Do you know what groundwater replenishment is? Last week, The Herald published a commentary by Sand City Mayor David Pendergrass promoting the answer to that question as part of our Peninsula's future water supply.
I agree with much of what Pendergrass wrote. Unfortunately, what he wrote is not the whole story, and what he omitted can turn his whole argument around 180 degrees.
Here are some of the critical bits of information that he left out of his commentary.
Often abbreviated GWR, groundwater replenishment is a promotional term for sewer water treated to be drinkable. The Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency currently treats local sewer water for agricultural use. Together with the water management district, it is now proposing to take treated sewer water that currently runs out to the ocean every winter and subject it to advanced treatment that will make the water drinkable for residents of the Peninsula, so far without seeking our approval.
One concern about the use of treated wastewater for drinking water is the potential impact on tourism. Although our community depends heavily on tourism, Pendergrass argues that the use of treated sewer water here would be no problem because it is already in use in Orange County. Left unsaid is that thousands of other communities do not use drinkable sewer water. In fact, according to a New York Times article on Feb. 8, only one-tenth of 1 percent of drinkable municipal water in the United States is treated sewer water.
Pendergrass claims that drinkable treated sewer water is cheaper than desalinated water. That was part of the hype used to help sell the idea to water users in Orange County, but it is not true here. Pollution control agency head Keith Israel claimed in a March 15 Monterey County Weekly article that local treated sewer water would cost $3,000 per acre-foot while a recent SPI consultant report for the regional water authority said the cost for 9,000 acre-feet per year of local desalinated water would be between $2,300 and $2,600 an acre-foot.
These last two amounts are even greater than the $2,000 to $2,200 per acre-foot estimated for the Carlsbad desalinated water and the $1,800 per-acre-foot average in the United States for 9,000 acre-feet of desalinated water per year.
Even more pertinently, use of treated sewer water here would reduce the amount of desalinated water needed from 9,000 to 5,500 acre-feet per year. The unit cost of desalinated water goes down as the total amount of water produced goes up. In fact, the SPI report showed that 5,500 acre-feet of desalinated water produced here would cost about $700 more per acre-foot than 9,000 acre-feet would.
Pendergrass failed to mention the problem of water rights. The Salinas farming community has these rights because it has paid for the current treatment facilities to reduce saltwater intrusion into the valley's groundwater basin.
The only water the pollution control agency would have to treat for drinkable use would be what the farmers do not need during the winter, and the agency would have to request that use from the farmers. In a dry winter like 2011-12, the farmers would need that water and so would not allow the pollution control agency to have access to it. That would make any water supply dependent on the use of treated sewer water highly unreliable.
Also left unsaid: To obtain the 3,500 acre-feet of treated sewer water required per year, the pollution control agency would have to build a treatment facility that could produce three times that amount because the facility would be able to operate only one-third of the year, during the winter months. That could increase the $3,000 per acre-foot estimated by Keith Israel for 3,500 acre-feet up to $9,000 locally.
Because the regional water authority endorses the processing of sewer to drinkable water, an important omission from the commentary by Pendergrass is that he, along with two other mayor members of the authority, is also a member of the pollution control agency, and two of the other mayor members have representatives from their city councils on the agency's board. A fair and balanced presentation would have pointed that out.
The crux of the matter is that we do not need the treated sewer water for drinking, we may not want it, and it would be much more expensive than desalinated water for us here on the Peninsula.
Meanwhile, our sewer water is not going to waste. Farmers are using it and are likely to need more of it in years to come as global warming increases the frequency of dry winters.
Ron Weitzman is president of WaterPlus, a local group that advocates public ownership of Cal Am's water system. He lives in Carmel.