 Okay, I see it's 6.30. So I would like to convene this special meeting of the Board of Directors of the San Lorenzo Valley Water District on March 11, 2021. Holly, would you call the roll please? President Maygood. Here. Vice President Henry. Here. Director Pulse. Here. Director Smalley. Here. And Director Tu is absent. She did contact both the president and myself to say she would not be available this evening. And so we need to take a vote on whether to excuse this absence. Is that correct? Yes. Yes, that's correct. Let's just make that a voice vote. All in favor of excusing Director Tu's absence today say aye. Aye. All in favor. Abstain. Okay. Director Tu's absence tonight is an excused one. All right. Are there any additions or deletions to the agenda tonight? Staff has none. Okay. Any from other members of the board doesn't look like it. Okay. So now we go to oral communications which is the portion of the agenda that's reserved for oral communications public on subjects that lie out, lie within the jurisdiction of the district but are not on the agenda tonight. If you would like to address the board, please hit the raise hand button. Let's see. I don't see any raised hands. So I guess we don't have any oral communications this evening. So let's go ahead to our new business and the only business tonight which is a discussion of reviewing and discussing notice of petitions that were filed by the city of Santa Cruz that change their water rights. And I'd like to give you just a little bit of context for this. I first learned about these changes when I looked at the packet that was the backup material for the February meeting of the Santa Margarita groundwater basin. And I noticed that the new modeling showed that we had only about half as much water available for in lieu recharges we did before, which surprised me. So I went and tried to find out why and it turned out because of some of the changes that were in accord with these petitions that have gone to the state water board. I read them and had a couple of concerns and then Mark Smalley, my other compatriot on the Santa Margarita Groundwater Association also had some concerns. And so he raised it at our last board meeting and we had learned that in fact, Carly and Gina and Rick had been working on this issue. And we thought it was important to discuss it here at a board meeting. Director Foltz asked us to agendize it because any protest letter has to be submitted by tomorrow. We had to have a special meeting and that emphasizes that tonight is just for information only. There will be no action taken. We won't be voting on the letter. The letter has already gone out to the board for any comments. So it will be sent in tomorrow by the deadline but we wanted all members of the board to have an opportunity to understand what is being done here and also so the public can be informed as well. And Rosemary Bernard who is Rick Rogers counterpart at the city of Santa Cruz is with us tonight. She's not here to speak or anything but she's just here in case anybody has a question that they want to direct towards her. So with that, I'll turn it over to Rick. Thank you, Chair. As we start, we have a short presentation that we'll put up. You're going to be hearing us discussing and referring to several water supply facilities, mostly pertaining to Santa Cruz, Santa Cruz water. And we thought it would be a good idea to start this presentation with some mapping to kind of give folks some ideas where these facilities are located. And if we can pull the PowerPoint up, that would be great. I'm sorry, I haven't received the PowerPoint. Carly, do you want to share your screen? I'm not sure. I think Holly, could you share? I think we share Holly's screen or maybe you can't do it. But I think Holly has the current presentation. Okay. No, I have not seen the presentation. I actually saw earlier a little flash that said Becca Reed sharing her screen. So she should be able to do it. Hello, this is me. I'm on Becca's account for CTV, but I haven't received the presentation for today. I can pull it up. Do you want to pull it up? Yeah, I can pull it up. Great. My apologies. That's okay. It'll take me just a moment and I'll have it. That's all right. While you're doing that, just let me add one more little comment. And that is that the petitions that are being put in by the city of Santa Cruz are a large change to the places that are able to use the water. Some changes in where water would be diverted and also changes in the use. And this is actually an effort that city of Santa Cruz has been engaged in for quite a long time. And we're also engaged in our set of similar sorts of changes, which are probably only a half a year behind at most. So there's not anything bad about this. This is good. We all should be revising our water rights to be consistent with new needs as we have to sort of eventually start to think about water in a more regional way. And so both Mark and I just found two little things that we were sort of concerned about. And that's what we're exploring here. We're not actually in any way opposed to city of Santa Cruz changing where they're using it because this is just modernizing things. Okay, I'm gonna hit screen share now and let's see if this works. All right, next slide please, Gina or whoever. No, hold on, it's a technical issue here. Can you see it? Yeah, I see screen one, slide one, yes. Okay, great. Now we're seeing the other ones. Hopefully you can see this map. We're gonna be talking tonight about the Loch Lomond Reservoir. We're gonna be talking about the Felton Diversion which the Felton Diversion is located on the San Lorenzo River adjacent to Henry Cal Park right across the street from George's log cabin. We're gonna be talking about the Big Trees Gauge which is located underneath the entrance bridge to Henry Cal State Park in the San Lorenzo River. We'll be talking about the Tate Street Diversion in Santa Cruz. What's not on this map, we'll be talking about the San Lorenzo Valley Water Districts Fall Creek Diversion, which is located at the end of Fall Creek Road adjacent close to the proximity of the San Lorenzo Valley Felton High School. We'll be talking about the Santa Cruz's Belts Wells in Santa Cruz. So we're gonna be talking about a variety of locations spread out through the San Lorenzo Valley and the city of Santa Cruz. And with that, I will turn over, we have one more slide that has a little better mapping that the show the Felton Diversion, the city of Santa Cruz, the service area, et cetera. And with that, I will turn the presentation over to a district legal counsel, Gina Nichols, to proceed with the presentation. And I guess I'll leave it here on the map for a moment. Well, I do some, make some introductory comments and you may or may not know that I'm not only the district's general counsel, but I'm also a water rights attorney. That's kind of the primary area of practice that I focus on. So these are the types of issues that I work on in addition to general counsel type matters. And here, by way of a little bit of background, as I understand it, the city of Santa Cruz's petitions for changes to their water rights have been in the works for more than a decade now. What has prompted this latest effort is that on about February 10th, the district received formal notice of the city's change petitions. So there have been a lot of prior iterations of the change petitions, but public notice was formally given in February. And when that happened, of course, the district staff took a look at the actual notice of the change petitions and the underlying petitions, which are now in presumably their final form or near final form. And they asked me as district legal counsel and water rights counsel to take a look as well as some technical consultants who work with the district. So we reviewed the notice and the underlying petitions and working together identified a couple of areas of concern for the district. And again, echoing Chair Mayhoed's comments. These aren't broad concerns about the city's proposed changes to their water rights. These are specific concerns as to issues that appear to have an impact on the district and its customers. So the two issues that we identify that are the subject of the draft protest that you see in the board packet are these. First, there's potential implications for the district's contracts, contractual rights to obtain water from the city's locker room and reservoir. And that arises because some of the conditions that had been proposed in the city's petitions would, well, they require certain minimum flows, but more importantly, they appear as they are written to prevent the city from providing lock loman water to any water supplier other than the city itself during certain drought conditions that are defined in tables through the petition. So, of course, we took a look at that and there's no way to know exactly how often those drought conditions that would restrict delivery of the water to San Lorenzo Valley Water District may be triggered. I mean, you might be able to estimate that but there's no way to know for sure. But what we do know is that the district is most likely to need the water when the water supplies are most scarce. And so it would be a concern if the district couldn't call upon that water during drought conditions. So that's the first issue we identified in the protest letter. The second one is a little more complex and it has to do with the proposed stream flow requirements for the city's water rights. And these, we pulled out kind of the key tables from the petitions themselves and included them in the board packet for anybody who wants to look at them. But in a nutshell, the issue here is that the city's petitions are proposing a table of minimum stream flows for the San Lorenzo River at Big Tree's Gage that wouldn't allow any diversions during three months during the summer and would have a 40 CFS minimum flow in the river for I believe six months of the year. And that minimum flow requirement is higher as I understand it than anything the district has seen in the past. And the district itself has water rights permits for the Fall Creek area of Felton that have stream flow requirements measured at that same point at the Big Tree's Gage that do not approach the 40 CFS in stream flow requirement. So this is kind of a tricky issue but the concern is that the city has worked out these minimum stream flow conditions with some of the resource agencies and that are now proposing to approve them with the state board. And the district hasn't really been involved in that process. The district is undertaking its own process to review its water rights. But there may and there may be a lot of assumptions built into those stream flows that the district hasn't really had a chance to examine or consider as they may be applied in the future to the district's water rights. So we're simply raising the issue that whatever new proposed stream flow requirements that are for the city's permits at Felton need to be harmonized in some way with the district's rights and what the district plans to do with its rights. And exactly how to accomplish that isn't entirely clear at this point. There's a number of different ways that that may be accomplished. But what we're doing by filing this protest is taking the first step to make sure that the district is taking a close look at this issue in conjunction with the city and the resource agencies to try to make sure that the district is involved in this process and doesn't kind of get left behind. So here for the last slide, we have kind of a flow chart that shows the effect of this protest letter. So I've outlined the two issues that the district has raised in the draft protest letter and the attached protest. And this flow chart indicates what that means for the water rights petition process. Essentially where we're at is kind of in the middle of the flow chart, excuse me, public notice has been issued of, as I said, you know, the notice we got on February 10th here in the middle of the slide. That's the public notice of the proposed changes to the city's water rights that we received about a month ago. What you have in your packet is a draft protest that the district plans to submit tomorrow. And so the next step is you kind of go down the flow chart is protest negotiations and division review. So there's a number of different things that could happen here. We could work with other parties to resolve the protest. The protest could be canceled or revoked in some way or we could end up going to a hearing over some of the issues raised in the protest. And there's a lot of variables before we get to one of those outcomes. But at this stage, what we're just trying to do is make sure that we're looking out for the district's water rights, its customers and the ability to serve water and meet the needs of the public a little bit upstream of the city's water rights in the San Lorenzo Valley. And Rick, did I have I missed anything that you think I should cover in this part of the presentation? No, I think you've covered it pretty well. The city has been working on this process. I think for about 15, 14, 15 years, it's been a long process. So with that, we will take questions from the board and at the board's discretion from the public. Okay. Director Faltz, do you have any questions you'd like to? I do. I wanna start out by saying though that at least I think this is the case. Rick, for at least several months out of the year, are we not already in violation of our Hilton water rights at the big trees measuring gauge? We are in violation from time to time, not all the time, but there are certain times that we are in violation. And keep in mind the Feltin water rights, under the Feltin water rights, Feltin is its own individual water system. And by permit, we are not allowed to remove that water from Feltin. So we are at times, yes. I understand that. And so the meta question for me is unless Santa Cruz is going to be releasing greater flows out of Loch Lomond, I don't see how we can possibly address a higher requirement at the big trees measuring gauge than what we currently have. We're gonna be out of spec even more. So this is deeply troubling that that would be, that that would be negotiated. Just a couple of other sort of meta questions. Bob, would you, I would just like to follow up on your question and just clarify something with Rick. Are we out of specs in terms of the measurements at the big trees gauge? Or I thought we were out of the rules in terms of the amount of water we're bypassing at the fish ladder. Well, it ties into the big trees gauge. Okay. So at certain times of the year, we can't make the requirement of our discharge with the big trees requirements that we have now. So my understanding is generally speaking, we're okay on fall creek bypass, but certain times of the year and certain years where it's drier, we're not okay at the big trees measuring. That's correct. And generally speaking, obviously Gail, we'd have to look at the- No, thank you for clarifying that. So Rick, I understand that we extract about a thousand acre feet a year from surface sources on average. It varies from year to year. What is the total volume of water that goes out the San Lorenzo River Mount? Do we know what that is? I don't have those numbers in front of me, Bob. We know what they are, but I don't have them in front of me. And in terms of Santa Cruz's petition, how much are they able to take out now and what are they going to? Is that an increase or is that a decrease? I do believe it's a decrease, but again, I don't have those numbers in front of me. Okay, but I mean, the numbers I saw in the petitions I thought added up to something around 6,000 and 7,000 acre feet. And so it's substantially more than we're taking out. And it would be, again, I tie it back to this flow requirement. You know, we're taking out a fraction of what they're taking out. And yet somehow there might be a need for us to reduce surface water use more. That just doesn't seem fair. Am I correct in thinking that, Rosemary, maybe you can clarify this, that there is no change in the total amount of water being removed, 3,000 acre feet per year, which in fact, that's the limit that the existing and the new petitions have. Is that correct? The 3,000 acre feet is the amount of the Belt and Permits. So the city has water rights in several places on the San Lorenzo River. One is the Tate Street Divergence is about 12.2 CFS. And then the Belt and Permits, which are time limited to winter time only use. One has September one to April 30th. I think the other one has October one to April 30th. Those are permits that are not fully licensed or they're not fully, you know, perfected. So we've used, we've demonstrated over time about use of about half of that. We're not asking for additional water there. We are asking for a time extension to be able to use that water over time. And then of course we have the dual creek rights that really affect that upper part of the system and there's a fish flow release from that facility that's been in place since the dam was built in 1960. So the request is not for more water. It is for a different flexibility for the where we might take the water, mostly lower in the system, as opposed to further up in the system. And we are integrating into the request a whole fairly complicated regime of water rights or flow improvements by past laws. Yeah, okay, but just let me clarify, so far you have not been using, in other words, did you just say we've not been, you have not been using the 3000 that you potentially could take out. You've been, what did you say about 1500? About 1700, yeah. But not really on a routine basis because the current provisions for the Belton permits, I'm sorry if we're going into a rabbit hole and you don't wanna go here. So just say stop if you don't want to. But the current provisions for the Belton permit are a diversion to storage in Loch Lomond. Which is one of the reasons they haven't been used very often because when Loch Lomond is full, you don't need to divert water. And when it's not full, as is the case for example, this year, there's often not water to divert that would allow you to meet a bypass flow even that the 20 CFS that existed. Thank you. I think what we're just trying to get clear here is that you could end up taking more water out of the river than you have been even under staying with not asking for more technically. Well, I think it's really important to know that the commitment we're making to the bypass flows is quite substantial. So the answer to that question about are we gonna be taking more is actually probably no because we might be using a different right but we're actually leaving a very significant amount of water in the system for stream flows. Okay, thank you. Bob, did you wanna follow up? Yeah, I guess I'm just, I'm really confused here. So when I look at the permits, I do see the 3000, which is sort of bundled on I think a couple of the permits. And then I see the diversion for Newell Creek, which is 3620. Now again, I understand you may not be taking it every year just as we vary in our take out of the surface water sources as well. So I'm trying to get an idea of what is your map or 3200, what is your maximum draw that you can take every year? Actually, this one here says 5600 acre feet per annum max diversion to storage at Loch Lomond. Maximum withdrawal not to exceed 3200 acre feet, maximum amount stored 8624. So, sort of worst case, that's where I came up with the 6,000 to 7,000 acre feet that potentially could be extracted from the river. So that's sort of one thing is just understanding where we are now and what you're proposing to be your maximum. And then the second part is I still don't understand how if we're not meeting our flow requirements of big trees now, all the time consistently, how we're possibly gonna be able to do that going forward if those flow requirements are increasing unless your district or your department is going to substantially increase the flow out of Loch Lomond in order to get up to that 40 CFM. That is how much are we going to have to contribute to that beyond what we're already contributing to it? Let's, I think the point is made. Let's go on and go to Director Henry. Okay, Rosemary's saying there's going to be more water in the river. And that's if they increase the flow to 40 and right now is it 20 to 25? Did you want me to answer? Let's go ahead Rosemary. Thank you. So the current bypass flow requirement at the Felton's version, the big trees gauge which is sort of for us the Felton's version is a 20 CFS bypass flow. We can't operate that facility at all unless there's 20 CFS going by that site. The proposal is to increase it to 40 CFS not because we, you know, want to but because that's the quantity of water needed to support the upstream passage of salmonids such steelhead and coho and the downstream passage during the sort of winter and the spring and fall when they're coming up into the freshwater system to support the passage in the reach between the Felton's version or the big trees gauge and the lower part of the river. So I think it's extremely important to realize that that flow is driven by a biological need that the fish have. Okay. And as I mentioned, the current requirement is 20 CFS it's been that way for quite a long time and we cannot operate that facility unless the flow in the system is 20 CFS or greater and it will increase to 40 CFS. Okay. And thank you. How, then how is that going to affect us in San Lorenzo? Like taking water out of any of the streams that go into the San Lorenzo River is that gonna, are they gonna think about changing our requirements from 20 to 40? I know you don't have a crystal ball but maybe you can tell me what you think about that. Well, I think the real issue is as sort of a little bit discussed at the Santa Margarita meeting a couple of weeks ago, I guess now is whether the current control point on your system is the right control point for the management of your rights and it may not be. And I know that's one of the things that is being discussed in your consideration of how you might ask for changes to your water right. And I don't have a problem with separating those things in the event that that's the right thing to do that works for you and doesn't result in basically having what you're gonna do to make negative impacts on what the city is trying to do. So there's a sort of a two-sting. I don't wanna affect you and I don't want you to affect me, right? So trying to figure that out, I think is the place where your attorney and Rick and I and others have been talking about this for a while but you've been as noted on your own path to look at how your water rights need to operate. Carly, you're sort of shaking your head as if maybe you have some ideas about what would be a more appropriate place to take that benchmark. Did you wanna comment on that? Right, right now we are having those discussions with NIMS and soon to be CDFW. So that is up and coming and we will be determining those by-pass flows for our system. And like Rosemary saying, we will have to consider what those effects will be on their rights as well as a downstream user. So that is up and coming in our own system. Okay, Lois, did you wanna add anything? No, I don't really have any more questions. Director Smalley? Yes, I also have a concern that the 40 CFS flow may affect our rights to what we can take out the Fall Creek diversion. But I think that the letter, the draft letter that we've seen that Gene has provided to us addresses that as best we can at this point. I would hope that the State Water Research Control Board takes that letter and the accompanying protest application into account before they make changes. And I would hope that they engage the district in these discussions, but we can't at this point tell the State Board what they should be doing. So I don't have any further questions. I think the letter is good and it has addressed my previous ones. I would just echo that and add that one of the things about the bypass flows, which is sort of the 40 CFS is it's a little bit ambiguously stated in the petition. As footnotes, it refers to the fact that you need the 40 CFS only under certain circumstances in terms of whether the fish are migrating or not. And yet it looks like it's being applied across the entire six months. And I think that would make a big difference to us whether it actually should be just applied during certain times when the fish are migrating or spawning or whatever and who determines when those time periods happen. And so that may be something that needs to also be worked out. Director Fultz? Yes, thanks. I just had one other comment. I am concerned about our felt and permit obviously in terms of the bypass flow requirements there, but I'm also concerned about whether or not this might potentially impact our other surface of water sources. That is if there's some sense that in order to achieve 40 CFS, we're going to have to not use as much surface water, and from all of our sources, not just Felton, but the rest have been Loma Mountain sources. That's a serious strategic concern. I mean, on the one hand, we have ground water loss saying don't use ground water. And on the other hand, we have sort of this doubling of the bypass requirement there that makes me concerned, are we being told don't use surface water? And so then I understand the fish requirements, but I also understand the people requirements and our ability to serve our people. And this, that doubling seems, especially given that we aren't meeting it now, just seems like we have a very large potential issue here with our ability to use surface water. If this is really past the way that it is, I'm deeply concerned. But the letter is good. And hopefully they'll pay attention. Okay. Are there any other questions from the board? If I'll go ahead and see if there are any questions from the public in the audience. If you have any questions or comments, please go ahead and raise your hand. Cynthia Zenzel, can we unmute Cynthia? Go ahead, Cynthia. Thank you. I'm concerned because I heard Perrette Harman say at a meeting of her ratepayers that they were in a better situation than us because they depend on groundwater, not on surface water and that they could simply deplete the basin during drought years, whereas we would simply be out of water because we wouldn't have rainfall. And I am concerned in hearing this discussion if we are going to be limited, if we're going to be expected to make up for the lack of flow in the river by decreasing our use of surface water rather than city of Santa Cruz being required to allow more releases of water from Loch Lomond, then we will be in a very precarious position. And I'm wondering whether any of the water that's going to be used from Loch Lomond is going to be diverted from the Santa Margarita aquifer or whether it will be used to recharge the Santa Margarita aquifer. Thank you. Rosemary, did you want to respond to that? I can't speak to what you might plan to do with the Loch Lomond water that is in your allocation. The city has a very sort of well articulated problem statement related to what it needs to do for its drought supply, which we're looking for places to put either Loch Lomond water or surface water in the wintertime when it's available in the local aquifers, but we would want to be getting a fairly good sized chunk of it back. I think the other issue has to do with the reality of when the crunch is on in most cases in the system, the Santa Margarita system is in the dry season, notwithstanding having a dry winter, typically there's enough flow in the system through even the dry winter conditions to meet needs. It's in that period of about, you know, April through the end of October that the problem exists here. And really because that's not a time when we can take water out of the Felton system in any case, we're not required to produce 60 CFS all of the time if the natural flow conditions in the river are not being affected by withdrawals are lower than 40 CFS, then that's the way it is. But it's kind of in that timeframe when additional flows would be being taken in the winter season that that's probably most constraining. I don't know if that helps to elucidate some nuances here or if it makes things worse for confusion. Well, I'm not sure if you quite answered Cynthia's question or at least what I thought her question was, which is, is any of this water that is being removed from Locke-Lomond or taken from the San Lorenzo River going to be put back into the watershed of the San Lorenzo River or into the Santa Margarita groundwater basin by injecting it into, for example, the Lompeco formation or I think one thing that immediately struck me when I read the petition was all this water was being taken out and being put into the wells, the belts wells, which are not within your service area and are not within the watershed. And so that, I mean, it might be legal for you guys to do that, but it kind of breaks my heart. So I guess I think that's kind of what Cynthia was getting at is any of this water going to be used in such a way that it will help with our groundwater sustainability plan. Right, okay. A couple of things is the answer to that question is, if possible, yes. And we have from the 2014, 2015 Water Supply Advisory Committee process recommendations to use aquifer storage and recovery in both basins to create a groundwater supply that would be a supplemental supply for Santa Cruz during droughts, but also to contribute to the restoration and the sustainable management of the basins, if possible. And I want to comment that the belts well-filled in the Mid County Basin is in our service area. The customers over there all the way to 41st are our customers, we do use that system now. I will tell you from four years of work, five years of work on looking at aquifer storage and recovery and understanding the nature of these aquifers, there do seem to be some opportunities, but there also are some challenges and constraints. So the answer to, is any of the water going to go into the Santa Margarita Basin that we might take to the extent that we can create a drought supply that works for Santa Cruz and that makes contributions to the sustainability of the basin, that would be something we would want to do. So it's not an either or in our case, but the system has to function in a way that water doesn't just go into the basin, it also can come out of the basin in circumstances where our storage is inadequate to meet our long-term supply. Thank you. Are there any other questions or comments by members of the public? Let's see, I don't see any. With that, I'll go back and see if there's any from the board. Director Fultz. Yeah, just one of the things I wanted to point out, I know we all know this, but it's important to, I think, talk about it. The Santa Runs Valley Water District customers have done an outstanding job in reducing their water use, not just during drought times, but even now. We are about 20% below the state's long-term goal of 50 gallons per user per day indoor use. And I would really not like to, that is something I think that a lot of districts around the state wish they could be at. It would be really great if that were recognized by the folks that are making decisions on this so that our continued conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater, what we've been doing for decades, well in advance of anybody else, can continue the way that it has been. We've shown ourselves to be responsible in our use of water. We've shown ourselves to be aggressive in how we reduce that use of water. Let's make sure that gets recognized and rewarded. Thank you. Any more comments or questions from the board? If not, does anybody on the staff wanna pipe in and say anything at this point? No? Thank you, everybody, our attendance tonight. It was a special meeting and a little short notice. Thank Rosemary for attending and working with the district on this issue over the last week. I appreciate everybody's time. Great, yes. Thank you again, Rosemary, for coming and answering our questions. I think it was really helpful. Happy to. With that, I think that was all our only item of business and so we can go ahead and adjourn, okay? All right, good night, everyone. Good night, everybody.