November 7, 2001 -- WDFW Montesano -- 9:00 a.m. until 12:00 p.m.
Present: Mark Swartout (Chair), Sue Patnude, Patrick Wiltzuis, John Sims, Lee Hansmann, Terry Willis, Bob Wheeler, Cynthia Carlstad, Chris Page, Dave Rountry, Kahle Jennings.
The agenda for this meeting was very ambitious and these are the issues that were addressed:
Plan & Strategy for Sub-basin Meetings
- CBP Meetings and Regular Business
- Order of Basins
- Hosts (assigned)
- Times (afternoon field trip, early evening meeting?) and Dates
- Field Trip Opportunities (e.g. wastewater treatment plant, restoration site if weather permits)
- Locations (specific)
- Key Groups/Individuals
- Issues Matrix
- Presentations (see attached diagram)
A recommendation from the committee covering several of these issues will presented to the full Chehalis Basin Partnership at its November 16 meeting (see attachment "A").
Water Quality Sub-committee
It was agreed that this committee should work on just more than Ecology TMDL issues. For instance, the committee could review and rank Water Quality Grants and Loans submitted to Ecology in place of the Ad-Hoc committee that has been used for the last couple of year.
In order to facilitate coordination between the proposed Water Quality Committee and the existing Steering/Technical Committee on issues related to the watershed plan it was suggested that the Water Quality Committee be a sub-committee of the Steering/Technical Committee. This idea will be brought before the Partnership for discussion.
Grays Harbor - recommendations/options for level of inclusion
After lengthy discussion the committee agreed that the Grays Harbor Estuary should be included in the watershed plan being developed under 90.82. The level of detail will depend on the particular issue (obviously instream flow in the estuary is not an issue, but water quality and habitat are). The committee further recommends that those groups that have been working on estuary issues for years should be asked to help us develop the estuary section on the plan (see attachment "B").
SRF Board Ranking
The Lead Entity application is due to the SRF Board by November 30, 2001. The project review and rating process will be evaluated for ways it can be improved.
Summary of the Level I Assessment
The contents and structure of the summary of the Level 1 Technical Report was discussed. The resulting recommendations will be briefly reviewed at the Partnership's November 16th meeting
Fish-Flow Study
The fieldwork for this study has been completed, but it will be a while before the data has been analyzed and a draft report is available. This project is really only intended to answer the question "are . the minimum instream flows established in 1976 adequate to meet the biological needs of the river?" This work will be combined with additional work under the following bullet to develop recommendations in the Basin Watershed Plan for ensuring adequate supplies of water for fish and for people.
Instream Flow Letter by Dec. 1, 2001
During the most recent legislative session, the legislature passed House Bill 1832 that provides additional funds for Local Planning Units that agree to take on the responsibility of evaluating river flows and making recommendations to Ecology if changes to existing instream flows are determined to be appropriate. The legislature authorized funding of up to $100,000 per WRIA for Local Planning Units that take on the responsibility. If the Local Planning Unit for a basin decides not to take on the responsibility then it falls to Ecology to develop the recommendations.
The Chehalis Basin Partnership has until December 1, 2001 to notify Ecology if it wants to take on the responsibility. We can back out of the project after that date if we can not develop a project scope of work that we are satisfied with, but if we let the December 1st deadline pass without notifying Ecology then we can not later decide we want to do the work.
After discussion it was decided that since 1) the additional funding would allow the Partnership to carry out more flow studies then we could do with our remaining Level 2 assessment funding, 2) the law is flexible enough in how "instream flows" are defined that it will allow us to consider more than just "minimum" instream flows, and 3) we can back out later if we can't develop a satisfactory project scope of work that the Partnership should tell Ecology it is interested in taking on the responsibility.
The STC agreed to forward this recommendation to the full Partnership at its November 16th
meeting (see attached draft letter).
Ecology's Compilation of Basin Water Rights, Permits, Claims, etc.
Due to the time this was a very brief discussion. Ecology proposed that for the initial effort it would compile the information broken down into sub-basins determined by where the 31 flow control points were established in the 1976 minimum instream flow rule. We can always decide later to combine some of the sub-basins as we start to define water management subareas within the Chehalis Basin.
THE NEXT STEERING/TECHNICAL COMMITTEE MEETING WILL BE HELD DECEMBER 6th AT THE WASHINGTON STATE DEPARTMENT OF FISH AND WILDLIFE OFFICE IN MONTESANO. BECAUSE OF THE NUMBER OF ISSUES THAT MUST BE ADDRESSED THE MEETING WILL BE A LONGER ONE FROM 10:00 TO 12:00 IN THE MORNING AND 1:00 TO 3:00 IN THE AFTERNOON.
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