AMERICAN RIVER WATERSHED GROUP

November 17, 2005

The meeting of the American River Watershed Group (ARWG) meeting was called to order by Bill Templin, American River Watershed Coordinator at 10:05 a.m. at the Auburn Recreation District Canyon View Community Center located at 471 Maidu Drive, Auburn.

Present: Bill Templin, N.F. American River Watershed Coordinator; Mal Toy, Placer County Water Agency; Kevin Roberts, Sierra Pacific Industries (SPI); Randy Burleson, Friends of the Rubicon and Rubicon Trail Foundation; Chris White, Balance Hydrologics; Bill Christner, Fluvial Geomorphologist, ECORP; Bill Deitchman, California State Parks (Auburn State Recreation Area). Input was also received from several stakeholders who could not make it to this meeting, they were: Felix Smith, Save the American Rivers Association (SARA); Marilyn Jasper, Sierra Club and Clover Valley Foundation; Bill Cave, Auburn Lake Trails; Robert Meyer, Retired U.S. Geological Survey Hydrologist & American River Conservancy; Pam Wirsch, Maidu High School; and Sue Stack, Watershed Resident.

Check-In:

Bill Templin led the “Check-In” procedure that entails telling who you are, how you are, if you have any time constraints, emergent issues, and/or individual expectations.

Review & Approval of Minutes:

No minutes were presented for approval.

Additions to the Agenda:

No additions were made to the agenda.

For this meeting Bill requested guidance from the Group on the subject of:

“What Are Your Top Issues of Concern in the American River Watershed?”

Mal Toy http://pcwa.net/ identified that 1) FERC Relicensing and reaching a wide set of stakeholders was his top issue, followed by 2) Hydroelectric, Water Supply and Recreation water uses, with general information on who’s doing what?. 3) Federal (NOAA) Climate and Weather studies, and 4) building off of the previous grant reports on watershed plan and stewardship strategy http://www.americanriverwatershed.net/viewDoc_html?did=1016 PCWA has already initiated monitoring of stream water temperature and flow at a number of sites in the watershed to begin helping to produce data that will be essential for the FERC relicensing efforts.

Kevin Roberts http://www.spi-ind.com/ indicated that his top priority issues were “Fish Centric” with distribution and relative abundance of fish species being #1, followed by 2) Basic Water Quality (Temp., DO, pH) and substrate composition to determine “Is there a problem?”, 3) Aquatic Habitat – a consistent and comparable data set with man-made fish barriers identified, 4) Aquatic Macro invertebrate population samples from throughout the watershed; 5) Current vegetative cover/land use (such as burns and clear cuts, numbers of horses on small acreages), prediction of future cover and fire danger potential; 6) flow, when, where and how has water management affected natural flow regimes both increases and decreases (culverts and other fish blockages); and 7) mercury distributions within the watershed.

Randy Burleson (FOTR http://www.friendsoftherubicon.com/ and RTF) expressed concerns over 1) off road vehicles and teaching certain users how to use them without damaging the resources http://www.delalbright.com/Rubicon/rubicon.htm so that land management agencies don’t restrict their use; 2) the Upper American River Project (SMUD) relicensing; 3) judgments and El Dorado N.F. http://www.fs.fed.us/r5/eldorado/trails-moto/rubicon/ Route Designations that could unnecessarily restrict OHV use; 4) Snow Pack and Weather Tracking for impacts on water supplies and trail conditions; 5) Multi-agency cooperative water quality statistics for trail and water and traffic statistics for trail use http://www.co.el-dorado.ca.us/Rubicon/MasterPlanReports.html

Chris White http://www.balancehydro.com/ mentioned that he was new to the area and was present to learn more about other’s concerns.

Bill Christner noted that his employer (ECORP Consulting, Inc http://www.ecorpconsulting.com/ ) is working as a consultant to PCWA doing water modeling, so impacts of ramping up flows for rafters, flow data availability, and flushing flows are concerns. His additional issues were 1) Sustainable Development; 2) Recreation Pressure and the resultant trash, cars and parking problems; and 3) interest in volunteer monitoring such as is being done on Traverse Creek, south of Georgetown in the S.F. American River Watershed.

Bill Deitchman http://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=502 expressed that their issues are: 1) the General Plan update for their recreation area; 2) PCWA’s MFAR FERC relicensing; 3) Health of streams and side tributaries, baseline water quality data; 4) determining how development and recreation are all impacting the watershed; 5) communication between agencies on waste discharges (and dead bodies) in the streams and recreational users who might be unknowingly downstream in unhealthy situations.

Via Email:

Felix Smith http://www.sarariverwatch.org/ identified 3 top issues: 1) Instream flows / releases from reservoirs, including duration, amount, and timing of those flows; 2) Water quality, man made and man-accelerated impacts including chemicals associated with modern timber cultural practices and road maintenance.

Marilyn Jasper requested that we invite Ron Stork http://www.friendsoftheriver.org/ (Friends of the River) to come up an speak on issues in our watershed that concern them.

Ed Wahl, fly fisherman and Rubicon River stakeholder, expressed concern that 1) the Hunter Creek Trail is still open to off-road bikers from the Ellicott Bridge to Hell Hole Reservoir and there is concern for their impacts on that environment; 2) Campers have trashed the area on both sides of the Rubicon River upstream of the Ellicott Bridge and combine alcohol and firearms to create unsafe and unsanitary conditions in that area.

Pam Wirsch, Maidu High School has begun responding to the issue of water quality monitoring by gathering data monthly at three sites near the confluence of the North and Middle Forks of the American River.

Sue Stack says 1) her top issue is wildlife habitat, followed by 2) open space, and 3) an amalgam of issues related to human encroachment (erosion and noise from off-road vehicles, dumping of debris and trash, poor sanitation, smog, and polluted runoff. She’s also concerned about the many large grey pines and oaks in her area near Bowman that are dying.

Robert Meyer rwmeyer@mac.com summarized his thoughts into Long-term, Mid-term, and Short-term issues which, when resolved would have many beneficial results.

“Long-term, out 35-100 years, the largest threat to the watershed and every last living thing in it is the impact of global warming.  The most current research, based on 12 different calibrated models indicates significant and adverse impacts to the entire Sierra within the next 50 years.  See the latest reports from Scripps Institute for details.  It is anticipated that snowfall will decrease dramatically, rainfall will increase dramatically, runoff timing would change drastically, and storage within the basin for water supply will be inadequate for even today's needs.  Vegetation types will likely undergo rapid change, perhaps with the entire eco-system changing. Mid-term, 5-25 years, the biggest problem could be expanded/increased federal and private logging activities and all the detrimental effects that go along with them.  Working to get the Sierra on a sustained yield program, one that can, based on science, be sustained indefinitely, is of course, the most sensible course of action.  Such a forest science based program would include not just the management of the timber, but all forest values. Short-term, now-5 years, public outreach/education about the value of the Sierra forests to all of us.  Trees and forests provide us with essential health, recreational, aesthetic, and other important benefits. Unfortunately, forest management in this country has traditionally focused less on the "services" produced by trees and more on the timber that could be produced. Forest management has, quite literally, failed to see the forest for the trees. It's time for everyone who cares about trees and forests to demand that forest management protects and grows the total value of forests.

A holistic approach results in:

* Cleaner drinking water and less erosion.

* Cleaner air that's free of pollutants.

* Processing of harmful carbon dioxide, helping to slow global warming.

* Better control of rain runoff and snow melt, resulting in fewer problems with flooding

* Sustained wildlife populations

* Sustained lumber production”

In other meetings, Rich Gresham, Placer County Resource Conservation District has expressed concern for these issues: 1) Fuel Reduction and Shaded Fuel Breaks to protect the rural and urban interfaces and the forest; 2) need for a watershed plan (that as agreed upon by all stakeholders) that would provide guidance towards improved watershed management; 3) improved cooperation and collaboration between and among stakeholders in the watershed;

Bill Cave http://www.auburnlaketrails.org/ has mentioned concerns with fuel reduction and invasive vegetation (star thistle) taking over where shaded fuel breaks have removed the underbrush and opened up fresh soil. They also have concern for urban runoff and nutrients from confined animals.

Marilyn Jasper (Sierra Club) noted that past Wild and Scenic designation discussions highlighted differing expert opinions regarding the best techniques to manage healthy forests and watershed resources. She stressed fuels are not the only issue that needs to be considered.

Marie Davis (PCWA) noted differing opinions on what constitutes a dead tree have been a roadblock to post fire forest restoration and asked if we know more now so that we don’t face the same road block next time there is a fire and restoration efforts can be implemented more quickly vs. spending years working through the court system with time drastically impacting erosion prevention and restoration efforts. Marie Davis added it takes a thousand years to create an inch of soil highlighting the importance of erosion prevention. Discussion revolved around how erosion negatively impacts the most important watershed resource, water.

Rick Humphreys noted his agency (SWRCB) is in the process of listing more waterbodies as impaired and encouraging a more global view of the issue. Any stream that was mined has free mercury and the potential for mercury loading. There remain many unanswered questions regarding how to best address the problem; active removal vs. leaving alone to naturally move through systems. Rick further reported the Bay-Delta Toxics Group is concerned with identifying sources and magnitude of mercury loading. It seems if you accept that mercury is already in the bedload, it does not make sense to spend a lot of funding to document the fact. It seems that mining tailings is a definitive source waiting to be mobilized by stormwater runoff. Rick recommended testing fish tissues for mercury levels as providing useful information.

Bill Templin promoted flyovers as an excellent way to generally assess watershed conditions with the potential to see things that you can’t see any other way. Rick noted Lake Clementine exhibits high turbidity under high flow conditions. The dam was originally built as a debris catchall for mining conducted upstream in response to sediment loading impacts in the lower watershed. There is most certainly a significant mercury load behind the dam.

In summary, I was very pleased with the time we took to review these issues and hopefully we can keep these in mind as we develop grant proposals to help resolve these issues. The subject of water monitoring (when, where, what, and why) seems to be a major issue in this watershed at this time.

Next Meeting:

The next regular meeting will take place on December 15, at the Canyon View Community Center.

Agenda Suggestions and Open Discussion:

Agenda Item: ARWG Grant Development, Review, and Endorsement Process

Adjournment:

The meeting was adjourned at 12:10 p.m.