To meet mandates of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, three options have emerged to achieve groundwater sustainability. In August, the board of the Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency will select one of these portfolios to recommend to the state’s Department of Water Resources for review. A hurdle is the cost.
“We’ve had some real struggles,” Advisory Committee Chair Curtis Weeks told the board on July 9. “They see a number and they can’t talk about the merits of the project.”
The project portfolios all incorporate some amount of demand management (reduction in pumping), optimization of the Castroville Seawater Intrusion Project, and use of a Monterey County Water Resources Agency permit to divert water from the Salinas River.
Both Portfolios 1 and 3A utilize a brackish groundwater restoration project (BGRP), each at different scales, affecting both cost and outcome.