MONTEREY — John Church stands on his two acres high above Carmel Valley and scans the honeysuckle and chaparral, past thick oaks and handsome vineyards, to green golf courses and hills browned to a late-summer velvet. Once, the ruddy gas station owner relished sunsets from this land. "Like neon," he says. "Fabulous."
When he dreamed about the home he would someday build, his heart would soar. But now a visit to the hilltop leaves his stomach tied in knots.
"When I come up here I think about what could be, and I get so angry I can't stand it," says Church, 56. "Sometimes I think it is best if I don't come at all."
Like many other people on the Monterey Peninsula, Church is heartsick over water. He can't get any. And without it, he can't build the house where he hoped to care for his aging father and, someday, to retire.
From Pebble Beach to Carmel--and the much-romanticized spots in between--hundreds of people find themselves in similar predicaments. Some can't build retirement homes. Others are prevented from remodeling. The addition of a single toilet can take an act of two government agencies and the local water company--if it is approved at all.
The rest of the state has seen new housing starts jump sharply in each of the last four years. At the same time, the peninsula of legendary golf courses, a world-class aquarium and a land baron named Clint Eastwood grants building permits only to those rich enough, inventive enough or patient enough to find water.
The Monterey Peninsula is positively parched not because of Mother Nature, but as the result of a man-made drought. The problem began in earnest when the state's water overseers ruled four years ago that the local water company was pumping 69% too much water from the Carmel River.
Drastic reductions were ordered. Monterey County and the city of Pacific Grove have waiting lists for property owners who want new water hookups. Many desperate residents are drilling their own wells or concocting elaborate deals to trade for water rights owned by farmers or developers.
Like New Yorkers watching the obituaries for apartment openings, Peninsulites scan the paper for building projects that have gone belly-up--hoping water will be freed for their own construction.
One local group is threatening to stop paying taxes. The water company gets calls from "vigilantes" trying to report illegal water hookups. One property owner who refused to go on the water waiting list in Pacific Grove paid more than $50,000 for access to water that once served a now-closed laundry.
