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PROPOSED NEW MONTEREY COUNTY DESALINATION PLANS

From the Monterey County Herald
Serving Monterey County and the Salinas Valley

June 29, 2002

By DENNIS MORAN
dmoran@montereyherald.com

The state's study on water supply solutions for the Monterey Peninsula, due by the end of July, will likely focus heavily on a regional seawater desalination plant at Moss Landing, Boulder Creek Assemblyman Fred Keeley said.

Engineers are currently studying the feasibility and costs of building such a plant near the Duke Energy power plant and piping water to the Peninsula, according to state Public Utilities Commission officials. The findings will be included in the PUC's long-awaited "Plan B" study of alternatives to a new dam on the Carmel River.

A proposed 24,000 acre-foot dam - Plan A - still has passionate advocates as a cheaper source than seawater desalination. But Peninsula voters rejected a funding package for an earlier dam proposal in 1995, and the current proposal is widely considered as dead in the water due to environmental concerns. The National Marine Fisheries Service opposes it due to expected negative impacts on migrating steelhead trout, listed as a threatened species.

"It's clear the dam will never be built," said Keeley, whose district includes much of coastal Monterey County. "It's important to move beyond the discussion of whether there will be a dam or not."

It was Keeley's legislation that created the Plan B process in 1998 to study alternatives to the dam. Peninsula officials have been under the gun to come up with new water sources since 1995, when the state ordered the California-American Water Co., the Peninsula's supplier, to reduce its draw from the environmentally damaged Carmel River by more than 10,000 acre-feet.

The final Plan B report was expected to be finished in December, and PUC officials acknowledge that its delay has been caused by more detailed study of a possible Moss Landing desal plant. A draft of Plan B released last year mentioned it but focused more on a trio of water supply options as a package: a smaller desalination plant at Sand City, water recycling and storing excess Carmel River flows in the winter in the Seaside aquifer by means of injection wells.

However, Keeley says, the National Marine Fisheries Service has indicated that winter flows on the Carmel River aren't sufficient to count on them as a significant source for aquifer storage. That finding prompted Plan B's detailed study of a desalination plant at Moss Landing, he adds. Injection wells could likely be used for storing water from a desalination plant, Keeley says.

Representatives from several local, state and federal agencies, including the National Marine Fisheries Service, U.S. Fish and Wildlife and the state Department of Fish and Game, met in January and discussed the advantages of a desalination plant at Moss Landing. Available space next to the Duke plant would be an advantage because it's already an industrial site and would not involve disruption to sensitive coastal habitats elsewhere, officials said earlier this year.

Also, the Duke plant's water discharge could be used to dilute the brine discharged from the desal plant. And there would likely be a big break in power costs - the lion's share of the expense of seawater desalination - says Guy Phillips, Keeley's chief consultant. "Transmission and distribution losses would be zero," he said.

And although Plan B will address only the Peninsula's needs in light of the state order to relax Carmel River draws, other entities seeking new water sources in North Monterey County and south Santa Cruz County could tap into - and help finance - a larger desalination plant at Moss Landing, officials have said.

"With the water situation in North County, we would sure be interested in exploring being a participant," said Lou Calcagno, a Monterey County supervisor whose district includes Moss Landing. "It sounds good," Calcagno said of preliminary information he's received on a Moss Landing desalination plant. "Now you have to put together the dollars and cents and whether it can be done or not."

Cal-Am still has an application for a dam before the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District, and the district is in the process of submitting potential water supply projects, including the dam, to required environmental studies.

Seawater desalination is among options the district is studying, but not at the Moss Landing site. A desal plant at that site would be up to another agency to take the lead on because it is outside the district, some board members said earlier this year.

Judy Almond, Cal-Am's vice president of operations, said the company would work with a desalination option. "Obviously we're interested in solving the water supply" problem, she said. "If that's what the citizens are willing to pay for to solve it, certainly we want success."

A dam would be cheaper, she said, and would be environmentally friendly in that it could provide year-round flow for the length of the river. Currently, the river goes dry for its last five to seven miles for much of the year.

But if a dam would draw legal challenges on environmental issues and be held up in court, that would "cost money to our ratepayers, and that's not solving the water supply problem," she said.

Dennis Moran can be reached at 646-4348.