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CENTRAL SIERRA
WATERSHED COMMITTEE
Wednesday, May
27, 2009
MEETING MINUTES
9:00 AM
Coordinator/Facilitator:
Jeannie Habben
1.
Introductions 9:07
John
Reed MC Water Advisory Comm.
Jack Fry Chowchilla Red Top RCD
Chuck
Leavitt Oakhurst Com. Action
Norman Kuhr Chowchilla Red Top RCD
Dale
Drozen Demand Open Government
Mary Motola Picayune Rancheria
Geoff
Anderson Dept. of Water Resources
Steve Haze Sierra RCD
Larry
Ballew Coarsegold RCD
Elissa Brown Upper Fresno Watershed
Vong
Her Picayune Rancheria
Connie Nielsen Upper Merced Watershed
Anne
Steed Upper Merced Watershed
Sharon Wedro - SJVAPCD
Mandy
Vance Sierra Nevada Conservancy
Four Guests from Oakhurst Boy Scout Troop
Bethany
Mills CA Regional Water Quality Control Board
Jeannie
Habben Chowchilla/Fresno River Watershed, Upper San Joaquin Watershed
2.
Mission Statement
Read
by Connie N.
3.
Review of Minutes/Agenda
All were accepted as presented.
4.
Updates, Handouts & Extra Information for Committee
Public
Comment
·
The
California Association of Resource Conservation Districts of the San Joaquin
Valley Area
Representing
Resource Conservation Districts in the counties of Fresno, Kern, Kings,
Madera, Merced and Tulare will be having their Spring 2009 Meeting on Friday
May 29, 2009, -9:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. at the
Home
Grown Cellar; Lehman Family Farm in Madera.
There will be the general meeting followed by a trolley tour of the
Pomegranate Farm.
·
There will be
an Oakhurst River Parkway Clean-up this Saturday - June 6 starting at 9:00
AM. We will be meeting at the
Oakhurst Library Parking Lot. Bring your sunscreen and gloves; tools, trash
bags, and water will be provided.
·
Elissa B
stated she is looking for partners for a grant that she is working on for
Abandoned Mines Assessment. This
is a coalition grant that requires three or more agencies to apply as
partners. These could be state
or local agencies as well as tribes and will cover mines on private lands. She is currently working with the Upper Merced Watershed
group.
·
Sharon W
stated that this may be her last meeting that she will be attending as
management has changed at the SJVAPCD and they may feel that this is not an
important expense. A discussion
on this took place and the board asked that a letter be written to SJVAPCD
to explain the importance of having a representative attend CSWC meetings to
continue the open communications between the members of CSWC and all
agencies that are important in the watershed and with watershed issues. Jeannie H will write the letter and send it to the management
of SJVAPCD.
·
Riverdance
Farms will be hosting their annual The Pick and Gather at Riverdance
Farms on May 30 and 31. There
will be lots of displays, foods, activities, and entertainment.
·
SNAMP has two
upcoming trainings:
·
The Sierra
Nevada Adaptive Management Project will host a field trip with the
University of California Science Team to share the forest health
research being conducted by SNAMP. The field trip will take place near Oakhurst,
California from 9:00 to 12:30 on May 28th (agenda and
logistical information to follow). We plan to host a similar field trip near
the northern SNAMP research site in Foresthill later in the summer.
Dr. John Battles, Professor of Forest Ecology at UC Berkeley and
co-lead for the Fire and Forest Health Team will review the forest
health research being conducted by the team and demonstrate data collection
techniques in the field. The goal of the field trip is to famililiarize
participants in SNAMP and other interested members of the public with forest
health research methods.
·
You are
invited to attend a workshop hosted by the University of California Spatial
Science Team of the Sierra Nevada Adaptive Management Project on The Use of
LiDAR in Forest Fuels Treatment Monitoring (with specific reference to the
SNAMP study sites on the Sierra and Tahoe National Forests) on June 3, 2009
- FS Bass Lake District office, 57003 Road 225, North Fork, CA (559)877-2218.
The purpose of these workshops is to introduce LiDAR (Light Detection
and Ranging) and other imagery technologies and to illustrate how they
can be applied to forest management.
5.
Upper Fresno River Watershed Assessment Elissa Brown
Steve
B and Luke W reported on their findings to date for the Upper Fresno River
Watershed Assessment. It is
unlikely that funding will be canceled but no payments are in sight yet.
When the payments begin again, they are going to look for a six month
extension for the project from the Department of Water Resources. Some of
the tests being completed are: dissolved oxygen and microbial data (fecal
indicators), water loss (Lewis Creek), and experiment sedimentation effects.
Elissa
B is asking for volunteers to write up informational descriptions for the
Upper Fresno River Watershed Portal for the sub-watersheds. She requested anyone who lives by one of the sub-watersheds
on the Upper Fresno River please contact her.
6.
Project Updates
q
Chowchilla/Fresno Watershed Jeannie Habben
All work is still frozen until notified by the state.
Jeannie H worked with Larry B at the EMC Relay for Life to distribute
free native trees as Trees of Life to all of the participants of the
event. Special thanks to Southern California Edison Co and Sierra Resource
Conservation District for donation of 450 Giant Sequoia and Red Bud for
Gifts and awards. The Cancer Relay for life/Trees for Life was a huge
success. Ms. Habben and Mr Ballew also distributed pamphlets; Top Ten
Noxious Weeds and Sierra Smarts. Jeannie H made a presentation at the
Mountain Oak High School in North Fork.
They are an alternative High School that is focusing on Natural
Resources and wanted to know about native and invasive/non-native plants and
watershed issues. Jeannie H did
a power point presentation and distributed many brochures to teach them
these issues. She is also
working with the Madera NRCS office on a Dairy Workshop to be held on June
11 at the Madera Farm Bureau office.
q
Coarsegold Resource Conservation District Larry Ballew
They
are currently partnering with the Eastern Madera County Fire Safe Council
working on various grants and fuel brakes.
They started a fuel break today that is off of Road 620; this should
be completed by the next months meeting and all are invited to go on a
field trip to the view the completion of the project. They are also
receiving funds for nine miles of fuel brakes on Quartz Mountain and a fuel
break/exit road in Cascadel Woods. They
are wrapping up a conservation easement of 280 acres at Minarets High School
and also have three other sites for conservation easements for the county to
act as Mitigation areas. They
have received additional funding for one mile of wheelchair access at
Kinsman flats. Their next
meeting will be on Friday, May 29 at about 3:00 following the Area IX
meeting in Madera.
q
Integrated Regional Water Management Plan
Mariposa County has renamed their area as the Central
California IRWMP and has included Upper Merced County, Mariposa County, and
Madera County. All of the RAP applications including the Madera County RAP,
were submitted on time and they are now waiting for their calls from DWR to
set-up their interviews.
q
Madera County Water Advisory Commission
The
Regional Water Management Group Formation Subcommittee was formed by the
Madera County Water Advisory Commission to develop a RWMG for the governance
of the Integrated Regional Water Management Plan (IRWMP) accepted by the
County. It will be made up of Stakeholders. There is a draft
Memorandum of Understanding being circulated for approval; now on draft
number eight. That draft will be discussed at the next sub-committee
meeting on June 15 in Chowchilla.
q
Southern Sierra Integrated Regional Water Management Plan
Elissa Brown
The
funding has been suspended; though their RAP application was submitted on
Monday, April 27. They had
several MOUs signed by many of their partners.
They held their last meeting a couple of weeks ago and it was well
attended.
q
Upper Merced River Watershed Connie Nielson
The
funding has been suspended; they are working what they can and keeping their
office open to a minimum. They
are very close to finishing many of their projects when funding returns.
All are welcome to come and visit the visitors center at Briceburg;
it is nearly completed and will be able to open with the assistance of BLM
and the Park Service. The Park Service will provide volunteers to assist with
staffing and the high school students are working on completing the mural.
q
Upper San Joaquin River Stewardship Council & Assessment
Steve Haze
The funding has been suspended; no report was made.
q
Yosemite/Sequoia Resource Conservation & Development
Robyn Smith
They are
continuing with the web-site development for the state association, and hope
to have it up by the end of June. Robyn S will be attending the National
Conference in Albuquerque June 14-17, and will be on a panel presenting
their Success Story about the establishment of the Sierra Nevada Coalition
of RC&D's. Yosemite/Sequoia and their partners will also be represented
by three poster sessions on "Welcome to the Foothills",
establishment of California Amer-Asian Resource Education (CARE), and
Ag./Nature Tourism workshops/Weekend in the Country. They have completed the
grant paperwork for the Foresta Township and Yosemite West fire hazard
reduction projects and are administering their project funds. They have
found three new VISTA's who will be arriving in July. Three $250
scholarships have been awarded to Yosemite, Sierra and Mariposa High School
students who are all going into natural resource related programs of study.
7.
Pending Grants & Grant Proposals
The
Resources Agency and all its 20 departments and the Office of the Treasurer
have been going through an extensive process basically since the late March
bond sale and that intensified after the Build America Bond (BAB) sale in
mid April--it was decided at some point that in the long run it would
be better for everyone, including the contractors, not to pay out funds from
the March sale alone but to go through the process of vetting and fitting
projects to funding source with both sales at once. They thought it would be
better to pay as many projects as they could at the same time. (It is
interesting to speculate why they didn't tell us that when they made
the decision) There are over 5000 projects, many if not most of which needed
to be put through these processes separately. Complicating matters further
were the restrictions on the BAB funds.
The way they chose to manage this process ultimately was to go through each
of the Propositions starting with lowest number, Prop 12. Prop 12 is now
done and tomorrow the requisite Departments will be instructed that they can
start the process paying bills and starting up frozen
projects funded by that Proposition. Fears about the amount of time it took
to get through Prop 12 and the much larger tasks of going through 40, 50 and
84 should be mollified by the fact that in getting though Prop 12, the
Agency and Treasurer's Office have developed a template that will greatly
facilitate the rest of the process.
This will allow for completion of all Propositions within two to three weeks
maximum. At that time, the Departments will be allowed to start the
processes of paying the rest of the bills and take steps to start up frozen
projects. Brian said that there should be enough money for almost all the
projects. If there are shortfalls, it will be up to the individual
Departments to decide how to deal with them. There may be a few delays
because the process requires each Department determining which Bond issue to
choose from for each project. (I realize this is contradictory since I
suggested earlier that this was part of the initial process. I will try to
gain more information about this.) But he did not expect it to be an
important factor. In other words, once they are allowed, the Departments
will happily start paying bills. The unpaid invoices will be paid first.
8.
Legislative/Regulatory
Updates
Nothing to report other than funding issues.
9. Adjourn 11:45 am
Next Meeting: June 24, 2009, 9:00 am to 12:00 noon
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