Monterey Peninsula Water Management District U.S. Bureau of Reclamation

Monterey Peninsula Water Management District (MPWMD) office is located in the City of Monterey in Monterey County, California. The MPWMD is the lead agency and fiscal agent for the North Monterey County Drought Contingency Plan (DCP) and convener of the Plan Task Force (Task Force). The Task Force includes MPWMD, Monterey Regional Water Pollution Control Agency (MRWPCA), Monterey County Water Resources Agency (MCWRA), and Monterey County Office of Emergency Services, among others.

Lettuce

The DCP is being conducted in parallel and in coordination with the Salinas and Carmel Rivers Basin Study (Basin Study). The DCP is a 24 month look at how to predict the different stages or levels of severity of drought; to address near-term vulnerabilities; to identify mitigation actions and activities that will build long-term resiliency to drought and reduce the need for response actions; identify drought response actions and activities that can be implemented quickly during a drought and, develop an operational and administrative framework to identify who is responsible for undertaking the actions necessary to implement each element of the Plan. The Basin Study is a longer-term study process that will develop new modeling and information to be used for the formulation and evaluation of currently identified and potential new mitigation measures.

The Basin Study and the DCP will access data created under the locally sponsored and currently underway, Salinas River Groundwater Basin Investigation. The combination of the technical analysis of the Salinas River Groundwater Basin Investigation feeding both the near-term drought response actions and organization aspects of the DCP and the long-term planning efforts of the Basin Study provides for synergy and consistency between the studies while meeting the needs of the stakeholders in a timely manner.

The combination of these regional water management studies has opened the door to a remarkable opportunity. Working in concert, the development and sharing of comprehensive technical information between these two studies will provide the greatest potential for stakeholders to make the best, most informed decisions around critical water supply issues.