By Don A. Wright
The Friant Water Authority Executive Committee met at the FWA headquarters in Lindsay on Monday, January 12, 2026. The open session began at 10:30am after a few hours of closed session. The meeting was held on MS Teams.
The Meeting
Chairman Rick Borges called the open session at 10:30am with no reportable action from closed session. The consent calendar was passed and for just a moment, all was well with the world. Consent calendar is a great invention. I’d like to know who came up with it.
Water Report
Ian Buck-MacLeod gave the water operations report saying a lot has happened since last month. Temperatures have been above average with a wet November, a dry December and wet again around the end of the year. The snowline is pretty high as the warmer weather has not helped the snowpack. He said there isn’t any major storm for the next 10-days.
Buck-MacLeod reported storage is up and above average for Trinity, Shasta and Folsom Reservoirs. They are all releasing for flood control and that creates high Delta inflows. The actual water amounts are well above the earlier December forecasts which is causing spills on these reservoirs.
The First Flush in the Delta usually calls for a negative 2,000 cfs at the Old & Middle River. That ended last week and the negative OMR has been 5,000 cfs. However, the state side of Delta pumping was hampered. The fed side has been bouncing back and forth between four and five units at the Jones Plant. The flows from the San Joaquin River are decreasing as none of the tributary reservoirs are flood encroached at this time. Endangered species, Delta water quality and OMR are the constraints to watch for the time being.
The San Luis Reservoir is trending well with 435,000 a/f of federal storage by March 1st. Friant has recaptured supplies in SLR. This water could spill if the conveyance space narrows. SLR holds Central Valley Project, State Water Project, South of Delta Drought Pool, Recaptured SJR and I don’t know what else. This water is conveyed by the Delta Mendota Canal and the California Aqueduct. I don’t recall the total cfs that can be conveyed by these two canals, but it is limited. There is a hierarchy accorded to conveyance and storage space.
Friant Water
Buck-Macleod said the US Bureau of Reclamation issued a 10-percent Class II allocation. The Bureau allocated an additional five-percent Class II last week. He said both the Friant Kern Canal and Madera Chowchilla Canal have done a great job of taking this earlier water. He expects another block of Class II water coming. Millerton Lake only holds about half a million-acre feet and the San Joaquin River can yield four or five times that much.
The ASO, Airborne Snow Observatory should fly on January 25th. This will tie in nicely with the Bulletin 120 release in February. There is no change to the current restoration-flow schedule. I think I heard him say 350 cfs at the Mendota Pools. He said Banta Carbona ID lost a pump but they should be able to continue with some restoration flows, maybe 2,200 a/f. So far this they’ve captured 33,000 a/f of return flow on the SJR.
Golden Mussels
Katie Duncan reported on the Golden Mussel situation saying there were mussels at the Kern Gate. A hot water treatment has been used. It is likely there are more mussels further north on the Friant Kern Canal. A partial dewatering, treatment and rewatering has been completed. Deliveries have been restored. Things may come to the point of chemical treatment. There has been good input from the FWA general managers, and they are working to get a strategy and budget to the board by the February meeting. Friant staff and Stantec Engineering have been working on bringing in experts in invasive species. Duncan said Buck-Macleod and herself have been participating in local, regional and statewide consultation on the Golden Mussel threat.
Duncan said it’s agreed the most vulnerable area would be Lake Millerton. She also expressed her surprise there is no watercraft check for Millerton.
Director Edwin Camp asked how many participants are involved in the ASO program. Buck-Macleod said everywhere Bulletin 120 covers. Most of the funding comes from the Department of Water Resources and the Bureau’s federal funds are less.
Millerton Lake
Buck-Macleod reported there is a special study for Millerton Lake Outflow Temperature Management and SJR Flow Connectivity Special Study – whew. A Request for Proposal when out December 17th, a great time of year for an RFP. They are due today. I don’t think this fully funded but if the Bureau comes through it will be an item at this month’s FWA board meeting.
SLDMWA
Wilson Orvis gave the San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority report saying SLDM approved its budget at last week’s meeting. Orvis said there wasn’t much difference from last year and he’ll be able to get some costs to the members soon. Retiring Chief Executive Officer Jason Phillips reported Orvis will become the primary Friant representative at SLDM meetings.
CEO
Phillips reported this is day one of his last week. Ten years ago he was sitting across from Camp in the same room and will miss being a part of this. He does expect to run into everyone at the Mid Pacific Conference in Reno later this month. Phillips will continue serving on the Urban Water Institute board.
Phillips said there will be a UWI panel coming up in February, featuring Aaron Fukuda amongst others, to discuss the actual, real-world impacts of SGMA and what Southern California can do to help farmers. This unfortunately will take place in Indian Wells. What part of the physical universe has malfunctioned to create the vortex that draws meetings it such an overrated locale?
This may be about the last official statement Phillips will make as CEO of Friant and the meeting adjourned at 11:26am. I don’t want to get sappy or mushy or emotionally maudlin – but I’m going to miss Phillips.
I started covering Friant meetings well more than a decade ago when it was the Friant Water Users Association. Great forces were pulling at the cohesive fabric of the FWUA. It couldn’t handle the stress and split into the FWUA and the current Friant Water Association. Same meetings, two different closed sessions. Eventually the FWUA was dissolved leaving only the FWA. Then before you knew what hit you there were two other groups formed: the North Friant Alliance and the South Valley Water Association.
This is when Phillips was hired as CEO. I was surprised at the choice. I’d first met Phillips when he was running the San Joaquin River Restoration Program for the USBR. He showed up at an Exchange Contractors meeting and he looked like he was maybe 20-years old if that. Always been a very youthful-looking feller. Some of you may recall the SJR Restoration was not a popular cause in the Valley and there was concern from Ex Con about the downstream reaches of the river. I didn’t know who Phillips was so I believe I was catching a negative vibe in the room towards the project that spilled onto him a bit.
Then 10-years ago he was hired as the new CEO for Friant and changed my opinion in a hurry. He accomplished some amazing things. First, he reunited the Friant membership. And that was not an easy task. Kind of like making friends with feral cats. It took a lot of patience and gentle coaxing, but Friant is now stronger than it’s been, maybe ever. Good thing too. Long stretches of the Friant Kern Canal were sinking into the ground, cutting some southern contractors’ supplies by 60-percent due to subsidence.
Think of Dr. Frankenstein shouting, “They said it couldn’t be done!” as his creation came to life. I saw something as amazing. Under Phillip’s guidance, urging and I suspect unseen blood, sweat and tears, Friant was able to partner with the Bureau and others to raise half a billion dollars and repair a portion of the canal. And under Phillips’ watch it was completed in less than five years start to finish – that’s lightspeed when you consider the average US Army Corps of Engineers nonmilitary project takes at least 20-years.
And finally, Phillips was instrumental in creating the Water Blueprint for the San Joaquin Valley. That organization has taken a much-needed leadership role in advocating for the water needs of the most productive farmland on earth. You could say Phillips was the right man for the right job at the right time.
On a personal level the one thing that has endeared me to Phillips because I can relate so closely is his willingness to say something funny, really funny and move on when no one laughs.
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FRIANT WATER AUTHORITY
854 N. Harvard Ave., Lindsay, CA 93247, Office 559/562-6305 Email:information@friantwater.org www.friantwater.org
The Friant Water Authority is a Joint Powers Agreement with 15 districts to operate and maintain the Friant Division of the Central Valley Water Project. Water from the San Joaquin River is diverted at Friant Dam at Millerton Lake to the Madera/Chowchilla Canal to the north and the Friant/Kern Canal to the south. More than one million acres of mostly family farms and numerous communities get their surface supplies from the Friant Division.
Board: Chair Rick Borges
Staff: CEO Jason Phillips, COO Johnny Amaral, CFO Wilson Orvis, Water Resources Manager Ian Buck-Macleod, Engineer Katie Duncan, Superintendent Chris Hickernell
