SAN JOAQUIN RIVER Dissolved Oxygen Total Maximum Daily Load Stakeholder Process

San Joaquin River Dissolved Oxygen TMDL 
Steering Committee Meeting Notes - Draft 1
December 20, 2000

Attending: Al Brizard, Doug Calkins (Stockton), Jim Curtis (Kennedy 
Jenks), Joe Grant (UC Coop Ext.), Tom Hickmann (Merced ID, MBK 
Eng.), Terry Gardner (Lathrop), Mary Hildebrand (SJC Farm Bureau), Bill 
Johnston (Modesto ID), Vance Kennedy (citizen), Debra Liebersbach 
(Turlock ID), Ronda Lucas (SJC and Stan C. Farm Bureau), G. Fred Lee, 
Paul Martin (W.U.D.), Bob Meleg (Modesto), John Moffatt (CDFA), Bob 
Murdoch (Stockton), Joe Pimentel (W.U.D.), Mike Schafer (Lodi), Alice 
Tulloch (TE), Al Vargas (CDFA), Kevin Wolf (facilitation and notes, 
kjwolf@dcn.davis.ca.us 530-758-4211)

Upcoming Meetings:
Steering Committee  - January 17,  2000  9 am-noon,  Location - To Be 
Announced, Stockton

Pollutant Exchange Committee – January 17, 2000  1 – 3 pm,  Location - 
TBA

Technical Committee – January 10,  9 am – noon,  Location - To be 
announced.

Material Handed Out at Meeting:
1. Outreach and Education Budget Proposal – Judith Buethe 

2. Letter from Wayne Marcus, General Manager, Oakdale Irrigation 
District  (this letter is not yet available in digital form)
3. Letter from San Joaquin River Group regarding the SJR DO TMDL 
Non-point Source Conceptual Model - Arthur F. Godwin  

4. CALFED Directed Action 2001 Proposed Projects, Table 1 – G. Fred 
Lee 
5. Implementation Planning Decisions – Kevin Wolf  

6. Alternatives for Allocation of Responsibility Among Individual 
Entities for the Excess SJR DO Demand, A Discussion Paper – Alice 
Tulloch 

NOTE:  Al Brizard was appointed to the Central Valley Regional Water 
Quality Control Board and is no longer attending these meetings 
representing any group.  He is here as an observer. The Stanislaus Farm 
Bureau will recruit a member to replace him on the Steering Committee. 

A. Chair and Vice Chair
1. Ronda Lucas explained that she needed to step down as chair of the 
Steering Committee because she now represents the Farm Bureau on 
the Ecosystem Roundtable and this steering committee may receive 
CALFED funding. Ronda will continue to advise the county Farm 
Bureau organizations and may attend steering committee meetings in 
this capacity. County Farm Bureaus are their own organizations and 
are do not represent the state Farm Bureau.

2. Mary Hildebrand was nominated and unanimously supported to be the 
new Steering Committee chair.  She accepted the nomination.  Mary’s 
email is .

3. The Vice Chair position will be filled in January.  Nominations are 
encouraged.  Please send nominations to Mary H.

4. The Executive Committee will meet by conference call in early 
January.  Bob Murdoch will set up it up at a time Mary can attend and 
will announce it on the listserv. Anyone who wants to will be able to 
participate. The purpose of the call is to establish the January agenda.  
Kevin will draft an agenda for the call to focus on.  

B. Directed Action Proposal
1.  Barrier Operations in the South Delta.    Modeling the impacts and 
opportunities of different operational scenarios for the south delta barriers 
has been a priority of the Technical Committee and was included in the 
CALFED 2001 grant.  DWR coordinates a South Delta Improvement 
Team that is heading up the analysis.  A major concern they are 
investigating is how different operational scenarios affect endangered fish 
populations and “take” restrictions.  Alex Hildebrand has written a letter to 
DWR specifically advancing concerns and desires revolving around low 
dissolved oxygen issues and barrier operations.  Fred will help make sure 
this letter is circulated to the SJR-TMDL mailing list.  At the January 
meeting, the Steering Committee will consider sending a similar letter in 
support of these issues. 

2.  Directed Action Grant Administration.    The Technical Committee will 
provide the Steering Committee with a proposal at their January meeting 
for which entity should administer the Directed Action grant.  Both Jones 
and Stokes and Fresno State University Foundation are possible 
candidates.  High on the list of criteria for selecting among candidates is 
their willingness to have the technical control of the grant be with the 
Technical Committee.  The Technical Committee will work out this and 
other grant administration issues at their January 7 meeting and present a 
final proposal afterwards.  In the meantime, Fred hopes to meet with 
CALFED to find out how much flexibility they have in paying grant funds 
directly to the state and federal agencies that will be doing some of the 
grant projects. 

3.   Principal Investigator.  There was general support for Fred Lee to be 
the PI for the grant.  He would be willing to accept this role and will 
include the issue in discussions on the grant both with CALFED and the 
administrative candidates.  The Steering Committee will finalize the PI at 
its January meeting.

C. Other Technical Committee Issues
1.  Need for a Synthesis Report on Year 2000 Studies.    The CALFED 
2000 proposal did not include funding to do a thorough synthesis of the 
results of the 2000 monitoring and analysis.   It is possible that some of the 
funding was not spent and could be available for this work.  Kevin will 
work with Mary and Fred to draft a letter to Peggy Lehman and DWR 
administrators to request this and other information about the 2000 grants. 
For example, some of the contracts are not yet completed for 2000 work. .   
If needed, a meeting will be arranged with DWR administrators to work 
out contract issues.  Kevin will include a commendation to Peggy Lehman 
for all the hard work she did with this grant under difficult circumstances. 

2.  The Turning Basin.   Very low dissolved oxygen levels have been 
recorded in the Deep Water Ship Channel Turning Basin this year.  The 
Turning Basin is a “dead end” arm of the lower river and should not be a 
problem for fish passage or other beneficial uses that are the focus of the 
Regional Board’s declaration of the lower river being an impaired water 
body.    Fred has suggested that the Steering Committee should approach 
the Regional Board to have the Turning Basin removed from the dissolved 
oxygen area of concern for our efforts.   Data from Turning Basin needs to 
be more thoroughly analyzed and put into the computer model.  If the 
results show that it has little or no impact on dissolved oxygen levels in 
the lower river, this information should be brought before the Board.  The 
Steering Committee will be updated on this at future meetings. 

D. Agriculture and Dairy Outreach Brochure.
1.  Judith Buethe provided the Steering Committee with the latest draft of 
the brochure that is being funded through the City of Stockton.   Mary H. 
and Paul Martin announced that they and other agricultural representatives 
had met that morning to review and provide edits to the brochure.  
Everyone else was encouraged to do the same as soon as possible.

2. Judith will incorporate the edits and send out a new version by email 
with crossouts and additions so that everyone can see what is being 
proposed to be changed.  Everyone will have one week to get additional 
comments to her.  The final version will be reviewed by Bob Murdoch for 
spelling and grammatical errors and sent to the printer.  Only if there are 
disputes over content will the brochure return to the Steering Committee 
for reconsideration. 

E. Outreach Proposal for Use of Turlock and Tracy Funds.
1.  Judith followed up on the direction of the Steering Committee at 
previous meetings and presented a proposed budget of $25,000 for the 
funding that the cities of Turlock and Tracy have budgeted to provide to 
the Steering Committee.  The proposal called for a large-scale presentation 
program where Steering and Technical Committee members would meet 
with different stakeholder groups and update them on the TMDL process 
and how it might affect them.  

2.  The Steering Committee decided to reduce the outreach effort to 
speaking at a few key organizational meetings such as the RCDs, water 
districts and Farm Bureaus. Thus the time and effort needed for a 
speaker’s program could be greatly reduced.  Judith was asked to review 
with the City of Stockton how much is left with those outreach funds and 
create a budget that emphasizes distribution of the different brochures.  
Judith will return with a new proposal, not expected to exceed $10,000.  
Judith will propose efficient ways of distributing the brochures to targeted 
stakeholders.  Some ideas include providing all the County Ag 
Commissioners with extras to distribute through their offices and sending 
brochures to county Farm Bureaus to be given to members attending their 
meetings.  Anyone who has ideas for how to distribute either the 
city/county or agricultural brochure should send them to Judith.    

3.  The expected $15,000 that should be freed up with this reduced 
outreach effort can be used for other vital needs.  The Technical 
Committee should return to the Steering Committee with a proposal for 
how this resource could best be utilized.  

F. Meeting with the San Joaquin Valley Drainage Authority – 
January 23
1.  Chris Foe and Fred Lee will take the lead in presenting information 
about the TMDL process to this group at their January 23 meeting.  They 
will have approximately one hour to review the issues and explain why the 
west side might be involved in solving the low dissolved oxygen problem 
in the lower river.  Fred and Chris will work out what they think should be 
presented.  Time might be allocated for this again at the January 17th 
Steering Committee meeting.

2.   It was suggested that Dennis Westcot, Chris’ boss at the Regional 
Board attend this meeting and provide an upper management’s view of 
how any stakeholders targeted with a load reduction responsibility might 
be included in the implementation plan.   Westcot’s presentation would 
also be valuable to be made at an upcoming steering committee meeting. 
Fred and Chris will work together to determine is this is feasible. 

3.  Anyone else interested in attending the January 23 briefing is welcome. 
More information will be posted to the listserv.

G. Strawman TMDL Results
1.  Chris and Fred will summarize the strawman model results at an 
upcoming Steering Committee meeting.   The model will run year 2000 
data to see if it would have been predicted with the 1999 modeling 
assumptions and algorithms.

2.   The Steering Committee directed Fred (and everyone else) to be 
careful in how the results are explained to the stakeholders.    Assumptions 
and potential problems with the data should be clearly stated.  How might 
year 2001 data monitoring and analysis change the results of the 
strawman?  How might reduction in assimilative capacity of the river and 
the Deep Water Ship Channel affect the load allocation?   It would be 
useful to have Chris and Fred present their summary of the Strawman 
analysis at the January meeting before giving it to other stakeholders such 
as the San Joaquin Valley Drainage Authority.

H. Alternatives for Allocation of Responsibility Among Individual 
Entities for the Excess SJR DO Demand
1.   Pollutant Exchange Committee chair Alice Tulloch provided a draft 
paper on five alternatives for how responsibility might be allocated for the 
dissolved oxygen problem.  She will post it to the SJR-TMDL listserv and 
request comments back.  She was not expecting any action on this item 
until after it had a chance to be reviewed.  

2.  There was general consensus by the Steering Committee that there was 
a lack of guidance by the RWQCB on how responsibility should be 
distributed for the low dissolved oxygen problem.  For example, export 
pumping is responsible for a portion of the low flows that pass through the 
lower river.  Should the exporters be allocated some of the responsibility?  
Chris Foe will hopefully be able to provide upper management’s thinking 
on these issues.  Upper management is not the Regional Board and thus, 
ultimately, these issues will likely need to be clarified at the Board level.

I. Implementation Planning Decisions
1.  Kevin Wolf presented the Steering Committee with a draft set of 
“decisions” on implementation planning issues that he encouraged be 
edited and finalized to provide clarity to committees and staff on this 
important subject.    

2.  A fundamental question was unanswered at the meeting and will be 
placed on the agenda for the January meeting – “Should implementation 
planning follow the load allocation or be done in a parallel process?”  If it 
is done sequentially, and grant proposals are written after the year 2001 
data is collected and analyzed, it will likely be impossible to provide an 
implementation plan with the TMDL by the end of 2002.  On the other 
hand, a parallel process may waste research and analysis resources by 
studying options that would not be included in a final implementation plan 
because the load allocation does not place responsibility in these areas.  

3.  Some implementation analysis will be included in the Directed Action 
grant proposal - the costs and benefits of different aeration options and 
south delta barrier operations that could improve flow of water in the 
lower river.  Also being considered is an inventorying and evaluation of 
the literature BMPs that could reduce non-point source load in the San 
Joaquin Valley.   The Steering Committee did not oppose moving forward 
on a proposal for Proposition 13 funds for non-point source load reduction 
analysis, so long as it did not interfere with the technical or steering 
committee’s ability to advance the work needed to create a defensible load 
allocation.  Kevin Wolf is working with Carl Chen to further develop the 
WARMF modeling proposal that was included in the CALFED Category 
III 2001 grant proposal as a Prop. 13 grant.  They will bring this back to 
the Steering Committee for a possible letter of support at the January 17 
meeting.

4.  The Steering Committee supported the proposal that a USDA expert on 
non-point source nutrient load reduction in the Chesapeake Bay region be 
brought to a future steering committee meeting. There is disagreement 
over how much load reduction is possible through application of Best 
Management Practices.  The Chesapeake Bay area has some of the longest 
running programs for non-point source reduction in the nation.  Fred,. 
Mary and Kevin will pursue inviting a qualified speaker to attend. It is 
hoped that the USDA will pay for the speakers’ costs to come to our 
meeting. 

J. Miscellaneous
1.  Atmospheric deposition of nitrogen in the form of NOx may be an 
important contributor of the nutrient load entering the river from the 
watershed.  If so, it may lead to financial contributions for load reduction 
from urban interests such as car and truck drivers throughout the Valley 
and in the Bay Area.  It could lead to increased political support for state 
funds for helping resolve this problem since the atmospheric source of the 
problem does not come exclusively from the landowners.   Vance 
Kennedy will follow up and find out more about the state of science on 
this question in the San Joaquin Valley. 

2.  A new possible solution to reduce or eliminate the dissolved oxygen 
problem in the lower river was raised.  What would be the impact if the 
lower San Joaquin could bypass the low dissolved oxygen section of the 
Deep Water Ship Channel and the river remain at the depth it is upstream 
where there isn’t a low DO problem?  Could a combination of flood 
control, riparian habitat, parkway, and water quality benefits combine to 
make it economically justifiable to reroute the San Joaquin around or 
parallel to the DWSC and resolve the low DO problem in this manner?

3.  Fred Lee and Nigel Quinn are organizing a tour of the Grasslands area 
to learn more about how it operates and how it might be contributing to 
the low DO problem.  Fred will announce the tour via the email