Monterey County details limited water allocations and new request process

Monterey County planning staff on Wednesday explained how property owners and developers can request a portion of newly available water allocations and summarized priorities the Board of Supervisors adopted in June.

Sarah Weichle of the county's Housing and Community Development team said the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District provided additional water to the county earlier in 2025 and the county now has roughly 82 acre-feet to allocate (about 72 acre-feet from MPWMD plus roughly 10 acre-feet the county previously held). "The water allocation was provided to the county by the Monterey Peninsula Water Management District," Weichle said, and she emphasized the county policy does not lift MPWMD's current cease-and-desist order that bans new meters in parts of the service area.

Weichle described the policy's prioritized use categories: an approved-project bucket (about 19 acre-feet reserved for previously approved projects), planned housing growth (including higher-density projects that meet housing-element opportunity-site or affordable-overlay criteria and smaller units such as ADUs/JDUs with a fixture-count threshold of roughly 12 fixture units), a first-come/first-served bucket for projects that do not qualify under planned housing growth, and a small strategic-reserve category the board may allocate at its discretion.

She said single-family homes on a vacant block of record may qualify if they already have a meter or water rights and meet a higher fixture threshold (about 25 fixture units). Weichle added that commercial, industrial and emergency/ fire-fuel-management requests can qualify under procedures described in the policy. "There is this category or first priority of previously approved projects," she said, and walked through eligibility and time limits intended to move projects forward rather than allowing long-term reservation without progress.

To request water, applicants must submit either a construction permit application or a discretionary planning permit (use permit, conditional-use permit, coastal-development permit) to the county permit center and complete a nearly finalized water-allocation request checklist. Weichle said planners and permit technicians will review submissions for completeness and, if criteria are met, reserve water during the completeness review; formal allocation is issued when a construction permit is granted.

When asked about projects on the waiting list, Weichle said four projects remain on the approved-project list, including single-family homes and subdivisions with approvals dating from 1997, 2002–2018 and 2021; HCD staff reduced a longer list of 20–30 projects to those still waiting and notified applicants who obtained alternate water sources. Elizabeth Gonzales, permit-center supervisor, said the county call center and front-counter staff are trained to help applicants and will route questions to planners when needed.

Weichle said the county will publish the full board policy, post the checklist and create a dedicated permit-center web tab and an announcement to help residents and developers begin the application process.