For an emergency water project, Cambria’s Water Reclamation Facility has spent a remarkably long time waiting.
Built during a severe drought in 2014, the facility has since been studied, redesigned, challenged, and subjected to regulatory review as Cambria wrestled with how to protect its limited groundwater supply without damaging the sensitive habitat surrounding it.
After 12 years, state coastal regulators decided the project has changed enough to move forward.
The California Coastal Commission voted unanimously on Sept. 9 that three appeals of San Luis Obispo County’s approval of the Cambria Community Services District’s (CCSD) Water Reclamation Facility (WRF) raised “no substantial issue” under the California Coastal Act.
The decision leaves the county-issued coastal development permit in place and ends the project’s appeal process.
“This project has a long history, and previous iterations of it did raise serious coastal resource concerns,” Coastal Commission District Manager Kevin Kahn told commissioners during the Sept. 9 meeting. “But the current project, as approved by the county, has been modified over the years in response to those concerns.”
Those modifications include eliminating a roughly 3.5-acre open-air brine evaporation pond, reducing operations, restoring disturbed habitat, directing treated water into the San Simeon Creek lagoon during drought, and establishing an adaptive management program to detect environmental problems.
The project is designed to protect Cambria’s existing water supply rather than create a new one. The community of roughly 6,000 people depends on the shallow San Simeon and Santa Rosa Creek aquifers. During times of drought, declining groundwater levels increase the risk of seawater intrusion.
Under the project, brackish groundwater would be treated to drinking-water standards and reinjected closer to CCSD’s potable wells, creating a protective groundwater gradient. Up to 425 gallons per minute could be reinjected, while another 100 gallons per minute could be directed into the San Simeon Creek lagoon during drought to support habitat and water quality.
But Coastal Commission water quality specialist Holly Hall acknowledged that regulators cannot know exactly what will happen with the system.
“Modeling cannot predict every condition that may occur during operation,” Hall told commissioners. “That is why we have given considerable thought to the adaptive management plan.”
The plan monitors groundwater levels, water quality, habitat, sensitive species, San Simeon Creek, and the lagoon. If problems are linked to WRF operations, responses can include reducing pumping or reinjection, adjusting lagoon discharge, or temporarily suspending operations.
Opponents argued that those safeguards still leave too much uncertainty.
Cambria resident Crosby Swartz questioned whether the district knows how much groundwater it can safely pump without drawing down the aquifer and urged commissioners to require testing at several pumping rates.
“There seems to be no agreement about a safe and sustainable pumping rate,” Swartz said at the Sept. 9 meeting. “We do not have to wait for the next drought to figure out how to [operate] Cambria’s reclamation facility.”
Others questioned how accessible the technical advisory committee overseeing monitoring would be. Appellant Christine Heinrichs asked commissioners to specify “what notice and access the public will have to meetings and reports.”
Residents’ skepticism follows the facility’s troubled history.
The CCSD constructed the original emergency project in 2014, when district officials feared Cambria could have only two to three months of water remaining. The system included an advanced water treatment plant and the roughly 3.5-acre brine evaporation pond that later faced several problems, including flooding during heavy rainfall.
State water officials issued a cease-and-desist and closure order for the pond in 2017. Since then, the CCSD has run the facility only briefly to maintain its equipment.
The revised project eliminates the open-air brine pond. Concentrated waste would instead either be treated through a zero-liquid discharge system before the remaining material is hauled away or temporarily stored and trucked to a disposal facility. The former pond would be restored as habitat.
Appellant Mary Webb remained concerned about storing concentrated brine near the creek and argued that the zero-liquid discharge proposal should undergo its own coastal permitting process.
Growth was another reoccurring concern.
Opponents have long questioned whether making Cambria’s water system more reliable could eventually enable development in a community that has restricted new water connections for years.
“The WRF serves existing customers only,” CCSD General Manager Matthew McElhenie told commissioners. “It does not create new service connections, lift the moratorium, authorize new development, or provide growth capacity.”
Commission staff similarly said the project does not increase the amount of water that the CCSD is authorized to extract for community consumption.
After public testimony, Coastal Commission District Manager Kahn stood by staff’s recommendation, pointing to the years of technical studies and the adaptive management program.
“I think the most critical piece is the adaptive management provision to make sure that it is what we expect it to be,” he said. “It identifies problems before they’re a problem.”
Commissioners agreed without discussion.
“We are very pleased with the Coastal Commission’s unanimous determination that the appeals raised no substantial issue,” McElhenie later told New Times in an email. “After nearly 12 years of regulatory review, technical work, public discussion, and project refinement, this was an important milestone for the district and the Cambria community.”
But coastal approval does not mean the WRF is ready to begin pumping water.
“For Coastal Act purposes, the project is approved and process complete,” Kahn told New Times via email. “CCSD still needs permits from other agencies.”
Those next steps include approvals—or confirmation that approvals are not required—from the Central Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, California Department of Fish and Wildlife, and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.
McElhenie declined to estimate when regular operations could begin.
“For the first time in many years, our focus can shift away from whether the project will receive its coastal approval and toward completing the work necessary to put it into service, when needed,” he said.
Under the county’s approval, the WRF can generally operate during prolonged dry periods between May and November for up to 24 hours a day, five days per week.
With the commission’s ruling, opponents have also exhausted the Coastal Act’s administrative appeal process.
“There is no other appeal path—if project opponents want to continue fighting this, they would have to go to court,” 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson told New Times via email.
Gibson described the decision as “a big step forward.”
“I agree with the Coastal Commission’s assessment that this is both a win for the resilience of Cambria’s water supply and a benefit for the habitat of San Simeon Creek,” Gibson said. ∆
Reach Staff Writer Chloë Hodge at chodge@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Sept 17-24, 2026.
