DAVENPORT >> The coastal town of Davenport, gateway to the new Cotoni-Coast Dairies National Monument and home to 100 households, may be running out of water.

The problem started in February when storms damaged the water intake at San Vicente Creek that provided the town with water. The intake is located on property owned by Cemex, which operated a cement plant here until 2010, but Cemex did not repair the damage and the town’s secondary source of water, Mill Creek, has a history of drying up in the summer.

“We supply water for every tourist that drives by,” said longtime resident Marcia McDougal, whose family runs Whale City Bakery. “It’s pretty hairy for us.”

Thursday morning at a press conference at a Highway 1 pullout, across from where the shuttered Cemex cement plant sits, Santa Cruz County supervisor Ryan Coonerty asked the global cement company headquartered in Mexico to help the people of Davenport.

When the county asked Cemex about repairs, the company said it would take “a couple years,” Coonerty said.

He voiced frustration that Cemex is trying to sell its water rights, for an estimated $6 million to $7 million, while ignoring the broken water line. A water right is a legal entitlement authorizing water to be diverted from a specified source and put to beneficial use.

In a May 25 letter to the county, Oscar Frias, regional vice president of planning at Cemex, said any repairs performed by the county would be at the county’s expense without right to recover the cost.

In a recent phone call, Ed Prins, Cemex director of real estate and planning, told Coonerty that Cemex does not intend to pay for the repairs, said Coonerty’s analyst Allison Endert, and although Prins said he would consult others at Cemex, the county has not heard back.

Neither Frias nor Prins responded to the Sentinel’s request for comment.

Davenport was founded in 1905 to house workers at the cement plant, which opened in 1906, and the cement company put in pipelines to deliver water to residents. The town grew to 1,800 people with two hotels; now a school and a handful of businesses remain such as Davenport Roadhouse and Whale City Bakery.

Since Cemex closed the cement plant in 2010, Davenport water bills have skyrocketed.

Households pay $1,649 a year for water, more than any other location in the county and one of the highest in the state, according to a survey by the American Water Works Association’s California-Nevada section.

On top of that, households pay $2,293 a year for sewer service, for a total outlay of $3,942 a year, rates approved by county supervisors.

“We pay a lot,” said Leanne Salandro, a graphic designer who lives in Davenport, noting Cemex had repaired the water system in the past.

In February, storms that left $114 million in damaged roads in the county rendered the water intake on San Vicente Creek inoperative.

There’s a major break at the intake and a second break farther up, according to Ken Fein, who has lived in Davenport for 35 years.

Cemex, which retained water rights in selling the Coast Dairies land, has declined to make repairs, according to Coonerty, making the town reliant on a secondary source at Mill Creek, which has a history of drying up in the summer.

To keep the town from going dry, the Davenport sanitation district, operated by the Santa Cruz County Department of Public Works, hired Anderson Pacific Engineering Construction Inc. to repair the San Vicente Creek intake.

“We used our emergency powers to access the line to make repairs,” Coonerty said, noting that if Mill Creek dried up, the town would have to truck water in, which would be expensive.

The repair job is going into its third week.

Coonerty said repairs are estimated to cost $220,000, a burden for Davenport residents.

“Cemex is responsible in my view,” said Fein, noting the agreements Cemex made when selling the 8,500 acres of redwoods in 2011 to Peninsula Open Space Trust and the Sempervirens Fund to maintain existing facilities.

Fein pointed out that Mill Creek water is muddier and costs more because filters have to be changed more often.

He said the repairs amount to “$2,200 per family” on top of water rates he thinks could be the among the highest in the nation.

Water and sewer rates have quadrupled in the past 20 years, according to longtime Davenport resident Noel Bock.

McDougal, who with her husband Bruce came to Davenport in 1967, started a pottery school, opened the New Davenport Cash Store and operated Whale City Bakery, spoke to Coonerty, saying, “I was up all night worrying about it.”

“We’re going to fight,” he told her.

Last November, Coonerty began a five-year process with the community of Davenport to figure out how to reuse the 100-plus-acre cement plant property, which Cemex is trying to sell.