SAN JOAQUIN RIVER Dissolved Oxygen Total Maximum Daily Load Stakeholder Process

San Joaquin River Dissolved Oxygen TMDL
Technical Committee Meeting  - DRAFT Notes
 October 24, 2000

Attending: Attending: Russ Brown (JSA), Alex Hildebrand (SDWA), Jay 
Jahangiri (Port of Stockton), Brant Jorgenson (JSA), Charlie Kratzer (USGS), 
Peggy Lehman (DWR), Gary Litton (UOP), Bob Murdoch (Stockton), Alice 
Tulloch (Tulloch Eng.), Kevin Wolf (facilitator and notes 530-758-4211, 
kjwolf@dcn.davis.ca.us)

Next Technical Committee Meetings:
November 7, 9 am - noon,  DWR  3251 S St, Sacramento
 
Handouts
1. Spreadsheet of tasks and expenses for CALFED 2001 grant proposal - JSA
2. Draft letter to Patrick Wright (new Executive Director for CALFED) - Bob 
Murdoch

A. Reconsideration of the CALFED 20001 proposal
1. We will use the November 15 BDAC meeting to officially request BDAC's 
support for CALFED to reconsider their "no funding" decision about our 
Category III proposal.   Ronda Lucas will be our main speaker at the meeting.  
We will schedule our November steering committee meeting in Sacramento 
around the BDAC schedule and encourage everyone to attend the BDAC 
meeting in addition to the steering committee meeting.  It is suggested that 
Ronda ask everyone in support of the reconsideration to stand up and state 
what group they represent.  Anyone who wishes to speak on the issue may, 
but we are concerned that taking up too much time may have a negative 
impact on the advisory council.

2. Bob Murdoch will coordinate the gathering of letters of support for 
reconsideration. He will pursue letters from all those groups that sent in letters of support of the original proposal.  Kevin will help with CUWA, MWD and 
DeltaKeeper letters.  Supporters can either sign on to an overall letter for 
reconsideration or write their own.  The due date is October 30/31.  These 
support letters will be added to the package that is sent to BDAC members 
and CALFED. 

3. Alex Hildebrand is crafting a letter from him to BDAC requesting 
reconsideration.  (Alex is a BDAC member.)  He wants help with this letter 
and requests review.  Along with his letter will be the technically oriented 
letter being drafted and coordinated by Russ Brown and the letters of support 
coordinated by Bob Murdoch.

4. Russ Brown will take the lead in drafting the letter that we will send to Patrick Wright, the new executive director of CALFED and to BDAC via Alex 
Hildebrand.  The Technical Committee will help in the writing and editing via 
email.  Issues that should be emphasized in the letter include:

a. Our proposal is the second year of a three-year program.  In the first year we received $866,000 and along with high marks from CALFED.  The grant 
proposal that CALFED rejected this year is essentially the same as was 
approved in the original funded proposal. This year's rejected proposal is 
essential to the completion of the work in which CALFED has already 
invested significantly.

b. Year one of the CALFED grant is going very well.  Data is coming in and will 
be used to help fine tune the details of some of the monitoring and modeling 
work described in the proposal.   Year one studies were fine-tuned based on 
the results from 1999 infield monitoring and analysis.  We have a good track 
record for using the principles of adaptive research and peer review in our 
work.  Funds we receive from CALFED for work in 2001 would also be 
subject to review and fine-tuning based on our analysis of the information 
gained from the 2000 studies.  If we drop monitoring and modeling in 2001, 
we will not have a solid enough base of information to craft a consensus-
based load allocation and solution to this important problem.

c. Numerous other issues facing CALFED and the future of the delta need the 
information that will be gained from our proposal.   Permits for barrier 
operations will need to account for their impacts on dissolved oxygen.  
Sacramento channel changes in the middle and north delta could affect 
dissolved oxygen levels in the lower San Joaquin.  Almost anything CALFED 
proposes doing in the delta may affect D.O. and thus has a stake in the 
development of the modeling and monitoring that would be done with our 
CALFED grant proposal.  The information will also be critical to evaluate 
cost-benefit ratios for these different projects. 

d. There are two main parts to the proposal.  Each part is critical to crafting and implementing solutions to the low dissolved oxygen problem.  Monitoring, 
modeling and analysis is essential if we are to understand and predict the 
problem.  Evaluation of potential solutions and ultimately the development of 
pilot projects to test whether our proposed solutions provide the predicted 
results essential to determining a set of solutions.  Each of these two major 
sections holds together separately and integrates into an overall program. 
Remove any one element and that section will lose some of its integrity.  

e.  The stakeholders have made a commitment to solving the dissolved oxygen 
problem.  Thousands of hours have been invested beyond those funded 
through the CALFED grants.  Over a half million in funds have been 
contributed to the project by cities and other stakeholders.  But the 
stakeholders cannot do this on their own.  CALFED funding is essential to 
unraveling the problem and developing the solutions.  

f. Losing funding in 2001 will be a major blow to the progress that has been 
made so far.  Progress made in getting permits for monitoring devises, the 
team of scientists working in the field, and some of past investment will be 
lost with a break in funding.  Coming back in 2002 will cost more and will 
delay the information and eventual solutions by at least a year.  The TMDL 
for dissolved oxygen will have to use only existing information because 2002 
field data and analysis will come in too late for inclusion in the load allocation process due to the Regional Board in December 2002. 

5. The Technical Committee will not prioritize the 19 projects in the proposal at this time.  The letter will explain the two major divisions in the grant - 
monitoring and analysis of the problem, and development of implementation 
options.  If CALFED wishes to lower the amount of money they grant, they 
can use this division in their decision.   We may provide a prioritization of the tasks for a directed action request.

B.  Directed Action Funding Request
1. Paul Marshal with CALFED is optimistic that the stakeholders will find some 
funding through CALFED's Directed Action program because they have 
identified the dissolved oxygen problem in the lower SJR as a priority. It is 
rumored that CALFED may have $40-50 million available for directed action 
funding.  Proposals are likely due by the end of the year.

2. Though it is possible that the directed action funds could cover the entire grant proposal, it will be best if some of the needed funds comes through the 
CALFED Category III program. Thus we should aggressively pursue 
reconsideration, and afterwards, if the BDAC/CALFED process is 
unsuccessful, pursue the directed action possibilities.

3. We will wait for further clarification from CALFED on what we will need to 
do to apply for directed action funds.   If we can, we want to meet face-to-face 
with CALFED staff who will be overseeing this program to better understand 
what we should do to present a proposal that succeeds in getting funded.  We 
may be able to just take the existing one and resubmit it with more 
clarification.  Or we may have to rewrite it. 

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