Utilities Advisory Commission MINUTES SEPTEMBER 4, 2002

Transcription

1 City of Palo Alto Utilities Advisory Commission MINUTES SEPTEMBER 4, 2002 ROLL CALL...2 ORAL COMMUNICATIONS... 2 APPROVAL OF MINUTES... 2 AGENDA REVIEW AND REVISIONS... 3 REPORTS FROM COMMISSIONER MEETINGS/EVENTS... 3 DIRECTOR OF UTILITIES REPORT... 4 UNFINISHED BUSINESS... 7 TRINITY... 7 Page 1 of 62

2 ROLL CALL Carlson: We re going to start taking roll from my left here. (Commissioners Ferguson, Bechtel, Rosenbaum, Council Member Liaison Beecham and Chairman Carlson are present). Carlson: So we re missing Dexter Dawes. We knew that. We re sorry he can t be here. ORAL COMMUNICATIONS Carlson: Are there any more tickets for people that want to speak? In that case, we will hold public comment on the agenda item of the Trinity River, which will be one of the first items. APPROVAL OF MINUTES Carlson: We ll just go ahead to the meeting notes from last time, which I want to comment were incredibly long. I m really impressed with the staff s ability to get the 99.9% I don t know how many percent that they did. There were a couple of items that were not gotten and I m afraid that it s lost to posterity, but except for those lost items, does anyone else have any changes for the last meetings minutes? Go ahead. Rosenbaum: We did all receive an with some corrections from a member of the public. I looked at those and they all looked fine, so I would move approval with the inclusion of the comments that were received by . John, did you get a copy of those? Ulrich: Yes, I did. Rosenbaum: All right, so staff has a record of those? Bechtel: I second the motion by Commissioner Rosenbaum. Ferguson: The was from Jeff Hoel. Ulrich: That s correct. Rosenbaum: Yes. Page 2 of 62

3 Carlson: Is everybody prepared to go ahead on that basis? I m delighted to have him review our 60 pages of notes. All in favor? All Commissioners: Aye. Carlson: Now, there have been some calls for even more publicity. The problem is that the system we have is very expensive and time consuming, unless anybody on the Board can think of something easier, something we d like to give up. Right now we are one of the few Boards that has a verbatim transcript that is published both on the website, and it s put in the libraries. The agenda s put out and the website also includes the key documents that are going to be discussed. This is not exactly a cheap operation. It takes weeks to put together those transcripts and I really appreciate the staff effort and their ability to spell all the wondrous acronyms that we all know by heart, and nobody else does. I know there have been requests for more, but we think we are doing a lot. It would just be unreasonable to do anymore unless anybody else has any recommendations. Let s go ahead. AGENDA REVIEW AND REVISIONS Carlson: We re skipping the notes from the public until we get to the Trinity decision. REPORTS FROM COMMISSIONER MEETINGS/EVENTS Carlson: We ll start out with the report from the Executive Director. John? Ulrich: Thank you, but you may have a report from the Commissioners. Do you want to go back to that or do mine first? Carlson: Sorry, I forgot that. Any reports of meetings from Commissioners? Bechtel: I believe there was a meeting at NCPA last week. Ulrich: 2 weeks ago. Bechtel: At Murphy s. Carlson: Bern, that s yours. Beecham: I was indeed at the meeting at Murphy s for NCPA. It was our annual meeting up there to give many of us a chance to go and visit some of our resources. There s nothing particular to report from that meeting. We had a good discussion of issues on one of our reservoirs, and a slide issue where we have a mountainside that s tending to slide down into the reservoir. We talked Page 3 of 62

4 about actions that NCPA needs to take. The City of Palo Alto does indeed have a financial interest in that particular asset. Palo Alto has urged that NCPA take a very long-term approach to this and see if there s some way that we can fully resolve the issue. Ferguson: I d just like to add to Bern s comments. I attended the meeting at Murphy s as well. I d missed the tour of our hydro facilities there when I went 2 years ago. I was particularly struck by the professionalism of the NCPA staff in particular, the affirmative environmental concern that they evidenced all the different staffers that we spoke with on the tour, and the executives as well. We re ahead of the curve. Palo Alto certainly is, with its own staff, and I went away impressed with the same attitude by the NCPA staff. Carlson: I d like to add. I haven t had any meetings in the past, but I m getting a number of invitations and the rest of you may be getting invitations by people who want to meet with us on major issues like Trinity and Fiber to the Home. I don t have an infinite time to do that sort of thing, but I m certainly willing to meet on such issues. The only invitation I ve got out there right now is PacBell. I may or may not find a time that works, but there may be others, and if anybody wants to do that, that s fine. We also would, of course if somebody has something major to bring forward bring them forward to the meetings. So with that, the Executive Director s report, John? DIRECTOR OF UTILITIES REPORT Ulrich: Thank you. I ll be rather brief. A couple of accolades though. Commissioner Ferguson and Council Member Beecham and also our Mayor Vic Ojakian and Commissioner Dawes attended the last [NCPA] Commission Meeting and I appreciate the time taken to do that. The hydro facilities are quite a sight to see. And the interactions with other members of NCPA are important for our relationship. So I appreciate that time taken away from your other normal business. My report, on purpose, is going to be rather short. It s important that you hear about the Water Legislation update. All 3 major bills designed to fix the deteriorated Hetch-Hetchy region water system have passed out of the state Legislature and are on their way to and have arrived at the Governor s desk. He has until the end of September to sign those bills. We re of course hoping that they get signed as they ve been submitted to him from the Legislature. Clearly, if they pass and are signed, it s a major victory for the Bay Area Water Users Association and the group of elected officials from a number of cities, including a lot of work and time put in by Council Member Beecham. All the various BAWUA agencies spent a lot of time. In particular, it was very helpful to travel to Sacramento for the key committee hearings. Since all 3 of the piece of Legislation had different committees and different times, it took multiple trips and a lot of focus on it. Page 4 of 62

5 The major bill Assembly Bill 1823 that was introduced by Assemblyman Papan requires San Francisco to complete a list of critical capital improvements to the regional system. It must report to the State on the progress towards that goal. So it would add some fire to getting this moving along. Senate Bill 1870 sponsored by Senator Speier creates what s called the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Water System Financing Authority, a JPA that through authority allows BAWUA agencies to finance their share of the cost to the upgrading of the system. Papan s other Legislation, Assembly Bill 2058, allows BAWUA agencies to form the Bay Area Water Supply and Conservation Agency, which also allows the BAWUA agencies to finance capital improvement projects. Through this vehicle, region wide water planning and investments and conservation and water recycling can happen more easily. These are all very important. With their passage, we re going to see some major progress towards getting the Hetch-Hetchy system done. That will allow San Francisco to go out to vote for this $1.6 billion measure rather than a multi-billion dollar [measure] that they would have had to vote on before this change. That, of course, would require us in Palo Alto and other BAWUA agencies to go out, and through this Joint Power Agency, issue bonds for our share of the system. So, major work. You ve probably followed some of the other bills. The one that s had a lot of interest on our part is Senate Bill 1078, Byron Sher s bill. It was passed on August 31 and awaits signature. It establishes renewable portfolio standards. In this one, agencies that invest in their own utilities are required to invest in renewables to the tune of 1% per year until they reach the 20% mark by the year Now, it s not that cut-and-dried. There are some stipulations, particular for investor-owned utilities, where they re capped how much money they re able to collect through their public benefits dollars, so they would not necessarily reach that 20%. Also in light of local control and local decision making, the bill provides for final decisions about renewable portfolios to be made by the local agency that operates the utility. In our case, the City Council would make the final decision on what that total renewable portfolio would be and over what period of time. There s significant flexibility given to local agencies. Carlson: John, that s a potentially very large item. Is there a maximum to what we have to spend? Do we have to spend nothing beyond our public benefit dollars, or do we have to spend what it takes? Ulrich: In the case of municipal owned utilities, there s not an obligation based on any formula or any funding. It s up to the local agency to make the decision. Carlson: Okay. Page 5 of 62

6 Ulrich: Those are the highlights on recent Legislation. I d also like report, after a number of months and tremendous amount of work, that we went through the RFP process and awarded a contract for the 25 megawatt purchase of energy to fill the hole in the 3 rd and 4 th quarter of our portfolio, a portion of it after This contract provides for this energy after We got a very favorable, very competitive price, and we negotiated the contract with a counterparty that we believe will be a very strong asset for our portfolio. Bechtel: John, excuse me, what was the duration of the contract period? Ulrich: I believe it was for 3 years. Bechtel: 3 years. Ulrich: Tonight on your desk, I ve given you a copy of a brand new report that we were just able to complete. It s the additional information about the survey data that we received from our survey that we made of 5000 residents of Palo Alto. A large percentage responded, giving us feedback information about fiber to their home and what their interest would be and analysis made on their current status, their favorability or dissatisfaction with their current provider. I do not have a prepared report. What you have in front of you is an outline of data that will be coming out, plus information about the specific results. Members of the public, I have a few extra copies and if there s not enough I will get them to them. We re also going to attend a meeting, a public meeting, that s sponsored by a community group on the 12 th of this month. We ll go through more of the details with the public that attends that meeting. It will also be part of our report of information that will come back to you for the October meeting, where we re going to have a far more lengthy discussion. We are preparing to complete all the other documentation that we have from our Consultant, and from our business case. That will all be presented to you with enough time to go through it and have the public review it. So the next meeting will be very interesting and will have a lot of data. Carlson: John, I missed the exact timing of that public meeting. That s September 12? Ulrich: I think it s September 12 at 7 o clock in the Council Chambers. It is not sponsored by the City, so I don t have all the agenda details. I was also corrected about the 25-megawatt contract. It is in Q4 and Q1. So it s the last part of the year and the first part of the following year and so it s the 4 th and 1 st quarter of the year and it s for 5 years, not 3. I m talking a little fast, but if you have any questions about some of the things... Page 6 of 62

7 Carlson: Any questions for John? In that case, let s go ahead. The first item of business is the Trinity River. There s a sufficiently modest number of people here that we can just go ahead with it. Hopefully get through it. Ulrich: Could I just ask to quickly go through the agenda to see if there are items that, because we don t want to give a lot of time to any of these subjects but I do have a number of staff that are here for some of the topics. If there are ones that you don t need a lot of input on, I d like to move those to the front and have a discussion on those, if that s all right with you. Carlson: All right. I mentioned that to the Commission. What s the feeling? Should we try and jump some of the information items forward. Ulrich: Don t feel compelled to do that. I m just making a suggestion. Rosenbaum: I would recommend that we not do that, that we get on to the public hearing. Carlson: Let s just go. It doesn t look like we re going to have 50 people lined up here, so let s just go ahead with Trinity. UNFINISHED BUSINESS TRINITY Carlson: Now I understood that there are going to be some NCPA people here. Ulrich: That s correct. Carlson: So there are NCPA people here. We have Spreck Rosekrans from Environmental Defense. John, do you have any recommended order on how to do this? Would you like to introduce it? That sure sounds good to me. Ulrich: What I m putting up [on screen] here is the request from the City Council to the Utility Advisory Commission through 2 motions. I just want you to be able to look at the request from the City Council. There are 2 motions that they made. They re asking you, the Utility Advisory Commission, to review the Trinity issues and to come back to them with your recommendation on what to do about the Trinity River negotiations. The motions are there verbatim on the top. They are also part of the packet you received, so you may want to reflect back on those as you go through the evening. Since this is a bit of an unusual process tonight, I ll suggest a methodology for going through it. I ll have a few comments about the report. I will introduce Tom Kabat who will have some additional background information about Trinity. I will Page 7 of 62

8 then also introduce members of the Staff from NCPA who will have additional information. The information will be complementary to each other and not be redundant. We ll just kind of build on background so that you have a good understanding of our position why we re recommending it and why NCPA is continuing to move ahead with the litigation and our support for it. Our recommendation will be to continue on the course that we re making now, towards the appropriate conclusion. Following their prepared comments, you can then ask them or as they talk, ask questions of them for clarification or whatever you d like and then I d recommend members of the public have comments they d like to make. Then as you see fit, enter into a dialogue, asking questions with members of the Staff and the public so you get a thorough understanding of all the issues, so you feel comfortable about making the decisions. If that s acceptable process, I ll move ahead with it. Carlson: Sounds fine. Let s go ahead unless there are any comments. Bechtel: Mr. Chairman. I d like to ask a few questions perhaps of Council Member Beecham about the direction from the City Council. As I m reading this, I was not there and I have not had the opportunity to speak with the Council Members. particularly Council Member Morton who made the original motion. But it s not real clear to me that exactly what we re being asked to do. As I read it, there was an original motion. There was an amendment to the motion that perhaps took out the leaning towards the one issue, took out the support. So it remains that we are to recommend for a possible position on negotiation to enable us to fully support the Trinity River negotiations. I read the Council s tone that they want to support negotiations of some sort. Is that how the end result of this motion came out? Beecham: The background of the motion is as you see up there, the initial motion by Morton and Mossar the City Attorney advised that because the way this had been agendized in that meeting, they could not express actual support of the Record of Decision making, so the motion was left at requesting the UAC to review the matter. The Council probably did at that time understand that there were negotiations. In fact, it is the case that there are not any direct negotiations between members that I know of. The Council may have in mind that the City of Palo Alto might make some recommendation. At this point, I m not sure to whom that recommendation would be made. Also, as you know, there was a hearing on August 20 in court. My understanding is that the Judge heard arguments from both sides of the issue and has not made a ruling yet. So at this point also, the UAC does not know where the court may be going on this, which makes it more difficult to decide what one might negotiate. Page 8 of 62

9 My suggestion is that the UAC look at the issues and advise Council on what you believe, in fact, are the important issues and what is relevant from various aspects of our community. Bechtel: Thank you, Bern. Carlson: I was also there at the meeting. There was a very frustrating segment for some of the Council Members. I m interpreting the charge very broadly, that we should make a recommendation to the Council on what should be done about our participation in the litigation concerning this project. But let s listen to everything and then we ll have to decide exactly what kind of motion we want to make, if any. John, you want to go ahead with the introductions? Ulrich: Sure, will be glad to. We provided you with quite a comprehensive report. You know some of the background and why we are purchasing power and a portion of it from the Trinity River. We wanted to make sure that everyone involved and didn t assume that everybody knew all the background saw that information that s included in the Appendices and in the document itself. We also wanted to give you information about what was said in the ROD and in the EIS. That material is all attached. What would be helpful would be for us not to go through each of the documents, but to give you a summary of the positions that we have why we have them and the role that NCPA and Palo Alto has so that you re comfortable with what that entails. It would be difficult for me not to recommend that, the course of action that we have been discussing for some time is that, we do not want to get into a position of trying this issue at the local level, in the confines of this room or at the City Council. A tremendous amount of work on both sides and both parties have taken place over a number of years about the best use of the Trinity River for many reasons. There s a large number of people that have a vested interest and a stake in the outcome. I don t think it s appropriate for us to try to go through every issue on both sides and reach some sort of conclusion. What we re trying to do is to say that we have been on the Trinity River, we have a contract and agreement with the Western Area Power Administration for close to 40 years, and we are very much interested in doing what is in the best interest of the environment. We have a long history of it. Many of the reasons that Palo Alto went into the Trinity River and into hydro are environmental reasons. The thought at the time, when you look back through the record, is that we put a tremendous amount of risk in a sense, putting all of our eggs in a basket of hydroelectricity rather than diversification into nuclear power or other generation for reasons, many of which were to take energy in a clean way, and bring it to Palo Alto. The intention has always been and will be that we re looking for energy resources that are appropriate. Page 9 of 62

10 So I m going to ask now and at the end that you consider very strongly recommending that we pursue the course that we are doing. This is the avenue that is given to everyone to pursue towards a conclusion that allows all parties to have their say through the courts. That s where we d like to keep it. I d like to have Tom Kabat give you just a little bit of a picture of what Trinity River is, in the sense of water, and how Palo Alto benefits, and what s the impact to us and the environment. Kabat: Thank you John. I think it s working. This diagram I put up here just for some background just to show two attributes of the Trinity River decision and maybe give a background for folks to point to and make their cases as the evening rolls on. These two things are somewhat of a sketchy representation of a map showing the mainstem of the Trinity River in blue flowing out of Lewiston Dam right now and flowing along and meeting the Klamath River. And then the Klamath flows up north and out into the Pacific Ocean. Here s Eureka as a geographic reference point. Also flowing into the Trinity mainstem are a number of un-dammed, uncontrolled inflows: creeks, tributaries, rivers, the north fork of the Trinity, the south fork of the Trinity and a number of other creeks, some of them relatively close to the Lewiston Dam. You ll hear a lot of statistics about the flow in the Trinity River and the statistics typically quoted are the releases at that point at Lewiston Dam. So that s what s shown on this map. Outside the diagram, I ll flip over and show Lewiston Dam, which is a regulating reservoir and dam and elevations up to 2500 feet down to sea level of some aspects of the Central Valley project. Back here is Shasta Dam topping out at about 1080 feet in the Sacramento River watershed and then there s a ridge that defines the watershed. Rain on the west side of the ridge is headed towards the Trinity. Rain on the east side of the ridge is headed towards the Sacramento. That ridge is running invisibly across here. Shasta was built in the 40 s, Trinity Dam was built in the early 60 s and it captures water from the upper-trinity watershed, stores it, releases it into Lewiston through the Trinity Power Plant. Lewiston is where the policy choice takes place about where that water is going to flow. There s that fork in the flow. The diversions we talk about are diversions from the Trinity River watershed over to the Sacramento River watershed. The diversions produce quite a bit of power per acre-foot compared to any other project in the Central Valley Project and you can see from the diagram why. The head on this power plant, the Trinity Dam Power Plant, varies from 200 to about 450 feet, but the head, the water pressure, as the water comes across and goes through 3 more power plants, it s noticeably higher, 700 feet going into the Carr Power Plant, 620 feet going into the Spring Creek Power Plant and then it flows through the regulating reservoir as Keswick at an 80 foot head drop out to the Sacramento River and flows down the Sacramento River to the Bay-Delta. Page 10 of 62

11 I ve tried to show a plumbing diagram on one side, a map on the other and a border in between. Hopefully this will give some idea about where the policy issue is. One way to frame it is, where should the flows go? That s what the ROD was apparently looking at. Another way to frame it is what should be done to restore the fishery of the Trinity River? Is it all about flow, or are there other aspects? So I thought I d lay out a little bit of that background, and turn it back to John. Carlson: Let me ask a couple questions here while you ve got that map up there. My understanding is that the theory of the fishery is the problem; it s not just how much water, but that the natural river to be well adapted to salmon needs floods to flush out the fine sediments that clog the bed. So a lot of water periodically is an important part of the stream regimen to make the salmon happy, is that right? It s not just a couple acre-feet a day; it s the big pulses. Kabat: I m not an expert in that area. My specialty is along the plumbing side, but we do have some experts in the biology aspects and the river morphology who will be addressing that this evening. Carlson: Great. Ulrich: I promised Tom if he d do that drawing, he wouldn t have to answer questions that are outside of his area. Carlson: That s a great drawing. That s a good graphic. Ulrich: You may want to refer to it. Do you have any questions of Tom on the plumbing question or would you like to come back to that at a later time? Carlson: Go ahead. Ulrich: I thought it would be helpful to put a picture to what is there. I will now introduce Jane Cirrincione who some of you have met. She s the Assistant Director at NCPA and under her leadership, progress is being made on this area. She will give you a little bit of background and also introduce our next speaker. Carlson: Jane, welcome. Would you spell your name please to have mercy on the people trying to do the transcript? Cirrincione: Yes, you re having a problem with my first name? Or would that be my last name? It s C-i-r-r-i-n-c-i-o-n-e. Thank you very much. Good evening. It s nice to be here in your fair city this evening. Again, I am Jane Cirrincione. I m Assistant General Manager at NCPA of Legislative and Regulatory Affairs and I drove here from Roseville today and came over the Dumbarton Bridge. I was very happy to go through the Don Edwards Wildlife Refuge. Prior to coming Page 11 of 62

12 to NCPA, I actually spent many years working on in Washington D.C. and part of that time was spent working in the office of Congressman Don Edwards from San Jose, who a few of you I m sure will remember and my charge during that time in his office was to work toward the goal of expanding that refuge, doubling the size of that refuge, adding additional 20,000 acres of wetlands and endangered species habitat to that refuge. Which was quite a challenge because, I don t know if you know this, but it s the nation s only urban wildlife refuge. So it presented a many policy dilemmas in terms of balancing future economic development believe it or not, there s even still some farming in that area and then our overarching goals of protecting endangered species. We were successful in finding an outcome and finding a solution that sort of met all of those needs. We re still working in that direction, but we came to a result that was very positive for the environment. The only reason why I have asked you to indulge me in this background is to say that that s something we re hoping to do with the Trinity River as well. We have many competing demands and competing needs with regard to the Trinity River. NCPA s role has been simply to say, Look, there are many demands. We need a process that leads us to a policy that accounts for all of the demands, and not only that, but is tested and shown to be the right solution to get us the kind of restoration that we need and that is required on that waterway. I m here tonight in part to assure you, and I know a couple of you are very familiar with this, that NCPA s process that led to our position on Trinity was a very reasoned and sound process and our involvement in this litigation and our positions on this issue are not new or arbitrary at all. NCPA has a history on this issue, going back to 1994, where we have been participating on agency scoping processes, public comment processes, testifying, meeting regularly with agency officials and working again toward that goal of a sound environmental solution on the Trinity. Our position ultimately on the ROD is to get to that very outcome, The resolution that our Commission passed at the end of 2000 that led to our taking the next step toward this litigation the very first clause of that resolution says that the Northern California Power Agency supports restoration of fisheries in the Trinity River. That is the first premise, underlying premise of our position and it was echoed throughout that resolution, which I believe all of you have seen. Our concern is not so much with that outcome. Our concern is the process that s been used to develop the Record of Decision, which is the current plan the Department of Interior has for work, for restoration activities on the Trinity. Much of our position on this has been misrepresented or overstated. Page 12 of 62

13 We simply support the restoration. We want a process that would get us to a sound plan. We hope to establish here that we re not quarreling with the goal of restoration. We re simply here to talk about the means by which we can achieve it. Our view, ultimately and our position is that there may be alternatives to the Record of Decision. The Record of Decision itself presents environmental problems and environmental dilemmas that have not been fully addressed or accounted for. And, as well, the science that s been used so far is highly incomplete. We have brought experts in the field that have worked both with NCPA but also have worked for the Department of Interior in the past that can expound on that, explain where some of the fundamental scientific approaches here have broken down and why we need to go back and take a look at where those weaknesses are and how we can address those. Ultimately, what we have proposed is a plan that has 4 parts: incremental action, science based approach, pilot scale projects and a collaborative approach where we can bring in all view points, all levels of expertise and bring this to the table on behalf of a sound and workable solution. This approach is exactly the same type of approach that s been used at CALFED and in the Central Valley Project Improvement Acts, so this has a great deal of precedent that has not been brought to bear in the Record of Decision process. Moreover, our concerns and our approach have been echoed by our Congressional delegation and even, in part, by Senator Dianne Feinstein. Their concerns about the process that was used here were not brought to bear and were not addressed as the Record of Decision moved forward and was finalized. We have others here that can talk specifically about how these issues have been treated in the past, and on other waterways, and the kinds of issues you might want to be thinking about in that regard. I hope you find that our presentation tonight is helpful and aids you in your efforts to examine this issue a little bit more carefully. So thank you very much for having us here tonight. Carlson: Thank you. I m sure all kinds of questions are popping up in everybody s minds. They re certainly are in mine right now. We ll go through the presentations and then we ll just call you back as necessary. Somebody else? Who s next? Phipps: Yes, thank you. My name is Jeff Phipps. That s spelled P-h-i-p-p-s. I try not to say that too quickly because there are too many f s in there and it gets slurred. I m an Independent Consultant working in water resource environmental issues. I ve been working with NCPA on Trinity for 9 years, tracking it so I have a long history. What I m going to do is provide a very short history of NCPA s participation and how we kind of got to where we are now. just so that you can perhaps again have some context to it. Initially, I started following the Trinity in 1993 on behalf of NCPA before the EIS for the Mainstem Restoration Program got started. At that time, they had a task Page 13 of 62

14 force that was responsible for developing a restoration plan and implementing the plan for restoration of the Trinity River, the Trinity River Basin, the whole basin. We started to engage in that discussion. They had a Technical Coordinating Committee that was open to all individuals to participate. It was a highly collaborative discussion on what they might be able to do in terms of yearto-year activities. So we began our involvement in that process. As they got into establishing some specific actions, then they said well we need to perhaps do some environmental documentation and they said we also need to address some flow-study environmental documentation coming out of the study, the flow evaluation study that was prompted by the 1981 Act. So they said, let s roll it up into an EIS. At that time, while we continued to stay involved with the Technical Coordinating Committee in terms of the action planning on the river, we also became involved in that separate process, that was to perform the NEPA and CEQA documentation for the restoration program. We were active in that process, commenting on the scope, on the purpose and needs statement, on the various drafts, on the methodologies and we engaged both during the public meetings as well as separately from that with the agencies and with other stakeholders. During those processes, our theme was a consistent we want full disclosure of the impacts of what we know and what we don t know and what possibilities exist out there. We also emphasized the need for watershed wide consideration. There are a lot of interactions between the mainstem and all of the tributaries that Tom had drawn up there in black, in terms of not just the fishery resources, but the inputs to the mainstem river. So the watershed wide interaction was important. We also emphasized the need to bring in outside people that could bring not only their knowledge, but also a sense of independence to the discussion so that we can make sure we have that objective discussion. That process went on for many years. They had the Draft EIS and they had the Final EIS. We kind of saw the writing on the wall, saying they don t seem to be listening to what we re saying. Prior to the ROD, NCPA contacted and wrote to Interior expressing our concerns that we re worried that if you implement the ROD in the direction that you re going now, it will tie our hands and we ll have to do things we don t want to do. We d like to sit down and talk about this. At that point or subsequent to that, we continued to get no response to that. They didn t even respond to our letter. At that point, we were discussing within NCPA what we should do. As we were discussing it, Westlands filed suit. At that point there were a lot of discussions within NCPA, and I m not the lawyer so I can t go into all the details, but it was decided that we would participate in that even though we might have slightly different objectives although we don t really know where Westland is coming from. But we felt that that was a venue that Page 14 of 62

15 would allow us to open up the forum to, again, get the objectives that Jane talked about, a collaborative science-based incremental approach. However, even during the litigation process, when there were discussions going on, we had relationships with other stakeholders and it was on our initiative, because this Technical Coordinating Committee that I d talked about had been going on. But it was disbanded in December of 2000, because the ROD was supposed to pick up for what it had been doing. There was no replacement group for the Technical Coordinating Committee to implement or develop restoration actions in the year So in our initiative we brought the stakeholders together and said we need to plan for what we can do with funding for We had 3 or 4 meetings and discussions to outline. It was a very good discussion amongst all the stakeholders including agencies. We presented that to the Trinity Management Council in June of that year and they said well that s interesting, we ll think about it, but we can t take input from you for reasons that are probably associated with FACA concerns and elsewhere. But regardless, that effort to try to participate was rebuffed. They then instituted an initiative on their part to develop the plan for 2001 which we were able to participate in through the technical forums. That s actually when we hired or brought on another Independent Consultant, Paul Bradovich, who s here tonight. We hired him specifically to be able to act as an objective Scientist in the discussion of the possible restoration actions for that year. There were a couple of day meetings that Paul went to. Out of that was supposed to be a draft report by that committee. That group of probably 40 to 50 individuals started on it, but there were probably about 20 core people that were in involved with it, and Paul might be able to add a little to that. That report was never published and never made available and never forwarded to the TMC. The input from the agency consultants did refer to that group, but there was never a concurrence from that group as to the recommendations. But we did try to participate and did try to interject science into the process and we continued on that vein. There had been some other forums about monitoring, that again Paul participated in, to try to bring the objective science perspective. But unfortunately those two didn t fully come to fruition in the end. The reason I just wanted to provide that background is: we ve been engaged, we ve been trying to be constructive. But the bottom line is, we never got a response to our desire for collaborative, objective process. That kind of tied our hands and put us in a spot. Well, litigation is the only way to reopen this, to bring back the balance that we sought. Again, I can answer questions later on if you have any, on the history. Ferguson: Just a quick timing question on the lack of government response. The letters went out apparently in January of 2000 plus or minus? Page 15 of 62

16 Phipps: Lots of letters went out. Ferguson: But the ones where you stopped getting responses? Was that early 2000? Late 2000? Phipps: We occasionally would get responses in terms of our comments to the like Purpose and Needs Statement. That was like in So we d get responses like thank you for your input. We ll think about it. We ll consider it. It got to be more serious when our draft, when we provided draft, comments to the Draft EIS, which I think is the one you re referring to in January and they responded to those in the supplement to the Final. We felt that the responses were not sincere. They said, Thank you. We ve addressed that in the EIS and we didn t feel as though there was any desire to talk about it. It was just a response, but they did provide a response to that. The responses that we didn t get was from Interior in terms of Secretary Babbitt saying we really want to sit down and open this up. We did not get a response to that and that included some Congressional inquiries and requests of Babbitt as well that they didn t get a response. Ferguson: Thank you. Phipps: Next I m going to introduce Mike Harvey. He s an Independent Consultant that has been brought on to help address some of the uncertainties with the science and the risk with the ROD. Harvey: My name is Mike Harvey. I m from Colorado. I am an Independent Consultant. I was initially brought in to the Trinity Project about 3 to 4 years ago to review some of the science related to the Environment Impact Statement and then subsequently the ROD decision on the flows. I ve worked in this field of river geomorphology for about 30 years. Over about the last 20 years, most of the work I ve done have been related to restoration of river systems, primarily trying to answer the hard questions where there s a conflict for water use, especially in the Western United States. What do you get for so many acre feet of water for environmental purposes? In other words, what s the link between flow and habitat and restoration of species? When I first looked at the EIS and the ROD and the subsequent recommendations, there are a number of things that came to the fore. First of all, obviously there had been a lot of science done on the Trinity over a long period of time. My initial conclusion though was that the science was done in a very localized area and there was a lot of professional judgment going into extrapolation of those results. In other words, there was no tool to extrapolate other than professional judgment. Now there s nothing wrong with professional judgment, but there are standard tools that we use in analyzing rivers. I m now working currently for the Interior on restoration of the San Joaquin River, the Page 16 of 62

17 middle of Rio Grande in New Mexico, among others. We use a standard sort of approach, analytical approach to evaluate the interactions between flows, sediment and ultimately habitat. The thing that I noticed was that that model wasn t there for the Trinity. As a result all the science that had been done, there was no basis for prediction and there was no sound basis for extrapolation. As a result of that and following the ROD, my company Master Engineering was hired by SMUD to actually put a hydraulic model together of the Trinity River from Lewiston Dam down to the North Fork trying to address some of the primary issues that relate flow and sediment to habitat. Fundamentally, this stretch of river that was shown on the diagram there the real river part, as opposed to the plumbing part is very complex. It can be divided on its physical characteristics into about 9 separate reaches. There are reaches in there that are truly alluvial; in other words, the characteristics of the river are purely the result of the interaction of the flows and the materials of which the flows interact. That s the definition of an alluvial river. A lot of the rest of the reach is partially constrained by bedrock, which eliminates some of the degrees of freedom of adjustment for a river. Other reaches are purely dominated by bedrock in both the banks and the bed. Now this is a little bit of detail, but it is important because the fundamental assumption in most of the ROD flows, or behind the ROD flows was this concept known as a healthy alluvial river. Now, it s an intuitively very attractive concept. What it s predicated on is: before we screwed it up, the river used to work. We had fish. We had flows. So all we really have to do is put that back together again, and all will be well. The problem with it as attractive as the concept is it means you can step beyond the question of having to answer the difficult questions what really is the interaction between the river and its habitat and the species? It s intuitively attractive. It s seductive in many ways because you don t really have to answer the hard questions. But unless a river is truly alluvial, then you violated one of the basic premises, in other words, that the form of the river results purely from the interaction of the flows and the boundary of materials, which are mobile. So we put a model together and we tested a number of things that weren t tested. One of the primary problems is the issue of flushing flows. You brought this up before, Mr. Chairman. Now what s the problem? The problem basically is that you don t get the big flows on the mainstem anymore and your tributaries are uncontrolled. Some of the tributaries, especially below the dam, drain an area of very rotten granite that produces a tremendous amount of sand. The only way you can eliminate that sand problem is to mobilize the gravels. But here lies the conundrum: the dam also eliminates the gravel supply from upstream. If you look at and model the ROD flows, what you see is that critical discharge. Now with that discharge that mobilizes the gravels what is the basis of the ROD decision? We ve determined from a couple of site-specific localities. Very good experiments that actually released flows to see what would happen Page 17 of 62

18 and measured them. Unfortunately those are singular locations. If you use that without some basis of extrapolation, you don t know what the impact is. Our model shows basically that the discharge is between 5-6 thousand CFS, which was identified as the critical discharge. Actually it s detrimental to many of the reaches. It will transport a lot more gravel than is available. That s problem number 1. All right. The mitigation to running out of gravel or not having it from upstream is you augment; you add gravel. The ROD has some estimates. Now those estimates are pretty large. As you re aware I m sure the water years were broken up into 5 classes that went from critically dry to extremely wet and so the amount of augmented material varies correspondingly, zero in an extremely dry year and up to about 67 thousand tons or yards, cubic yards, in an extremely wet year. Now there are 3 things to ponder here. Let s just take the extreme. It s easier to talk about extremes. 67 thousand cubic yards. That s about 6,700 ten-yard dump trucks. That s about 20 truckloads per day for 365 days a year. That s a lot of gravel. There are some issues. Where do you find it? How do you get it there? The other problem is, there has been some augmentation tried below Lewiston Dam. It hasn t worked very well. Now if there had been a critical analysis done on it, it would have been pretty easy to see why. On the riffles, a discharge of about 6 thousand CFS will mobilize the gravels, but it mobilizes them into the pools. The ROD flows will not, with the current geometry, mobilize those gravels out of the pools. The only way you will move this material downstream is to allow the pools to fill in, which destroys habitat. There s a temporal issue here because we don t have the really large flows that used to occur. The upper limit to the ROD flows will not achieve that goal. That could have been determined beforehand if somebody had modeled it. Finally, in terms of what an analysis should have shown and another example of it, is that it has accepted that flows alone will not recover or restore the Trinity. There are something in the order of 44 sites that have been identified as sites for mechanical disturbance, removal of vegetation and development of more complexity in what has become a very simplified river since the dam went in. Well, what has happened at some experimental areas is it shows that it won t happen. You create a flow expansion zone and what happens? Sediment deposits out and just reforms the process. So what we really believe is some good science was done. It was local, but it s not a prescription for restoration of this river system. We need to go beyond that. We need to look at it as an integrated system. I believe this has worked, and is where we re headed. Thank you. Page 18 of 62

19 Carlson: Let me try and summarize to make sure I understand what s going on here. What you re saying is that this proposal is not only very expensive, and nobody s even mentioned dollars yet, but the problem is that it really won t work, and on the Trinity itself in some significant sections of the river, you believe will actually make things worse for the target species. Am I summarizing things correctly? Harvey: You have a very accurate summary of what I said. Carlson: Thank you. Beecham: May I ask a question also? You used the extreme of the highest flow and explained in a sense how they may not work as planned. Are the moderate flows more useful as in terms of mobilizing gravel to appropriate areas, not necessarily dumping them in pools where it s not so useful? Harvey: The problem with gravel transport is that it does require a minimum amount of flow to actually mobilize. You have a threshold condition and all of the flows prescriptions in the ROD do actually reach a point where they will mobilize gravels. The question is how much gravel? So if you re in a gravel-limited, supply-limited situation, it s just a question of you move a small amount under lower flow regime and you ll just move more under a higher flow regime, and you don t have the balance. The habitat we re dealing with is dependent on both mobilization and the redeposition and storage in the correct areas off the gravels. Beecham: Would it be possible to add gravel at the head of the alluvial reaches of the river, to at least put gravel in those locations appropriately? Harvey: Yes it would, but there s always a problem with adding gravels. There s a temporal issue. Even in a natural river, an individual gravel particle only moves a very small distance during a flood flow. So yes, you can do it, but you re going to have to wait quite a while to get the desired achievement. It s a nice idea. You just put gravel into the river and you let the river distribute it. It will do it eventually, but it won t do it in the short term. Ferguson: Is that over months, or over years? Harvey: Over many years, because you assume they re only going to get one flood per year on that system. So if you only have one flood per year, an individual particle of gravel only goes a relatively short distance. Ferguson: So what s a reasonable number of years to conduct a good gravel experiment? 1? 5? Harvey: You re going to have to look at 10 years or beyond. Page 19 of 62

20 Ferguson: Thanks. Carlson: Commissioner Bechtel? Bechtel: In the background material we have, there s also talk about problems that might arise if there was reduction to the flow to the Sacramento River watershed. I m not sure if I heard you talk about that. Did you also consider and look at currently what s happening there, and what would happen if in fact we reduced the flow or actually increase or return the flow to the Trinity? Harvey: Nobody has looked at it from the point of view of the physical system. It has been looked at with respect to the biological system and I would defer that to Paul Bradovich who s the next speaker. Bechtel: Thank you. Bradovich: Good evening. Thank you for your time tonight. My name s Paul Bradovich. I am also an Independent Fisheries Biologist. I ve been acting as a Fisheries Biologist for 20 years in California, and over the course of my experience, I ve been involved in numerous restoration projects. The restoration projects have ranged from trout restoration enhancement projects in the High Sierra to restoration on our coastal streams and rivers that flow directly into the Pacific to very large rivers in the Central Valley. Most recently I was the Lead Scientist and Principal Author in the development of a habitat restoration management and enhancement plan for the Lower American River, one of largest tributaries to the Sacramento Rivers. That plan is complete and it is being implemented. I am ongoing as the Lead Scientist and Principal Author for an implementation plan for the restoration of the Lower Yuba River just upstream to the American on the Sacramento, additionally one of the largest tributaries to the Sacramento River. I ve been retained by NCPA for the past several years as Jeff mentioned. I reviewed and provided comment on the EIS/EIR. I ve also filed declarations associated with the litigation. I would like to briefly discuss with you and raise to your attention 3 major issues, from a fisheries perspective, associated with the implementation of the proposed restoration plan for the Trinity River. Those 3 major issues are: the uncertainty associated with implementation of the plan as proposed, the current status of the fishery resources on the Trinity, and the effects to important fish resources including threatening endangered species on the Sacramento River and the Delta. Regarding the uncertainty associated with the restoration plan as proposed on the Trinity, Dr. Harvey did a very good job describing much of the uncertainty associated with the physical geomorphology aspects. Page 20 of 62