City Council - meeting_joint_regular

And board of supervisors of the Monterey County Water Resources Agency, meeting. I let the record show that all supervisors are present. Are there any additions or corrections to this agenda today?

There are none.

Alright. We'll open it up for general public comment for this special joint meeting. Is there anyone with general public comment for the special joint meeting? I'm seeing none. We'll close public comment, bring it back for one scheduled matter to receive information on the Salinas Valley groundwater sustainability overview of feasibility studies and implementation strategy. And we've got Ara Azadaran from Water Resource Agency and Brett Harman from the Groundwater Sustainability Agency.

Yeah, thank you. Good afternoon Chair and Supervisors. It's a pleasure to be here today with my counterpart, Perret. It's been a while since we've been able to brief you all on the activities being led by the SCB and supported by the WRA. And so, I thought this would be a very timely opportunity to do this as the SCB has just completed a number of studies and quite a bit of work that we've been collaborating on this past eight months or so.

And so today, we wanted to take a moment, talk about the work that we've been performing, talk about some of the things that we've learned, and discuss a little bit about, you know, and where do we go from here. And so, that's kind of the art today, and looking for this to be more conversational than anything. Maybe, Prate, you want to talk about this?

Yes. So we'll tag team this. Good afternoon, supervisors. So glad to be here. It was perfect segue from Paul Sciuto's presentation. Water and wastewater both very, very important for this community and especially on the water side. We are on our own. We are independent. We do not receive any imported water. So everything we have here, we have to take care of and make sure that we're good stewards of the shared resource.

So we have kind of six building blocks here, and we are just going to scratch the surface today. We're setting it up that there will be more meetings and more workshops. We have a lot of information to share. So I'm not going to repeat those but go straight into the first one. So we are Salinas Valley based in GSA.

We are the still, I'm calling us, a new kid on the block. We are the newest Sigma Sustainable Groundwater Management Act is a little over ten years old, 12 to be exact, 2014 it was enacted. This agency, we are younger, we are turning 10 here, so we are moving to middle school maybe, something like that. And so the state realized that groundwater is kind of out of sight, out of mind. A lot of people are using it, relying on it, but it's not really managed cohesively, but it is shared and it connects underground.

So state setup, there's a lot of acronyms in Sigma, but how it relates to here, two main challenges we have in this region with groundwater is seawater intrusion. And it's nothing new. I'm sure all of you know about century old, not quite, but eight years ago, it was first detected. And now it is quite far inland. So it's about seven miles inland.

And the area to the west of it is intruded and not usable in many cases. Very, very tightly connected with that is chronic overdraft. It means that we are using more than is recharging. And it's not although it's not necessarily a problem from year to year, it's like our budgets. If we have a little bit put aside, then we can use more than we are earning in any given year.

But if every year we are using we are spending more than we are earning, It is unsustainable in the long run. And so Sigma came sustainable groundwater management mandate, set a very structured timeline and by 2040 in one of our six sub basins that we manage, we have to get to sustainability by 2040. The other five sub basins are two years later. They have until 2042 to get to that. So ultimately, we have the SVP GSA six sub basins.

They are hydraulically connected, not uniformly. There is more flow between certain regions, much less between some others. But I think what's even more obvious to me as I'm kind of spending really time understanding it, economically, we are more connected than hydraulically. It's a small county and we all rely on this resource. And if we don't take care of that, we're all going to lose together.

So for that reason, we are moving forward with a coordinated solutions, working with our partners and any other agencies that are in this space. So projects and management actions, we have so six years into that we've been mainly studying and we are getting some criticism that that's all we do. It's time to start actually acting, start constructing something. We were very fortunate to receive several grants from Department of Water Resources. So our annual budget is about $3,000,000 In addition to that, we received $20,000,000 in the last five years from the state.

So state recognized that we do have challenges, and they will very graciously give us money to study those projects. So those are all now done. And if anybody who loves reading lots of technical materials, those are all on our website. There's pages and pages, so be ready. But we realize that's not something that should be expected from stakeholders or from all of you.

So we are bringing to you them in a hopefully more manageable packaging. And so those are the six that we will be doing a workshop. We'll get to that at the end. But we wanted to give you just a taste of it, what types of solutions we've been looking at. And we're going to take turns here because some of that is not brand new. Some of that is building on existing infrastructure, and this is one of them. So Ara, maybe you can kind of go through what are the what we were trying to get done on this. So you have two slides per project. You have objectives and then what did we find out?

Yes. And so with the Castro Seawater Intrusion Project, the optimization study really looked at what could we do with the existing infrastructure to improve its operational capacity or efficiency. And so one of the first steps in that working with Monterey One Water was to develop a system of telemetric meter reading that helped us develop a hydraulic model so that we could test various ideas in terms of how we improve the existing CSIP system. And so there were three capital projects that were identified through that modeling work. In short, it would be improving the distribution system to allow for greater pressurization in areas, to reduce reliance on well pumping, to make up for pressure volume, expanding the storage of water for the same reasons, and then improving redundancy.

There are many parts of the C system, especially its primary pipeline that crosses the Salinas River that is a single point of failure. So those were the three key findings. Other work that we were also able to perform under the SVB grant was to upgrade what's called the dry scrubber or install one at the Salinas Valley reclamation project. That allowed the wintertime maintenance process to be truncated and add redundancy to the existing chlorine system. We were also able to restore or revitalize the existing booster pump stations.

And so these were critical improvements to the existing system that have improved the system performance and have reduced reliance on the groundwater wells. And so, it was very successful here. Next slide. And so, this kind of quantifies some of the benefits of these various activities. The well pumping reductions of course are our priority target.

Folks often think of CSIP as being a distribution system to deliver irrigation water, and that is true, but that's a means to the ends. The ends is to reduce pumping from the 180,400 and to slow the intrusion of seawater. The other optimization projects have some significant costs associated with them when you look at them individually, but when you step back and look at them in the scheme of some of these other projects that we'll be talking about, they appear more manageable. And so more decision making to come as we begin to prioritize what to move forward first, but this is the optimization study.

Okay. So next one, aquifer storage and recovery, short lots of acronyms. As I said, ASR is for short. So we will we were studying we were doing a feasibility study on looking at capturing surface water from Salinas River during the wet season and then injecting it into the 18,400 aquifer sub basin, and it could be partially recovered that water pumping it out during growing season. So that's kind of the concept of that project.

It was first feasibility study that we did. Key findings, we were to be honest, we were hoping for more. So what it came down to is that there are significant constraints and the amount of the volume of water that we were able to capture was that's the second bullet there. It depends on the type of the year. And so it's the high end was twelve thirteen thousand acre feet per year.

And then you kind of start seeing that we're really trying to do now is to compare those different studies and have a unit cost because if you just look at the capital cost, of course, the larger the project, the larger the cost, but it also produces more water. Therefore, it has more benefit. So the unit cost is something that we are finding a little bit more valuable. And so it's the estimated capital cost, about roughly $05,000,000,000 there and then unit cost in roughly around 2,000. Those are all very preliminary studies, so I wouldn't kind of get stuck on that, but just give a magnitude of the scale.

This one, BGR, brackish groundwater restoration, probably kind of the most talked about because it was the second study we launched upon. So we've been looking at it for quite a while. The concept is to install extraction wells along the coast and to intercept seawater coming in, then treat that water and then use the treated water so to have as a replacement supply to inject it into the 18,400 aquifers. So we would do two things with that. We would address the intrusion, civil intrusion, but we also that provides that creates a new supplemental supply that is quite reliable because it's not dependent on the type of the year being a dry or wet year.

And so that also March we submitted to Department of Water Resources as one of our grant deliverables. And we studied a lot of different scenarios, but there was one that was preferred and we spent the most time on and it's large. This is a very, very large project. So it creates 46,000 acre feet per year of new water supply. And so it would actually that extraction barrier is even larger.

But then when we treat it, some goes to it gets to Celine, it's brine, goes to outfall. So the new supply is 46,000. And it's the only project so far that has been able to meet our goals for seawater intrusion that are set in our GSPs. It means that it can stop seawater intrusion and start slowly even pushing it back. Estimated capital cost, it's now a little under 1,000,000,000 and the unit cost that includes the capital cost plus operation and maintenance comes at $3,300 an acre foot.

I'm going through them very quickly. I'm just trying to give you a sense of how much work was done has been done and how much we looked into different ideas. So here, there's only six building blocks. In order to get to the six, we shifted through probably dozens, I'd say, because there's a lot of good work that had been done has been done, and we did not want to kind of create the wheel, if you will. So this one is another long name, short C and E, essentially looking at against surface water resources surface water resources and worked very closely with water resources agency on this.

Because the first thing we really had to do is we don't have any water rights. We don't own any water rights. We don't own the reservoirs. We don't operate the reservoirs. All of the water that comes down the river, we need to make sure that we understand how it's being managed now and how it could be managed in the future. So maybe anything else to kind of

I think the important takeaways from this study, know, permit 11/1943 has been held by the agency for decades. It's been talked about for a long time. Its face value is a large number. But practically speaking, when you begin to look at when it's available, the limitations in the volume of water that you can divert, as well as the cost to build diversion capacity, it does become much more limited in the practical outcome. But as Perrette said, we did look at a variety of different opportunities here.

I think the big takeaways are storage would be important and that's true for primarily almost all the different types of water that we've looked here. It tends to be available when demand is low, in the wintertime. But there is some potential here. And so Pred indicated with some of the other studies, there is the potential for this to contribute to the sustainability goals, but not sufficient enough to meet them all. And so maybe it gets leggoed together with other folks, other projects.

You can see kind of the range of water supply availability there in that third bullet. Recharge basins on the East Side would be the most cost effective way to move forward here as opposed to treatment and injection. Recharge basins of course have their own maintenance issues as they silt up over time, And that would have to be managed. And from a geology perspective, you'd have to pick the right locations. They are limited.

Capital costs are not insignificant. And when you're looking at those larger numbers, you're looking at the numbers that would include larger quantities of storage to maximize the potential of 11,043. So unit costs, again, as Predator indicated, these are really course estimates at this stage and as any particular project gets refined, those numbers would be refined as well. So I think they're more to compare and contrast and to be taken as actualities.

And I think that maybe I'm going to hand it back to Ara again because that is building on CSIP. We originally it was called CSIP expansion maybe and realized it's misleading. People are thinking what are you saying here? We don't have enough supply even for the current CSIP customers expanding it. Where is the supply going to come from? So we realized that maybe finding another acronym is the way to go.

Yes. And so NSIP is what we came up with the new seawater intrusion project. We began this analysis by evaluating what source supplies exist currently and when and in what range of quantities so we could understand what we had to work with. We focused on the area generally east of the existing CSIP project between the existing CSIP project in the city of Salinas. And as we did with other scenarios here, we looked at a variety of potentials, satisfying all of the currently groundwater irrigated irrigation demand.

So potential is great as 28,000 acre feet a year to looking at just those areas where the 400 foot aquifers intruded to looking at potentially just offsetting deep aquifer pumping, which not surprisingly is concentrated in that area where the 400 has been intruded. So those were some of the scenarios that were evaluated. Again, like other options, this option is greatly enhanced with the development of storage. It requires use of permit eleven thousand and forty three and fifteen thousand acre feet of surface water storage is one potential if we're looking at smaller outcomes than other sources are achievable. But again, can help contribute to the solution, but alone is not one of those solutions that gets us all the way home.

And for comparative purposes, our estimated range of costs.

And so the last one is the only one that is now on the demand side projects. Obviously, the whole goal is to create or find supplemental supply. So all six were on the supply side. Demand management is one tool that we have on the demand side. We are not leading with this.

We really want to be meaningful about demand management, demand planning, especially as it relates to the water that is used by ag. It's a little bit easier to take shorter showers at home. But for ag, it's a business decision and there are definite ways of you can't use less because that's not what the plans require. So we are looking at it as a complementary to supply side project. If there's any areas that we can't reach with the supply project, that could be plugging in a demand management measure.

Also use carrot method, not stick, kind of emphasize incentive based, especially on there. As much as we know, percent roughly 90% of groundwater is used by ag. We do have regions pockets where it's mainly or very heavily rural residential use. And those people urban side, they have agencies, would it be public or privately owned water utilities that are taking care of helping those people to be efficient users of water. Rural residential does not have that luxury.

So we are thinking of how to help those people and how to really kind of bring in them into the shared resource game. And another reason to use demand management is possibly interim. If a project takes a while until we get it constructed, does it make sense to use demand management to either right size the project to make sure that we are not making the problem larger. But unfortunately and then it's obviously from the state standpoint, I haven't really used that. And but it is what we're all facing.

If we don't figure out how to address the ground border, how to meet the ground border goals and address the challenges we have, the backstop is state deciding it for us. So So we would lose local control. And what we've seen so far from elsewhere in the state where that has happened, state has only one tool, and that's demand management. So they would come in and they would be in a place to just impose demand management measures, impose fees. So we're really hoping we are not going to end up there.

We want to be figuring what makes the most sense. What's interesting about this slide is it's not quite feasibility study the same way as projects are, but we have contracted with an economist that has helped us to really look at the opportunity cost and look at also the cost of doing nothing and also the cost of reducing demand. And it really relates more to the business side. But I think that's one reason, R and I, we are here sharing that story with you that it's not just the problem that 18400 has. It's not just the problem where those specific areas where groundwater levels have dropped.

It is extremely costly for us as a community to be doing demand management at a large scale. So the numbers there in the last bullet were truly that I had to pause and go and check, is it really this many zeros? So that and this is again, we're not saying where it would happen. It was just trying to quantify. If we were to impose pumping reductions on ag, And those are the numbers, thousand to 60,000.

And I think it kind of helps like why those numbers you saw the largest single project that we had studied was creating 46,000 new supply. So this kind of right in the roughly the same amount of let's reduce the demand by that. It would result in output loss of more than 1,000,000,000 a year. Every year. This for me was startling.

It was like that why the projects as much as they the price tag is high, but they create a value and they create for us an opportunity to continue this thriving ag economy that supports the rest of the economy. So we have to figure out somehow how we move forward. And it really pains me because we're not the only agency that is coming up and sharing that we have solutions, but they're expensive. We heard from Paul. Ara has his own infrastructure needs that Water Resource Agency has.

And then we have other utilities. They're all looking for what the infrastructure needs is. So how do we make smart decisions? How do we keep everybody's interest in mind? And how do we I think, Supervisor Lopez, you were saying earlier, there has to be a global thinking because it's so shortsighted to just go and say, we get hours done and then you're stuck with your problems. So implementation time line, we are kind of here in the middle. All project feasibility studies are completed. We are looking at what we're calling portfolios. There's no one single project that meets all of our groundwater goals. So it needs to be at least a couple of them stitched together.

And we have advisory committee that we are who is helping us to bring to the board, SVPGSA Board, a recommendation on which is a preferred portfolio. It does not mean we're going to start we have shovels and we're going to have a ribbon cutting. It means we're going to actually do a design. We're going to do CEQA. We're going to start figuring out funding strategies.

We're going to start figuring out who would be the agencies that actually could implement it. Because we, the GSA has been a planning agency. I think the intention is for us to remain a planning agency. So we would be looking for maybe existing partners to take on the ownership and maintenance and construction or a new entity. So that all is the next steps when we talk about implementation.

And then we get to finally to let's construct something, keeping in mind that this all needs to be done by we need to get to sustainability by 2040. So we had a very fast pace, fast pace race here. But we I have still a lot of faith that this community can come together and we can figure out what we need to do to continue even that we have lots of those challenges. I don't want to talk about challenges. I want to really focus on opportunities. And so Ara, what are we going to do next?

Yes. And so again, in the interest of time, we wanted to just provide this broad overview today. As Parete indicated early on, all of these technical studies are available to the public. We're encouraging folks that are interested in these issues to review that documentation, have their experts review that documentation. We are holding a workshop the morning of May 18.

There are flyers out on that, and that is intended to be an opportunity for those who have dove deeply into these technical studies to come and ask questions. We will have the expert staff and consultants available to engage with those folks. And so there will be that opportunity to dive deeper. And yeah, we continue to present this information in whatever forum we can. We want to make sure that awareness is as broad as we can make it and that people have the opportunity to weigh in.

I think that's the last slide I'm thinking. Yes, it is.

That was the end of the slides?

Okay. I thought that. At the end of the slides. Okay. We can go and start all over.

Thank you. So thank you for the detailed presentation and I know there's been a ton of work happening in so many spaces of conversation. So this is really is a brief, brief overview of so much more beneath that and and around it. Let's open it up for public comment to start with.

Good afternoon chair and supervisors my name is Chris Bonn I' the president of the slingest basin water alliance and like you all probably know the alliance represents about 80,000 of the irrigated acres in the valley We're weighted a little bit more up to the north, but we do have membership acreage and operations all the way down South of King City as well. So this process is something we've been heavily invested in from the very beginning because we have a lot at stake. And for quite a few years now, we've been questioning one of the base assumptions in the seawater intrusion effort that the GSA has been involved with, specifically the fact that we are trying to push the five hundred milligram chloride line back to where it was in 2017. So that 2017 goal is in the twenty year plans that were approved by DWR. And we've always suspected and have done some modeling, and we've wondered, okay, much of the scope and cost of the current projects that we're looking at are influenced or dictated by that 2017 goal line.

And we asked multiple times, can we change that goal line? Is that possible? We asked that for year after year. And finally, early this year, I went up to DWR and asked them, can we change that goal line? And they said, yes. You can change it, here's how you do it. There's a very set black and white process to do it. So, the agency does not have the budget and time to do any new modeling based on a new goal line. So the Alliance is spending our money on that. We're doing our own modeling on a different goal line, a different set of projects.

We hope

to have that done mostly by the May, and we will certainly bring that to your attention because the projects that GSA have, we cannot make sense of them financially in this valley. So we appreciate your time. Thanks.

Thank you. We have one hand online. We'll go to Tom Versek.

Thank you, chair. It's Tom Verzig speaking. I represent clients in the southern ends of the valley, so in the sustainable basins of the Upper Valley and the Forebay. Those are the sigma terms we use. And I have two points. One of them is to actually amplify what mister Bunn said. The amplification is that sigma is a robust set of laws and regulations. And there are time frames, there are thresholds, there are standards. And it's important that no matter what is preferred locally, what the local politics may dictate, it really all needs to fit that very large system. And if anyone has any doubts whatsoever, please look at the Central Valley.

Huge amount of experience there to see what can, can't be done, and how it's going to be working. And and I'm an outsider to that as these those are not my clients in the Central Valley. I'm just pointing out there's a lot going there going on there in Sigma you can look at. And one of the things that matters in Sigma is there's a drop dead date tomorrow for the one eighty four hundred under the DWR provided. Supervisor Church and his capacity on the GSA certainly knows all about that.

My other point well and and and also, I have no opinion on what the alliance the the proposal about the lines, proposal about any project. I just have no opinion. But I am amplifying that those laws really do matter and those regulations do matter however they come out. And, I mean, my other point is that at some point, I think this the presentation said something about being shortsighted. I would turn it around by sigma is a three generation law as written.

So if there is failure for the first ten or fifteen years in order to get forty five years of success, that's well within the contemplated approach. Thank you.

Thank you for your comments and your participation in the process. I'm seeing no other hands raised and no one else approaching the dais in the chamber, so we'll close public comment and bring it back to this board. Church?

Thank you for the presentation and for the comments. I mean, I think one thing is that everybody is in complete agreement on water and there's not much everybody in this county gets in complete agreement on is we don't wanna lose local control. I think that's the the bottom line for for everybody on this. And that is the some of the guillotine, to speak, hanging over all our heads here as we make these decisions in a relatively short timeline. I was looking here at just putting everything in just sort of cost scope on the projects you put forward on those five different projects.

The maximum on those is 4,500,000,000. The demand management has the impact of 1.3 to two. So, are numbers we really haven't looked at in terms of projects ever before in this county, and the totality of them. Now, obviously, we don't have to put down, I think, 4 and a half billion dollars to solve the water issue, that's not what the plan is, so we could not even begin to afford that. But it's and and as you pointed out that you're basically a a a planning agency and the GSA GSA is not really geared to to to set this up and run it.

So there's a lot of unanswered questions on, as you've sort of started to address, on how it's going be paid for, who's going to run it, all important things out of that. I as as these projects are being narrowed down, and the brackish water one is the one that has got the most discussions on, and there was originally about seven different options. So I'm and I don't have some more things to say after this, but I know there's already, you know, with these five options and a menu of mixes that could be done in various intensities, how were, and why did you settle on that one out of the seven? Just so I can get an idea. And is it open for any the others?

I'm not advocating for one, but just noticing you just gave one when there were so many that have been presented.

Yes. The two big decisions that we had was well, two decision points. One was how much water should be extracted and injected. And that was driven by we had bookends, we had a smallest one that would meet some goals, but not all. And we had the largest one.

And then the other one was should it be direct delivery of the treated water to the end users And when we were comparing doing that cost benefit analysis early on, then we brought to our GSA board in October our preferred scenario to move forward considering all of those. So at that point, this one was a top front runner. But yes, is not nothing has been decided. All of those projects, we can go back and tweak them. A new idea, a new version, it could be some of that is direct delivery and some of that is injected.

That's all doable. But in a big scheme of things, we have to be kind of deciding out of all of those options we've studied, let's move forward with a much more focused, smaller set of them and tweak them further if necessary.

Sure. And the only thing I would point out from that is this one's injection only. And as Mr. Bunn brought up earlier, he's concerned about how to pay for this. If there is desalinated water made available for other use, that's one of the ways to pay for it, that the injection only removes from the consideration. So that's why I'm just trying to keep options.

It's still an option, very Keep much

them alive and floating about their, so to speak. You made the comment of when you first started off, as you've studied here, and there's been, as you say, many studies for people to look at. And I wonder if you could just elaborate a little bit further about everything being connected hydrologically.

Well, we know water travels underground. It does not travel extremely fast. And there are clay layers. There are different soil types. So it does not move a whole lot.

We see, for example, between 180, 400 and Eastside, there is much more movement. We know even within the sub basin, are different areas that are not super connected like Upper North End Of 18400. So that's why we have this wonderful tool that is another acronym SVIHM, Salinas Valley Integrated Hydrologic Model. That model allows us to project, take anything that we do with a demand management or supply project, say we do it here and then see what parts of the valley it actually is impacting, either benefiting or adversely impacting. So it's a very site specific.

It depends what water is either how it's recharged, where it's recharged, where it's used. And so it's not what we see is not uniformly. It's very site specific and very source specific. So just using the model is our best tool at this point.

But there's various levels of connectivity.

Various levels, yep.

Okay, very good. So finally, looking at this and we had the previous presentation from Mr. Sciutto on the various projects there, hundreds of millions of dollars. Obviously, there's work being done at the dams. Again, more hundreds of millions on different projects there.

CalAm has projects that's working on over in Marina, hundreds of millions. We're looking at all these different scenarios. And the problem is there isn't any coordination. And when you're looking at things this much, this deep, this critical, that to me is what's striking me as the big black hole in all this that could send a lot of things going awry, could lead to projects that are in conflict with each other, projects that become more expensive as we've already brought up that don't that aren't just maybe can't be afforded or can be afforded, and could lead just to all kinds of distribution problems, or just a whole list of things here. And I know a few years ago, when supervisor Adams was on the board here, she had kind of pulled on a couple meetings a lot of various entities and stakeholders in the county together.

It didn't go anywhere. Everybody spoke about what their interests were, but there wasn't there wasn't impetus for for any solutions to come about. I think that we're probably at that point now. And I'm gonna, before we end here, I'm gonna make, after the other supervisors, I wanna make a motion that we come back again and have one of those workshops. I don't know what else to call them as we just try to explore in detail more some of these projects and what the GSA is doing, as well as the others, and try to make sure that everybody is on board, basically.

Yet, I understand there needs to be some sort of unified decision making, some financing framework, a clear understanding of affordability and how those fits in, and yet there isn't one single entity that has that power. I mean, closest there is to it is probably a water resources agency, because it's countywide, but the water resources agency is basically a flood control agency, unless there is some change in state law and somewhere along the line. But there just has to be some system level coordination where everybody's getting some input in. So I'm gonna, I don't know, there's support here for that or not, but I'm gonna recommend something on that line and kind of leave it at that.

If I may, this was not agendized for any action, nor to provide direction. I think the board can comment.

I'll comment on that.

We can't do any action on anything that's a presentation. I mean, in terms of calling forth a meeting. That's not necessarily a board action that's putting onto an agenda.

I I think you can have agreement on putting an item on the agenda for discussion further. But I was concerned that

That's what

I was was concerned you were gonna go farther than that.

No.

Sorry.

Yeah, be happy to comment on that because it sounds like the goal would be a regional conversation, with a goal toward improved countywide coordination. And it comes back to what you presented because for me, and I think the public comment exemplifies this, is, you know, the comment will automatically go by its very nature to individual needs and and and and and individual impacts regarding the cost of a project. Yet what I see you presenting and what I think could be even clearer is there is a a a deficit in acre feet in terms of how much water we need, and how much water we're using. Right? We're we're not replenishing as fast as we are, using water.

We're we're spending more than we're making, as I think you said, every single year. And as a result, we have the saltwater intrusion or the seawater intrusion amongst other things. And so instead, you know, I really think we need to get clear about the the the amount of acre feet we need and where it needs to go and how much it's gonna cost. And what was interesting for me is you outlined several projects, and I was surprised to see how little some of them would accomplish and how much they would cost on an annual basis. Not the capital cost in the beginning, but the cost per year to run that system on the user.

So how much it would cost per acre foot ultimately for the user each year. And so if it turns out that what we need is a larger project, more like this brackish these extraction barrier and treating that water and using that water. We gotta get on board as a county in terms of how to spread that cost, preferably countywide, because I think it's the only thing that would bring it down for the use user. And then along the lines of what supervisor Church is saying, since there's so many projects going on I mean, I'm in the in the 5th District Of Monterey County where where we're we're we're in a, you know, loggerheads over a desalination plant where you've got one part of the community saying we need it, another part of the community and the water management district saying we don't. But that that dispute, you know, is also very political.

And so if we could re revisit that conversation amongst the county's needs, and maybe there's a part of that project that could even be useful to, say, desalinating the water that's extracted from the extraction barrier. There might be some potential for a public private partnership, right, where it's a win win situation. I don't know. But the only way we're gonna get there, I think, is by having the kind of conversation that supervisor Church is suggesting, and that helps us get out of our silos. Because I understand it, but what's really strikes me from your presentation is the potential close to $2,000,000,000 per year that we could lose economically if the state comes in and implements their own demand management.

And I think your presentation here is demand management light compared to what it might look like if the state comes in and takes over our our basin. And I think that should really worry everyone. So I think but it's human nature to be concerned. Right? If it's if you're if you're in the industry, you've got your needs that have to be met. We we see we saw just in the public private I'm sorry. We saw in just the North South, if I'm correct, the two folks that made public comment are on two sides of the Salinas Valley. We're gonna stay in that conversation. Then you add the peninsula. We're gonna stay in these silos well past twenty forty if we don't do something different.

So I just wanna be supportive of supervisor Church's idea because I I think there's a problem that needs to be solved. And and if we could come together as a county and have a regional conversation about solving that problem, and we look at numbers in terms of acre feet, what we need, how to get it, how to pay for it, I would feel like we're gonna make a lot more progress. And and if we don't, that demand management from the state is the threat. And I certainly don't wanna see that. Thank you.

Yeah. I've got a lot of opinions on this one. So appreciate the ongoing conversation, which, I've been able to be in a lot of different rooms around. I I really wanna throw my weight behind the comment from mister Bunn, this idea that the target that we're going after is dictating the cost that we're chasing, in my opinion. And that line that we decided on '20 in 2017 is what we are chasing because we said, well, we agreed to that.

But the state is open, and the conversations I've heard directly from them and conversations I've had to reassessing where that line needs to be. And this question of, are we gonna do what nobody has ever do what nobody's ever done at a scale that the world's never seen and push the sea all the way back to the coast? I personally don't think that any of the options on the table are gonna do that. I think we can try and cost people a lot of money and put ourselves in a position where it fails, and we still have the same obligation to come back to that line even if this billion dollar couple billion a year, whatever project fails, we're still on the hook for the same ask, which is to put that push that water back to the ocean. I've never seen anybody do it at this scale.

Yet, we're we're pitching for it and saying we can do it with this science that's never been proven. That's scary to me. What's not is setting a fair expectation of holding the line on the day a project comes online. Which project? To be determined, but something that keeps this industry agriculture viable in Monterey County and assessing all water sources on the Salinas Valley side to determine what the best potential option is for us. So I think we're framed in a 2017 conversation. We're boxed in by it. I get that. I get the pressure that you're feeling. I understand the North South divide, I think, better than most from the world that I live in.

And I do believe we have solutions near our fingertips, but we need to redefine the problem. I just personally don't see the science that says we're gonna really push this thing back into the ocean. I would rather we come up with a realistic line. I've already had conversations in Sacramento, had conversations here. Folks are open.

But we need to come forward with what we think is fair, feasible, and doable because the biggest thing is all these costs are gonna fall on the heads, not just of the farmers at 90% but on the residents of this county and the residents of this country as those costs inevitably get put into products that end up on the shelf where romaine becomes a treasure. You know, we all talk about that wanting to see it at such a cost a box but not at this cost. Right? It where it becomes unsustainable because once you lose 10%, then that 90% can sustain that other 10 be loaded on top, and you lose it over time. It erodes.

And so I'm really worried about being framed in by the conversation. I wanna I appreciate the way this was framed as we have not decided. We need to continue to talk, but I think the biggest thing that I need to hear commitment is to be willing to reassess what the problem is. And I did not hear that yet in the presentation, but I'm hoping we can get there because that, I think, is where our solution lies, where we build sustainability into a project like this that puts us on a true path to solution rather than continuing to chase ghosts and things that I just personally even reading through a lot of science on this don't think we're ever gonna get to push this thing all the way back. I know it's been done at small scale, but we're talking about a scale this world's never seen.

So we're cool. I don't think we're that cool. Right?

You came back from moon.

You came back from the moon. That's great. But we did that in the seventies, and we haven't figured it out in the last fifty six years or whatever it was. So, you know, just saying, I wanna be realistic about what our challenge is and what we can get to. And I wanna make sure that we're looking at all options fairly, squarely, and really assessing these costs. I'm not opposed to the concept put forward by supervisor Church, but I acknowledge that we're not the end decision making body for many of these questions either. And I think that's the difficult piece. We can sit and we can come to an agreement, but in the end, it's not on us to a certain degree, especially as having been on that formulating board for the GSA in the way that they're set up. There's authority there, and it's intentional that it rests with them. So, again, I appreciate the ongoing conversation.

I I think we need to be willing to put together a united front and approach those key decision makers from here to our state's capital and acknowledge that they've already heard these concerns and aren't opposed or unwilling to work with us. We're seeing the same conversation out of the Central Valley to mister Verzick's point with leaders acknowledging that some of these timelines perhaps are a little stringent, but I think we can get there. I really do given our history and the way we've always led for ourselves here on the Central Coast. I I think we have regional solutions near our fingertips. Thank you, madam chair.

Just one question, if you could just help me understand what the goal is in terms of what being asked of us in terms of saltwater intrusion? Are we supposed to return it all the way to the ocean or are we supposed to hold the line? What are we obligated to do?

Yes, it's actually what we decided that line. So it's a locally driven decision. It's 2017. It is where the 500 was in 2017. So it's not all the way back to the ocean.

It could be a different line. What we need to do is we need to assess what are the potential adverse impacts to all of the beneficial users and uses. If we were to set it at a different place, so it will take some time. We need to be very intentional about looking at that. We also need to actually figure out how much cheaper would a project be because with seawater intrusion, what makes it so challenging, I'm going now internalize my hydrogeologist colleague, Derek Williams, because the ocean is here and the groundwater levels are here.

We're not talking about stopping it until we can equalize those two. So even just to stop it, it takes a lot of water that just to bring it. We're not pushing it anywhere. We're just stopping it here. So we need to be kind of figuring out that, that where is the new line and we are working Christopher Bunn was very graciously let us know, the agency know that he's talking to DWR.

I've talked to DWR. It's just a process. And unfortunately, there's those two things that are working against that in conflict a little bit because we do have we have marching orders from the state that we need to be submitting a committed solution. And then at the same time, we have to buy ourselves a little more time of figuring out how a project or a suite of projects could be optimized and right sized.

Right. But I want to just be clear. In your presentation, saltwater intrusion is seven miles inland at this point in time. And I've never been under the impression that what we're asked to do is return it seven miles So back to the I want to be

2017, the current minimum threshold line is 27 the twenty seventeen's line. Yeah.

And it's already come in further than that, but the idea of pushing it back even that far has never been done at this scale anywhere.

Right. Right. Okay. That's fine. But I mean, I was not under the impression that we were presenting a project that was going to return it to the coast. So I just want to be clear that would be absolutely impossible. It sounds like maybe going to But the

2017 line is also

I just want to make sure that we've got the accurate information here. Thank you.

Quick questions. Very complex process, right? And I think Super Resolopes brings a good question like what agency is empowered, right? When the Groundwater Sustainability Agency was formed in 2017, the legislature gave, I think it was passed in 2016, enacted in 2017, gave certain powers this agency to not only create the plan, but then the harder part is the implementation of it. The tough decisions.

That's kind of where we're at right now. But I'm not going to that. I just wanted to bring that up. The questions are regarding when a strategy is chosen, I know we're not there yet. Is DWR, the state, providing resources to carry out this plan, which is always a tough part when we talk about how to pay for it.

The state seems to be in a position to play critical role for solutions. I know we're going through this year, but I know a lot of other areas in California, especially the coastal counties are dealing with similar challenges. So, that'd be one. Number two, and it has to do with our legislators, their involvement in trying to help reach or get us to a point where stakeholders are on the same page towards a strategy. And I know we can't divulge everything that we do talking to our legislators, but how do we see their role in trying to reach or realize some of these strategies?

Do you want to take it? So we need to have something we believe that is necessary in this region. And once we have that, I have started talking in both federal and state level what are some of the opportunities that we could get help funding help from state and feds. And I think we are standing pretty well. But the first thing we need to do is to believe in something and show commitment to that.

And I believe the larger population is behind that solution, the more chances we have actually to convince other people that they this we are incredibly unique and special. We are in terms of that value per capita of ag value. We are the third county in the state and but much more diverse high value crops. So not creating any more food deserts for the state. I think that actually resonates.

And so we can we can go and find people and tell them we have only 400,000 people living here and this is what we produce. So we need help. We can't do it on our own, but we are willing to put our money behind it. We just need help. And I believe that the story, as much as we do not want to go forward with a project that is not proven, but something that people could proudly say, we did it.

We made it happen. And it's the components of the projects that we're studying, they are not unique. Then put together the way that has not been done before. So we have to have a little bit of faith. But I do believe and you heard from Paul Schutto how much of M1 projects have been funded by different grants and low interest loans. So I believe that this message is worth carrying forward talk to our representatives. But what I've heard back is, well, have you agreed within your region what you want to do? And I'll tell you have that, don't come to me. A little bit of that. Let's really figure out what is the best path forward and then put all of our effort into convincing other people that they should be part of that.

Well, would just say don't come to them once we got a solution. They should, all those stakeholders should be part of getting to that decision, right? Involved along the way. That's why on that question, are we making these presentations to our legislators, state federal legislators as well?

They have seen some of the At

least the one on ones as we're going and having the meetings to the community to bring them along the process so they know what the options are and so they could also weigh in on what's the right path forward. And I recognize difficulty, the complexity, the politics around this as well. So, I know it's a very tough job, and I appreciate the presentation today. But I just wanna make sure that we're bringing all our legislators, state and federal, along for the discussion as well.

Yeah. No. That's a great suggestion, supervisor. And and I I agree with Perrette. They have been informed in bits and pieces, but not something as comprehensive as what you just all got so we could get together and schedule that sort of opportunity.

I also think, certainly we know that Sigma is going to change everything, we just don't know yet how. And so there's certainly going to be a role, a legislative role in the future. There's going to be a dynamic between decisions that are made locally, regionally, decisions made in the courts, and ultimately how the legislature reacts and responds to all of that. I think '14 when folks were looking twenty five years out, 2040 seemed like a very reasonable target. We are fortunate in the Salinas Valley in a lot of ways.

We are much further along than other parts of this state. I think there is going to be a revisiting of that 2040 timeline. Obviously it would be a legislative action to take that on. In each legislative cycle we have all seen the introduction of various ideas to modify how Sigma is moving forward. Yeah, there's certainly a role for them in all of this. And so we'll take up your suggestion there and do a more comprehensive overview of all this for them.

Thank you. Yep.

Thank you for the, again the end of presentation and all the work that went into coming up with some really significant potential solutions. I think I wanted to highlight the concern, the risk and trying to determine exactly what is the risk of losing local control of of having like, I think there's you know, depending on who you talk to, that sounds very different. And maybe it is a political question less than one that's carved in stone. I think that that for me is central to any decision that's made. The the conversation about, you know, considering a new baseline, I I think it's commendable that we have partners who are so invested in trying to help find solutions.

And I think it's important that we're, at this point, that we keep everything on the table. And also that in order to navigate through some of these realities, I continue to hear, you know, that there's questions going back to like, are the things that we agree on? You know, where is where where where where generally speaking are we aligned and on the same page? And I I I think we're maybe moving towards that, but I but I also know that we're we're not all on the same page and there continue to be questions about the seawater intrusion maps. There continue to be a lot of questions out there.

And so as we introduce a new baseline or concept of some solutions along the way, I think it is important that somehow we're maintaining clarity about what we do agree on so that we can be building off of that. So I just want to make that comment cause it has been shared with me by folks who are saying I'm not sure. I'm like, okay, that ship sailed. Think that I thought we aligned on some of these issues. I think the question on all of these potential solutions, including the economic analysis of like what is the cost of what do we there's a cost to taking action, there's also a cost to not taking action.

But to be really clear, so in our comparisons we're not just looking at what is the cost to acting, but we understand what is that true cost to acting and also what is the true cost to not taking action. If we know that that the the the intruded groundwater is is continuing to move inland, there will be a cost to not taking action. And it's not just a risk of losing local control. It's it's a real risk to our water supply that I think we need to be really aware of and keep that at the forefront of all of this. But in that concept of who pays for these solutions and who's benefiting from these solutions, I think so much of it all comes back to that core question for me, which then introduces the politics into everything.

Know, whose water is it that we're talking about? But supervisor Daniel had mentioned the possibility of having a broader, larger population of folks who are contributing to the solution. And when I it wasn't in this presentation, but when I hear and when I'm thinking about all of this, we're talking about groundwater supply, but it's hard not to have groundwater supply and flood management be in parallel to each other. We can't we can't talk about one without the other. And even though the state is saying manage the groundwater in this community and with our basin, we really are also talking about flood management.

And those who benefit from appropriate flood management projects aren't necessarily those who are in the area where that water supply is coming from. So I know that's not necessarily something that's been on the table in a very public forward way, but I think that it's something that we need to be willing to talk and consider. Because if we're going to do flood management projects that benefit a larger population and help to fund or problem solve on the groundwater basin side of things, like that has to be a conversation that either we're saying we're we're gonna have it or we're not. But I think we're getting closer to having to make some of those decisions. So tying it all back to the initial comment from supervisor Church requesting that we, I think, continue engaging as a board in this conversation.

I'm hearing more and more from the community that they want this board to take a greater role. And my comment back is like, be careful what you ask for. I think I will just say this again in this public setting. I think it's important that we are engaged and participating in the decisions, but I would be cautious about stepping into and I would hope that those who are most directly affected can work with the teams that we have in place coming up with solutions and continue to talk through and bring consensus based recommendations forward because I just can't imagine that anyone is gonna be happy if you ask me to be making those decisions on your behalf. So at some point, we're gonna have to get to a point where decisions are made, but to to get to to have to have that community and stakeholder participation as much as possible, I I think we're gonna get better solutions.

So I'll just say that again. But to your point, Glenn, I've wanted to have this come back so that there's more discussion, more public discussion of the specifics. Do you want to comment on what you were envisioning a little bit?

Sure. Well, think we've all kind of touched upon an issue here is that there isn't an overseeing the body that's looking into water out of this. The GSA does have the powers to act on this, but it is a completely appointed body that is really charged with determining what essentially going be the largest infrastructure projects this county's ever had, and will affect what's going on with this county for the next thirty to fifty years. And I don't think, sitting on that body, it's a good body, but it doesn't have that whole perspective of the county, and the impact that it could have rippling through elsewhere into the county, even outside the GSA boundaries, into perspective here. And I think that's really important, and that's really where our job as elected officials for the county, even if it's a passive role, we have a role in there for that information to come forward so it could at least be distributed and to have some kind of involvement, whether it's minimal or more more more maximum or not.

I don't know onto that. And I'm not proposing anything at this point outside of saying, I think, what I'm looking at here is, you know, it's it's a special board meeting because I think this is an issue that we can't take care of and just squeeze into our regular agenda. But a special board meeting perhaps around the June. I think Mr. Bunn said their stuff is coming back at the May. I know the GSA and Water Resources are meeting on the sixteenth to discuss in a little more detail. Sixteenth or eighteenth? Eighteenth. Eighteenth, sorry.

Am happy to meet you on Saturday if you like. Yeah.

Thank thank you. I I probably won't make that. So anyway, I I do think it's at at that six six weeks from now, which put us into about the the middle of the middle of June, we might have a lot of these pieces together. I think we need to bring in all the the stakeholders we can. I know mister, you know, Weeks is here.

You know, there's Marina Coast. There's every all the to try to get an understanding of what there is everything's being proposed in this county and and have all all options open at this point because I I don't think anybody's gonna be completely happy with what comes out of this. Everybody's gonna have to give a little on something or another. But that's my motion is for six weeks now, a special meeting.

Can I just add to that? Just having been part of several conversations that are bringing agencies together around water, specifically on the Monterey Peninsula, you get into a situation where people talk right past each other. So I just think it should be something that we think about. I am a 100% in support of of having this meeting. And I think we just want to do some planning, learning from the past time, the last time that supervisor Adams tried to do this.

And so if you would like, I'd be happy to like put my head together with you and work on the development. But I think it's really important that everybody who wants to be part of this conversation as an agency that exists today that works on water, that we try to get everybody into the room to have that conversation. And we're very clear about what the goals are. Because again, you know, especially they're really politicized, from my experience, how political it is on the Monterey Peninsula. You get folks into a room and they just talk right past each other.

And so, I think the goal being, you know, the potential for collaboration, the potential for county wide collaboration. So I think we just need to think about what we want that meeting to look like and how we're gonna structure it and how it might possibly be successful. Right? The odds are stacked against us. We're talking about water. But, you know, what is the potential for success? And and and and I think that's just gonna take some preplanning, and I'd be happy to work with you, supervisor Church, on that if that's possibility.

Yeah. I I'd be quite willing to do that because I think that's the the big thing that that caused us to fail when there are the two previous meetings when when they were five or six years ago. There needs to be some end goals in here. Some achievable ones. Thanks.

Was that a second, Kate?

Yes. Okay. Sorry. Yes.

Not to put words in your mouth. And just looking at the calendar, our our June is pretty stacked. So I think a lot and if we're asking others to participate, they're just with flexibility for how schedules are able to work, but with goals for, you know yep. Please.

I just wanted to comment briefly. I'm not opposed to to this what you're proposing, Supervisor Church. I just saw what happened the last time we did this, and I don't know if if it really was much came out of it. Right? We there were several meetings held everywhere. It seems like everybody just bring everybody together and have a kumbaya moment. But we know that's not how things work around water solutions, right? Because they're very complex, challenging, political. And so, we could do this all over again. But I just want to be truthful and honest with, let's be honest with ourselves.

What do we expect the outcomes of that to be? Is it just going over like a presentation like we did just today? I don't know. I just I'm just saying I'm a little skeptical because I saw what happened last time and didn't see much come out of it despite the the planning from staff mostly and I think it was like four meetings or so that were held. This didn't didn't see see how it was strategic in advancing the conversation. Thank you.

Yeah, just before the vote, would just state I think we need to stay as focused as possible on the challenges around the GSA. Appreciate the attempt at a global, but we've done that before. And I think that's like a four day conversation if we're going to put everyone in a room together. So I would prefer that we focus on this GSA need and solution and the partners who are should be part of that. I'm just worried about creeping beyond anybody who might have water adjacent All of a sudden, you've got folks in the room that yeah. Again, I'm trying to stay focused given the history.

I I I think we have to have some there's going to be some sort of integration, at least initially, here on understanding. I mean, there's M one W's got projects. Cal M's got projects. If we just, if you don't take into consideration, and I agree, I mean, the other, the attempt to do anything here was not successful, but we did not have loss of control of our water at stake at that point. I think supervisor Daniels hits it that it's it's a long shot on something being pulled out, but the fact is I think the board of supervisor has to supervisors has to be here weighing in and somehow on these water issues.

But if know, if you've gotta we've gotta evaluate here, I think, all options, at least initially. And if we start to focus it down and limit it, then we're just we're making something achievable. Think that's workable in the long run, really dealing with what is potentially a huge financial cost, much more improbable to happen.

Can I add two things that I think are helpful in terms of my understanding of this? If you as a GSA are going to be proposing a project that involves any sort of desalination that requires an outfall, you're likely going to have to use Monterey One Waters outfall pipe. So that would be important to have them at the table. And we are currently in Marina, if CalAm's moving forward, building a desalination plant. And so however that unfolds, there might be the potential for some collaboration. So I think it's important that we have the conversation amongst the folks that you could even say that marina

should

be at the table because the lawsuit with the coastal commission has to do with a slant well at a location that if we were to do this that location would be null and void if we were to collaborate on some level. I mean I think there's there is the potential. And what I want to caution us from from being is is is like naysayers from the start. I don't know how we don't do something to solve this problem. Because if we don't come up with a solution, then the state will come up with that solution for us.

So I'm never opposed to thinking really big. And if it's regional, that brings the cost down. So this might fail. This might truly fail and we will have one meeting and it will fail. But what's the alternative? Thank you.

Okay. So we could keep talking about what I think the maker of the motion has been clear about what's as well as the second, what the what the motion is and what would be included. I'm hearing there's maybe not total agreement about that from the rest of the board, but as to the motion that's on the floor, I think it is clear.

But since Glenn and I are sort of on the same page, if someone else would rather sit on this, like, plan with Glenn this meeting, I'm open to that too. Don't need to be the one to do it. I just those were my 2¢.

Alright. So with all of that and no one else is making eye contact with me, we will take a vote. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed?

I'll abstain.

Okay. We have an abstention. Alright. So that was four in favor with Lopez abstaining. Alright. Okay. We'll have Alejo change his vote and abstain as well. Okay. Fair. Alright. So we'll plan for a conversation to occur in roughly six weeks based on scheduling availability. And we'll say thank you for the presentation. You and May. And engaging in

the workshop.

Yes. With that, we will adjourn this joint meeting and reconvene the board of super