After years of planning and deliberation, water authorities in the Salinas Valley voted to move forward with a more than $1 billion portfolio of projects to address seawater intrusion last week. The main component of the plan involves pumping salt water out from where it has seeped into coastal aquifers, running it through a reverse osmosis plant and then reinjecting it to push the salt water back coastwards. With a 9-2 approval vote by the Board of Directors for the Salinas Valley Basin Groundwater Sustainability Agency meeting on Aug. 13, the region took a decisive step toward its state mandated requirement to bring Salinas Valley groundwater into sustainability by 2040. …  As mandated by the 2014 Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, the extent of seawater intrusion must be pushed back to where it was in 2017.

Other groundwater news:

• Cal Coast News (San Luis Obispo, Calif.): Land owners win legal battle over Paso Robles basin water rights
• SJV Water (Bakersfield, Calif.): Only two Kings County water board races on the ballot in November