Related Projects

Carmel River Mitigation Project | Sand City Coastal Desalination Plant | San Clemente Dam Removal

Carmel River Mitigation Project

Background:

• In 1981 MPWMD established a Water Allocation Program to regulate water production and delivery systems  and set up procedures to establish limits on the amount of water Cal-Am could draw from the Carmel River.
• Between 1981 and 1983, scientists determined that CalAm's diversions had a negative effect on fish and wildlife habitats and streamside vegetation and contributed to widespread channel instability.
• In 1984, the District began implementing the Carmel River Mitigation Program, which focused on restoring vegetation and improving wildlife and steelhead habitats.
• The program has continued, in various forms, to the present day.
• In 1995 the State Water Resources Control Board ruled that Cal-Am has an obligation to continue the program should MPWMD ever cease to operate it; however, all concerned parties have agreed that the program remain the primary responsibility of the MPWMD.

Key components:

• General mitigations relating to water supply and demand management, and
• Specific measures relating to select environmental resources such as steelhead and riparian vegetation.

General mitigation measures include hydrologic monitoring (precipitation,streamflow, groundwater levels, and water quality), water production management (operations agreements, quarterly water supply budgets, and well registration and reporting), water demand management (conservation, permitting, and monitoring), and water supply planning.

Specific mitigation measures include steelhead protection (spring smolt rescues, fall/winter juvenile rescues, summer juvenile rescues and rearing, and adult and juvenile population monitoring), riparian habitat protection (vegetation monitoring, plantings and irrigation, erosion control, and channel clearing) and lagoon habitat protection (vegetation surveys, topographic measurements, and wildlife monitoring). Each of the components is described in the Annual Mitigation Program Reports that are required by CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act). More information about specific activities here.

Sand City Coastal Desalinization Plant

Sand City is already desalinating water. It has had its own desalination plant since 2010, when the new Coastal Desalination Plant came online. Frustrated with the delays in finding a regional solution to the water supply problem, Sand City decided to be proactive and develop a water source to help fuel the City's economic growth. The plant is owned by Sand City and operated by Cal-Am.

• Cost: $11.9 million
• Funding: $2.9 million from the California Department of Water Resources Proposition 50 grant funding. The remaining $9 million came from city redevelopment funds and capital improvement funds.
• Production: 300 acre-feet per year (~98 million gallons). To put it in perspective, this is about 3% of the size of the proposed Water Supply Project (~9700 acre feet).
• Timeline:
  • Environmental impact report completed and certified in January 2005.
  • Project approved by the California coastal Commission in May 2005.
  • Prop 50 funding received in 2007.
  • Construction began in March 2008.
  • By March 2009 most of the elements were in place and ready for testing.
  • The plant came online April 2010. Read about the Grand Opening ceremony here.

San Clemente Dam Removal
aka The Carmel River Reroute and Dam Removal Project (CRRDR)

The San Clemente dam is located near the confluence of the Carmel River and San Clemente Creek, between Big Sur and Carmel Valley. Built in 1920, the 106 foot high dam was acquired by Cal-Am when it purchased the assets of the previous water supplier on the peninsula.

Over the past 90-some years, sediment has built up in the reservoir behind the dam, rendering it unusable. It has not been a water source since 2002, and is now so deteriorated it is at high risk of collapse in an earthquake or flood. If the dam fails, the water and silt would flow downstream, endangering 1500+ homes. In addition, the dam has not been good for the fishies, especially the steelhead and red-legged frog populations. It simply has to go.

Because of the location of the dam, simply blasting it away would endanger communities downstream, and trucking the sediment to another location was not cost-effective. Cal-Am wanted to try to strengthen the dam (much cheaper than removal), but this would not resolve the concerns for aquatic and riparian habitats. Instead, the California Department of Water Resources approved a plan to carefully remove the dam structure and reroute the Carmel River in such a way that the sediment will be essentially stored in place, to eventually be integrated into the existing landscape and developed into a park with recreation trails.

Estimated cost of the project is $84 million. Roughly $49m will come from Cal-Am (that's you and me, fellow ratepayers), $25 from state funds, and the remainder from federal funds and private donations. The Division of Ratepayer Advocates (DRA) opposed the ratepayer surcharge, saying that Cal-Am should not profit while writing off a deteriorating asset, but the CPUC allowed it (of course).

The CRRDR (as it's called) is the largest dam removal project ever in the state. It is not the first, or only, dam in the country to have this sediment-buildup problem. About 50 other dams have been removed in the last 20 years in California alone. What is remarkable about this project is the size, and the difficulty of dealing with the sediment given the dam's location. Stabilization of the site began in summer 2013 and the project is scheduled for completion in 2015.

Critics claim that Cal-Am mismanaged the dam and should have had some sort of silt mitigation program in place.  The deterioration of the dam is often cited as one example of why Cal-Am should not own the proposed desalination plant.