Cal-Am gets $1 million state grant to build desalination test well

California America Water has been awarded a $1 million state grant for its desalination test well project.

The grant will help pay for the installation of an approximately $4 million slant test well, which is intended to prove the viability of beach wells as feed-water for the company’s Monterey Peninsula Water Supply Project.

Cal-Am officials say that if the desalination plant isn’t built, they won’t have enough water to serve the community.

That much is certain, says the company, but what isn’t certain is whether the desalination plant tests will come back positive to move forward.

“We want to confirm that the technology we’re proposed for the wells is indeed feasible, and get more information about the water quality and impacts to the groundwater basin,” said Catherine Stedman with Cal-Am.

If the California Coastal Commission approves the necessary permits in November, the test site will be in Marina, near the sand mining plant. It will become the permanent desalination plant location if all goes according to plan, Stedman said.

Not everyone is confident, however.

“I think we have to be careful about asking for things that in fact they have no idea whether they’ll really work,” said Ron Cohen, the former director of Public Water Now.

Public Water Now is the local citizens’ group that pushed for public control of the peninsula’s water supply but ultimately lost out to Cal-Am in the battle over Measure O.

Cohen believes Cal-Am should go with a system that is already known to work rather than trying out its own design.

“That they have to prove that slant wells don’t work first, and by the way, that’s on our nickel, so it doesn’t effect them whether they do it or don’t do it,” he said.

Regardless, with state water restrictions in place, Cal-Am says it’s either sink-or-swim with the deal project, which because of a delayed environmental impact report was pushed back to 2019.

The state funding for the test project comes from Proposition 50 (the Water Security, Clean Drinking Water and Coastal and Beach Protection Act,) which allocates not less than $50 million in grants for brackish water and ocean water desalination projects throughout the state.