My very wise and beloved late Hungarian mother often used to say to me, "You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink."

For well over 10 years I have found this expression very accurate in respect to our Santa Cruz community and our water problems and deficits here.

Some of you readers might recall that around a year ago I, through my nonprofit Monterey Bay Conservancy, ran full-page ads twice in this paper describing our water crisis, our "inconvenient truth,", and its principal cause — too many berries. www.begentlewiththeearth.com I also described the dire economic, social, and environmental consequences which result from this berry-based economy which requires us to use up our water supplies and other local resources in the way we are doing.

In today's piece, I will lead us to the water that we already have here locally, but don't quite yet realize it. Water with which we can successfully address all of our region's water needs without either desalinated or imported water, nor even new dams or reservoirs, using only the abundant natural system — our existing groundwater — in a reasonable manner.

So first: Where's the water?

Well, if you read this paper, you would know that a pipeline is possibly going to be built in the South County and that water will be imported through this pipeline from the Central Valley Project and elsewhere.

This and other local sources will eliminate the huge water overdrafts, saltwater intrusion problems, and massive water resource losses that plague us from Soquel Creek Water District through Pajaro. Consequently, one might reasonably conclude that this "pipeline" and water imported through it must be our salvation.

Wrong.

What is not explained or understood by our community, and apparently by the elected officials and decision-makers in this county, is this key fact: once our agricultural well pumping practices are changed or, as the Pajaro Valley Water Management Agency calls it, "optimized" twice as much water will be newly and sustainably available to our local wells and groundwater in Pajaro than will be imported through the possible new pipeline. In fact, the Pajaro Basin Management Plan indicates that, on average, only around 13,400 acre feet of water yearly is expected to be imported through the new pipeline to address the 45,000 acre foot yearly Pajaro and Soquel Creek Water District overdraft.

I include Soquel Creek here, as well, because it gets one third of its supplies from this same shared Pajaro Basin groundwater. Pajaro's water abuse and resource loss is Soquel's problem, as well.

La Selva Beach's critical salt-water problems and SCWD's "SEASCAPE WELL" are examples.

What also goes unexplained is that this plan hinges on the most important fact/assumption that twice this amount of water — that is, 26,000 acre feet yearly — will then be available from Pajaro's and Soquel's local groundwater and wells once agricultural well pumping is redirected from the coastal area to other more inland locations in the Pajaro Basin.

When we stop pumping agricultural wells on around 8,000 acres of agricultural lands near the coast in Pajaro, and redistribute the pumping inland, the yearly sustainable yield of the Pajaro Basin wells will more than double from the present 24,000 acre feet a year to 50,000 acre feet per year. By stopping the coastal agricultural pumping, we will gain 26,000 acre-feet of new local, sustainable groundwater supplies. This is a huge increase in the local water supply.

This key fact/assumption is contained in an obscure appendix of the Basin Management Plan Technical Memoranda 4 for Subtasks 6.1, Baseline Conditions and Basin Sustainable Yield Analysis, Raines, Melton, and Corolla, Inc., May 31, 2000 that nobody of consequence here in our community seems to have read or be aware of. I would suggest that a reading of this appendix become required reading for our local decision-makers and anyone else interested.

Consequently, the "pipeline" and imported water is not the real solution. Instead, stopping agricultural well pumping in the 8,000-acre coastal area, which will produce twice the amount of new supply yearly from our natural groundwater system than the pipeline is expected to, is the most important and necessary step which we must take, in any event, to solve our local water crisis.

Doug Deitch is a local resident and founder of the Monterey Bay Conservancy of Santa Cruz. He refiled his countywide groundwater emergency lawsuit against the county Board of Supervisors this month. The second part of his article will be published next Sunday.