Jon Pedotti walks on the cracked remains of a parched lake bed on his 1,561-acre ranch located along San Simeon Creek in the Santa Lucia Mountain foothills of Cambria, which are brown from drought, on Oct. 1, 2014. Once again, Cambria, as well as other small coastal towns, must make decisions on what to do to stretch out its ever-thinning water supply. 

Nestled along the Central Coast, Cambria is a picturesque town famous for its vintage clothing and antique shops, its one-of-a-kind olallieberry pies, its scarecrow festival in the fall and its Disneyesque Christmas market and light display in December. Located right off of Highway 1 and 73 miles south of Big Sur, it’s a popular stop for those driving on the Pacific Coast Highway. 

Cambria has also been running out of water for nearly four decades and — like many spots along the Central Coast in San Luis Obispo County — it does not have a permanent solution in the offing. The unincorporated town of more than 5,000 people is dependent wholly on two creeks, the Santa Rosa and San Simeon, for its water supply. As climate change ramps up, those creeks are drying out more rapidly and more frequently. 

Between May and October, the driest season, the creeks have run dangerously low as the state’s current drought takes its toll. In 2021, the town almost ran out of water, declaring a level four emergency (there are only five levels) and requesting that residents curb their water usage by 40%.

But conservation alone may not be enough, at least according to one expert. “I don’t think we can conserve our way out of major droughts in this region,” Richard Frank, an environmental practice professor at UC Davis and director of the California Environmental Law & Policy Center, told the Public Policy Institute of California. 

“We have a big groundwater problem on the Central Coast — over-pumping has caused saltwater intrusion, which is contaminating our groundwater supply,” he noted. “Connecting to state and federal water projects is not a solution. They aren’t able to meet existing demand and can’t expand deliveries.”

Its proximity to Southern California, year-round Mediterranean climate and December Christmas market make Cambria a popular weekend getaway destination for tourists each year.

The lack of water also means that the town cannot grow. By 2000, Cambria’s Community Services District had reduced growth from 2.3% to 1%. Today, it is zero percent. 

That has created a system of haves and have-nots in the town, “dividing the property owners of Cambria into three distinct categories: those who have access to water, those who will have it eventually, and those who will never have it,” a Cal Poly San Luis Obispo undergraduate study explained. 

The water issues came to a head in mid-March when Cambria resident Al Hadian, who owns a pair of lots on Cambria Pines Road — an arterial thoroughfare from the beach toward the downtown — was denied permits to develop on his property. 

Hadian took all the necessary steps through the San Luis Obispo County Planning Department, but his plans to build a single-family residence were ultimately rebuffed after the county sent the plans to the California Coastal Commission. 

“It was sent to the Coastal Commission, and all of a sudden two of the commissioners wanted to appeal the project,” Hadian told New Times in the wake of the denial. “I thought that this would be a slam dunk because I have a water meter that is active, I am paying my bills, I’m a pre-moratorium customer.”

The problem, commission planner Esme Wahl told New Times, is “Cambria has a longstanding water issue,” noting that development can only happen when there is an adequate and sustainable water supply.

“We’re not able to make either of those findings, and as a result, we have to deny this new development in Cambria,” Wahl said.

A woman crosses the main drag of the storybook Central California coastal town of Cambria. Like several other small hamlets in the region, Cambria is facing dire circumstances with its water supply. 

The Sierra Club’s Santa Lucia chapter — which serves SLO County, including Cambria — noted in a recent newsletter that the Coastal Commission “sent two letters to the SLO County Planning Department concerning its permitting practices in the communities of Cambria and Los Osos … and the commission is clearly done with five years of repeating itself.”

Indeed, the Coastal Commission’s report notes the county “is giving applicants a sense of ‘false hope’ when it [processes development applications], and is doing a disservice to these applicants and the broader community.”

The result is that other residents feel the water situation, while having to be constantly monitored, isn’t as dire as the commission paints it to be. 

“I get their mission, but they are at odds with the people, and they’re going a little overboard,” says John Weigold, a retired Navy admiral who’s been at the helm of the Cambria Community Services District for the past three years, referring to the commission’s findings. 

Weigold and property owner Hadian believe that because the properties were installed with water meters by the district — before a 2001 building moratorium in the wake of an emergency water shortage declaration — the building permits should still be considered valid today. 

“Hadian has a very strong argument,” Weigold told SFGATE. “The Coastal Commission put that deal together in the 1990s. And this wasn’t a handshake deal. A lot of money including the construction of another water tank went into it. Those parcels have had meters in the ground. The Coastal Commission was part of all that discussion and agreement. For them to turn around and deny it is pretty stunning.

“The district doesn’t agree with the Coastal Commission’s interpretation of the agreement — and we’ve reached out to them because we have a whole host of issues.”

But while the district may not agree with the Coastal Commission, the commission’s spokesperson says it is the community, the water district and the county that have control over Cambria’s fate. 

“Solving a community’s water issues is beyond the commission’s jurisdiction and is something Cambria needs to work on with the county,” California Coastal Commission spokesperson Noaki Schwartz emailed SFGATE. “This may mean a new source or upgrading wastewater treatment plant functions for water recycling/reuse/reinjection or may mean partnering with nearby operators.”

The wrangling over a single project is only one small example of the struggles that residents, developers and water districts of coastal communities like Cambria deal with on a regular basis, Weigold points out. “This is indicative of what they do across the state,” Weigold says, noting that the Coastal Commission’s tangles with Huntington Beach and Monterey over plans for desalination plants are two more examples of resources that are “maybe not allocated where they should be.”

Jon Pedotti hauls a 500-gallon tank of water he filled from one of his wells to a trough on his ranch located along San Simeon Creek in the Santa Lucia Mountain foothills of Cambria, which are brown from drought, on Oct. 1, 2014. Cambria faces similar drought conditions today. 

“Where does this all get adjudicated, I don’t know,” Weigold says. “Right now, it’s in court, and that’s expensive and a waste of taxpayer dollars. Right now, we are generating clean water, and we’re forced to dump it into the ground.”

Weigold is referring to the district’s wastewater treatment facility, spun up as a temporary solution in 2014 for $13 million to address water shortage needs after then-Gov. Jerry Brown declared a state of emergency. The facility reuses and desalinates brackish wastewater. It runs a combination of freshwater, estuary water and treated sewage wastewater through three stages of osmosis, eventually injecting the treated water back into the two water-supplying creeks, in turn creating a supply for the community.  

“The way our system works here in Cambria is we have a new water and water conservation policy and procedures that we follow, so a lot of the indicators point to always being at stage two anyway,” Weigold says of the state moving to severe drought stage measures in Southern California this week. “We manage it by conservation and our water reclamation facility. If we need to go to stage five or six level conservation, we think we have a good handle on management of our situation.”

Weigold says the water treatment facility is currently going through a permitting process to enable its full-time operation if needed.

As drought-stricken California starts to clamp down more and reserves hit all-time lows, the folly of kicking the problem to the next generation seems to have come home to roost not only in Cambria but in all of coastal SLO County, Weigold says. 

But in his view, there is almost zero political cohesion for Cambria and other small beach towns on the Central Coast to band together and find a long-term and sustainable solution.

“Every community is so different with their own little issues,” Weigold says, noting that he engages with other water districts at least once a month to talk about short- and long-term fixes and discuss the intricacies of the problem in each town as well as the area as a whole. “I just don’t think the communities have any wherewithal to get together. I think the community engagement part of my job is Ph.D. level. It’s really difficult to manage at times and work with so many varying views on what a community, or the area, should be when it grows up.” 

A view from above Cambria's wastewater treatment plant, which was spun up as an emergency alternative to running dry in 2014. The Cambria Community Services District is currently applying for full-time use of the facility.

And it’s not just differences seen from village to village. Within town limits, the battle lines are drawn neighborhood by neighborhood, house by house, about what should be done with water and how much should be spent by taxpayers. 

That infighting, ultimately, paints a “difficult picture,” Weigold says.

Even in idyllic Cambria, there’s “a division among residents on what the future looks like,” Weigold says. He noted that if the wastewater treatment facility is permitted for full-time use, available water could potentially lead to more development, or at least a shift in the current zero-growth outlook. 

But that would require more adjustments and likely, more infighting. No one knows what’s in store for Cambria’s future, especially as climate change continues to dry out the state.  

“More water, more building means a change in Cambria’s culture,” he says. “A lot of people want to leave it the way it is. They feel the addition of water means change, which I don’t agree with. We all have different issues on the coast. I think everyone wants to do what’s right, what’s responsible. I don’t think anyone wants to harm the environment. But we also have to live. And once saltwater gets into the supply, it’s game over.” 

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