 A good day, everyone. I welcome you to this public session of the Owens-Lake Scientific Advisory Panel. I'm Dave Allen, the panel chair. Panel's work is being conducted under the auspices of the National Academy of Sciences in response to a request from the Great Basin Unified Air Pollution Control District in the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. The panel has been asked to evaluate the effectiveness of alternative dust control methods for their degree of reducing particulate matter emissions from the Owens-Lake bed and reducing use of water in controlling these emissions. Today, the panel will hear a presentation that is relevant to its task. I would like to emphasize to everyone that this is an information gathering session and that the panel has not completed its deliberations. Comments made by individuals, including members of the panel, should not be interpreted as positions of the panel or of the National Academy of Sciences. Once the panel's draft report is written, it must go through a rigorous peer review process before the draft is considered an NAS report. Therefore, observers who draw conclusions about the panel's work based on today's discussions will be doing so prematurely. I want to note that this entire session is on the record and is being recorded. The presenter will be asked to provide remarks and then the panel members will have the opportunity for follow-up discussion. However, because of time limitations, the panel and presenter should not be expected to entertain questions from members of the public. Anyone who wishes to submit written comments or other materials that are relevant to our charge should contact Ray Wassell, the responsible staff officer at the academies for this study. Before we begin the presentation, I'd like to ask the other panel members to introduce themselves to the audience and indicate their affiliations and why don't we go through the panel members and Rita, well, let's just have people introduce themselves as they hear a window of opportunity. So could we have the panel members introduce themselves, please? Good afternoon. This is Scott Tyler from the University of Nevada, Reno. I'm a hydrologist. Greg Okin from University of California, Los Angeles. Scott Campbell with the USDA Agriculture Research Service. Nisha Jami, Stanford University. Roya Bahraini, University of California at Riverside. I am Prateem Biswas, Washington University in St. Louis. Valerie Ebner, University of California at Davis. Akula Venkatram from University of California at Riverside. Okay, thank you panel members. Our speaker today is Dr. Saeed Jorat from the Los Angeles Department of Water and Powers Eastern Sierra Environmental Group. The topic of his presentation is the hydrology of the Owens Valley and Owens Lake and the effects of the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. So we'll ask Dr. Jorat to take no more than about 30 minutes for his presentation and then we'll have questions from the panel members. So Dr. Jorat, the floor is yours. Good afternoon. My name is Saeed Jorat. I'm with the Eastern Sierra Environmental Group of LADWP. Our group basically deals with the hydrology issues in the Eastern Sierra plus the water rights issues that for all the properties that the city has in the Eastern Sierra and the water rights to be able to divert water from Eastern Sierra down to the city for municipal purposes. So this presentation basically to address a few requests by the panel. What I got from Adam was the basic hydrologic facts of the basin, climate and hydrology data for Owens Lake, water budget, anticipated impact of Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. With that, I mean we'll start with basically, again I wasn't sure where the panel is coming from. It looks like we have lots of members from California, so you should be by and large familiar with the area. But what I'm going to go through assuming that you are not that familiar with the area. So Owens Valley is located basically on the eastern side, eastern central side of the state. And location-wise, the northern part is located in Mono County and the southern part is located in, in Inyo County. This is a relatively, I mean to start with many of the many of the slides that you will see here coming out of USGS reports or the reports that were prepared by our, by our consultants. Also the data used by and large I mean is either DWP, USGS or also a great basin data that has been collected. So that's just to give a qualifier on the information that we will present. So the basin is about 2600 square mile and bound by monobasin to the north, white mountains and Inyo Mountain on the east side and the Sierra Mountains on the west side. And to the south, we have Rose Valley. The city of Los Angeles owns about 315,000 acres of land mostly within the valley floor of the basin. So this slide, the reason I have this slide is to show basically that water in, water resource in the valley basically comes from the snowfall along the eastern Sierra Mountains. And what we have is a number of snow pillows throughout the mountain that measures how much snowfall we get. And from the snowfall, as you may see, there are many creeks that flow off of the mountain to the valley floor. There are over 40 creeks that flow off of eastern Sierra Mountains to the valley floor, just handful of creeks on the east side from white mountain and not much of any runoff of any mountain in the south where we are near Owens Lake. Owens River starts from north, headwaters of the basin and all the way down flows and ends up in Owens Lake. So one of the, one of the snow pillows that we use to measure snowfall is in Mammoth Creek. And on Mammoth Creek, we have the amount of snow is clearly related, correlated to the runoff that we calculate from the mountain. On the average, a snowfall in Mammoth Creek is about 42 inches of water content of the water from the measurements that we collect. That's a measurement in April 1 of each year that is measured. And as you see, there is a clear variation in a snowfall. For example, what you see in, in 2016, we had less than two inches of snowfall. Sorry to interrupt. I think the screen is dead for some reason. How is it? Can others see Saeed's screen? I just lost it as well. Okay. So yeah, I mean, it's fine here. It shows it. So let's go out of here, maybe. And yeah, are we connected? Let's try to share again. Share. This one and share again. Please go check to see the system directly on. I think you're connected to zoom, but we're seeing the zoom screen on our screen. It took a while, yeah. And now we have it back again. Okay. Okay. Good. So, so what, let's go back then. I mean, I I'm not sure where was the last screen that everybody saw. So I think I was talking about mammoth path, snow pillow, and the variations that we see from year to year is, I mean, 2016, we experienced the lowest snowfall in the period of record. And then followed by the year in 2017, with one of the highest, the second highest snowfall. So what I want to show is basically the big variations you see from year to year. So the runoff from the snowfall for the valley is an average of 405,000 acre feet per year. And that's the average for the previous 50 years of runoff. And again, you see periods of drought followed by a few years of wet years. Late 80s, early 90s, we had one of the longest droughts, it was a six year drought which we experienced. Similarly from 2012, 2016, again, we experienced drought. But you can see repeatedly these periods of droughts happening, typically for every three to four years of good year, you see six to seven years of very dry conditions. Similarly, as far as the precipitation on the valley floor, again, you see variations. These are a number of gauges we have throughout valley. Bishop is toward the northern end of the valley, and then he comes out and a heavy is the southern end. On the average, we get about less than six inches of rainfall on the valley floor. And the amount of rainfall on the valley floor clearly correlates with the elevation where it's measured. So on the west side, typically, we see more higher precipitation on the east side. Typically, we see lower ones. As far as the geology of the basin, obviously, Owens Valley is part of the Great Basin Region. What we see here, the consolidated granitic formations on the mountain side, then you have alluvial finds, which are, I mean, I'm sorry, consolidated granitic formations on the mountain side. You have unconsolidated formation on the alluvial finds, which is mixture of sand and gravel, coarse and fine material. And when you come to the valley floor, what you see basically is alluvial formation, which are well sorted layers of sand, gravel and clays. As far as the cross section of the valley, if you look north, what you will have is alluvial finds on the west side, where the recharge comes in and recharges both the shallow and the deep aquifers. These two aquifers are generally, when you get to valley floor, are separated by a layer of low conductivity, clay, silty material that creates an artesian condition in the lower aquifers. Again, you're looking from west toward, going toward east, you typically encounter the Los Angeles Aqueduct, and then the Owens Valley Fault, followed by Owens River. So the groundwater flow generally flows from north to south. I mean, this map shows the water level contours starting from north. This is Bishop area and moving southward and heading toward Lone Pine and then Owens Lake. So Owens Lake basically gets some recharge coming from north as far as the groundwater flow goes. So LADWP has nine well-filled throughout Owens Valley. I mean, starting from Laos, Bishop going all the way down to Lone Pine. Obviously, at this point, we don't pump any groundwater from Owens Lake. So it's not a well-filled window. We are looking in future to use part of the water demand for that mitigation on Owens Lake from groundwater and their Owens Lake. And that's a program that we are pursuing. We'll see where we end up with that. So out of the nine well-filled, we have approximately 110 pumping wells throughout valley. And on the average, we pump about 74,000 acre-feet of water from these well-filled throughout the well-filled. If you look at the amount of pumping that we have been doing throughout time, generally after the completion of the second barrel of Los Angeles Aqueduct, we started groundwater pumping. And you see that we have big variations in some years. I mean, we have really a small and other years, depending on the availability of surface water we were using groundwater. So, I mean, 87, 88, we pumped nearly 200,000 acre-feet. In 1991, LA and in your country entered into an agreement to manage groundwater in Owens Valley. And as a result, you'll see more stable type of pumping over time. And that's what we have been doing. And it looks like, I mean, the agreement kind of works to provide a stable groundwater source that would be available for users both within Owens Valley and for export to the city. Now, where do we use the water for? That we have in both surface and groundwater. Of course, the lion's share of the water use is for irrigation. And now we use about 65,000 acre-feet of water per year for that mitigation on Owens Valley. And there are other enhancement mitigation and obligations that we have throughout the valley based on the agreement between the city and in your county. For example, this lower portion is where we started rewatering the lower part of the river with water. So, we need to maintain a minimum of 40 CFS of flow in the Owens River south of intake for the Los Angeles aqueduct. So, as a summary, this basically gives a total, I mean, a summary of different facts throughout Owens Valley as a whole. And probably we went over most of all of these numbers except the last one, which on the average, the city exports about 240,000 acre-feet of water from Eastern Sierra for municipal uses in the city of Los Angeles. So, coming down from Owens Valley and focusing more on Owens Lake, the lake Owens Lake is basically located at the southern end of the valley. And again, you see a number of creeks that feed into the area. The biggest one being obviously cottonwood. The other ones are there, but some of them are really small and historically, there have been such a small amount of water flowing that they have never been measured. I mean, so we never installed gauges to actually measure. So, the flow out of these creeks have been estimated to this time. But now we are starting to install gauges at the base of mountains to be able to measure how much runoff we get from the mountain side. Going to the next thing is that looking, I mean, we looked at the snow pillow in the mountain area. Here, we also have a snow pillow in cottonwood in the mountain. And this graph basically shows the April 1 water content of the snow pillows in the area. Compared to mammoth that we saw, the average water content for mammoth was about 42 inches. Here, we get about eight and a half inches over time. And again, this is one of the good stations. We have data all the way back to 1940. And again, you see the variations from year to year. You have really wet years and you have four years. This year actually ended up being a good year. When you go next week, you'll probably see more water than we typically see around our valley. Most of the creeks are flowing good. So, this year, the runoff is about 138 percent of normal. Similarly, we have gauges that measure rainfall. And the reason I put these just to portray the variations you see on the east and the west side of the lake. On the west side, the cottonwood gauge, which is located here, again, on the average gets about 6.6 inches of precipitation annually. On the east side, since 1997, Great Basin started a station that measures the precipitation. And the average that we have is about three inches. In long time, 3.8, again, down in South Havie, which is one of the reservoirs, regulatory reservoirs that the city uses for regulating flows out of the valley toward the city is about 6.6 inches. So, again, there are a few other gauges that have been installed recently. We don't have, I mean, more than two, three years of data. So, I just show them, but the numbers were about in the same range that you see from mostly from what you see in Keeler. And again, I mean, the elevation on this side is higher. But generally, I think being close to the mountain front on the west side, we get these higher rainfalls. So, unlike, I mean, Owens Valley where studies have been done for a long time and learned a lot more about the geology and hydrology, on Owens Lake, there is not as much information available. So, in between 2009 and 2012, we started looking at a project, Owens Lake groundwater evaluation project that during that project, we installed a number of monitoring wells throughout the lake. I mean, and we can see DWHP1 through DWP11 all to cover the entire area. What we did at each location, we drilled a monitoring well or a borehole all the way to 1500 feet deep, looked at the formation, conducted the geophysical logs, and then completed the borehole as a monitoring well. We see, I mean, as you can see, there are at each of the locations, and probably you will see some of these next week when you visit the lake, that you have a set of three cluster wells, and basically, they are completed at three different aquifers. And throughout the lake, but instead, all of these monitoring wells are in artesian conditions. So, the head in the formation is higher the ground surface. In some of the wells, probably if you go by DWP9, the head in the deepest monitoring well is 45 feet above ground surface. So, you have a strong artesian condition. We had a definitely difficult time drilling these wells, especially because of the artesian conditions that we had. So, at each one of these locations, as the deepest well was being drilled, we were collecting lithological formation, what kind of material we are getting out of it, and more usefully, we collected geophysical log, and resistivity log, basically, probably one of the more useful information you get out of it. High resistivity that we get is because of basically associated with the coarse material, that's gravels and sands, and low resistivities associated with fine material, such as clays and silt. So, with the information that we got, we basically determined that there are up to five aquifers at Owens Lake. So, combining what we got from boreholes and borehole geophysics, combined with the seismic surveys that were conducted by Great Basin Air Pollution Control District in 1990s, and I kind of forgot to talk about the resistivity survey that was conducted. These purple lines are different resistivity, the seismic surveys that were conducted. So, combining the data from seismic survey and the geophysical log, we came up with what the aquifer condition is at Owens Lake. So, throughout the report, we basically have multiple cross sections. This is basically looking again north. You see five different aquifers with different thicknesses. They are separated by low permeability layers, which are basically clays as a result of sedimentation over time. And, definitely, these formations are the main groundwater system, which is separate from what you see just near the surface, which is really thin on the surface of the lake. The aquifer system itself is up to five different layers of aquifer that exist in the area. The other things that we learned from or basically improved the understanding was the faulting system in the Owens Lake area, which definitely controlled the movement of groundwater. The two main faults that ran through the area is Owens River Fault and Owens Valley Fault. That Owens Valley Fault even extends all the way to the north. And you see allowing the fault where lakes, small lakes, or sieves that come off of the fault side, the upside of the fault side that come out. To understand the exact effectiveness of these faults in controlling the groundwater movement, we obviously need to do pumping tests. We have started doing some of these pumping tests and we need to continue the pumping tests to better understand to what degree they act as a barrier to the ground water flow. And that's really important because, as I'm going to talk a little bit later, these faults help provide water to the habitat around the lake, to the spring and sieve areas around the lake. So in order to be able to ensure if we ever do a pumping for that mitigation, it's not going to affect the the springs and sieves and the habitat that depends on that. We need to better understand the characteristics of the faults on the lake. So thinking about the water budget for the lake, obviously we have the inflows and off outflows. The fact that the basin is in a steady state condition, the inflows and outflows obviously they should balance out. So inflows to the lake, the components of inflow to the lake include a recharge that we get from the north, from Lone Pine area, from streams along the Sierra Mountain, the Mountain Bellock Recharge, Interfluvial or Fan Recharge, just precipitation on the Fan areas, down valley flow, and a small amount of recharge from Inyo and Koso range and Centennial Phalan, which is to the southeast of the area. And finally from south we have heavy reservoir which seepage from the reservoir is another source of inflow to the system. The only outflow that we know is pumping. As far as pumping goes is Crystal Geyser, which is located in the south west area corner of the lake. I mean you have probably seen and used buttered water from Crystal Geyser. So they pump a small amount, something in the order of 350 acre feet a year. The other part is that we call it generally consumptive use is mainly the evaporation and evapotranspiration from the area. So multiple evaluations have been done to see what is the water balance of the area. Generally they all range between 50 to 70,000 acre feet a year. Again being the fact that the system at this point is in a steady state condition, the inflows and outflows should balance out. So different components of inflow including down valley flows, mountain front, mountain front recharge, stream channels, the heavy reservoir, centennial flats, so the total of what the inflows are and then the outflows obviously water that makes it to the brine pool evaporates and that's a big component. The springs and seep areas around the lake that I'm going to talk a little more about them later is the other component and the small again domestic groundwater pumping that you have in Olancha, Chile that's the other component and then recharge that comes from the groundwater into the river itself further north that's the last component. So as I mentioned as you go around the lake and probably you will see them next week when you go around the lake one of the interesting components that you see is all these springs and seeps around the lake. So and this is one of them in the south side that I mean looking nice I mean like middle area but what you will see is water coming to the surface. There isn't I mean even though the source is groundwater there is no well-defined spring eye that's okay here is where the flow comes out and that's how you can measure it. So this is definitely hard to measure the amount that comes out of the ground and supports all these middle spring and seep area. The mechanism that we see the way these spring and seeps are supplied is by the recharge from the mountain front coming through the alluvial and hits the lake with material that cannot move laterally so it ends up moving up to the surface. You also will see probably a few of these artesian waves that tap into the groundwater that is out there but the main source of water that seeps to the surface in the spring and seep areas is the recharge coming off of the mountain that cannot make it that far out into the lake bed itself under the lake bed itself so it has to come to the surface. I mean some obviously make it but there is enough that can support the spring and seep areas so because we couldn't actually measure the flow using a flume what comes out of it what we did we installed a number of monitoring wells at each site I mean for example here we did three I mean three monitoring wells to different depths one five foot ten foot and thirty foot and measured the head in these monitoring wells so what we saw in all of the monitoring well by the way in some of the locations great basin had already one or two monitoring well there so we went in and if there if there was a ten footer or a three footer we added a thirty footer or vice versa in any case we ended up with nine representative locations throughout the lake spring and seep areas that we could measure the difference in head in these different three sets of cluster monitoring wells what we see is that for all of these locations the head or water level in the deep monitoring well was always higher than the shallower ones so the red line in these high so what you see here is basically three representative locations one on the west side one on the south side and one on the east side but in all of them what you see is the head in the thirty footer is higher than the ten and five footer and again similar situation you see on the west side these head differences are small because of the formation being more sandy on the east side you have more clay formations so you get a lot bigger differential so and what we call it is the groundwater gradient that supports that causes the flow come to the surface and support the spring and seep area habitat that exists around the lake bed so that basically is something that if we again go forward with the pumping of groundwater for that mitigation we will use these differences as a control mechanism to make sure the spring seep area habitat is not impacted by groundwater pumping for example if these if the difference between the deep and the shallow levels let's say it's 10 the way we are looking at if we get let's say 50 percent of that gradient reduction then we will stop pumping so we are still working on this project we haven't completed the the hydrologic monitoring management and mitigation plan that will clearly describe how the mechanism is going to be but these are some of the tools that we are going to be using in order to make sure the resources around the lake are not going to be impacted by groundwater pumping so with that the the last piece that I should talk about is basically the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act I suspect those of you from California are familiar with it as you know California has had regulatory control over surface water from 1914 however no control was on groundwater you could pump as much groundwater for beneficial use as long as you don't impact the other pumpers in the area however in 2014 the state came up with Sustainable Groundwater Management Act and basically the goal is that to prevent undesirable effects and the way they define and the undesirable effects and interestingly enough I think it was important enough that they came up with these icons for each one of these effects lowering of groundwater levels lots of storage sea water intrusion degraded quality of the water land subsidence and surface water depletion so these were part of the act that came out in 2014 so based on the sigma any and adjudicated basin that is prioritized I mean basically all the basins are prioritized about over 500 basins we have in California are either low very low low medium or high and any basin that is categorized in medium or high then they have to develop a they have to establish a groundwater sustainability agency that is responsible for developing the sustainability plan by 2022 and if they don't they are subject to to a state intervention now how do I how do they prioritize different basins they have eight different categories that they utilize to to catalyze each one of the basins I mean population population growth the important ones being groundwater reliance and documented groundwater impact and other relevant factors that they think is I mean a state department of water resources think that's relevant so in 2014 their prioritization categorized Owens valley as medium however their draft of 2019 prioritization that came out in in April categorized Owens valley as low and as you can see many other basins are I mean especially in central valley of California are categorized as as high a high priority so we are expecting that by August to have the final prioritization released by department of water resources and we will know if we will stay at low I know there are a few protests to the to this prioritization it may stay low it may go back to medium but as of now based on the draft is on low with respect to Owens valley the county of Inyo and the county of Mono city of bishop and eight community service districts together they formed a sustainable groundwater sustainability agency and they are now working on a groundwater sustainability plan now however the city of Los Angeles lands in the Owens valley is treated as adjudicated that means it's not subject to sigma and if you look at the map here the hatched areas are all city of Los Angeles owned lands so they are not subject to sigma however Owens lake which is under the jurisdiction of state lands is not so the Owens valley groundwater authority will have jurisdiction over pumping from from Owens lake if we move forward and work on trying to get groundwater for that mitigation so the way they are looking at it because as you saw from the map the area are bunch of little areas that when you of the whole basin if you take the city of Los Angeles art then you have the small pieces around that the the OVGA is going to be controlling among them is going to be Owens lake so so Owens lake will be considered as a management area within Owens valley groundwater basin and the what we are working on now as part of groundwater development program we believe we'll meet the requirements of any sustainability plan for the basin by Owens valley groundwater authority so that's where we are now I mean we'll have to wait and see what the priority is going to be whether Owens valley groundwater authority will stay or dismantle if it comes out to stay low because at that point they don't have to exist but they may in any case that's where we are now we'll know more as time goes on and with that I mean basically I'm done and I'm here I mean if you have any question we'll be glad to discuss it and if not I will find the answer for you and come back to you okay thank you very much let's transition quickly to panel questions and we'll handle panel questions in the way that we did yesterday just having panel members ask the questions directly rather than raising hands through the zoom system so let me open it up to panel questions yeah this is Scott Van Felt and I'm wondering which of the aquifers you have most of the wells bottomed into you're talking in Owens valley right yes yeah in Owens valley prior to the water agreement I will go back to where I mean so it's clear what we were talking about prior to the water agreement vegetation was not really a big issue so the the goal was to maximize production so wells were were screened both through the shallow and the deep aquifers however since water agreement every well that we have drilled which is not very many but wells that we have replaced I mean because wells go out of commission so any wells that we have drilled are screened in the deep aquifer so we have minimum impact on a wire table which supports vegetation on valley floors okay thank you sure additional panel questions well I'll go ahead and ask one then so I'm not a hydrologist so but I noted that you stated that a number of the seats and the groundwater movement to the surface was influenced by earthquakes and I wonder with the recent flurry of that earthquake activity in the immediate area whether you've seen any substantial changes in the seats or the movement of the groundwater or pressures in your various wells yeah when if you look at these on the panel on the left side the red points are where we actually measure water levels in those cluster monitoring wells and they are all equipped with the pressure transducer which continuously measure water levels and unfortunately we I mean we haven't seen anything so far but we haven't downloaded data from the transducers yet so by the end of the month when we download the data and look at it we probably I suspect you will see some changes in the in the water levels as a result of the earthquake because I mean they are continuously measuring water levels so as of now I don't have much data to give you but I mean we should be able to by the end of the month when we download the data to see what kind of changes we see in water groundwater levels as a result of the recent earthquakes which I mean 7.1 was high enough we should see and close enough to the area other panel questions I saw a little quip that Scott Tyler wanted to be unmuted I suspect he may have a question oh this is Scott Tyler thank you whoever did that just a question on the kind of aquifer chemistry and salinity so I just sent this out as a chat so you can ignore that but I assume that the springs are sort of in the relatively fresh couple hundred to a thousand TDS range and your aquifers once you get below the surfacial the ply aquifers are in the are in a few percent salinity can you can you give us a feedback on on water quality a little bit from some of these deeper wells actually that's a good question maybe I should have added some on water quality which I missed but in any case you are right I mean because we get the we get the recharge from the mountain front fresh water coming down the water quality in these spring and seep areas are really good no problem there but as you go down to the west because there's not much recharge from this area the quality degrades and as you go down deeper the quality really degrades I mean when you go down to let's say the over four five hundred then the TDS that would have been on the west side something in the order of two three four hundred parts per million comes down to about five to ten thousand part per million so the quality definitely degrades as you go deeper and especially as you go on the east side of the lake thank you sure and just maybe just one more question I know when because I happen to be on the drilling rig when when the ol 92 core was was drilled and and and a significant natural gas was was run into it did you guys run into into methane at all in any of your drilling yes yes I mean that's interesting that you have you expect so that ol 92 is somewhere around here and we have new wells in this area and we the most recent one that we drilled was in this location and in both cases we did encounter yeah methane gas you're right yeah and that's a problem especially on the south and southeast portion of the lake if you drill deep okay yeah indicative of pretty significant organic matter at depth somewhere right right right and in the long run it could actually be useful I at least I it would be worthwhile at some point for someone to think about that as a natural resource to help cover costs out here it could be it could be again we are not I think going deep enough you know in in ol 92 you went really deep I mean several thousand feet in our case I mean the deepest we go we went I mean as far as those initial boreholes that we drilled was about 1500 feet deep and again no problem with the boreholes we did in the north side on the east side no problem the area we encountered problem was on the south and basically south west side of the lake but yeah potentially somebody can you can think through how they can utilize that resource any final questions for Venky here I'm not a hydrologist so this might be a naive question I notice you're using you're using one third of the water that you're pumping out for mitigation do you propose to use less than that what are your plans for all reviews so you're talking about I mean the pie chart you showed suggested that you're using one third of the water approximately one third of the water that you're pumping out the pie chart yeah I think that's what let me go back here I think that's that's it that's it you just pass by okay this one not that one not one there was a pie chart it shows how much water you oh okay no okay I see I see I see what you are talking about yes this is this is this talks about the water use is not just groundwater use you I mean I mentioned that we get about 405 000 of acre feet of recharge from the overall from eastern sierra so not all of this water I mean not all of this water is basically groundwater so we have ground we have we have okay we have on the average 74 000 acre feet of groundwater that we pump and we have about on the average 4040 5000 acre feet of runoff that these are the uses of water on in Owens valley it could come partly from surface water partly from groundwater but the total use of combined surface or groundwater in Owens valley is about 168 000 acre feet so what is just a clarifier I mean when you say Owens lake is 65 000 what does that mean that means for that mitigation we have to divert I mean and again next week you will see when you visit the area we have to divert water from the aqueduct and use it for that mitigation so right now we are pumping zero amount from Owens lake area we pump groundwater further north from the wellfields to the north but the water that goes to Owens lake for that mitigation its entirety come from LA aqueduct or what we call pump participation the water that we diverted into the the river and then comes down south and at that point it can either go back to the aqueduct or go to Owens lake for that mitigation so the water that you see 65 000 average acre feet on the average on the Owens lake for that mitigation does not come from groundwater okay but it could be clear if I could follow up I was writing these numbers down as you were going through your slides so I just want to be clear because the 405 000 average runoff then goes into two basic bins one of which you're showing in this slide as I understand it which is 168 000 feet of Owens valley uses of which 65 000 is for the mitigation and then you elsewhere in your slides noted that the shipment to Los Angeles uh averages 240 000 acre feet so the two my understanding then is the 240 000 acre feet plus the 168 000 acre feet is uh is equal to the total amount of runoff that you're getting is that a correct interpretation no that is generally correct that's generally correct even though there are other uses besides that other land owners that use there are I mean for example you have the city of Bishop that uses groundwater for pumping we have a big pine we have lone pine we have independence plus there are a number of private land owners throughout that use water for that mitigation for for irrigation so overall yeah generally you are right of the water that gets runoff off of the mountain partly is exported to the city the rest is used on the within Owens valley for various uses and again the two main ones the lion's shares go for Iran for all like that mitigation or for irrigation uh that we have committed part of in your LA water agreement to continue irrigating uh in the area sorry can I ask you a question before we have to show this is Miusha and I've been struggling with muting and unmuting for the whole entire time um so can you actually talk a little bit about I mean this conversation is very interesting two things one I'm very interested to know as water as it sort of you have wet years and dry years we have this country in Los Angeles when you have extra water they mentioned that they try to send it sort of prevent it from going to the valley just because of the infrastructure that's there so I'm very interested to see how that water is managed the second thing is um do you guys do any recharge uh in the area and then you mentioned there's irrigation going on for the city of Bishop and a little fire solve their land owners in the area what is the magnitude of that irrigation is it you know compared to what gets transported down to Los Angeles okay so let's start with your first question that how is water managed in in a year in a big year like let's say 2017 or this year 2019 um you know 1969 was a was a really big year was probably the biggest year in the period of record we have lots we had lots of water so all the extra water made it to Owens Lake and then evaporated right however now because of all of the infrastructure we have for that mitigation on Owens Lake that you'll see next week we have to prevent water to go to Owens Lake so what we do we basically try to spread water on the alluvial funds which will recharge the the groundwater basin right and in 2017 we ended up having to release some water down from the aqueduct on the area that we weren't intending to release so that's what happens because of the because of the amount of water we have the converse of that is that I mean in in the drought years like the year before 2017 which was the year that we had very low run up we ended up taking basically zero water to the city so when you have sustained droughts like 2012 2016 we will have to lower the amount that we can export to you know in order because we have commitments in the city in the valley that we have to meet like you see in the in this pie chart that we have to provide water for various users in the valley so that comes first and export to the city is the secondary so when there is drought especially when we have sustained droughts like I mean in 2015 then we end up not exporting water which means obviously the city still needs water people need to drink we have four million population in the city that need to have drinking water that means the water has to come either from Sacramento Delta area or from from Colorado aqueduct so those are the alternative ways that we have to supply the city when we don't have enough water from LA aqueduct and that's basically the reality of the life that we have to deal with and manage the water that we have for for different purposes that are committed to basically based on agreements that we have especially the 1991 Inyo Los Angeles water agreement please repeat the other question so I can go over those so you sort of answer so you do you guys do recharge try to recharge the groundwater when you have a big year and then I was wondering what's the percentage of the water that's used for fish up and the agriculture areas in the in that region because you just mentioned some of the water is used by the locals right yeah I mean again a small amount in many cases we really don't have any data but the irrigation water some of it is covered covered by what you see here the 50 000 those are on city owned land the other landowners we really don't have good data we are working to get more detailed data using like satellite imagery to look at how much the how much different irrigated areas use we are still in the process of completing that study but yeah the city of bishop big pine independence the tribes the tribes for example I mean the tribes I can tell you exactly they have we have tribes in each one of the the towns in the Owens valley they have bishop big pine independence and lone pine they all have reservations they use 5600 feet of water I mean every year I mean that's their allocation that they they can use the anyway they want so we have some of those numbers but we can also estimate for modeling purposes I mean what other uses are but generally a small amount okay thank you sure any final questions okay well I'd like to thank dr dr for his presentation and also all of his responses I recognize that we may develop additional questions as the panel continues its work I'd like to thank everyone for their participation in today's open meeting and I will remind before we adjourn the panel members that we have a closed session that will necessitate you dialing into a different zoom line in just a moment let me turn to ray and see if there are any closing administrative comments he needs to make this is ray no I have no additional comments other than to to thank our presenter for a great presentation and thank everybody for participating on the call thank you great thanks everyone and the panel we will reconvene as soon as you can join the other conference line okay