By Josh Dowell
On March 4, 2020, the Tehama Colusa Canal Authority hosted its monthly board of directors meeting. A call to order at 9:00 AM kicked off the general orders of the day. A little background before we dive in, the Tehama Colusa Canal Authority is a Joint Powers Authority that serves 17 Sacramento Valley Water Contractors across four counties. This group serves over 150,000 acres making them one of the true movers and shakers in the California water landscape.
Quick approvals of the minutes, a salute of our nation’s flag and the board was off to the races. The financial reports of the authority from January 2020 were approved next. TCCA‘s Don Babb, Operations and Maintenance Supervisor updated the board on active projects. Fish screens have been installed up in the Red Bluff plant and flood control was updated along with the authority’s second canal, the Coring Canal. As the irrigation season starts to get underway the team updated their equipment to meet the needs that inevitably will come up. By the way, does it feel like that this irrigation season has come a little sooner than normal? Hopefully, at least at the time of this writing, the rain in our forecast will arrive next week and dump some fresh snow up in the Sierra.
A robust Sustainable Ground Water Management report was given by Lisa Hunter, Water Resource Coordinator for Glenn County. A groundwater summit will be hosted by the Groundwater Resources Association in Sacramento June 10th and 11th which will focus on the management of these plans. Glenn County’s three sub-basins are working together to formulate one plan, I can only imagine how fun it is herding all of those cats at once. Luckily there is some time left as the plans are not due to the Department of Water Resources until the 2022 cycle. Mary Fahey, Colusa County followed on some of the information shared by Hunter. The Yuba Water Agency was the first agency in Northern California to submit its plan, almost two years early. Colusa Groundwater Authority should have a first draft plan ready for public comment by July of this year.
General discussion captured the last moments before the board entered a closed session, closing out a lengthy talk on how Northern California is prepping for SGMA in 2022. The meeting then went into closed session. 
DISCLAIMER OF RESPONSIBILITY; Waterwrights strives to provide his clients with the most complete, up-to-date, and accurate information available. Nevertheless, Waterwrights does not serve as a guarantor of the accuracy or completeness of the information provided, and specifically disclaims any and all responsibility for information that is not accurate, up-to-date, or complete. Waterwrights’ clients therefore rely on the accuracy, completeness and timeliness of information from DAW entirely at their own risk. The opinions expressed in this report are those of the author and do not represent any advertisers or third parties.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Copyright 2020 by Don A. Wright
