Quarterly Water
Supply Strategy and Budget Report California American Water Main Water Distribution System: July – September 2018
1. Management Objectives
The Monterey Peninsula Water Management District (District) desires to maximize the long-term production potential and protect the environmental quality of the Carmel River and Seaside Groundwater Basins. In addition, the District desires to maximize the amount of water that can be diverted from the Carmel River Basin and injected into the Seaside Groundwater Basin while complying with the instream flow requirements recommended by the National Marine Fisheries Service (NMFS) to protect the Carmel River steelhead population. To accomplish these goals, a water supply strategy and budget for production within California American Water’s (CalAm’s) Main and Laguna Seca Subarea water distribution systems is reviewed quarterly to determine the optimal strategy for operations, given the current hydrologic and system conditions, and legal constraints on the sources and amounts of water to be produced.
2. Quarterly Water Supply Strategy: July - September 2018
On June 7, 2018 staff from the District, CalAm, the National Marine Fisheries Services (NMFS), State Water Resources Control Board’s Division of Water Rights (SWRCB-DWR), and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife (CDFW) met and discussed the proposed water supply strategy and related topics for upcoming quarter.
Carmel River Basin CalAm will operate its wells in the Lower Carmel Valley in a downstream to
upstream sequence,
as needed to meet customer
demand. For this quarterly water budget, it was agreed that CalAm would plan to cease
any Upper Valley production when the River enters the “Low Flow” regime. To the
maximum extent, pumping will be shifted away from the
river wells and Seaside native and banked ASR water will be used to meet demand
in the summer months. Any new sources of
water reduce the water available to be pumped from the
river on a one to one basis consistent with SBO 2016-0016.
Seaside
Groundwater Basin CalAm will continue to produce
water from the Coastal Subareas
of the Seaside
Basin during this period,
as necessary to meet system demand and facilitate ASR recovery. There is
also a goal to produce 25 AF of treated brackish groundwater from the Sand City Desalination Plant in each of these three months.
It is recognized that, based on recent historical use, CalAm’s production from the Laguna Seca Subarea
during this period cannot be reduced to zero, as is set by
CalAm’s allocation specified in the Seaside Basin Adjudication Decision.
In
this context, the production targets represent the maximum monthly production
that should occur so that CalAm remains within its adjudicated allocation for the Laguna Seca Subarea. Under the amended Seaside Basin Decision, CalAm is allowed to use production savings in the Coastal Subareas to offset
over-production in the Laguna
Seca Subarea. However, the quarterly budget was
developed so that CalAm would produce all
native groundwater in the Coastal Subareas and Laguna Seca
production would be over the Adjudication allotment.
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