Good afternoon. Welcome to the April 17, 2025 meeting of the

Secondary of Flood Control Agency Board. Would the clerk please call the roll.

Thank you. Director Desmond, Director Hume, Chairman Kennedy, Director Rodriguez, Director

Cerna, Director Jennings, Director Kaplan, Director Pluckybaum, Vice Chairman Holloway,

Director Crush, Director Lee Reader, Director Baines, Director Stevens. We do have an 11-member

quorum. Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. This meeting of SAFECA is being live-streamed

at Metro14live.SatCounty.gov and will be recorded and reared on Metro Cable 14 on Saturday,

April 19 at 3 p.m. Members of the audience who wish to address the board should fill

out a speaker form if they have not already done so and bring it up to me. When addressing

the board, please limit your comments to three minutes and identify yourself for the record.

Thank you. Thank you, Madam Clerk, and I'll add to the

announcements that we are doing a focus group today for all of those in the audience. If

you think that Director Jennings and Director Hume's uniform should be the official SAFECA

uniform of the day, please leave your comments in the back of the room. Would you please join

me in the Pledge of Allegiance?

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for

which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Thank you.

Your item.

Our first item is our public comments for items not on the agenda.

Thank you, and I do have a number of speakers. First is Bill Bretain.

Yes, good afternoon, Chairman Kennedy and members of the board. Microphones are on.

That's okay because I haven't started the clock, so you're good.

Okay.

I should be on.

Testing.

There you go.

Okay.

Anyway, my name is Bill Bretain. I'm a resident near what's known as the Contract 3B for the

American River Common Features Project. I'm a California registered civil engineer.

I worked for 25 years with the Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board as a

water resource control engineer, and I'm now retired.

I'm here today mainly to talk about the lack of alternatives in the NEPA CEQA document

for the project. Since the project started, when we started commenting almost a year and

a half ago, we've been asking for other alternatives than the rip-rap alternative that Army Corps

and DWR have presented. So far, whenever we've asked for that, we've essentially been told

to go pound sand by Army Corps, by our elected officials, or anyone else that we talk to.

That's interesting because CEQA and NEPA require multiple alternatives.

I recently submitted two letters to the Army Corps of Engineers, and I copied them to CEQA.

In those letters, after doing quite a bit of research, I found that bioengineering was

included as an option in the alternative section of the general re-evaluation report in 2015.

I also found that Army Corps told the public that bioengineering would be analyzed for the

contract 3B reaches in 17 response to comments letters to local residents who had submitted

comments on the project. I also found that other alternatives than the proposed rip-rap

bank protection were anticipated to be analyzed for contract 3B following further studies,

according to the 2015 erosion protection report. Bioengineering methods were also included

in the erosion protection report, and there are bioengineering methods that are feasible

in the contract 3B section reaches. CEQA and NEPA require a reasonable range of alternatives

to be considered, and US EPA during the scoping process told Army Corps that they needed to

include a full range of bank protection alternatives in their environmental document,

including biotechnical alternatives. However, in 2023, when the environmental document came out,

no other alternatives were included except the destructive rip-rap alternative that involves

removing over 700 trees, including large heritage oaks. At this point, I've requested that Army Corps

remove the project from the environmental document for 3B so that the other projects can move forward

and contested so that the Central Valley Flood Protection Board- Bill, can you wrap up?

I'm wrapping up. Okay, thank you. So that the Central Valley Flood Protection Board can move

forward with those other projects uncontested. Basically, I just don't want this board to have

their legacy be the destruction of the American River Parkway unnecessarily. Thank you, Bill. Thank you.

Nancy Nisker. Nancy?

Hello. My name is Nancy Nisker, and I'm here to talk about the American River Common Features