By Joel Hastings
A meeting of the Chowchilla Subbasin GSP Advisory Committee was called to order at 1:30 p.m. on Friday, January 14, 2022, by Chair Kole Upton on Zoom. About 25 were in attendance including all committee members David Rogers, Madera County supervisor, Rodrigo Espinosa, Merced County supervisor, and Lucas Avila, president of the Triangle T Water District. Staff member Doug Welch of the Chowchilla Water District was staff coordinator of the meeting and other staff attending included Stephanie Anagnoson,
director of the Madera County Water & Natural Resources Department and Sarah Woolf of Triangle T Water District.
There was no public comment, and the only additional agenda item was to approve holding the meeting online. Minutes of the last meeting held March 17, 2021, were approved.
The single item of business was the presentation, discussion and eventual approval of a proposal from Davids Engineering and Luhdorff & Scalmanini to address the preliminary letter of deficiencies for the GSP which has been received from the Department of Water Resources (DWR). Principal John Davids led off with a 12-page document shared on his screen with all attendees. (The complete document is available on the Madera County website here
https://www.maderacountywater.com/chowchilla-subbasin/
He began by pointing out that on November 18, 2021, DWR had completed an initial review of the Chowchilla Subbasin GSP and submitted a letter to the GSAs identifying three potential deficiencies that may prevent DWRs approval of the GSP.
Davids listed the three items from DWR:
(1) insufficient information to support the selection of chronic lowering of groundwater levels sustainable management criteria,
(2) insufficient information to support the selection of land subsidence sustainable management criteria, and
(3) insufficient information to support the determination that interconnected surface water or undesirable results related to depletions of interconnected surface water are not present and are not likely to occur in the Chowchilla Subbasin.
With the final DWR letter due by January 29, the GSA then has 180 days to respond. Davids identified four tasks that he said were required and two additional that might be considered optional. Task 1 was for the engineering firms to participate in project technical meetings with the GSAs, DWR and the GSP Advisory Committee. Task 2 would be “task management” by the engineering firms to coordinate all the players, managing schedules and budgets. Task 3 would be the completion of text revisions in the GSP regarding
groundwater levels, subsidence and the interconnected surface waters, and Task 4 would be the completion of additional “non-modeling” analyses of those three conditions.
He said two optional tasks would be… Task 5, performing additional modeling updating hydrology for water years 2016 – 2021 while evaluating the Integrated Water Flow Model (IWFM) to simulate residual subsidence, summarize results and model output. New tools are available that were not when the plan was put together, he said. Optional Task 6 would be to support the development of the domestic well mitigation program. This would entail defining mitigation measures (deepening wells, etc.), expansion of municipal water service, distribution of costs, and identifying funding options.
He identified the costs of each task individually with the cost of the four required tasks totaling $239,036 and the two optional tasks at $97,270.
One of the first comments from someone we could not identify asked, “Did we do anything right?” Davids replied that a lot had been done right and that “you should be proud of your work.” Anagnoson said that all the GSPs have received comments and with some 1300 pages of documents these plans are extremely detailed. She added, “I’m not thrilled but there are only three comments.”
Christina Beckstead, executive director of the Madera County Farm Bureau, asked, “Do you expect the proposed mitigations will be good enough for DWR?” Davids replied that he was optimistic that they can properly respond.
Chairman Upton said, “It seems like we’re doing a lot of studying but not doing anything to
cut water use. We’re still in overdraft.” He said that action is needed to help people with domestic wells and to allow farmers to plan. He said he felt money should be spent to accomplish something.
Doug Welch responded, reviewing actions that have been taken including work on recharge, groundwater allocations and construction of pipelines to deliver water to the west side of the Subbasin. He said, “We’re moving forward, not stopping during this better explanation to DWR.”
Anagnoson added that these were preliminary responses from DWR. She expects more complete details by the end of January and then there will be 180 days (six months) to respond.
Woolf agreed with the notion that demand management action is needed. Then she asked if Task 5 can be postponed until the five-year review of the GSP. Welch replied that he felt Task 5 could be contingent on grant funding from DWR. The cost for that single Task had been listed as $68,800.
Chairman Upton asked for comments from the two county supervisors. Madera Supervisor Rogers said that “DWR wants us to fix things but then takes away assets for a cure of the problem. He asked, “Do they want us to solve the problem or do they want us to go away and die.”
That said, Rogers then moved to approve the submitted plan but with Task 5 contingent on DWR funding. Staffer Welch reminded the group that their role is to recommend action to the GSAs. He said it was the expectation that staff would take these recommendations to the GSAs.
A roll call vote was taken with unanimous approval. It was noted that there would be several more advisory committee meetings to review activities before the 180-day deadline. And with that, the meeting was adjourned at 2:10 p.m.
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Chowchilla Water District – PO Box 905 – 327 So. Chowchilla Ave., Chowchilla, CA 93610 559/665-3747 website www.cwdwater.com
Staff: Acting General Manager – Brandon Tomlinson; General Resource Manager – Douglas Welch
Board: Kole Upton – President, Dan Maddalena – Vice President, Russell Harris, Mike Mandala and Vince Taylor
PROFILE: Formed in 1949, the Chowchilla Water District serves about 85,000 acres situated in southern Merced County and northern Madera County on the eastside of the San Joaquin Valley. The District serves over 400 water users, with an average farm size of about 162 acres. Buchanan Dam was constructed in 1975 and is operated and maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The maximum capacity of the dam is 150,000 acre-feet and has a maximum conservation capacity of 140,000 acre-feet. The District also has appropriative water rights issued by the State Water Resources Control Board to divert water from the Chowchilla River. The Madera Canal supplies water from Friant Dam to the Chowchilla Water District. The District has contracted with the Bureau of Reclamation for 55,000 acre-feet of Class 1 Water and 160,000 acre-feet of Class 2 Water. With Madera ID, the District owns the Madera-Chowchilla Water & Power Authority which operates the Madera Canal and four hydroelectric power plants located on the Madera Canal.
