Quick Take
At its meeting this Thursday, the California Public Utilities Commission will make a key decision about California American Water’s proposed desalination project on the Monterey Peninsula. Bruce Carlos Delgado, mayor of Marina, urges the CPUC to reject the proposal, citing old data, high costs to ratepayers and severe environmental risks. Santa Cruz residents should pay close attention to the CPUC’s decision, as it could set a precedent for how future water infrastructure is reviewed across California’s coast.
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The California Public Utilities Commission (CPUC) has a critical opportunity on Thursday to hit the brakes on the outdated, unnecessary and environmentally destructive California American Water (CalAm) desalination project. As mayor of the City of Marina, I urge the commission to do right by Monterey Peninsula ratepayers and communities and reject this fatally flawed project and the obsolete data being used to justify it.
Before locking ratepayers into decades of costly and excessive infrastructure, the CPUC must reconsider whether this project still serves the public interest. A decision Thursday will answer a fundamental question: Does the Monterey Peninsula need an expensive and environmentally harmful desal project, given the region’s dramatic decline in water demand and robust new water supplies?
The answer, based on all the available evidence, is a resounding no.
A quick history: This project was proposed under different circumstances in 2012. Back then, CalAm claimed it needed a desalination plant to meet a projected water shortage of nearly 5,000 acre-feet per year (AFY) by 2021 — mainly to comply with a cease-and-desist order limiting its water diversions from the Carmel River. But it is now 2025. The project still hasn’t been built. The water shortage never materialized in 2021 and CalAm has more than managed to meet its customer needs and comply with that cease-and-desist order without desalination. And the Pure Water Monterey Expansion Project, which will provide an additional 2,250 AFY of water to CalAm, is expected to come online by early 2026.
In reality, the water demand on the Monterey Peninsula has precipitously declined since 2012 and continues to fall. CalAm’s own updated demand projections now estimate a potential shortfall of just 2,500 AFY by 2050 — half the previous estimate and 2½ decades away.
So why would the CPUC rubber-stamp CalAm’s outdated plans for a desal project that would generate three times that much water? Allowing CalAm to move forward to construct that plant now would come with an exorbitant price tag that would raise customer bills in one of the most expensive water districts in the country, for a water supply they do not need.
That’s not to mention the destructive environmental impacts this facility would impose if it were ever built. The proposed industrial wellfield site on Marina’s dunes and beaches threatens our coastal resources and subjects local aquifers to overpumping and seawater intrusion — taking more than 15 million gallons of water per day out of the local groundwater aquifers to operate.
The CPUC has a duty to regulate investor-owned utilities, like CalAm, in the public’s interest, not to greenlight its proposed outdated infrastructure based on obsolete data.
There is no water crisis looming. There is no pressing shortfall. There is no justification for CalAm customers to bear the cost of a massive, unnecessary and environmentally harmful project.
The City of Marina calls on the CPUC to fulfill its mandate: Follow the evidence, protect the public interest and stop this boondoggle now.
Bruce Carlos Delgado is the mayor of the City of Marina.