SAN JOAQUIN RIVER Dissolved Oxygen Total Maximum Daily Load Stakeholder Process

San Joaquin River Dissolved Oxygen TMDL
Technical Committee Meeting  - DRAFT Notes
 October 10, 2000

Attending: Attending: Carl Chen (Systech Engineering), Tom Hickman 
(MBK/Merced ID), Alex Hildebrand (SDWA), Jay Jahangiri (Port of Stockton), 
Brant Jorgenson (JSA), Charlie Kratzer (USGS), G. Fred Lee (Tech Chair), Peggy 
Lehman (DWR), Gary Litton (UOP), Bob Murdoch (Stockton), Alice Tulloch 
(Tulloch Eng.), William Stringfellow (LBNL), Kevin Wolf (facilitator and notes  
530-758-4211, kjwolf@dcn.davis.ca.us)

Next Technical Committee Meetings:
October 24, 9 am - noon,  Jones and Stokes, 2600 V St Sacramento (Special 
meeting to prioritize CALFED 2001 Grant proposal)
November 7, 9 am - noon,  DWR  3251 S St, Sacramento (Regular TAC meeting)
 
Handouts
1. Draft Individual Reviews of the CALFED 2001 Dissolved Oxygen Grant 
(brought by Brant Jorgenson)
2. Summary and Budget of our CALFED 2001 grant proposal

A. Strawman Load Allocation Update
1. Six members of the technical committee met last Friday and crafted the major 
underlying parameters of the strawman process. To receive their notes and to 
get information about their upcoming meetings, contact Fred Lee 
(gfredlee@aol.com). 

2. The Strawman Workgroup will use Carl’s model to evaluate oxygen demand 
in pounds per day (convertible to milligrams per liter) in the DWSC.  Model 
runs will be done on six flow levels from 100 – 1500 cfs and on different 
Deep Water Ship Channel depths including at 40 foot (deepening by 5 feet) 
and pre channel conditions (narrow and shallower (200 yards wide and 8-10 
feet deep).  The model runs will focus on two seasons – summer 
(August/September) and fall (October/November).

3. The Workgroup anticipates having the draft strawman allocation finished by 
mid-December and will review it with the Technical Committee before 
presenting it to the Steering Committee and the rest of the stakeholders. 

4. The workgroup welcomes recommendations for what data and analysis should 
be undertaken in the strawman analysis. Everyone interested should talk to 
Fred or Chris. 

B. CALFED 2001 Grant
1. Our proposal did not score high enough by the CALFED technical review 
panels to receive funding.   The major reasons listed by the reviewers for this 
decision included:
a. Lack of Adaptive Research – We will explain what we did for the 2000 
grant and how we use an adaptive research evaluation process and the 
recently collected data when we finalize the coming year’s work. 

b. Lack of Integration between the projects – how do they tie together and 
support each other. (We will explain how the computer model will be used 
to integrate the projects.)

c. Too many projects, too big. (We will provide a prioritized list so that they 
can have our recommendations on what should be cut, if anything.)

2. The Technical Committee decided to pursue a number of actions to attempt to 
counter the decision by the reviewers to not support the project.

a. Prioritize the proposal’s projects.  A grant in the $1-1.5M range would more 
likely be funded. Thus the Committee will meet on October 24 to prioritize 
the different projects.  The grant will not be changed for concern that any 
changes will make it ineligible for reconsideration.  But the prioritization will provide the decision makers with our recommendations on what parts should 
be cut if not all the funds were available.

b. Help the Steering Committee write a two-page letter to BDAC explaining the 
importance of the work to CALFED’s overall planning process for the.  
Include a short explanation countering each of the major complaints the 
reviewers had with the grant.  Alex H. will draft the section about the 
importance to the overall delta planning process. Reasons for the grant’s 
importance include: 

 i. The monitoring and modeling will be important to the new permits that 
are needed for South Delta barrier operations.
 ii. A potentially successful solution to the dissolved oxygen problem will 
not likely be crafted without more information and analysis.
 iii. A defensible NEPA/CEQA review cannot be done for the dissolved 
oxygen implementation plan and other delta operational and structural 
change that affect D.O. without the monitoring and analysis called for in 
the CALFED grant. 
 iv. Many of the drinking water quality issues that the urban exporters are 
wrestling with will benefit from the information that will be gained from 
these studies.  

c. Carl and Peggy will draft a response to the major concerns.  These drafts will be circulated to the Technical Committee via the email lists for additional 
comments.  Present the draft letter to the Steering Committee for finalization 
at their October 18 meeting.  Send cc:s of the letter to appropriate people 
including elected representatives.

d. A more detailed response from the Technical Committee will be sent to 
Wendy Halverson of CALFED.  In this letter we will explain the prioritization 
ranking of the projects and how and why they are integrated.  We will also 
address the concerns of the technical reviewers in greater detail. 

e. Recruit supporters to send additional letters to BDAC and CALFED in 
support of this project.  We need to draft a standard letter and provide them 
with our prioritization of projects before we can expect many of them to write.   
Bob M. and Kevin will help organize the request for support.

f. Write letter(s) to CALFED to request that these projects be funded through the Directed Actions funds that CALFED will hopefully have available in the new 
year.  Resolving the dissolved oxygen problem in the lower San Joaquin is a 
priority for CALFED 

C. Prioritizing the 19 Projects within the CALFED 2001 Proposal
1. Criteria for Prioritizing 

a. Importance to the load allocation process.  Will the stakeholders’ and 
RWQCB’s allocation decision be defensible in court without these projects?  
How important is the each project to gaining credibility on the TMDL with 
the stakeholders?  

b. Importance to the enhancement of the computer model so that stakeholders 
can better evaluate management alternatives.

c. Potential for funding from other sources in a timely manner.  Can the project 
gain funding from another source (e.g. Prop. 13)?  

d. Assistance in providing near term improvements to the dissolved oxygen 
problem. Some of the projects offer more opportunity than others for 
advancing solutions to the low DO problem before the end of 2003 (e.g. 
Barrier Operations). (Note: I use the end of 2003 because a final decision will 
not be made until the end of that year, thus it should be the baseline year to 
analyze a no-action alternative.  If Barrier Operations were improved before 
then, a higher base flow in the SJR would be achieved and everyone’s load 
allocation would correspondingly be reduced.)

e. Cost of the project.  Cost/benefit ratio.   

f. Amenable to adaptive research. 

g. Critical to long term solutions.  

h. Political sensitivity.

2. Process for deciding the priorities.
a. Projects will be prioritized using their existing budget.  We will not ask 
Principal Investigators to present a scaled back project.  We will though want 
to know whether taking a 10-20% cut would make their project untenable.  PIs 
should be prepared to answer this question and others.  Hopefully all PIs or a 
person who can speak for them will be able to attend. 

b. Use a weighing exercise process where participants choose their top 6 or 7 
projects.  The results usually brings one third of the projects as clearly most 
important, one third as moderately important and and the rest lower.  
Sometimes the resulting ranking can be the final order.  Sometimes the 
exercise leads to further discussion and a different ranking.   

c. Consider dividing the projects into engineering and monitoring components 
and use this in the evaluation. 

D.  Miscellaneous
1. Dr. Orlob’s concerns in the Peer Review about the computer model need a 
response from Dr. Chen.  This will be on the November agenda.

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