You're here.

Good afternoon.

Welcome to the February twenty eighth, twenty twenty edition of the City of Sacramento Water Committee.

Will the clerk please call roll and establish a quorum?

Council Member Guerra.

Here.

And Chair Harris.

Here.

Thank you.

Well, I think um, can I have a motion on consent?

Move consent.

I'll second.

All those in favor?

Aye.

Aye.

Discussion calendar is nomination and selection of the vice chair of the committee, and I would like to nominate my vice chair, Eric Guerra.

I would duly accept.

Thank you for the order.

Very good.

Move to end second.

Seconded.

All those in favor.

Aye.

Aye.

Opposed to abstention.

Congratulations, Mr.

Vice Chair, and thank you for showing up.

You're welcome.

So I gave it a Costello.

No comment.

All right.

Uh item number three, Madam Clerk.

Item number three is water rights and water supply regular process oral report.

Uh, about a lot of events, especially over the last six weeks or so.

But I also understand we have a rather busy agenda, so I'll try to move relatively briefly through this to allow room for the rest of the items before your two o'clock meeting.

But by all means, please feel free to ask questions or offer comments as you see fit.

So as you know, I typically like to do is just spend a few brief moments about the city's water rights.

They cannot be overemphasized, the importance and the value to them, and overall its broad portfolio and what it provides to the city and its customers.

And of course, there are ongoing risks, but really the two big items have to do still with the Bay Delta control plan update process and the voluntary agreements in particular, as well as uh new news from last month, January 20th, I believe it was California DWR released uh notice of preparation under CEQA, which is really the start of the environmental process for what would be a single tunnel or what the project is defined as as a Delta Conveyance project.

So, in terms of the water rights and entitlements, the city has a very nicely diverse portfolio with pre-14 rights, as well as five permits that are issued by the state water board, four of those on the American River, one on the Sacramento River, plus the 1957 operating agreement that is a wonderful agreement for the city, very valuable, and has really helped ensure reliability of water supplies over the years and decades.

The city also has groundwater wells that it operates and seeks to enhance over the coming years, especially with Sigma and other groundwater issues and projects such excuse me, such as conjunctive use.

In terms of risks, uh climate change is increasingly a factor from the regulatory perspective.

It's certainly part of the governor's resiliency plan and wanting agencies to plan for that, both at the state and more local levels.

And of course, uh the other impact that creates uncertainties and unreliabilities is the regulatory processes, such as with the voluntary agreements.

If that ends up defaulting back to the state water board, are we back to a pure unimpaired flow approach, which from the July 2018 framework would mean 45 to 65 percent of flows remaining in the river for fisheries and in delta needs.

So, with that quickly about the control plan update process, under the the laws and the rules, the the process is supposed to protect all beneficial uses, which would include the city's municipal and industrial uses.

And however, we often hear about the habitat, really fish wildlife and habitat being the phrase within the regulations for enhancing those or at least preserving and not worsening conditions for listed species and other habitat needs in the Delta.

So, as you know, we've been working for the last several years through what remains to be called the voluntary agreement process.

There's been several facilitators by the governor's predecessor as well as the current, and really the three main groups are still made up of the state team, the water users from around the state, as well as the environmental groups and Bureau of Reclamation.

I'm gonna somewhat put an asterisk there for now because I'll get to something in a moment to where things things have really become contentious over the last week.

And the short version of that is the state has sued the federal government under Endangered Species Act having to do with the federal government's biological opinions.

So I'll touch more on that in a moment, but still back to big picture and the American River Voluntary Agreements.

There are flow measures and non-flow measures on this slide.

It's identifying really the collective use by the American River users by doing reservoir reoperations on the upper part of the river, upstream of Folsom Reservoir.

We are downstream, obviously, so we are a major player for the groundwater substitution transfers where our commitments would really be in place during the critical and dry years and up to six times over a 15-year term for a voluntary agreement.

Non-flow measures, this should be hopefully familiar.

This is the same with having 50 acres of spawning habitat.

Uh the water forum just did a wonderful project at Sailor Bar that has uh, from what I'm hearing, proven to be successful to assist with spawning.

And then it's part of the non-flow measures.

There would be 150 acres of rearing habitat.