Agreement, thereby prolonging CDO moratorium injunction against affordable housing.

According to law, CalAm cannot extract SVGB groundwater to use as desal source water. Gratefully, Pure Water Monterey Expansion fulfills Peninsula's supply-demand water equation for 30-plus more years!

— Margaret-Anne Coppernoll, Marina