A STUDY by the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District shows last year Monterey Peninsula residents used 30 percent less water than they did in 1988 — an extraordinary figure that further underscores the need for a desalination plant, a California American Water Co. official said.
The study, conducted this year, showed even though 3,000 water meters have been added in the California American Water Co. service area in the last 17 years, water use has substantially declined in every sector of the community, from golf courses to residences.
The figures show that Peninsula residents use far less water per person than most other communities in California, and that, despite calls from environmentalists, additional conservation is not a practical alternative to a new water supply project.
“Desal should be the last arrow in your quiver,” said Steve Leonard, division manager for Cal Am. “But we are about there.”
Cal Am has illegally pumped water from the Carmel River since 1995, when the state, in Order 95-10, compelled the company to drastically reduce pumping from the river because of damage to the steelhead trout and red-legged frog populations.
That order was made at the behest of environmental groups, which said the overpumping was damaging the river environment. Now, some of those same groups are sounding the alarm about desal plants.
The Sierra Club, the Santa Monica-based Desal Response Group and the Surfrider Foundation support water conservation over desalination plants because of desal’s potential harmful effects on marine life.
But Leonard said the fact conservation has been so successful on the Peninsula shows why a desal plant is so crucial.
“There is not much more conservation to be wrung out of the people of the Peninsula,” he said.
And the MPWMD statistics, part of a larger analysis by the water district that looked at existing and future water demand on the Peninsula, show conservation has been aggressive.
“The Monterey Peninsula conserves water probably better than any place west of Israel,” Leonard said.
Golf courses saved the most water, reducing 1,271 acre-feet in 1988 to a mere 368 acre-feet in 2005, a 71 percent decrease. Since 1995, golf courses and other green spaces in Del Monte Forest have been irrigated with treated wastewater from the Carmel Area Wastewater District, which has dramatically reduced their potable water demand. And just completed this year, the $12 million Forest Lake Reservoir allows reclaimed water to be stored during the winter months, when the demand is lowest, so it can be used to irrigate the golf courses and athletic fields in summer, when demand for water is at its peak.
Dramatic water savings were also seen in the residential sector, which consumed 23 percent less water in 2005 than in 1988. Multiresidential units, such as apartment complexes, used 44 percent less, according to the study.
Darby Fuerst, the water district’s senior hydrologist who performed the analysis, said there are numerous reasons — behavioral, technological and financial — why the Peninsula has been so successful in conserving water.
“You can’t underestimate this,” Fuerst said. “There has been an increase in the price of water, and that will cause people to use less.”
Cal Am uses a tiered rate structure, which means the more water a customer uses, additional units of water costs more.
The water company spends about $300,000 to $500,000 annually on an ongoing campaign to promote water conservation.
“We spend virtually all of our advertising money telling people not to use our product,” Leonard said.
Regulatory mandates have also helped.
“Besides pricing and education there have been a lot of requirements since the ’80s,” Fuerst said. “For instance, we are required to have low-flow toilets. There have been rebates to replace your washing machine with a low-flow version.”
Besides low-flow alternatives, from shower heads to hose spigots, a certain conservation ethic exists on the Peninsula that is rare elsewhere, Fuerst said.
“Water is scarce and a precious commodity,” he said. “More people understand the value of water.”
As a result of conservation, more than 30,000 acre-feet of water has been left in the Carmel River just in the last 10 years. That’s almost 10 billion gallons.
The figures are based on Cal Am’s average production of 11,066 acre-feet per year from the Carmel River between 1996 and 2005, and Cal Am’s historical average production of 14,106 acre-feet per year between 1979 and 1988, Fuerst said.
Carmel Valley resident Pat Bernardi, who was one of the activists who filed a complaint with the state because of Cal Am’s pumping of the Carmel River, said she is not necessarily opposed to a desal plant although she believes there is room for more water conservation.
“I think we are not left with a lot of options here,” she said.
Bernardi, who said she favors subsurface drilling as a means for desal because it’s more environmentally friendly than once-through cooling, said energy consumption and costs are her primary concern with desal.
“It’s just that like anything else,” she said. “It has advantages and disadvantages.”
While out-of-town environmentalists strongly oppose desalination plants — especially types that use once-through cooling — locals such as Frank Emerson, vice president of the Carmel River Steelhead Association, said a desal plant could be the only way to alleviate the environmental harm done to the river because of overpumping.
“It really concerns me, this groundswell of irrational criticism toward desal as some sort of gigantic environmental disaster,” said Emerson, whose group rescues about 10,000 fish per year from the Carmel River. “The environmental impact of a desal plant is much less than what we are doing to the Carmel River.”
