By Joel Hastings
The Chowchilla Water District board of directors met in its regular monthly session, the second Wednesday of the month, on November 13, 2024. President Roger Schuh called the meeting to order at 1:31 pm. With all directors present, he invited public comment but there was none. There were no changes to the agenda.
GSA Matters
The group convened as the GSA board with a continuation of the public hearing on the revised Chowchilla Subbasin GSP. Resource Manager Doug Welch said that the final wording that will satisfy DWR has not yet been accomplished, so that he was not asking for board approval. Currently specifics are being worked on to mitigate a drop in water levels or a rate of domestic well failure after 2040. He said, ”We don’t yet have the actual language to be in the revision.”
Welch said he wants to get the wording nailed down before he asks for board approval. He said he’s hopeful the final draft will be ready for approval at the December meeting. After some discussion of the current number of domestic wells going dry, the group reconvened as the CWD board at 1:46 p.m.
The Board Meeting
Office Manager April Garay presented the monthly financial report. She said the beginning fund balance was $18,927,117.34 on October 1. Receipts for the month totaled
$966,737.25, while disbursements were $923,203.16 resulting in a balance on November 1 of $18,970,651.43. Schuh inquired about the timing of payments and the true-up with Friant and the response was, as usual, they can only wait and see. Monies back from Friant are anticipated this year. The warrant list of bills to pay totaled $1,065,822.65. And the budget was deemed to be in order, so all were approved.
The board considered a request for waiving a small interest charge on an overdue payment from a customer, based on the late delivery of a check with an earlier date. Because the customer actually pays bills from an address in Idaho, the board allowed the waiver of $43.86 interest, as it did for a smaller amount last year. The board said after two years of this situation, they would not be so considerate a third time, emphasizing it is the obligation of any property owner to make timely payment on water purchases.
O&M
The board approved minutes of the October 9th meeting and then heard the O & M report from Operations Manager Chris Mayo. He said a good bit of time has been spent removing sediment from the Berenda Canal. Dried weeds are being burned along a number of banks. Mowing and spraying are also being done as well across the district. He said a tie-in had been installed from Central Pond to Extension. Seven employees participated in crane
certification training, which he said is more rigorous than in past times. Repairs and maintenance work was done on three Chevy ditch trucks, a Ford ditch truck and the burn trailer.
GM Report
General Manager Brandon Tomlinson said that while approval of an annual water exchange with Triangle T Water District was on the agenda, he wanted their board to act before he made the request here. It’s an annual exchange between recaptured San Joaquin River restoration water and the Chowchilla River water – up to 1500 AF. It’s beneficial to both organizations since it avoids the need for actually moving water down a dry slough. There is no problem, but he said as with the revisions being worked on in the GSP, he just wanted “i’s” crossed and “t’s” dotted… or something like that. It will no doubt be done at the next meeting.
In his monthly report, Tomlinson handed out preliminary totals for the water year, showing month-by-month calculations for water inflow, deliveries, riparian deliveries and totals. As usual, June and July had the highest inflows with at 46,088 and 44,796 AF, respectively. Deliveries for those two months including riparian were 31,920 and 31,263 AF, respectively. May was third high with a total of 24,259 AF delivered and riparian.
Agenda Improvements
The agenda this month called for reports from directors before the closed session, a useful
change for visitors. President Schuh reported on his participation at the Friant board meetings and said it was a good thing that now Friant has a seat at the table at the San Luis Delta Mendota board. He said the Friant board offsite meeting is set for next week in Paso Robles. He said it’s really not a retreat but a useful full day of work.
No other directors had comments to offer, and the meeting moved into close session to consider two property negotiations and three items of anticipated litigation.
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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: General Manager – Brandon Tomlinson; General Resource Manager – Douglas Welch; Lela Beatty, Treasurer
Board: Roger Schuh – President, Karun Samran – Vice President, Russell Harris, Nathan Ray 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 about 85,000 acres in southern Merced and northern Madera Counties. It’s over 400 water users have 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.
The Chowchilla Subbasin’s DWR # is 5-022.06
