 Hello everyone and welcome. Thank you for joining us here tonight. Over the next two hours, we are going to hear about the Columbia River Treaty local governments committees initiative to integrate social and economic objectives within a modernized Columbia River Treaty. This session is being recorded and will be available afterwards for you to watch or to share. It will be emailed to you all after the session, likely tomorrow or shortly after. My name is Brooke McMurchey and I am part of the province of British Columbia's Columbia River Treaty team and I'm pleased to be your host for this event. I'm joining you tonight from the territories of the Laguncan speaking peoples, known today as the Esquimalt and Songhees First Nations, also known as Victoria British Columbia. I also acknowledge with deep respect the territories of the Tanaha, the Schwetmek, the Silks and the Sinaix peoples and neighboring tribes whose territories span the Columbia River Basin. It's great to see so many of you online there's just over 60 people who are listening in right now. If you'd like to feel free to put your name in the chat and let us know where you're joining from. Before we dive into the evening I'd like to take a moment and share how things will flow. In just a few moments, I'll be welcoming Linda Warley who is the chair of the Columbia River Treaty local governments committee, and she'll start us off with a few opening words. We'll then hear an overview of the Columbia River Treaty and the socio economic integration initiative. Part of that overview will include a high level summary of Kootenai River hydro operations. We'll then dive into presentations on the interests and performance measures associated with the Kootenai Reservoir, the Duncan Reservoir and Kootenai Lake. We'll take a quick break in between the Kootenai Reservoir and Duncan presentations. There will be time for questions after each presentation and then again at the end of the session, just before we adjourn around eight o'clock Pacific time or the two hour mark. So many of you have been part of these types of sessions before but just as a reminder to ask your questions during the session, please enter them into the Q&A function in your zoom window. Please don't type your questions into the chat as they will be missed. So if you'd like your question or your comment to be seen by the panelists, please enter it into the Q&A box. If you'd like to ask your question verbally, you can use the raise hand function which is also in your zoom window. If you are phoning in, you can press star nine to raise your hand. And in both cases when it's your turn to speak and ask your question, you'll receive a prompt to unmute yourself. If you're on the computer, you'll see a little window pop up and if you're on your phone, you'll hear a prompt to unmute yourself by pressing star six. You can then ask your question after which we will mute you again, unless you have another question. A reminder to please be respectful of those you're asking questions of, and in the interest of time, try not to raise questions that have been already asked. And please try and limit your questions to about one minute if you're asking them verbally. Finally, please try and keep your questions related to the material at hand tonight. Sometimes it can be difficult and our presenters are here to answer as many questions as possible this evening. We've got loads of resources to point you in the direction if we're not able to answer what we hear tonight. In addition, any questions that aren't answered this evening will be included in the summary report which will come out after the fact. Many of you may be aware that Canada and the United States met last week for another round of negotiations on the Columbia River Treaty. If you're curious to know how that went or to read an update from the minister responsible for the Columbia River Treaty, we encourage you to go to the province of BC Columbia River Treaty website for that. This evening session is focused on a very specific aspect of work that is informing Canadian discussions around a modernized treaty, and it's not going to cover updates on international negotiations. So if you are curious to learn more about that, please visit the province of BC's Columbia River Treaty website. I think that's it from me. So now I'd like to welcome Linda Warley who's the chair of the Columbia River Treaty Local Governments Committee to start us off with a few opening words. Welcome Linda. Thank you Brooke and good evening and thank you everyone for attending this webinar this evening on the Kootenai system of the Columbia Basin. And I'd like to recognize and respect that the lands on which I live and meet are within the unseated territories of the Columbia Basin Indigenous Nations peoples. The Columbia River Treaty Local Government Committee has been working together since 2011 to ensure the voices of the Basin residents and local governments are heard in the decisions about the future of the Columbia River Treaty. We have attended numerous rounds of meetings across the Basin over the past years listening to the voices of the local residents in numerous rounds of meetings across the Basin to ensure that these voices are reflected to our recommendations. The recommendations have which we've come up with through these voices of the people of the Basin have gone forward to for consideration to the negotiations team for possibly being implemented some of those wishes into the new modernized treaty. The work you'll see presented here tonight is a product of our ongoing efforts to keep this living document of our recommendations as informed and up to date as possible. I'd like to thank the members past and present of the committee for the years of work they've dedicated toward the future health of the Basin that has led us to this important scope of work. We're grateful to the province for their support of the committee, including this work and to CBT for their ongoing support of our work for the health of the Columbia Basin on behalf of the people of the Basin. We appreciate your finding the time to attend this evening and listen to the presenters and learn about the immense scope of work presented here today. That's being done on behalf of the inhabitants of the Basin and the Columbia system, the Putney system and all living entities within it. Thank you to the socioeconomic team, integration team who's worked diligently to bring this information to you today. We look forward to your input on this draft work. Thank you. Thanks very much Linda. I'd now like to welcome Cindy Pierce who's the executive director of the Columbia River Treaty local governments committee and project lead for the socioeconomic integration initiative. Cindy is going to be joined by Ryan McDonald with McDonald hydrology consultants limited, and they will provide an overview to provide some context for this evening. Cindy and Ryan will wait just a moment for them to connect. I'm not here but it looks like Cindy might have dropped off. Yeah, I'll send her I'll send her a message and see how things are. Oh, she can't unmute or get my video going. Of course, well we can hear you Cindy. The co host to solve the problems way to go I think it's Morgan magic. Thank you. Welcome. Thank you, Brooke for the introduction and Morgan thank you very much for your work in the background to make sure all the technology works as it should. And also thank you to the province for the sport for this work directly, and a great appreciation to be working together with the provincial BC team on this. Thank you to all the participants, especially those of you who are doing it the second time around. It's nice to see familiar faces, and for those of you for whom this is your second webinar. We appreciate your dedication. It's really incredible. The, the, the, the, this session is focused on a particular topic, and we know that there are other topics of interest around the Columbia River Treaty. There's a complex and far reaching agreement with confidential negotiations going on. And this session focus on on just one specific aspect of this complexity, which is integrating socio economic objectives into a modern nice treaty. The team working on the socio economic integration and who are here tonight for the webinar will not be able to answer all the questions that are beyond our work and our knowledge of the process. And we know that there are a number of other topics that may be on participants minds. And we wanted to provide you some with some links for information and where to send questions right up front. So you know you've got that information. And so if I could ask Lauren to share the slide deck and bring up the first slide that would be great. Thank you. And while I go through these Morgan will kindly put them in the chat for those of you who want to get them out of the chat as we go forward. And the links will be included in the email comes that comes to you with the recording after the webinar. So the first topic of course is the negotiations. And as Brooke has mentioned, updates are on the BC CRT web page, and questions can be sent through the CRT email and they're both of those links are on this site. We really encourage you to subscribe to the CRT newsletter and to subscribe for updates. This is the source of information on the negotiations. And it's really wise if you're interested in this topic to to get to get signed up. The second topic is integrating ecosystem function into the treaty. And this is an interest for many people. The three indigenous nations in the BC Columbia Basin involved in the negotiations are leading the process to integrate ecosystem function into the treaty. And the province held an info session with this group on this work last June. And a link to the materials and the recording are shown on the slide here and again I would encourage you if you have time this and short info sheets. The recording is there and and some background documents as well. The next topic that there that is of high interest is salmon restoration. And again the indigenous nations in the BC Columbia Basin are also leading an initiative and this one is called the Columbia River Salmon reintroduction initiative or cursory. And you can learn more about that initiative at the link that's on the slide as well. Now, well this session is focused on the Kootenai. I suspect that there are some folks online who are from the Arrow Reservoir, or the lower Columbia where water levels reservoir and water levels are very low, historically. And we wanted to let you know that information about reservoir and flow levels come from BC hydro, and we provided you the email and the phone number for BC hydro for this information on the slide. Now we encourage you BC hydro provide provides weekly updates on reservoir levels and notices about changes in flow in the lower Columbia. And we want to encourage you to sign up for the their their weekly and as we needed updates and you can do that through that email address. Now, with regards to this low water topic, the local governments committee identified this as a concern that was heard from Basin residents as Linda described in the 2021 recommendations to the governments that are involved in the negotiations, and we are updating our information around the impacts from the current event, and we'll continue to encourage the Canadian negotiating team to seek solutions to address this concern. So, those are some topics that we know are on your mind, and aren't topics specifically related to the integration of socioeconomic objectives but we wanted to upfront providing with this information. So, Lauren. If you could click the next slide please. So I wanted to introduce the other two members of our team. Lauren with Laura is with Selkirk innovates and she's our leader, our researcher and she's responsible doing the PowerPoint clicking for us. And every Dabur Smith is our engagement coordinator, and she as Brooke explained is is watching the, the Q amp a box and will be providing questions to be answered through the session. Now you may have noticed that I'm one handed talking here. On the other hand is in a sling and so a bit of a disabled one darn paper hanger here with a bunch of paper around me. So there may be times where you need to give me a minute a second or two to have my one little hand do what it needs to do so I appreciate that as we go forward. Thank you. Let's go let's now dig in on this topic of the socioeconomic integration into the Columbia River treaty. The next section is Brooke explained is the background section. So, some of you are new to the Columbia River treaty so we just wanted to do a few slides of background on the treaty make sure everybody's got just a basic grounding in it. So, the treaty, the Columbia River treaty is a Canada us transboundary water management agreement that was ratified in 1964. The objectives are our power generation and flood and flood management. It required Canada to build three dams Duncan, which we'll talk about today Hugh Keenley side or the arrow. And at the end of the arrow reservoir and Micah dam which creates can basket reservoir and and the treaty allowed the US to build the Libby down in Montana which creates the Pucanusa reservoir that floods into Canada, and also impacts downstream flows. Implementation of these dams inundated 110,000 hectares of ecosystems displaced over 2300 people in approximately 30 small communities and impacted economic activities for those communities and regions that were that were inundated. The treaty does provide benefits to British Columbia through first of all a one time prepayment for 60 years of assured flood risk management and 30 years of half of the incremental US downstream power potential. And that is called the Canadian entitlement. In 1995 when that 30 years ran out. The Canadian entitlement has been delivered annually to British Columbia through electricity that the province then decides what to do with in terms of using it and domestically or selling it. So, there are, there are benefits and ongoing benefits from the current treaty. The status of the treaty at the moment is that flood risk management shifts in 2024 next year to more ad hoc or called upon approach. So in 2014 CRT reviews were initiated in British Columbia and the Pacific Northwest, and those reviews recommended modernizing the treaty, not terminating it. We've provided you a link to the BC decision around around the review and this decision to modernize the treaty. Canada US negotiations began in 2018. Canada leads the Canadian negotiating team because this is an international treaty. The team has full participation of BC, and the, the regional indigenous nations that not that to know how the soap soap and agon and the Sheikwet Mcnations. You can as we've said, see updates on the website, and I want to say again sign up for that newsletter it's precious. Next slide please. So, in the context of these negotiations, why are we doing this work what is the purpose of this work. It's the CRT negotiations advisory team and it includes representatives from the five governments that we just discussed, and that team needs to understand how US proposals for treaty changes will impact base and interest, and how the treaty can be modernized to increase flexibility for Canadian operations to to improve conditions for BC base and interest. Those are two of the many things that the, the, the, the entity needs to understand. And that's the focus of this work. So, that's the background on the treaty. The next piece is what is the Columbia River Treaty Local Governments Committee and Linda has provided you a background. I'll just skim through some of the more details here. The treaty was formed in 2011 to ensure the voices of Columbia base and local governments and residents are heard and decisions related to the future of the treaty. And that includes 10 currently 10 elected officials to are appointed by each of the, the four regional districts in the basin area, and one is appointed by the village of Vailmont and another from the Association of Cootley boundary local governments which is the collective organization for local governments within the Columbia Basin Basin. As Linda mentioned, the committee provided recommendations to the governments involved in the negotiations in 2014, and in 2021. And the committee has ongoing contact with the negotiating team with the BC CRT team and with the CRT negotiate CRT indigenous nations representatives. The, the committee also liaises with the BC CR team to resolve local concerns. Now, some of the issues that we face in the basin are, are due to the international tree. Some of them are domestic that we can solve locally. And so the, the committee works with the BC team to try and solve those those domestic issues. The group also leads the, the, the CRT socio economic integration work, and I want to echo Linda's words around appreciation to Columbia Basin Trust and to the province for their support for the committee. Now we've provided the, the local governments committee website and the member list links so that you can go and look for more information if you're interested. All right. Next slide please no set so now, given that we're focused on basin interest what are those interests. So these are interests that are impacted by river flow levels or reservoir elevations that are that are impacted by the Columbia River tree. And click please. There are the indigenous nations are leading the work around two types of basin interests. One of course is indigenous cultural values. The second category as I mentioned earlier is socio at the, the ecosystem function. Interest that the indigenous nations are leading together, but local governments committee leads the socio economic interests and these include things like flooding navigation recreation tourism health, agriculture and erosion. The other interest is power and the power generation work is led by BC hydro. Understandable. Now, I'd like to turn it over to, oh, we're focused on the socio economic, we're full. I'd like to turn it over to Ryan, our, our modeling advisor, the wizard as I like to call him some days. And he'll take you through a few slides to explain the process that we're using to integrate the socio economic interest into the tree. Thank you Ryan. Thank you Cindy. Yes Cindy talked about, you know, having these basin interests and we need to be able to have a way to bring those interests forward in terms of how do we actually inform negotiations. So, a lot of the work that we're doing right now is really focused on the modeling component of the project so we're using models to inform the negotiations and what we're using is is is river management models. So these river management models ultimately enable us to evaluate a range of different operations in the system that could help us in meeting the objectives of meeting those basin interests. So if we could throw one more slide there. Yeah, so the river management models enable us to look at these range of interest and enable us to quantify the effective operations on performance measures and we're going to talk a lot today about performance measures later on. And really what they are is a way to evaluate the different things that matter to the basin. The river management models ultimately as I mentioned are used to pull levers in the system and evaluate what the effect of different operations might be. So, if you click one more forward, we then take the changes in operations and we can evaluate how those operations affect those performance measures that we're looking at. And Lauren will walk through this later on in the slides but ultimately you can imagine by changing reservoir levels or flows out of a reservoir. You can change ultimately how a given performance measure may perform. I'm going to talk really briefly about what performance measures are, and we can sort of walk through sort of how we're using them in this work. So what is a performance measure a performance measure is ultimately a combination of four things so it has to be something that we care about. So there has to be a why we have to give it a location so there's a where so we're in the basin to be actually caring about that thing. When do we care about those things and then what actually is it. So if you step through one more slide or one more click Lord. So as an example we can look at Kootenai Lake, and Kootenai Lake flooding might be one of the things that we're actually trying to look at. So why would we look at Kootenai Lake flooding, we may want to minimize the damage to property and infrastructure so I could be one of the measures that we're trying to look at. So again where in this case is is Kootenai Lake, when this doesn't happen. Just episodically this would be a year round type of a performance measure, and we would care about the levels in the system throughout that year long period. And the levels are the things that we actually defined so the what piece is the expected annual damage in terms of dollars. Ultimately that's measured when water levels including like her above 1752 feet. And the way that we evaluate that as we would say, you know, more times that a higher number of reaching that 1752 is worse for the system and a lower number would be better. So that's essentially how we frame performance measures in this work. Next slide, Lauren. So for this work we actually have two types of performance measures. We have what we call combined pms or combined performance measures and these are essentially for high level initial scenario evaluation. We do look at a number of scenarios and as Cindy walked through already there are a number of different components of this work so there's cultural values, ecosystems, flood control hydro power. So a high level scenario high level pms that allow us to evaluate scenarios at a pretty high level. Underneath that is what we call sub measures so these are things that we use to dig into detail around individual scenarios so once we have a scenario that we think is working recently well, we then use those sub measures to say okay. Yeah, we actually understand what's going on, and we can look at more specific interests. So an example of this again is that could be like flooding. The combined performance measure is what I already described. That's the expected annual damage when water levels are above 1752 feet. The sub measures of this would be different components of that so we can look at different elevation beds. Or if you go forward one more. Oh, yeah, different elevation beds. We can look at the number of days at or above different elevation beds, and we can look at the number of years at or above those elevation beds. We can sort of dissect the performance measure and really figure out what exactly is going on. Over to you Cindy. I'm sorry about voices bad thing in there. Thank you, Ryan very very much. So the process and timeline that we've used for this work today as we started back in 2020 to collect information around community interest and previous socio economic performance measure measure information from a number of sources. We also looked at designing the engagement. And it was it's essential that we hear from you and others around these performance measures and so we, we spoke with a group called the Columbia Basin regional advisory committee know this is, I put a link on this group because they are an important part of the process. This group advises on the CRT and on regional hydro operations. There's about 25 public members who are chosen from expressions of interest from community members. And they're chosen to represent the diversity of the geography and interest in the basin. It also this group also includes indigenous nations and local government appointees and hydro operator representatives, and you can learn more at that link. So we spoke with that group we spoke with local governments, indigenous nations, and we were designing methods for the public at large as well. So that, then we moved into to know we don't click up. That's okay. That's okay. Then we moved into developing the performance measures once we had the information together and we knew we had a plan for how we're going to do this. Then we worked on developing the performance measures, revising the previously used one use performance measures based on new information and developing new performance measures where needed. Some of that work is completed and some of it's in progress as you'll see tonight. So here we have been getting feedback from Seabrack from local governments and from you to Monday night and today through this webinar. And that feedback will inform the recommendations that the local government makes on socioeconomic performance measures. And we have been moving some of the performance measures into the river management model that Ryan mentioned to test them. And that's really where you learn whether or not they're going to work or not and whether we need to tidy them up. And once we get your feedback and it's considered then they will be finalized. Since December the model has been been being worked with. And so that there's been some ongoing confidential scenario modeling that again helps us sort of quality can do quality insurance quality assurance with the performance measures, see if they're making sense with different scenarios has been very helpful. Where we are now then is in the last and learn you can click again now. Please. Where we are now is in the last steps of the process in finalizing our community feedback, and then moving through the last step. Thanks. Next slide please. This is a little bit crazy of the of the performance measures, and this is for the Columbia side. I'll quickly run through them for can basket reservoir there's a navigation and recreation and tourism performance measure, and we're working on erosion. For Lake revelstoke there are no performance measures because we have not heard there are community interests that are impacted by by reservoir level changes. That the rest of the system does for the arrow reservoir. There are four performance measures, and also the erosion one is being worked on, and for the lower Columbia. We had flooding and recreation tourism performance measures, and at the session on Monday, we were asked to add a navigation performance measure which is an interest on the Kootenai side which we're focused on. We have the Kukenosa reservoir now. For some of you, the name of this water body is is Lake Kukenosa. We have currently a recreation and agriculture performance measure and just a week ago, we were asked to consider adding an erosion performance measure as well. We have flooding recreation tourism and health, which is related to mosquitoes and Cooney Lake flooding navigation, as you'd expect with the fairies recreation and tourism. And then for coral into the confluence, which is the part of the river where there's a number of dams between the West Arm of Cooney Lake and the Confluence with the Columbia, we don't currently have performance measures. There was a question about the brilliant pond fluctuations and those are not directly impacted by CRT flows. And so they're not included and there was also a flooding concern around a campsite or RV park near the confluence with the Columbia and because that's affected by backwatering. We have included that in the Columbia, lower Columbia flooding performance measure. So let's click please. So, a summary of the process then is we've, we are taking input from the Columbia Basin Regional Advisor Committee local governments and the public is quick please. So that's coming to us as a project team and our responsibility is to complete the background work research to make sure to make recommendations on performance measure, and to host these engagement activities. Next click please. Without information, the recommendations from the team will go to the local governments committee and that committee will make recommendations on the performance measures and scenarios for Basin socioeconomic interest, which last click please will inform. Oops, the negotiations advisory team in terms of using the modeling scenarios to support the negotiations. So that's what this process is all about. I'll turn to questions. I'll catch up in my paper moving my one handed paper moving. Ah, sorry, one big important thing in red text that the revisions are ongoing in this process based on new information. So this is not a one and done process. This is a continuous improvement process. So don't feel like you have to, you know, we have to get we don't have to get everything right this past. We can be put on notice about something try and reconcile it through this process and and if we can't, we can keep working on it over time. Okay, I think if we can turn to the questions. Okay, thanks very much Cindy and Ryan and Lauren for formatting the PowerPoint. Every you've been monitoring the Q&A is what do we have for Cindy. Thanks Brooke so the first question for Cindy is what are the implications for Kootenai River residents, if water is diverted from the Kootenai into the Columbia River in the headwaters of these rivers near Emberman. The next question I'm sure relates to the to the reality that the current treaty includes a provision. As I understand it, the current treaty includes a provision that would allow Canada to divert water from the Kootenai into the Columbia. And this is a provision that's been there since 1964. To my knowledge, I have not heard of any interest in doing that. But that does exist in the treaty and it does come up at most of these sessions. Thank you. The next question is, has groundwork been done to estimate the costs of building a we are across Kukenosa Lake on the Canadian side. This is a question we thoroughly anticipated and so I'm going to, I'm going to read from some notes that I took from publicly available information. In 2021, the province released a draft feasibility study, responding to a pro proposal from some local residents to build a we're damn on Kukenosa reservoir right at the border. So we could control the water levels public engagement was conducted and the province provided a summary report and the link to the report and the feasibility study are on the website and Morgan will put them in the chat. And then they're in the province's report, the province explained that after reviewing the feasibility study which did include a cost estimate. So you so you could go to that link and find the cost estimate. Where are we at here. And reviewing the feasibility study and all the feedback on the issue, the province determined that the first priority to most efficiently address concerns about Kukenosa reservoir water levels is to advocate for increased coordination. There will be dam operations during the Canada US negotiations on the CRT. And I've noticed that the minister's statements and her year and reflections on the negotiations have mentioned that there are discussions happening around increasing collaboration around will be damn operations. So this does appear to be underway within the negotiations. Now I've taken some time to answer that question, because I know that it is on the mind of folks on the in the East. But the, you know, through the work we're doing on identifying socioeconomic objectives and performance measures we really want to know what the interests are related to the treaty matter most to you, and what water levels and river flows, you think would support those interests. I hope that's, that's a helpful answer. Thank you Cindy. Another question is why is flooding not included as a performance measure for Lake Kukenosa. So why don't we wait until we get to the Lake Kukenosa section and we'll, we'll dig in on that one. And I'll be, I'll be prepared to answer that, and I think that would be helpful. I did notice that there's a couple of questions in the, in the Q&A is about sort of operational issues around environmental monitoring and movement and things like that. Those, those are, we're focused on a planning process here, and those are not questions that I can, I can really tackle. But we will, as Brooke said, record them in the summary report. And there may be answers at that point. Thanks, Cindy. We do have time for a couple more questions before moving on if there are any. So, someone wanted to add on to a previously asked question about diverting water from the Cooney River into the Columbia, and are wondering if there are positions on the Canadian side about keeping or removing this language from the treaty. Now this is clearly not a question that I'm in a position to answer. I am nowhere near the negotiations at this level of detail. This is a question I'd encourage you to ask the province, and they may or may not answer because the negotiations are confidential and must be at this point. Anything else? I think for relevant questions for the current topic. I think that's it for right now. Thanks. Super. Looking forward to the flooding one coming back. Great. So, next up, Cindy and Lauren, you guys will, or actually Cindy, you'll continue on with a high level summary of the Cooney River operations. Is that right? Yes. And before we do that, I want to reiterate the purpose of this, you know, this webinar and this step in the process. We're really wanting to introduce the performance measures to you to answer any questions and maybe get some feedback from you during this session. We also really importantly invite you to provide feedback through the online survey forum and Avery will provide the link to that survey at the end of the webinar. What you tell us during the webinar we will of course keep track of, but we really encourage you to also put your comments into the survey when you have a few minutes. So now let's turn to understanding the Cooney system just a little bit. The Cooney, the Columbia basin has a series of really winding rivers. And Lauren, if you can trace the river, the Cooney River for me with your cursor, I would appreciate that the Cooney River starts right next door to the headwaters of the Columbia River. And it flows south into the top end of Cuckinosa reservoir. Through the reservoir, Lake Cuckinosa, down to Libby Dam in the United States in Montana, and then starts coming up north through Watters Ferry and crosses the border near Creston and into the south end of Cooney Lake, which is a very, very long lake. Now at the north end of Cooney Lake is the Duncan River. And the Duncan River flows south through Duncan Dam and into Cooney Lake. Cooney Lake has a big long arm called the West Arm, which has Nelson on the end of it. And then the river flows out of the West Arm through a number of dams that are not CRT dams, and then into the Columbia River. So it's a sinuous river system because of all the wonderful, gorgeous mountains we have in the area. That's the Cooney system. The operation of the Cooney system is more complex than the Columbia. Next click, please, Lauren. The reservoir elevations are the result of inflows, less whatever the dam outflows are. So you can think about it as a big bathtub. I'm going to find an image and use a bathtub in this at one point. So the reservoir elevations are based on inflows. Some of them are regulated by upstream dams and some of them are natural. And then there are the dam outflows. And the dam outflows for the Cooney system are defined as they are for the Columbia by the Columbia River Treaty, which provides for flood risk storage and power generation by the Duncan Dam, which is a CRT dam and also can be managed through the non-treaty agreement and the water use plan. And the system is also run, dam outflows are also based on domestic power generation needs. Now those are the three that are relevant also on the Columbia side. On the Cooney side, there are additional factors. And one of them is that for the Libby Dam operations, they have requirements, legal requirements under the U.S. Endangered Species Act for particular flows to benefit endangered species, fish species. Now those flows benefit not only fish species in the U.S., but as I said, the dam flows from the river flows from Libby Dam into the south end of Cooney Lake. And there's a portion of that flow that is in Canada. So these endangered species that flows do benefit fisheries species in British Columbia. And then additionally, for Cooney Lake, there is an international joint commission order. Now this is a very old order. This order was made in the early 1900s and it was created to provide for power generation in those dams at the end of the West Arm while not impacting the agricultural interests at the south end of Cooney Lake in the Creston area and then in the West Ferry area. So there's another additional management requirement on Cooney Lake. And we'll come back to that when we get to Cooney Lake. So the results of the inflows and the outflows creates this diagram of reservoir elevations. And this is an example for Cucanusa from 1980 to 2020. The elevations in meters and feet are on the y-axis up the sides of the graph. And then months are across the bottom. And we start in January. The blue line is the average reservoir level over that period of time, that 40 year period of time. The blue highlighted area is the most common reservoir levels, the 90th and 10th percentile, they call them, during that period of time. And then the gray shading is the kind of outliers, the maximum and minimum levels for the reservoir over that time period. So again, the operations are based on the inflows, which vary from year to year, minus the outflows. And it results in this kind of a pattern in most of the reservoirs in the basin over time. And Lauren will come back to this diagram very soon. So let's now look at Cucanusa Reservoir, or Lake Cucanusa, some quick facts. Next clip, please. So this is the Transboundary Reservoir. It has 67 kilometers in British Columbia and 140 kilometers total. Again, the dam is in Libby, Montana. All of the inflows are natural. There are no regulated inflows. So the reservoir has to deal with whatever comes at it, so to speak. The outflow is managed by Libby Dam, which is owned and run by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. And that dam does have power generation capacity. The storage is five million acre feet. And I apologize, we had put million acre feet written out on our other graphs and we'll do that. Our last presentation will do that before we send this out to everyone. And a million acre feet is basically one foot deep across a million acres. And that's how water management engineers think about the storage within the bathtub. The annual water fluctuation is up to 72 feet, or 22 meters. So it's a substantial up and down. Next slide, please. The socioeconomic goals that we are currently aware of for this area are recreation and tourism, maximizing the community benefits from the quality and diversity of recreation and tourism, and grazing, maximizing grazing opportunities within the reservoir drawdown zone. I hear you that I hear the question about flooding, and we had not been informed that flooding was an issue in this reservoir. I want to hear more about that when we get to the question session so we can understand, you know, what the exact impacts are from flooding. So thank you. Lauren, I think it's over to you unless there's that graphic. There we are. So, to try and put these elevations in into context and I wanted to show you a couple of pictures and these are thanks to Stuart Rood for providing them to me. This is a picture of the reservoir from the causeway, sort of in the northern third of the reservoir the portion in Canada. Looking north. And this is August 5, 2020, when the reservoir is is near nearer full pool full pool is 2459 feet. Next click please. And this is the reservoir four months earlier on April 24 same year 2020 when it said 2404. And this, you know this shows you what a 50 foot difference in elevation means within the reservoir, this at this location, certainly the northern end of the reservoir gets drain of all reservoirs gets drained in British Columbia gets drained more deeply, simply because of elevation changes as you go from north to south in British Columbia. So just wanted to put that the graphic in context with some pictures. Over to you now learn please. Okay, so let's stick into some of the details of the performance measures. We're going to show you one of these graphs for each reservoir or river segment they can help us sort of visualize how the the recommended performance measures line up against historic water levels, which of course reflect historic hydro system operations. It's important to note that operations might change in the future so these graphs shouldn't be thought of as a limit on what's possible but they do help us sort of calibrate our thinking in terms of what how achievable a performance measure might be. So for cuckadoo so we have two performance measures that we've been working on the first is recreation and tourism, and the range. We've recommended is represented by this this dotted box here. So you can see that the average reservoir levels are generally within the recommended range, with the exception of the spring. And that's a common friend that we see across recreation tourism pms for most reservoirs recreationists would generally prefer if water was higher in the spring months for grazing you can see our interim performance measure that it's that solid line with the water levels going downwards, and you can see that if historic operations continue as they were this performance measure would only be achieved in the early spring. As ranchers generally prefer that the water levels are lower throughout the grazing season. So let's dig into these details of the performance measures a bit more Cindy up for grazing. So there are several grazing licenses within the drawdown zone in the northern portion of the reservoir these are essentially. They were private properties that were inundated when the reservoir were created was created and the ranchers now have licenses to be able to conduct grazing on them. And the water levels are low enough and the forage is in good enough condition. Now we have had to wait for some mapping, much improved mapping data to be able to understand the elevations in the inundated portion of the reservoir we've just got that we've gotten that information recently, and I've been working through with the range officer to make sure that we've got the right information to to move forward on this. So the measure is the number of hectares per year that are available about and should be below that caught it on the other one more in the sun should be below this elevation so that the, the, the area is available for for grazing. The season is from May 1 to October 31. That would be ideal, of course, and we're looking forward to working with the ranchers to understand you know what their highest priority dates are, and, and what the implications are if they don't have access to that grazing. Now we know that this performance measure conflicts with the recreation tourist tourism performance measure which wants the reservoir high. You know, our job is not to reconcile all the performance measures, it is to record the current interest in the area and look at how those interests are impacted by a variety of scenarios. Now inundation doesn't just affect how much area is available for grazing it also affects the condition of the range. The plants, the forage plants, if they're inundated for a long time, they're in less good condition that takes them longer to pop out of it and get to a state where they can be grazed. So we have have on the docket to look at a grazing condition performance measure as well so this is interim. It's a work in progress, and we look forward to to refining it over time. So for recreation and tourism the elevation range we've recommended is between 2445 and 2455 feet over the season, June through September. That's a preferred elevation range that we've heard from multiples organizations that represent recreationists around the reservoir, including the regional district of East Kootenai. One note here is that in past processes we have developed past processes that have been developed for performance measures on treaty reservoirs. There's been a specific performance measure about coconut angling. And so we went back and forth with local biologists and fisheries folks on this and have to determine that the data underpinning that performance measure is is a bit problematic and also update. In fact, the focus on coconut as a species might also evolve as there are perhaps some other species that are also becoming important to the reservoir. So we've recommended some, some research acrylic survey or Angler preference survey to help us still more current understanding of angling trends on the reservoir. And this is one of those performance measures where we've developed a series of sub measures, and we've done the set of recognition that recreation is not one thing there are of course many different types of recreation at each has its own access needs and preferences. And sometimes those even differ across sites for example if we think about boat launches. So these sub sub measures represent the detailed information that we have on activities or sites that we have information on, which is not comprehensive. There are definitely sites and activities that the research team hasn't been able to find data about an important note with the sub measures is that we differentiate between access and experience access is fundamental because you can't do the activity without access but experience is also important because access is not really valuable if the activity isn't, you know desirable the full range of accessible information or accessible elevations. And you can see that difference come out in the sub measures here motorized voting access is possible as low as 2407 feet. But because of various hazards, hazards that exist at those low water levels voters prefer when water levels are much higher 2440 or or even higher. All right, let's go back to questions. Let's this flooding question. Every time we've interacted with folks on these performance measures, we've asked, are there concerns about flooding. And we haven't been able to identify any specific circumstances where their concerns about flooding. There are clearly concerns about debris at high water conditions and you may have noticed that we have a sub measure and the recreation and tourism performance measure because it's a principally a voting issue as we understand it. So, so the reason we don't have a flooding performance measures that we don't have information that would indicate the impacts. So if there are areas properties and with associate economic performance measures, we are not focused on the environment that's over in the ecosystem function work. If there are properties or community infrastructure that are impacted by flooding, please let us know. Ideally, by filling out the survey, and there's a section there where you can add information for each of the performance measures if you wish. I'm going to notice the question again about diverting the company I think we've dealt with and I'm not wanting to go further on that one. The other question about money for recreation, etc. That again is more of an operations piece that would be beyond our planning work that we're doing here. Maybe as you pause there I'll also let folks know I mean this isn't an invite to flood the Q&A box but you know your comments and questions that we might not be able to answer in this forum will be seen by other folks who may have an opportunity to answer. So just just so folks know that these questions are not dying on the vine so to speak in this session they will be shared with folks who might be able to answer them. I see Karen your comment. So what we are working on is reconciling interests within each of the reservoirs and then across the system over time and through the scenario where I understand the relative merits of food security for sure. It became necessary in the process to reconcile the performance measures around particular interests in a reservoir. We would bring those folks together to have a discussion about this to understand their concerns and try and reach a community level agreement. It's not ours on our own to do that reconciling. Does that help? I hope that helps. Thanks Cindy. And just a reminder to folks to you can raise your hand if you'd like to ask your question verbally. I've seen a few hands go up and then go back down again so feel free if you if you have a question and you're not too sure about whether to ask it you go ahead. And also just to acknowledge that everyone's receiving probably a lot of really dense information here this evening and a reminder that all of the details about the performance measures are on the local government committees website. So if you're if you want to kind of digest what you've heard and go back and review that material before sending your questions to the LGC email address, or filling in the survey that's also on their website where that's how you can provide your feedback on the performance measures that have been identified, go for it. So lots of lots of dense information questions might not come to mind right away. And that's just fine. Thank you Brooke and we haven't actually described what's on the website I realize. There are summary documents for each for the Columbia and the Kootenai that basically reflect what's in this presentation, but in text form. And then there for each of the performance measures there are information sheets that provide more details around what Lauren and I have spoken about. Sometimes in great detail about how we got to where we got to because it was a long journey, sometimes pretty quick. So I'm your, we certainly encourage you to go and have a look and Morgan thank you again for putting that every thank you for putting that into the chat box. That's wonderful. No more questions. I think we can move on. Oh, we do have one question. Are the seasons in the performance measure subject to change with respect to climate change well that I want you to know that the seasons for recreation and tourism in the performance measures across the basin has already have have been changed from where they were to say 1020 years ago from the processes that have been done in the past that you know the spring has the summer season, the recreation season has gotten longer. So we are reflecting the information as we have it now. And within the scenario evaluation where climate change is also being integrated. So it is it is front and center. Thanks Cindy. There's a couple more questions I haven't had a chance to skim through. The question around the dollar value of electricity from Libby dam is way outside my wheelhouse by a long shot. I'm sorry about that but that's just that's the way it is. The question about how much does maximizing these performance measures depend on Canada securing flexibility which I understand to basically mean reduced commitments, the water storage and flood flow management in the negotiations with the US. Well as as the presentation that the beginning said, the, the purpose of the work is to inform the negotiations with regards to the flexibility that Canada, the increased flexibility that Canada, that five governments are seeking through their negotiations with the, with the, with the United States, and certainly, you know, what comes out of those negotiations will lead to reservoir management approaches that will hopefully create better conditions relative to the performance measures. That's what, you know, that's what the intention is. So I'm just reading this last question here that was posed. Maybe time for one more before we take a short break. Go ahead Cindy. I think that last question is more of a comment and I hear you. All right. There's one comment that's just popped up Cindy directed to use maybe have a look and then we can take a break. I'm happy. I was so happy to see you sign on. I'm I'm I'm regretting that I haven't been able to reach out to you. Thank you. I'm glad you appreciate it we're working on it. How far apart are the ideal compared to what works for recreation. Did a big difference, or could there be a compromise. Lauren, could you please pull a PowerPoint back up and go to the reservoir graph slide please. And Brett, I appreciate you asking a question about a compromise, because that's, you know, those are that's the work that we'll need to do over time again this isn't a one and done process. We needed to get your performance measure properly defined. And you know all we have right now are some initial elevations. And so we put the performance measure at the lowest elevation. We need to understand where the vegetation is that's most important, and we need to understand what time of the year is most important to you. And once we we get to that stage and I just was able to talk with the range officer today. She's been a very very busy lady. And once we get to that stage, which we will do with you. Then we can maybe look at how do we find something that works for everyone. I don't know what that'll look like at all but we need to get the grazing information properly defined first time very much look forward to coming back and having that cup of coffee with your family. Wonderful. Well thanks again Cindy and Lauren for taking us off here with with these discussions about performance measures. We are going to take a short break here. Yeah right. We'll take a short break here for about five minutes, and then we'll come back and hear similar, similar information about the Duncan reservoir and then Kootenai Lake. But for now, you all can leave the webinar running. We'll put up a pause slide and we'll come back here at 10 minutes past the hour, and and start things up again thanks everyone for joining by the way I had a chance to look at the participants list I see a lot of familiar names, and a few new ones as well so it's really great to see. See all you folks listening and we'll talk to you in about five minutes. Hi folks, we are back. So now we are going to I'm going to turn back over to Cindy and Lauren to talk about performance measures for the Duncan reservoir. Thank you. So we're going to move now to the little one, the Duncan reservoir so the Duncan river as I mentioned earlier comes into the north end of Kootenai Lake, and the dam is just upstream of the inflow to the Kootenai River. Pardon me to the Kootenai Lake, and there is a little stretch called the lower Duncan river between the dam and the lake that we're going to we're going to focus on during this session as well. So quick facts please. Lauren, this is the baby reservoir. This is the smallest CRT reservoir. It's not tiny at all, but in the magnitude of the other reservoirs under the treaty it's a small one. It's 45 kilometers long, the inflows are all natural. The outflow is through Duncan Dam which is owned by BC Hydro it does not have power generation. The lower Duncan piece I mentioned to you has it has inflows that are related to the Duncan Dam regulate the inflow. Let's start that again. The lower Duncan River inflows include regulated flows from Duncan Dam, and then the natural inflows which are quite substantial from the Lardo River and Meadow Creek. The storage in this reservoir is 1.4 million acre feet if you remember. So I could can do so if I recall correctly was five and the annual flux but the annual fluctuations are up to 98 feet and this reservoir basically goes from full to empty most years, not all but most years. So for the reservoir itself, we have a performance measure for recreation and tourism that is similar to the other ones. The one for the Cucanusa reservoir, and it is to manage, maximize the quality and quantity recreational experience, including reservoir access and visual aesthetics. There's also performance measures for the lower Duncan River, and that includes flooding, minimizing the damage to people and property and then mosquito nuisance and health risks. And we don't have a specific goal for that one yet we are working on that one. And the map shows you the portion that is the reservoir, and then there's the dam and then there's the lower Duncan River and then there's Cucanac. Over to Lauren. Okay, so we have one performance measure for the reservoir and that's recreation and tourism. And you can see that trend of having a tail stick out into the spring is reflected here. Recreationists would prefer that water levels are higher during what has traditionally been the spring recharge period. And this box is actually a little bit misleading because this performance measure takes a weighted approach and that the shoulder seasons aren't valued as heavily as the core recreational season. And let's take a look at that so we've, we've recommended continuing the waiting approach that's been used in past performance measure processes that have received community input that the core season of July 15 to Labor Day. Is weighted most heavily with the season starting in April 1 and then ending and about Thanksgiving, being weighted a little bit lower. The waiting is also applied to different reservoir elevation so I'll just click through here to show you the community prefers that the water level is, you know, between one and 1.5 meters below full pool. So the water levels are higher and lower than that. Yeah, higher and lower than that are weighted a little bit us. There's one some measure that we've been able to develop for Duncan and that's focused on debris so high water introduces a lot of floating woody debris into the reservoir which can be a hazard while also damaging recreational assets like like beaches and and then we have one performance measure for the Duncan River. So note here that the units on the graph are not elevations their flow units so we've got cubic meters per second and cubic feet per second. Also note that this measure is is measured below the Lardo confluence and so and the Lardo River is is free running. So part of the flow that's tracked in this graph is regulated and part is not. There's two components to the flooding performance measure the box here represents low line areas and you can see that does occur periodically in the summer and the line with the arrows is for extensive flooding. And that happens more rarely within the 10th percentile of flows. So I've been tracking this performance measure and the numbers are the levels are from the Duncan water use plan. And we basically have two performance measures one around low line areas. And these are the days per year in that high flow years should come out of there. We did make that change sorry folks. There's so many details in this stuff that every once in a while they squirm on through. I apologize we'll catch those in the later in the version that comes up to you. So these are days per year and we the information that we're working with was around cubic meters per second so four to five four hundred to 500 cubic meters per second is the is the flow range. And they were looking for less days per year where we're in that range. And the concern is that seepage is occurring in the risk of flooding is high if there's a rain event or I need to increase stand flows for any reason. So that's the reason for this low lying area flooding performance measure. Next slide a next click please the extensive flooding performance measure is when there's an extensive area of low lying areas that are flooded including hay fields, and there is an important industrial site in the lower Duncan that it's flooded at this point in time as well and these are with flows that are above 500 CMS. And we're measuring days per year above that level and less is better. Now we do have some measures for this, this one as well. And that these sub measures would will for a particular flow levels will measure the numbers of days at the flow level is reached and the number of years when it's reached, because it isn't just the total number of days in the year. It's, you know, on an average, anyone over the scenario period, it's actually for these particular flow levels, how many days and how many years that's what causes the actual damage. And one more click please learn. Again, I these these information is based on the water use plan from the early 2020s. We would really appreciate receiving dated photo photo verifications. And when the flow levels get high next spring hopefully someone we can send someone up with a camera and take pictures and that's how we verify when flooding impacts are concerned. And I've provided the email address for the local governments committee there if any locals are online and they want to take pictures of low lying areas flooding or the industrial site or any impacts that's really really helpful for us. Thank you. Over to Lauren. So we did want to we did want to mention mosquitoes here as we know this is an important issue for the Duncan River community. We've done a fair amount of research on this one and have concluded that we're not able to develop a performance measure at this time. While we have evidence that there, there is a relationship between regulated flows for the dam and mosquito presence in the Meadow Creek area. We don't have enough data to set a specific threshold that we're able to use for a performance measure. The relationship between dam discharges and mosquitoes, it's not straightforward it's a little it's complex. And we also don't know what level of mosquito presence is problematic for the community in terms of nuisance or health risks. It's not the numbers that we're dealing with at this time. And it would take a little bit more research to overcome those barriers and that research isn't currently for us. Okay. The first question, Ed, if I had two hands I would quickly go to the local government committee recommendations and quote from them. The committee has a recommendation about flood risk management. We don't have the link at hand right now, but maybe Avery will be able to get that and put it into the chat box. It does have a recommendation around flood risk management, including and I just don't know the exact colleagues exactly worded but including local governments sort of doing what they can to reduce flood risks. It's probably not as close as an answer as you'd like but it's what I can get to you with that sort of one handedness at the moment. And I see the question about economic potential, and we're not, we're not focused on that kind of thing in this process so I'm going to pass on that question. The next question is around Lake Windermere, remaining protected against flooding. Lake Windermere is not one of the CRT is not a CRT reservoir it's not a reservoir is a lake. And so that's not part of this process either so I'm not in a position to answer that. There is somebody who has raised their hand so if we could jump over and allow that person to ask their question verbally and then we can jump back over to the written questions. Yes, I'm sorry I forgot that part of the process. That's why I'm here. Thank you. All good. So we heard from this gentleman on Monday buzz harms worth you go ahead and unmute yourself if you're still interested in speaking. I'm going to give just a moment here. All right. Never mind back to the Q&A's. Go ahead. Okay. No, no go ahead go ahead buzz that's great. All the information getting this evening is very interesting but we want to know here on Lake Windermere. We're going to be adjusted in any way to do with water supplies to the coast from the Kootenai River or from other rivers in question. And we see the original the original article that I received on the trust from the treaty was that this was all going to be flooded water raised considerably. So the, the, I think the article that you're referring to was part of the original work that was done by us in Canada, around the development of the Columbia, and there were proposals to flood the East Kootenai, or the West Kootenai and there were a number of different dam options. So the decisions were made through the treaty and ratified in 1964 and the four treaty dams were created. And I'm not aware of any, any plans anywhere anytime to flood the East Kootenai through the Columbia River Treaty. It's that that was an old planning process to explore alternatives. Thank you. It's nice. It's nice for the people of this area to know that we're going to be set safe, normal, normal. Yeah. Thank you. Thanks so much. Go ahead Cindy. In the Q&A the next question is around whether the loss of the land was worth what we get from this devastation in the Duncan Valley. That's a question that's well beyond the scope of this work. If you're interested in learning more about the impacts. There's a report by George Penfold that you'll find on the CRT website, but that's not something I can comment on. Now, the next one is around the downstream benefits and that is, that's a negotiations kind of topic and that's not one I can address either. The Columbia River Salmon Recovery Initiative, which I gave a link to earlier, is looking at salmon restoration through the Columbia in Canada, including in the Silicon and Lemon Creek where, you know, where they were historically. And so that would be the place to go and check on what's going on around salmon recovery. Thanks, Cindy. We have another person with their hand up. I'm going to allow Ellen to ask their question. Ellen, go ahead. It might take a moment. Hi everybody, I think I must have hit raised my hand by accident. Thanks for thinking. Oh my gosh, what was my question? I don't have a question, but thanks anyway. You're very welcome. Great to hear your voice. All right, we have another raised hand from two folks that we here at the province know quite well. Mario and Ken, I will unmute the two of you. You can ask your question. Love to hear you Mario. Mario or Ken. All right. Maybe we'll come back. They might have also inadvertently hit their raise hand but there'll be plenty of chances to ask your question if you have one to ask Mario and Ken. Cindy, you want to go back to the Q&A box. I'm wondering about whether similar work is happening on the US side of the border to what has been discussed here. I'm not familiar with any work of this nature, but the negotiations are very confidential. And there may be something that I'm not aware of, but I'm not aware of anything. All right, it looks like the folks Mario and Ken have their selves unmuted. Would you like to ask your question now? Yes, I would. Mario. Hi, my name is Marius Kotler. I followed the Columbia River Treaty from day one. I'm probably older than dirt. However, you mentioned social and economic. The ecosystems were destroyed when we signed the Columbia River Treaty. The economic part of it, I seem to, whether it's me or I don't know, I seem to have missed. But Libby Dam in 2017 used $138 million worth of power. We haven't got one cent of that power from 1945. This committee prepared to make recommendations on that for our bargaining committee, because I think it's a big part of negotiations. Thank you very much. Thank you for that Mario. Can I respond to that? I'm sorry, but go ahead, Kathy. Surprise guest. Mario, you're my hero. And Ken, who's helping you totally be engaged in your 90s. And we need more people like you and young people to make their voices heard. And I'm going to tell you, Mario and Ken, that it's exactly what we're talking about at the negotiating table. So you don't need to trust us, but we will come back to you and tell you how we are going to deal with that. And hopefully you will be satisfied. Thanks so much, Kathy. And thanks again, Mario and Ken. Yeah, thank you. Great. Cindy, we have time for maybe one more question before moving on to Kootenai Lake interests. There aren't any in the box that I can answer. The one that's there is similar to the question was made. Perfect. That was asked. That's wonderful. Okay. Well, why don't we move on then to Kootenai Lake interests. I see a note Brooke about people don't know who Kathy is. Could you maybe address that? Yes, absolutely. So Kathy Eichenberger is the executive director of the province of BC Columbia River Treaty team. And she's also the British Columbia lead on the Canadian negotiating delegation. And she's listening in here tonight because she wants to hear what everybody has to say and the input on these on this work to identify performance measures. And she was going to be incognito. So there weren't inadvertently questions raised about negotiations, but I know our team has a great relationship with Mario and with with Mario for years. And so I know it meant a lot to her to respond to Mario's question there. So if you do, as a side note, if you do follow our social media or any sort of public communication we have about the negotiations and we mentioned how BC is at the negotiating team, I think Kathy is our representative there. Thank you. Thank you for clarifying that and thank you for the question. So let's go to Kootenai Lake. So Kootenai Lake I've described a couple of times it's a long, long one with Duncan Dam at the north and the Duncan River and Libby Dam regulating flows in through the south. Click again please. Lawrence getting late. I'm losing it. For Kootenai Lake. Sometimes it's a lake and sometimes it's a reservoir. It's 104 kilometers long, it's big. The inflows are regulated by Libby Dam about 44% through a year over the year, and by Duncan Dam about 16%. And then there are huge natural inflows from both of those dams through the length of the of the reservoir and the west arm. And that's about 40% of the annual inflows that sometimes of the year, especially when there's the fresh at the natural inflows are much higher than what the regulated inflows are so sometimes it's a lake with natural inflows driving lake levels and sometimes it's a reservoir with the upstream reservoirs, driving the levels. The outflow is Coral in Dam, which is owned by Fortis. And Coral in Dam is regulated under the International Joint Commission order as I mentioned earlier. Now that order must be consistent with the Columbia River Treaty. So the two have to work in tandem, as best as possible. The annual water level fluctuations are only up to 16.5 feet. It's much less than on the CRT reservoirs. Next slide please. There are lots of interest on Kootenai Lake and so consequently lots of socioeconomic goals. First one is flooding, really critical, especially along the west arm where there's lots of development. And with regards to the ferry operations, then navigation relates directly to the ferry and important ferry operations along the lake. Recreation and tourism is very important. And the goal is very similar to the goals on the other reservoirs. And then at the south end of the lake around Creston, there are some goals around Creston dike management. That's an important set of infrastructure that's impacted by lake levels. And we've learned actually river levels, maybe even more so. And so the intention there is to support farming and wetland protection by minimizing pumping costs at critical times. Next slide I believe is over to Lauren. Yeah, so, so here's the graph for Kootenai Lake. And then we have four performance measures to show you. So flooding. Again, there's two components as there are for other reservoirs or segments. Okay. The highest one is dotted line with the arrows is flooding that causes documented structural damage. And you can see that this is happening relatively rarely within the top 10th percentile of blows up here. There's a line area of flooding that dashed box. That happens more frequently in the spring and early summer. There's two components of a performance measure related to dikes in the Creston area as Cindy mentioned she'll get into those in detail but you can see that. Because average elevations are generally below the upper threshold this one is usually met but not always. The lower threshold that one is usually not met. Navigation is this big double box around the whole, basically the whole graph and you can see those that performance measure relates to the lake elevations needed by the ferries to operate and you can see that that's almost always met except for, you know, the very extreme of the hydrograph here and then finally recreation and tourism which is this big solid box in the middle. You can see that average flows are generally within the range except for a couple weeks in the middle of the summer when they typically go above the seasonal or the they typically reach seasonal maximum. Cindy over to you. Thank you, Lauren. So for Cooney Lake flooding. This one has had a substantial amount of attention. We've identified a low lying areas flooding performance measure that's between 1750 and 1752 feet. And we were able to, we were able to verify that this spring to some degree, when there was a high, when the water levels got to 1751 point six, and the emergency office operations center there indicated there was some worry about inhabited structures being damaged but the water went down before that became an issue so that was encouraging and we'll continue to monitor that as we go forward. And so the units again our days per year and we want less is better. And so this one we're reasonably, we're reasonably confident with the upper elevation on this one. The second one. The second one is about structure damage and transportation limits. The ferries have been built to particular with that the, the docking of the, the osprey or whatever the balfour Crawford Bay ferry is called. And the hair up very both the ramps on the hair up very having particular design limits. And so those become a challenge and perhaps even unusable above 1752 feet and structural damage structural flooding of homes and other structures happens above 1752 feet as well. So that's how we've set that performance measure. Again, another click please Lauren we have some measures. Oh that's on the next slide. Sorry. So we go back I missed something there. The unit that we use for the structure damage is for the structure damage and transportation limits is actually damage in dollars and cents. And that's based on recent RDC K flood impact study in 2020. And we're really fortunate to have that study. And the RDC K is very fortunate to have that study. And it's been really helpful in in putting this performance measure together now I will flag that the study does not include wave action, wind and wave action. And we are. We have questions about ways to incorporate that into the into the study as well because that may reduce the, the, the thresholds that we're working with. We do need photo verification for the 1750 as the initial low lying area flooding elevation. So, when we start to get high water levels in the spring we may have some people crawling around taking photos to see when low lying areas are flooded and it may be difficult because the vegetation line on couldn't like has moved about as operations have changed, particularly at Libby. Next slide please. The, this is the graph from the couldn't like report that shows the damage estimates as the elevation. The, the, the, the, the horizontal line is dollars and the vertical lines are elevations. And as the elevation goes up the impacts go up based on this study. Next slide please. Again, because the impacts of flooding aren't just how many days above a certain level it's how many days for each event and how many years this happens. Thank you. So, for navigation as both of us has mentioned, I've mentioned previously the navigation performance measure is set by the operational limits of the Balfour Kootenai Bay and. Here at fairies so the, the limit for this one is 1738 to 1752 which as we showed is kind of well within normal normal operating limits of the lake. For recreation and tourism. We recommended a range of 1734.4 to 1748 feet, and that lower level is set by the International Joint Commission order for Kootenai Lake which it specifies that following fresh at the lake can't can't go above that level until September. So it would be impossible at the stage to aim for anything different. The maximum elevation was set based on our understanding of flood dynamics on the lake which is that the lowest lying areas start to flooded around 1749 feet and though our knowledge of flooding is evolving as Cindy just mentioned and so it's possible that we may be able to bump that up by a foot or two. So the sub measures that we've been able to develop for the leak they mostly come from a 2000 report for the Kootenai system. So we do have some questions about the data, it's definitely dated and some numbers seem a little bit questionable for us, especially that no beat at beach access is preferable all the way up to 1754 which is when we know there is flooding happening around the lake. So we've acknowledged that some more research would be beneficial to help us get a more current understanding of recreational preferences on the lake. Okay, can you like crust and dike management performance measure. This performance measure is based on the results of 2013 technical meeting of floodplain operators that was done as part of the CRT review technical studies. We had an initial meeting with the Crescent Valley floodplain management partnership, and they've indicated to us that the revisions are needed. This was interim because it was based on the 2013 studies. In the last bit we've had an initial meeting. We have some more work to do around this one but I'm going to show you what it is at the moment, and you can expect some refinements going forward. So there are two performance measures one is called preferred operating days and this relates to when the dike and pumping systems work the best. And that's below 1750, which is fortunately below the flooding of low lying areas. So those two line up well. The second performance measure is related to spring dry days, and that this this performance measure links to allowing movement of farm equipment on properties. And in this case, the level desired level is below 1739.3 feet from March to April in the important seeding season. And again, if you track this process, you can expect to see some changes in this these performance measures going forward. So I think now we can move to questions. And I see a number of questions in the chat. There was a question around flooding and people building in the foreshore. And that is certainly a risk and with the operations, the Libby Dam operations in particular but also Duncan regulating the flows into Cootney Lake. The water levels have changed over time and that has allowed for vegetation to be reestablished and that's allowed for what are called accretions to happen, and then for people to want to build down closer to the lake where there's higher risks. The RDCK has flood management bylaws and does what they can. And certainly the local governments committee and the recommendations explicitly talks about the local governments doing what they can to reduce flood risk. There's a question about a comprehensive map of the lake shore being flooded illustrating the areas of concern of that is what the Cootney Lake flood risk impact study was based on. And the RDCK is the owner of that information we don't have it as a as a as a team. I don't have an answer to the question about how many acres were flooded during 2022. I think the next question around monitoring on the lake is an operational question which is is outside the context of this work. The last question around the weir. I'm not aware of any quest any suggestions about building a weir on Cootney Lake if this is related to Cootney Reservoir, I've already answered that question, and maybe Morgan or Morgan, if you could please put the link in the chat to the feasibility study that was done for building a weir on on Cootney. Cindy there's a question in the chat somebody's asking if we'll forward all the links that have been posted in the chat as well. And I think we we certainly will forward at least some of them in the email that we send around when we circulate the recording of this session. And we'll compile a list of resources to include in the summary report as well so you will have record of all the links that were thrown up in the chat for you guys here tonight. I also note that we after the session is done will leave the meeting open a little bit longer for people in case they want to scroll through the chat and just grab some of their links themselves. So you go thanks for the question. Thank you for recognizing there's much work behind this I want to again thank the socioeconomic team they have done enormous lifting on this work particularly Lauren, but also Ryan and and every. Thank you for recognizing that that means a lot. You know the purpose of the work is to is to create the best set of information that we can by the local governments committee, reflecting public values that public interest, so that the information in the scenario modeling is accurate as it possibly can be that that again is the as we described earlier that is the purpose of this work. I have a quick sentence there to about about you know the amount of work I'll just mention that we didn't start from square one we were building on past processes that have happened multiple past processes in some cases for depending on where you are in the Columbia system and so there's a fair amount of research that we were able to draw on fair amount of work that was done before us and which allow us to access some efficiencies thankfully. So he is a very modest woman. Thank you for that context, Lauren. I would also offer that some of the past public consultation reports that your team looked into included input from some of the folks who are actually on this call right now so if you've been involved involved in past consultation processes to do with the Columbia water use planning etc. Good chance your feedback in the was incorporated into those reports and therefore has informed a lot of the work we're hearing about tonight. There's a series of questions in the chat box and I'm making sure that there isn't something in there that I am in a position to answer. The questions are largely around the management of Duncan dam and its purpose and the impacts, and that is likely disappeared out of my off my screen. That's beyond the context of this work. Sorry, managing my chat box with one hand trying to get no worries Cindy, I might offer it since we do have time for final questions at the end. So why don't we take a moment here to move into options for providing feedback. And then if it'll give you a chance to look at some of the questions in the q amp a box and then we, we do have a little bit of time at the end here for final questions. So that's all right with you. Maybe I'll turn the floor over to every to share how folks can provide their input on the performance measures that you heard about here tonight, and the work more broadly. And that's a question in general to so every the floor is yours. Thanks Brooke. So we put together a very comprehensive survey that we'd love to encourage everyone to fill out. I'll be posting the link right away in the chat box you can access that. So please include a question for each performance measure that we've talked about tonight and also for the Columbia River system as well. So please take some time to fill that out. We do have detailed information on every performance measure on the Columbia River Treaty local government committee website. So we'll be posting that link as well so make sure if you have any questions or you want more detailed information about all the performance measures we talked about tonight. So please include that website, the one the first one posted on the slide here and we'll also post it momentarily in the box. So that just yeah a lot of information that will help you fill the survey if you do provide more if you do require more details. Yeah we really look forward to hearing your feedback it's really important for us in this process so thank you so much. Thank you so much Avery. And I actually I just saw a comment come through the chat asking. First of all saying wonderful leadership in in both sessions the Monday session in this session here, and asking if you slash we are all residents of the community I think that's a great question. If our panelists feel comfortable sharing. I'll start for myself. The most distant of all I'm not I'm a resident of the Victoria or the Laguna and speaking people's territory. However, my father grew up in Nelson and has deep roots in the basin so I do have ties to the area Cindy what about yourself. I'm born and raised in this in the basin. I've worked or lived in pretty much all of it I currently live in Revelstoke where I can see the cotton woods along the river outside my window, my office window. And I live in Nelson I've been here for 15 or so years. And Ryan lives in Cranbrook he unfortunately had to leave us. He lives in Cranbrook and he's done a lot of work in the basin. And I'm also in Nelson. And just as an aside, I know the enormous amount of work being done on efforts outside of the socio economic work so with ecosystems for example, with salmon with the treaty research in general so much of it is done by people who are based in the basin and I mean goodness that makes it all the more powerful. We're, we're, we get the benefit of firsthand photographs and and detailed studies by people who can walk out their door and see for themselves so that's great. We do have a little bit of time for questions Cindy if if there were any that you saw in the q amp a box that you'd like to answer no. No, I don't see any that are within my daily work. Sounds good. So maybe I'll reiterate again that I do have a hand my hand up. I don't see. Oh sorry, Kathy I don't see that. Oh, go ahead. So I, my role in all of this is the lead for the BC delegation for negotiations and and working for since 2011 with local government committee and all of you folks in the different communities. And that's why it's so important to have these sessions. It's so important. And, and all of your interests and everything that the LGC local government community is doing is feeding into how we can improve the operations of the treaty to benefit the mental and the social and economic objectives of the basin so you know I can not say too much about how much it's important for you to contribute to this. And I really appreciate everyone who has been attending and asking questions and so on. And please continue to do so because that's what is going to really result in something better than we have today. So thank you. Thanks very much for that comment Kathy. Absolutely, and we'll continue to hold sessions like this as long as we can. And I would hope I would hope there's no plans yet but I would hope we'd be able to come back to the basin soon we we in the province outside of this work the province has been to the basin for multiple rounds of community meetings and there they're so so important to be face to face with everybody and and we're looking forward to doing that again. And I will say that for the local governments committee it's an absolute pleasure to be able to do this with you. We've, we've waited to get here and we've, I'm glad we've taken our time and got the information together as well as we possibly could. There is a question in the chat that we could answer do you want me to tackle it, please do yeah I'm not able to scan through quick enough to see what it is go ahead. So there be similar public sessions regarding the ecological performance measures there was a session in June 2022. And that was on it was on the it was around three other performance measures, the ecological performance measures, and that was on the slide at the beginning but maybe Morgan can pop it in the chat now. And I would expect over time that we will return to that those the ecological before rest of the ecological performance will come forward through one of these sessions hosted by the province. That is as a citizen of the basin. There you go. And as a side note, the link that will be shared in in the chat to that info session also includes written materials as well that were presented at that session so you'll get a video like this as well as some written materials to. There it is thanks Morgan. So I forgot to say that in the along the way in the chat there was a lovely little ha ha from Graham. Yes, for the humor. Very, very helpful, but at this time of night, after a week like this. So, for those who couldn't see it, it was a comment about a pro for about a metric for mosquito bites and Graham, it lives in gold and he says he measures mosquito bites with the metric of bites per minute. Yeah, I think many folks in high mosquito areas can relate with bites per second in some areas. Alright, so I don't see any other questions. Lots of great comments throughout the chat and I think at this point we can say thank you so very much to everyone for your time, your thoughtfulness and your questions tonight session as well as as previous sessions. And please do be on the lookout for the email that we will circulate with a link to the recording once it's been posted on YouTube. And that email also include a link to the survey that we've talked about quite often throughout tonight. And of course there will be a summary report that will capture what was caught talked about this evening as well as responding to the questions that were raised. And we will include a list of all of the links that we included in the chat to so you'll have all of that information captured. I think that that is it from me. Oh, I suppose any outstanding questions can also be emailed about this work can also be emailed to the local government committees email address info at CRT LGC dot CA. Any questions about the Columbia River Treaty can be sent to the provinces email address at Columbia River Treaty at Gov dot BC dot CA, and you'll you'll have that on a slide at the very end here. I would like to just conclude with saying, I so appreciate Mario Scolero. I'll get it wrong. I think he's 94 he might be 95. And he's so passionate about his environment, his community, and, and the whole basin, and I just wish that everyone would be the same. So, Mario, hands up. Thanks, Kathy. Yeah, there are a lot of really, really engaged folks out there and to be so engaged for so long. It's, it's a real gift. And for us to hear from from folks who have such long lived experience lived history in the base and it's a real gift so thank you. And thanks Kathy for that comment. So I think we can, we can call it a night. Thank you everybody once again. And like I mentioned, oh, sorry Linda, lots of lots of pillows and closing comments. Before we go I will pass it over to Linda one more time to close us out and once we're we're done here we'll leave the meeting open so folks can browse the chat. Linda. Thank you very much. Please send us off. I was just saying goodbye to everybody. You pretty well covered it which is which is great. If I have one moment I just would like to extend my sincere appreciation to the socioeconomic integration team. I would like to thank Donald Mac Hydro, Lauren rhetoric from sulker innovates every divorce Smith, and to the BC tree team, brook your facilitating was wonderful and as always and thank you for that. Kathy I can burger for being online after a long day do appreciate you're here, and Morgan for providing the support and keeping the other contact information flowing into that chat box really appreciate you. Thank you to everybody that it was here tonight just thank you for being here for learning more about the Columbia River Treaty local government committee and all the great works they do. A real special thank you to Cindy Pierce our executive director who just holds our heads above the water week after week after week, and even in her condition. We really appreciate it. And please folks fill out the feedback please forms, give us anything you have on that as always your inputs really valuable to us. And we so appreciate your attending both of the of these webinars at one or both of them and for all your input so thanks a lot folks go safe. Stay healthy, and thank you. I think that's it so anybody, anybody else who's been on the support team here feel free to turn your cameras on and we'll wave goodbye. Good night, and we'll see you soon.