By Don A. Wright
The San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority held its board of directors meeting on Thursday, July 11, 2024 at its Los Banos headquarters and on Zoom. I was driving down to Selma last Wednesday when my wife texted me an advertisement from a Texas newspaper. You may be aware a hurricane hit Houston last week and HEB, a regional grocery chain posted something that caught her eye. The ad read, “Hurricane prep package – four cases of bottled water and two briskets. Limit two packages per customer.” Where else but Texas is brisket a vital food in a disaster package?
The Meeting
Chairman Cannon Michael called the meeting to order at 9:32am with a flag salute, as it should be. Next was self-introductions and this is the first meeting since the east and west got friendly with Friant’s CEO Jason Phillips at the table. Friant now has a limited voting roll. Director Bill Diedrich said Phillips got his seat at the table and he had to sit at the back. He was chastised for not getting there early enough. It was all in good humor and its good to see Phillips attend one more meeting.
Gov’t Stuff
J. Scott Petersen gave a rundown of legislative issues. The federal House Resolution 4247 by Harder, deals with greater storage when the snowpack is big. HR 4385 by Neguse is meant to send some authorized money for drought preparedness. He said they both merit support. On the state side AB 2735 by Rubio, an act to allow non-governmental water corporations to form Joint Powers Authorities for insurance pooling is in play. ACWA isn’t on board as this is the camel’s nose under the tent for regulators to expand authority on public agency insurance. So that is an oppose. The board agreed with staff recommendations.
Finance & Administration
COO Pablo Arroyave reported about the emergency reserve funds that were spent. He said there were liner problems in the Delta Mendota Canal that had to be dealt with as quickly as possible. Due to a cut back of pumping at the Jones Plant divers were able to get in the Delta Mendota Canal and fix things. It cost an extra $214,000 and the board approved the expenditure.
Arroyave found another way to responsibly spend money. The O’Neill Forebay is where water from the Delta Mendota Canal and the California Aqueduct gather to be pumped up behind the BF Sisk Dam into San Luis Reservoir. Those pumps need repairs now and then. At the moment the O’Neill Pump needs repairs and parts are about $1.8 million. The O’Neill pump takes water from the DMC into the O’Neill Forebay then the Gianelli Pump takes it to the reservoir. A lady engineer, Jaime McNeil explained the details and added the company (sounded like Kin-tear) with the preferred bid was also found favor with the US Bureau of Reclamation. She said the total agreement is more than $16 million but just the $1.8 million is being withdrawn from the grasp of wallet moths today. The board approved and that was the end of action items requiring votes.
Reports
Next Petersen caught the board up on state and federal affairs saying on the federal side there is a new Deputy Secretary of the Interior if the Senate approves. I believe her name is Shannon Estonia. Petersen said the California Fish & Wildlife service is looking to list the longfin smelt as endangered by the state, not the feds. That is expected to happen in just a couple of weeks. How will this impact the biological opinions? If I understood Petersen, not as much as you might think, but it could gum it up a bit. The National Academy of Science will be reviewing the biops.
Petersen said the South of Delta ag allocation was increased recently to 50 percent thanks to efforts by Valley House members. He expects Senate bills to move forward now. But the Farm Bill is not moving forward. He things there will be a continuing resolution to carry thing until after the administration.
Lobbyist/consultant Dennis Cardoza said there was a hearing on the Endangered Species Act and the National Marine Fisheries Service was presented as being capricious and sloppy. He said the entire land of Washington DC is shell shocked or gob smacked by the recent presidential debate. This was reported of course before the assassination attempt on President Trump. It will be interesting to see how that event gooses things along.
On the state side the water bond has been monkeyed with to the point that ACWA went from support to watch status as the infrastructure portion was less than helpful. Someone mentioned if the state sits on that mountain of Prop One money much longer it will generate enough interest to pay for infrastructure.
Petersen reported the Non Voluntary Agreements, now known as Healthy Rivers & Landscapes is being reviewed closely with an eye to see that the agreements in the MOU are accurately incorporated into the implementation. It sounds like State Board staff is being watched closer than ever, as it should be in all government agencies. There is also a survey by the California Water Commission (they are the ones sitting on the $7 billion for water storage since 2014) to find out if there is enough public outreach. Petersen said it’ll take five minutes to give the CWC a piece of your mind and it should help. Click here.
On that subject, Kristen Olsen said the electeds in Sacramento are aware of how much trouble there is in getting the Prop One money pried loose from the government wallet
moths. She noted the during the bond hearing Assemblymembers had to literally shout into microphones due to pro-Palestinian protestors. She said the state legislator is on recess and will come back to work mid-August. She expects this to be a little calmer than usual as most of the controversy in the water world has already been passed or defeated. There could be flareups due to trailer bills – this practice is despicable so of course it is quite common in Sacto.
Cardoza added the Chevron Deference was overturned by the US Supreme Court. He believes this won’t have an impact on prior cases but will give some relief for federal matters in the future by taking the regulatory agencies’ thumb off the scale.
Executive Director’s Report
SLDMWA Executive Director Federico Barajas said the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law has a second opportunity to apply for grants. Two more funding requests are in the works. The O’Neill pumping plant got $5 million earlier and another $60 million is needed. There is a $75 million award from the Bureau for repairs on the DMC. This and the O’Neill pumps will be the subject of new grants. He reminded the member agencies to get their aps in soon.
The next issue was Operations, Maintenance & Repair water rates. Now that there is a contract with Friant there will be a rates adjustment. This is going through the Finance & Admin Committee to be brought back to the board. Project Use Energy is a part of the rate calculation. The PUE was explained by staff as an estimate of electricity costs about to be charged to the SLDMWA. If I heard correctly it takes more power to move water into SLR than is generated by its release. Once this estimate is trued up I believe SLDM has 30-days to pay up. It’s usually a healthy chunk of change. Barajas said he and staff are gathering forces to get a more comprehensive approach to this. SLDM isn’t the only ones on the hook. The Wester Area Power Association and PG&E are involved. Then there’s the need for new transmission lines and that’s another big cost.
Barajas asked attorney Becca Akroyd to explain the second amended and restated MOU with Friant. She said the cost recovery rates going forward and retroactive to March will be based on this document. Barajas thanked Phillips for Friant’s hard work to help pull this together. Phillips said everyone should be proud of the heavy lift. He said now that he’s no longer limited to three minutes of public comment he’d like to present his speech. That didn’t happen because he was threatened with having to buy everyone lunch if he indeed gave the said speech.
COO Report
Arroyave said the WAPA 69 KV line shut down two Sundays ago. That should have shut down the Intertie but it didn’t and there was a serious arc when it came back on in just a minute or two. He said there is a massive study of what happened. The relay that should have tripped the breaker appears to be in good order. There are four pumping units at the intertie – a facility that moves water from the California Aqueduct to the DMC and back. Two units should be workable. He emphasized the entire system is being inspected with a fine toothed comb. He also said there shouldn’t be any negative water movement at this time. I saw a video of something similar happening at Pine Flat Dam’s power station and it was awe inspiring at how much power is in electricity.
Next Arroyave said the deadline to finish the transformers at the O’Neill Pumps didn’t pan out and to make it work would have interrupted water supplies way too much. The new plan is to take four,10 day outages separated by a couple of months. This will give time to repair the facilities while allowing ample flexibility to complete these repairs and maintain water supplies at needed levels. Arroyave said thanks to Chris White’s chairing of the Technical Committee things are moving.
Water Report
Arroyave thanked USBR’s Kristin White for the water update. She said ask questions and if she doesn’t know the answer, she’ll get back to you. Good for her. She said by the end of the month demands should go down and give the Central Valley Project a little relief. She said the temperatures in Redding were past 115 degrees. There is a little extra water going into the Delta to help with low oxygen levels. Higher tides this weekend will force releases to protect the X2 line if I understood. Something happened to Oroville due to fires and the CVP had to help out with some Delta bound water. These releases turned out to help make up a federal debt to the state in the Cooperative Operations Agreement. This is how the state and the feds split the water in the Delta, the COA. She added there is more than 600,000 a/f of federal water at San Luis.
Other Reports
Next Michael said there were committee meetings and invited chairs to give updates. There were a couple of very brief statements made and committee members were encouraged to attend the meetings.
Outside reports include State & Federal Contractors Water Agency, Family Farm Alliance, California Farm Water Coalition, ACWA, Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley, San Joaquin Valley Collaborative Action Program and the Central Valley Project Water Association.
Mike Wade reported on the CFWC news saying he and Westlands Director William Bourdeau were able to speak in Southern California and it was a good opportunity to tell ag’s water story in an urban setting. He added ACWA wants to join the Cultivate California program’s outreach. This will help consumers and media learn more about the water/food supply nexus. He said a story was also released to the Sun Gazette (I think) to get out the skinny on water, ag and what’s going on. He said the water banners on cotton trailers have proven vulnerable to graffiti tagging so new banners will soon be available.
Director John Varela said the ACWA report would be pretty much what Petersen has already said about the bond situation.
Petersen said the Blueprint met last week and the Unified Water Plan has met with the Delta Mendota Subbasin and is heading north. The Blueprint Strategic Plan presented by
Hallmark was adopted and there is more talk about the implementation ongoing. He said the CAP meeting took place this past Monday and half of Tuesday. The Jobs First Program was brought into the plan as well water supply investments. Petersen said he thinks things have been ironed out. This is important because the plan is a prerequisite for alternative funding for water infrastructure. The Bureau is about to cough up funding set aside for CAP to develop a scoring tool to prioritize projects. CAP is focused more on investment categories.
Board members were asked to give reports and I wasn’t sure who said it but there were tours and panels and such participated in.
Closed Session
The meeting went into closed session at about11:14 and thirty four and half seconds a.m. The meeting at this point dealt with a trash can full of legal items and that was that. Go be good to each other and yourselves.
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ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2024 by Don A. Wright
SAN LUIS & DELTA-MENDOTA WATER AUTHORITY was established in January of 1992 and consists of approximately 2,100,000 acres of 29 federal and exchange water service contractors within the western San Joaquin Valley, San Benito and Santa Clara counties. The governing body of the Authority consists of a 19-member Board of Directors classified into five divisions with directors selected from within each division. The main conveyance is the Delta-Mendota Canal that delivers approximately 3,000,000-acre feet of water within the Authority service area. Of this amount, 2,500,000-acre feet are delivered to highly productive agricultural lands, 150,000 to 200,000-acre feet for municipal and industrial uses, and between 250,000 to 300,000 acre-feet are delivered to wildlife refuges for habitat enhancement and restoration.
Board – Chairman: Cannon Michael,
Staff – Executive Director: Federico Barajas, COO: Pablo Arroyave, Attorney: Becca Akroyd, Director Finance: Ray Tarka, Director Water Policy: J. Scott Petersen, Director O&M/Facilities: Bob Martin
DWR SGMA #5-022.07
Email: youtellus@sldmwa.org
209/826-9696
P.O. Box 2157 Los Banos, CA. 93635
