THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1994, 10:00 A.M.
--o0o--
	MR. CAFFREY:  Good morning.  My name is John 
Caffrey.  I am Chairman of the State Water Resources Control 
Board.
	Welcome to these continuing proceedings on standard 
setting for the Bay-Delta.
	Let the record show that the full Board is present 
this morning.
	By way of introduction, to my far left is Executive 
Director, Walt Pettit.  Next to Mr. Pettit is Board Member 
Marc Del Piero, and between Mr. Del Piero and myself is 
Board Member Mary Jane Forster.  To my immediate right is 
Board Vice Chair James Stubchaer, and next to Mr. Stubchaer 
is Board Member John Brown.
	Good morning to my fellow Board members and to all 
of you.
	We also have at the staff table Mr. Tom Howard, 
Senior Engineer; and Barbara Leidigh, Senior Staff Counsel.
	Also in the front row available to assist are other 
staff of the Board, Heidi Bratovich, Gail Linck, Ben Romero, 
Sean Bagheban.
	Good morning to all of you.
	This is the fifth in our series of workshops in 
which the State Water Resources Control Board will hear oral 
comments and recommendations regarding the water quality 
standards for the Bay-Delta estuary.
	I have discussed the procedure that we should follow 
from this point forward with the other Board members.  All 
of us are aware of the important work the parties have been 
doing in developing alternative sets of standards for the 
Bay-Delta estuary.
	We commend the parties for their efforts.  We know 
it has not been easy.  We encourage all of the parties to 
continue working together to identify and develop areas of 
agreement in response to these very positive efforts, and to 
keep everyone updated on the continuing work of the parties 
and the Board's staff.
	We have asked the Board's Executive Director, Mr. 
Pettit, to conduct a series of publicly-noticed meetings 
with the parties and the involved State and Federal agencies 
starting later this month.  We have tentatively scheduled 
the first of these for September 21.  A public notice will 
be issued in the next few days.
	The purpose of these meetings will be to review in 
detail and compare the features of the various alternatives 
that have been presented to the Board, and to provide 
opportunity for frank discussion and the exchange of ideas 
for modifications and/or improvements.
	Later, probably in mid-October, the Board will hold 
a concluding workshop to receive a progress report on the 
alternatives.  If possible or appropriate, the workshop will 
include a staff presentation of an alternative developed out 
of the meetings between Mr. Pettit and the parties that may 
become the preferred alternative.
	One serious caution:  In order for the Board to meet 
the December commitment laid out in the framework agreement 
with the federal agencies, it is critical that the parties 
reach agreement or narrow the alternatives as soon as 
possible.  We are confident that the process we are setting 
up to be conducted by Mr. Pettit and later the Board will 
afford that opportunity.
	If you intend to speak today, please fill out a blue 
card and give it to our staff at the front table.
	As you know, the comments and recommendations 
received during this series of workshops will be used to 
prepare a draft water quality control plan and we expect to 
release the draft in December, 1994.
	About two months after the draft is released, we 
will hold a hearing on the draft.  After the hearing, we 
will make whatever changes are needed, provide copies of the 
revised draft to the interested parties, and then, hold a 
Board meeting to consider it for adoption.
	Conduct of today's proceeding:  As in the past, 
today's proceedings are described in the notice for today.  
Additional copies of the notice are available from staff.  
	This workshop will be informal.  Today we want to 
hear from the parties on the key issues specified for this 
workshop.  Each party will have 20 minutes for an oral 
presentation.  
	A party may be represented by one or several 
speakers.  If the party needs additional time, the party's 
representative may request additional time at the beginning 
of the presentation.  Please explain why the additional time 
is necessary.
	If we are not able to provide you all the time you 
think you need, we encourage you to submit your presentation 
in writing.
	In the interest of time, we ask that parties avoid 
repeating details already presented by other parties 
whenever possible and simply indicate agreement.
	Alternatively, parties with the same interests are 
welcome and encouraged to make joint presentations.  
	We will also accept and we encourage, as we have 
been all along, written comments.  You need to provide the 
Board and staff 20 copies of any written comments and 
recommendations, and make copies available to the other 
parties who are here today.
	As in the past, a court reporter is present and will 
prepare a transcript.  If you want a copy of the transcript, 
you must make arrangements with the court reporter.  
	There will be no sworn testimony or cross-
examination of the parties, but the Board members and staff 
may ask clarifying questions.
	I believe I have about 15 cards for today, so 
perhaps we will finish today and not have to go over to 
tomorrow.
	Today's key issue is carried over from the fourth 
workshop.  It is:	What fish and wildlife standards should 
the State Water Board evaluate as alternatives in this 
review?  
	And I will call the parties in the order that we 
have called them in the past:  Number one, elected officials 
for the State, Federal and local governments; number two, 
representatives of the State, Federal and local agencies; 
and number three, all others in the order that your speaker 
cards were submitted to staff, unless you have special time 
constraints which you have noted on your speaker cards.
	At this time, I would like to note that I have a 
special request from the Western United Dairymen to present 
a new economic model they have developed for these 
proceedings.  This is something that they told us about a 
couple of workshops ago and asked that they be given some 
deference when that information is available.  
	Economics is not listed as a key issue for today, 
but we have tried to accommodate people in these workshops 
whenever possible, and we recognize that the economic 
effects of the various alternatives are a very important 
consideration.  Therefore, unless another Board member 
objects, I will grant 20 minutes for the presentation by 
Western United Dairymen.
	Also, they have asked for permission to speak as 
early as possible to allow for discussion if it is desired 
on the economic model during the discussion of the 
alternatives presented by the other parties.
	We will hear from them right after the elected 
officials and representatives of the public agencies.
	In addition to the Executive Director's meetings 
later this month and the Board's October workshop, you may 
continue, as always, to send written materials to Mr. Pettit 
or Mr. Howard.  If you do that, we ask that you send 20 
copies of your materials and that you also send copies to 
the parties who have participated in these proceedings.
	Any materials received by the Board will be made 
available for inspection by interested persons.  We thank 
those persons who have used these workshops as an 
opportunity to help the Board develop a plan that will 
afford reliable and reasonable protections for the estuary 
and all its beneficial uses.
	We are hopeful that you will be able to further 
address the Board as a result of the meetings to be 
conducted by Mr. Pettit.
	Do any of the Board members wish to add anything to 
the statement I have put into the record at this point?  If 
not, we will then move to the cards in the order that I 
specified.
	The first presentation then is going to be from our 
counterparts in the Federal Government, Club Fed.  Are the 
representatives of Club Fed ready to make their panel 
presentation?  
	I understand Patrick Wright, Dan Fults, Joel Medlin 
and Chris Mobley are present.  
	Have I covered everybody?
	Please come forward.
	MR. FULTS:  We are missing Chris Mobley.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Does that present a problem?
	MR. FULTS:  I don't think so.  I am not quite sure 
whether he will be here or not.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Good morning, gentlemen.  Before you 
begin, I hope I didn't cause any confusion.  Mr. Stubchaer 
was reminding me I may have said we would hear from the 
Dairymen after the elected officials.  If I said that, what 
I meant to say was the representatives of the elected 
officials, of which there are a number here today, and the 
public agencies.
	So, we will not be getting to the Dairymen's 
association immediately, but we will in the very near 
future.
	Gentlemen, good morning.
	MR. FULTS:  We are here on behalf of the Club Fed 
and we will have a presentation for you today by Patrick 
Wright from EPA, who will be making a more in-depth 
presentation to you on the status of their activities.  
	My intention is to bring you up to date on where we 
are in terms of activities of Club Fed.  It will be very 
short, but that will help to bring you up to speed as far as 
those things that have been going on.
	My name is Dan Fults from the Bureau of Reclamation.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Let me remind all the parties that 
since this is not a hearing per se, we are, as I said in the 
statement, keeping a transcript, so if you could identify 
yourselves before you make your presentation, it would be 
helpful.
	MR. FULTS:  First off, I do want to say that 
yourself, as Chairman of the Board, signed the framework 
agreement.  It is fully consummated now.  All signatures 
have been done.
	MR. CAFFREY:  It hasn't changed since I signed it; 
has it?
	MR. FULTS:  No.  It is signed and transmitted by the 
Assistant Secretary to the Secretary of Resources, Doug 
Wheeler.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We appreciate that.  Thank you very 
much.
	MR. FULTS:  A success story.  It has three 
principles involved in it:
	One of them is to work on water quality 
standards in the Bay-Delta.  
	The second principle is establishing an 
oversight management work group for the day-to-
day type of operations that impact the Bay-
Delta.
	And then, the third principle is to work 
toward long-term solutions to the Bay-Delta 
issues that we have. 
	And in regard to developing a long-term process for 
getting at these issues, we have been working closely with 
members of Club Fed and certain representatives of the Water 
Policy Council on various proposals and ideas of how we can 
package a group that would be able to move ahead and start 
studying and working towards the long-term solution.  
	We have made good progress in that.  In fact, there's 
a press release that I left quite a number of copies of in 
the doorway as you come in that announces a meeting, a 
formal type of meeting on September 19.  There's a 10:00 
a.m. meeting in Los Angeles, and then later in the day, a 
3:30 meeting in which State and Federal officials would like 
to meet with public interests to go over all the long-term 
process ideas that we have and to hear others' ideas, too, 
as we formulate this organization.
	This process we have been working through I really 
feel reflects a true partnership between the Federal and 
State governments and the representatives involved.
	We do want the public to play a very important role 
to us, both the State and Federal agencies.  We have talked 
very seriously about establishing some type of citizens' 
advisory group that would be sanctioned by State and Federal 
law and we do realize that we will have to take an approach 
that could eventually lead into some type of CEQA and NEPA 
compliance in formulating solutions to the long-term issues 
in the Delta.
	That pretty well brings you up to speed on where we 
are in the overall framework endeavors, and then, to get 
more informed on the water quality standards, Patrick Wright 
will be making a presentation.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Fults.
	MR. WRIGHT:  I am Patrick Wright from EPA in San 
Francisco.
	Good morning.
	At the last Board workshop, EPA summarized the 
extensive discussions with the parties that have taken place 
since our proposed standards were announced last December. 
	We also described some of the modifications to those 
standards that we have developed in an attempt to reduce 
their water supply impacts while maintaining our targeted 
level of protection.
	Once again, we would like to thank the staffs of the 
various agencies and interests that contributed their time 
and energy to this process.
	Although several significant differences remain among 
the parties, we are encouraged by the progress we have made 
to date and urge the Board to build upon these efforts in 
its development of State standards.
	In December, 1993, EPA proposed three sets of water 
quality standards for the estuary as part of a coordinated 
set of federal actions.  In the past several months, we have 
been reviewing the comments received on the proposed rule, 
and working with a broad spectrum of interested parties in 
developing the final rule.
	Today we are making available several documents that 
explain in detail our current staff recommendations with 
respect to the final standards. 
	The first set of documents were contained in a notice 
of availability that was published in the Federal Register 
last Friday.  The second set were part of a letter sent 
earlier this week from EPA to the Fish and Wildlife Service 
and the National Marine Fisheries Service as part of the 
Endangered Species Act consultation process on the federal 
standards.
	The recommendations in these documents are, of 
course, preliminary.  They represent staff recommendations 
only and have not received final management approval.  
Nevertheless, we believe it is important for the State Board 
and other parties to be apprised of our efforts as we all 
work towards adoption of mutually acceptable standards.
	The staff recommendations include four sets of water 
quality criteria:
	1.  Estuarine habitat criteria.
	The first are the two parts per  thousand salinity 
criteria at Rowe Island, Chipps Island, and the confluence 
of the Sacramento and San Joaquin Rivers.
	Based on extensive discussions with DWR, CCWD and 
other parties, we have developed two major modifications to 
the estuarine habitat criteria described in the proposed 
rule:  A sliding scale to replace the five water year 
classifications and three alternative methods of compliance 
at the Rowe Island and Chipps Island stations; daily 
salinity, 14-day average salinity and the equivalent daily 
outflow.
	These modifications have been endorsed by a broad 
range of interests.
	2.  Fish migration criteria.
	The second set of criteria are fish migration 
criteria to protect salmon smolts and other migratory 
species in the Delta.
	After the close of the public comment period, EPA 
participated in a series of three scientific peer review 
workshops on these criteria organized and facilitated by the 
urban and environmental interests.  Several participants in 
the workshops raised concerns about using predicted model 
results as the basis for these criteria.
	The group agreed that goals for salmon smolt survival 
should be based on the actual fall-run salmon smolt survival 
index rather than predicted model results from the U. S. 
Fish and Wildlife Service model.
	Based on these discussions, EPA has developed an 
alternative methodology for the fish migration criteria that 
is based on measured survival rates.  The new methodology is 
described in two documents published in the Federal Register 
last week:  The summary of the three scientific peer review 
workshops on the fish migration criteria sponsored by the 
urban and environmental interests in June; and a description 
of an alternative set of criteria based on the conclusions 
of those workshops.
	The target values for the new set of criteria reflect 
an achievable set of implementation measures, and are 
generally consistent with the doubling goal established by 
the CVPIA and State legislation.
	The workshop participants also discussed how these 
criteria might be implemented.  There was general agreement 
that a specified salmon smolt survival goal should be 
coupled with a set of implementation measures designed to 
achieve the goal, including gate closures, increased flows, 
export limits and other measures.
	The goals would be revisited during the triennial 
review process to determine the effectiveness of the 
measures.  The implementation measures could then be 
modified as appropriate to achieve the goals on average over 
a period of years.
	We believe this approach will insure that the 
designated uses are protected while providing the 
flexibility necessary to experiment with different 
approaches to improve survival.
	In recent Board workshops several parties have 
stressed the importance of developing real-time monitoring 
programs and studies to evaluate the effectiveness of 
innovative control measures, such as the sound barrier on 
Georgiana Slough.
	By combining goal setting with an adaptive management 
process, we can provide a mechanism for the State Board to 
incorporate the results of these and other ongoing studies 
into its implementation plan without modifying the approved 
criteria.
	3.  Fish-spawning criteria.
	The third set of criteria are salinity criteria to 
protect fish spawning and other fish and wildlife uses of 
the lower San Joaquin River from Jersey Point to Vernalis.  
The purpose of these criteria is to address increased 
salinity levels caused by agricultural return flows in the 
San Joaquin Valley.
	In the preamble to the proposed rule, we suggested 
that these criteria were likely to be implemented by 
increased flows on the lower San Joaquin River.  That 
statement was based on an analysis by the Board staff which 
concluded that the measures proposed to protect salmon in 
Draft Decision 1630 would also be adequate to meet these 
salinity criteria.
	Several commenters took issue with these statements 
and suggested that these criteria should be implemented 
through reductions in salt loadings from agricultural return 
flows.  
	EPA agrees with these commenters, and recommends that 
the Board develop an implementation plan that builds upon 
the recommendations of the San Joaquin Valley drainage 
program and Environmental Defense Fund's recent proposals to 
use economic incentives to achieve compliance with the 
criteria.  Through this approach the Board can insure the 
criteria will not have any additional impacts on water 
supplies.
	Some parties have suggested that these criteria are 
inconsistent with an ecosystem-based protection plan for the 
estuary and may even have adverse impacts on some species.  
	We disagree.  We don't believe that setting criteria 
to reduce the impacts of salt loadings on spawning habitat 
for sensitive species, including striped bass and Sacramento 
splittail, is in any way inconsistent with an ecosystem-
based approach.
	We are also not aware of any evidence that reductions 
in salt loadings would have adverse impacts on other 
species.  In fact, we note that several parties, including 
the California Urban Water Agencies and the Association of 
California Water Agencies have recommended reductions in 
salt loadings as part of their comprehensive protection plan 
for the estuary.
	4.  Suisun Marsh tidal wetlands criteria.
	The final recommended criteria is a narrative 
criteria to protect the tidal wetlands surrounding Suisun 
Bay.  You may recall that EPA's approval of the 1978 Delta 
Plan was conditioned in part upon the Board's commitment to 
develop standards to protect aquatic life and the brackish 
tidal marshes surrounding Suisun Bay.
	Because these commitments were not met, EPA 
specifically disapproved the State's salinity criteria for 
the marsh because they were not adequate to protect 
estuarine habitat, wildlife habitat, rare and endangered 
species, and other fish and wildlife uses of the marsh.
	In the proposed rule, therefore, EPA has included two 
possible narrative criteria for the tidal wetlands, and 
solicited comment on whether these or other criteria should 
be included in the final rule.
	Let me just clarify here.  Those two possible 
narrative criteria are contained in a special section of the 
proposed rule that requested comments rather than in the 
proposed rule.
	Based on the comments received on these and other 
questions, we have further refined this narrative criteria.  
It provides that water quality conditions be sufficient to 
support high plant diversity and diverse wildlife habitat, 
to prevent conversion of brackish marsh to salt marsh, and 
to protect and maintain sustainable populations of those 
species vulnerable to increases in water and soil salinity.
	We believe that this criteria serves several 
important purposes:
	It fulfills our responsibility to set standards for 
the tidal marshes; 
	It addresses concerns raised in the Endangered 
Species Act consultation process regarding the protection of 
candidate species dependent upon brackish marsh habitat;
	It provides a clear statement that the tidal marsh 
community should be protected in any comprehensive 
ecosystem-based protection plan for the estuary; 
	And it provides an incentive for new and ongoing 
studies of the marsh to be completed, as the Board 
recommended in the 1991 plan.
	You may recall that in the 1991 Water Quality Control 
Plan, the Board noted that a biological assessment is needed 
to determine the water quality requirements of the rare, 
threatened and endangered species in the managed and 
unmanaged wetlands around Suisun Bay.  The plan stated that 
the Board would develop amendments and additions to the 
existing numeric criteria based upon the results of this 
assessment, and then, in a later action assign 
responsibility for meeting any changed standards.
	EPA supports this approach and encourages the Board 
to work with the Department of Water Resources, the 
Department of Fish and Game and others to complete the 
assessment before the next triennial review.  
	The narrative criteria will provide a framework for 
these studies, and insure that protective criteria are in 
place pending the development of revised numeric criteria 
for the marsh.
	That concludes my summary of EPA's staff 
recommendations.  Again, each of these criteria are 
explained in more detail in both our letter to the Fish and 
Wildlife Service and the National Marine Fisheries Service 
and our Federal Register notice regarding the fish migration 
criteria.
	Thank you, again, for hearing our comments.  We 
appreciate this opportunity to contribute to the State 
Board's process, and look forward to working with you and 
your staff in developing approvable State standards.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you very much.
	MR. WRIGHT:  That concludes our presentation and I 
would like to welcome Chris Mobley here from the National 
Marine Fisheries Service.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Do you have a statement you want to 
make to the Board?
	MR. MOBLEY:  No.
	MR. MEDLIN:  I would like to introduce myself.  
First, I am Joel Medlin.  I have recently come to the 
Sacramento area from the Dakotas, and worked for the Fish 
and Wildlife Service for a number of years and now I am the 
Field Supervisor here in Sacramento, California.
	I do appreciate being here along with the other 
members of Club Fed, but I just want to assure the Board 
that the Service has a major role in this activity in the 
establishment of the water quality standards, and especially 
regarding Endangered Species Act compliance.
	We are looking for the long-term solution along with 
our counterpart federal agencies and obviously under the 
framework agreement with the State, and I'm very pleased to 
see the framework agreement as the basis for us to get 
really involved in the specific issues.
	Clearly habitat is a major key to a long-term 
solution, and basically, that habitat can be broken down 
into physical, chemical and biological resources or 
parameters, and certainly, the Service's goal is to work 
with all the agencies to reverse the downward decline of all 
the species, not just those that are listed and endangered.
	In fact, the mandate of the Endangered Species Act is 
to conserve natural resources, especially those that are 
listed, but also, those that are candidates for listing, and 
we are going to be looking at that long-term solution as a 
way to hopefully return some of the values that are causing 
many of the species to decline.
	Obviously, key to the Bay-Delta area habitat is the 
chemical or the water quality standards which EPA and the 
Board are working on now, and certainly the Service is going 
to be much involved in reviewing the outcome of those 
efforts and implementing our Endangered Species Act 
requirements.
	In that regard, obviously, we are in various forms of 
consultation on many of the actions right now on the 
Endangered Species Act and I just felt like I should 
introduce myself and give you a few brief thoughts on my 
views.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Medlin.  Welcome to 
California.  I take it, you arrived recently.
	MR. MEDLIN:  Yes, I came on paper, I arrived in 
April, but I have been in various stages of moving since, 
but I am in the office now.
	MR. CAFFREY:  All right.  That completes then the 
presentation of the Club Fed panel.  Thank you, gentlemen.
	Let me see if we have questions.  Mr. Del Piero.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Mr. Wright, in regard to the 
presentation that you made, I have a couple of questions, if 
you would be kind enough.  
	At the end of the first paragraph titled Estuarine 
Habitat, the last sentence says:  These modifications have 
been endorsed by a broad range of interests. 
	Whenever I read a sentence like that, I wonder who 
those broad range of interests are.  Are they articulated 
somewhere so I can see who agreed and who disagreed?  
There's an implication that there are apparently some who 
disagreed.
	MR. WRIGHT:  Well, that may be.  I am not aware of 
any parties that disagree in concept, for instance, with the 
idea of having a sliding scale or an alternative method of 
complying.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  How many were asked?
	MR. WRIGHT:  We have worked with dozens of interest 
groups from all parties. 
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Were they asked?
	MR. WRIGHT:  Oh, yes.
	MR. DEL PIERO:   Have any of them voiced opposition?
	MR. WRIGHT:  We have had some disagreement over the 
technical details of how both the sliding scale and the 
alternative compliance methods would work.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  So, it was not unanimous in terms of 
support for the plan?
	MR. WRIGHT:  No, I would say not.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Do you know who those organizations 
are so I can get a list?
	MR. WRIGHT:  What we can do is we can provide you 
with a list of the participants in the working group 
sessions that we held on these particular provisions.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  What good will that do if I don't 
know who supported and who didn't?
	MR. WRIGHT:  You will probably have to contact those 
members directly.  In addition, there's a summary that was 
prepared by Dr. Wim Kimmerer of a consensus process that as 
we indicated was sponsored by both the urban and 
environmental interests that wrote up essentially the degree 
of consensus that was achieved at those workshops and listed 
the participants.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Now, no one kept a comprehensive list 
of who supported and who opposed?
	MR. WRIGHT:  I think this is the first time we have 
presented the specifics of this, so I am not sure that any 
of the parties, with the possible exception of the urban 
water agencies, are on record specifically on the specifics 
of these two alternatives.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  So, the broad range of interests 
referenced here are none of the water agencies?
	MR. WRIGHT:  No, again, I would say the broad range 
of interests supports the concept behind these major 
modifications.  There may be some disagreement over some of 
the details, but I am not aware of any major disagreement 
with either of these.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  There is no way of my finding out 
what potential objections there might be to these 
recommendations?
	MR. WRIGHT:  That is what the Board's hearing is all 
about.  Hopefully, you will hear that.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  This is being represented by you as 
being endorsed by a broad range of interests.
	MR. WRIGHT:  As I said, when you look at the 
summaries of the urban and environmental documents, this 
reflects that summary -- that summary reflects a broad 
consensus of a large number of parties.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  But you don't know who they are?
	MR. WRIGHT:  No, there's a list of the urban 
agencies, DWR, environmental groups, including the Bay 
Institute.  I don't have the specific list in front of me, 
but I can assure that a wide variety of groups was 
represented.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  All right.  Let me go on to something 
else then.  
	The U. S. Environmental Protection Agency, during the 
tenure I have had with the Water Resources Control Board has 
repeatedly encouraged the Board to implement a permitting 
system whereby all agricultural discharges in the San 
Joaquin and Sacramento Valleys that are contributing to salt 
loading would be permitted by the Board.
	Is that basically what you are recommending under 
your fish spawning, the third paragraph?
	MR. WRIGHT:  Not specifically.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I want to get real specific on this 
because I want to know how you would propose this Board 
implement this recommendation without a permitting process.
	MR. WRIGHT:  For instance, there are a number of 
different programs out there that have been developed to 
reduce agricultural drainage.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  You are talking about voluntary 
programs?
	MR. WRIGHT:  I am talking about all the measures 
listed in the San Joaquin Valley drainage program and the 
wide variety of concepts in EDF's recent papers, as well as 
several others.
	We are not prepared today to outline a specific 
recommended implementation approach, but to merely say that 
the Board should develop such an approach in order to 
implement the standards just like the Board does any other 
water quality standards, whether it be selenium in the 
valley, copper in the South Bay -- generally in those 
standard-setting processes, EPA does not show up and try to 
recommend or prescribe any particular implementation method, 
but instead, it focuses on the standards that are necessary 
for protection of the uses.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  You don't disagree, though, that EPA 
in the past has, if not outright recommended strongly, 
encouraged the Board to adopt a regulatory scheme for ag 
discharge.
	MR. WRIGHT:  I am not familiar with what our previous 
statements have been, but it wouldn't surprise me if that is 
what our policy has been.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Do you have any time line in which 
this nonspecific program that the Board should adopt should 
be implemented in order to achieve water quality standards?
	MR. WRIGHT:  We do not have a specific time frame in 
mind today, but we would be happy to discuss that with the 
Board and other parties in developing an implementation 
plan.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  The reason I ask that is because the 
implementation of a program to eliminate salt loading from 
agricultural return flows could be -- well --
	MR. WRIGHT:  We recognize it is not going to happen 
overnight.  
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I don't think we have a staff to 
implement a permitting program like that for the San Joaquin 
and Sacramento.
	MR. WRIGHT:  They might give us a grant.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  They would have to be giving us a 
grant for the next 50 years to do something like that given 
the amount of salt.
	I guess I am asking how realistic EPA's expectation 
is of implementing any kind of proposal like this short of 
tremendous amounts of funding for the implementation of this 
very strict regulatory program on all agricultural 
discharges.  
	How realistic do you expect this to be in addressing 
water quality in the Delta?
	MR. WRIGHT:  I would say we intend to be realistic 
and flexible regarding the time period it might take to 
comply with these standards just as we have been with the 
selenium standard in the valley, which also has a very 
extended implementation plan that has tried to address that 
issue as well.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Is that within the context of 
protecting the species of the Delta or in the context of 
realistic implementation of the program you are 
recommending?
	MR. WRIGHT:  Clearly, by law, the standard has to be 
set at a level that's necessary to protect the use but at 
the same time the law provides plenty of flexibility in 
terms of time frames to implement the standards, so I think 
there is plenty of room for flexibility on that particular 
issue.
	It's not, though, allowable to simply say that 
because it is difficult to implement, it is allowable not to 
set a standard.  If you have a pollution problem, the law 
requires you to set the standards and then work towards 
implementation, and if that takes longer for some standards 
than others, that can be provided for.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I understand.  I am not being hard.  
I am trying to get really down to some very specific facts 
and specific recommendations here because I have looked at 
this real closely and I am becoming concerned that a number 
of recommendations are sort of open ended in terms of actual 
implementation of proposals that can be incorporated into a 
water quality plan that can be sustained, and if, in fact, 
it is challenged, it appears that there are a lot of 
recommendations that don't have any specificity, or more 
significant, lack of specificity, and there is a tremendous 
propensity on the part of all the parties to say, we're 
going to be very flexible.
	I had the occasion yesterday to see some of the most 
current species indicated in the Delta, not just the 
regulated indicated species, but pretty much all the species 
that are evaluated by the Department of Fish and Game, and I 
am concerned that proposals like this that could be years, 
if not decades in the implementation, are not going to be 
realistic in the event someone challenges this water quality 
plan and points to the very practical immediate population 
declines in terms of species in the Delta, and in order to 
avoid this Board losing any more lawsuits, I am looking for 
real solutions as opposed to we are going to be flexible.
	And I am not picking on you, I have heard it 
repeatedly from all kinds of People, so I guess in terms of 
me anyway, if there could be a greater degree of specificity 
in terms of the timing that you all anticipate for things 
like a salinity control plan for the San Joaquin Valley so 
that we can have a realistic discussion on what that 
actually means so that the agricultural interests that are 
present here understand that that may well mean a waste 
discharge permit for everybody that has an agricultural 
discharge into the San Joaquin Valley.
	MR. WRIGHT:  Let me just say one additional thing 
there, and that is, of course, when we published our 
proposed rule, we got two very different sets of comments on 
the issue of implementation.  
	One party said because EPA has no authority over 
implementation, we shouldn't say anything about it. 
	And another said that how can you possibly expect the 
parties or the Board to accept the standards without 
describing in excruciating detail exactly how it would be 
implemented.
	What we are trying to do is also balance those two 
competing views.  In doing that, we would certainly be happy 
to talk to you and your staff about what is realistic in the 
San Joaquin Valley.  
	That's about all I can say.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I would hope that if there are 
proposals made not only by fed and the agencies that you all 
represent, but by everyone here, if there are proposals 
being made that there be a degree of specificity so we 
understand what the practical implication of those 
recommendations is going to be.
	Having had some discussion with the people from the 
San Joaquin Valley before in regard to the potential of 
their having to get a waste discharge permit for their ag 
drains, there may be some small amount of antagonism to that 
idea.
	MR. WRIGHT:  Let me just make one final point and 
that is, of course, we believe merely by setting a standard, 
even if the implementation plan is going to take quite some 
time, we strongly believe that setting the standard itself 
is a powerful incentive for those things to happen.
	If you have been reading from the other parties', 
virtually all of the interests in the state agree that salt 
loading should be reduced and the standard provide the 
framework and a mechanism for that to happen.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  There are a lot of things everybody 
agrees on.  Implementation is the issue.
	MR. WRIGHT:  We hear you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Ms. Forster, and then Mr. Brown.
	MS. FORSTER:  I want to compliment you, Patrick, on 
the progress that you have made in this report today.  
	I have a question about what you mean here in the 
third paragraph where it says:  The first set of documents 
were contained in a notice of availability that was 
published in the Federal Register last Friday; the second 
set were part of a letter sent earlier this week from EPA to 
the Fish and Wildlife Service and the National Marine 
Fisheries Service as part of the Endangered Species Act 
consultation process.
	It is my hope, and I guess I want you to respond to 
this, it is my hope that the Club Fed group, when you are 
working on your standards and the water that will be 
dedicated to your standards, that you are not just narrowly 
looking at the Clean Water Act, but you are also looking at 
the block of water that satisfies the Clean Water Act and 
the Endangered Species Act, and what you represent as the 
amount of water needed for fish and wildlife takes care of 
all of your issues, and then, that hopefully would translate 
into the certainty and the shelf life, the word that  people 
use.
	Is that how you are working at Club Fed?
	MR. WRIGHT:  We have been striving very hard to make 
sure that we try to integrate the federal actions as much as 
we can, and in particular, to make sure that standards, 
particularly State standards, will be driving the system 
rather than the Endangered Species Act, and the consultation 
process is the right vehicle for doing that.
	We want to make sure that through the broader habitat 
based approach that's represented by the standards, we can 
try to protect the needs of not only those species that are 
listed now, but the wider variety of species so we can 
preclude the need for additional listing and not have water 
supply impacts above and beyond what's required for the 
standards caused by either additional listings or take 
restrictions, or other mechanisms under the Endangered 
Species Act.
	It's a bit of a challenge, but that's been our goal 
from the beginning.
	MR. CAFFREY:  I asked Ms. Forster if she would yield 
and she said she would.  
	I want to make sure I understand what you are saying.  
You seem to be saying that you would look to the State Water 
Board, and this is my inference, I can't remember the exact 
words you used, but you seem to be saying you look to the 
State Water Board to pick up the pieces for the guarantee of 
the shelf life after you do what you do.
	That worries some a little bit because I would like 
to think that the framework agreement reflects that when you 
produce your standards, that they will be represented by the 
Federal Government as a package deal, and that there will be 
a certification therein that there is a shelf-life guarantee 
of some specific amount of time, because I'm afraid if that 
doesn't happen, and I am not saying we are sending you off 
by yourself to do that, but that if we are not able to use 
this mechanism that you have described this morning or some 
other mechanism in the near future to fashion something that 
we all understand and agree to provides us the needed 
reliability we need for all beneficial uses in terms of 
water supply, I am afraid that a lot of this will be for 
naught, so I really  think that whatever is done really has 
to have all that happening at once because we won't have the 
reliability.
	MR. WRIGHT:  I didn't mean to imply that at all.  I 
merely referenced the State, in anticipation that the State 
will be adopting approvable standards next spring so EPA's 
role and the role of the federal agencies under ESA, 
therefore, will be minimized.
	MS. FORSTER:  I just wanted to wrap up by saying in 
studying for the workshop today, Patrick, I was reading 
statistics and reports and numbers, and one of the things 
that worries me is that this year just the take costs 1.4 
million acre-feet.
	Well, if we go with that and we come up with an 
allocation for fish and wildlife that greatly enhances the 
ecosystem productivity of the Bay-Delta and is a major 
increase in the goal that we are all working toward, and 
then we have this 1.4 million or whatever it is going to be 
every year, that doesn't work for either of us as serving 
Californians, and so that's why those kinds of statistics 
make me nervous on how we are going to resolve that in a 
real prudent reasonable fashion.
	MR. WRIGHT:  It makes us nervous, too, and we are 
working around the clock to make sure we try to come up with 
an integrated package that doesn't have that result.  
Hopefully, by December 15 we will get there.  We have a 
number of different processes going on as part of both the 
consultation process and the biological opinions that are 
being prepared to try to avoid that situation.
	We are not yet prepared to tell you exactly how we 
propose to do that, but that certainly will be a major focus 
of our discussion in the next couple of months.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Mr. Brown had a question.
	MR. BROWN:  Mr. Wright, when you speak about return 
flow from the Central Valley Project and the State Water 
Project supplying irrigation water to the San Joaquin Valley 
at the rate of about one ton of salts per acre per year, 
there are several problems associated, of course, with 
agricultural drainage and we are concerned with water 
quality as it affects the ecosystem.
	There is another major concern as to the accumulation 
of salts in the San Joaquin Valley and in the root zone 
where these kinds of problems have helped to destroy 
civilizations in the past, and it seems if you are going to 
address the first part of improving drainage water quality, 
that the second part also needs to be addressed.
	You can't continue to accumulate salts in a closed 
system without destroying the agricultural community, or 
certainly degrading those districts that are affected by 
this and who have worked hard over the years to improve 
their irrigation system.
	They have closed off a number of tile drainage 
systems and practically all of the tail water recovery 
systems.  
	There's maybe some more improvements that you can do, 
and you talk about economic incentives and such, but it 
seems like until you develop a salt balance or until we 
develop a salt balance of this closed system and have some 
way of exporting salts as well as importing them through 
these plans, that the long-term solution will not be 
addressed.
	Have you given any consideration to a long-term 
solution to the problem?
	MR. WRIGHT:  Certainly a number of other people in 
EPA are working with the Board and other parties to try to 
address that issue, not only as I said before, to address 
salt loadings, but selenium loadings and other issues, and I 
certainly agree with most of the parties that any kind of 
implementation for this standard or any other standard 
should be developed as a part of a broader comprehensive 
plan to try to deal with all of these issues.
	I don't want to in any way minimize the complexity of 
the difficulty in trying to do that and we are participating 
in various efforts.
	MR. BROWN:  I am not concerned with the complexity -- 
yes, I am concerned with complexity, but I am concerned with 
doing one without the other.  If we just cut off drainage, 
and all the options that we are talking about does this, if 
we just cut off drainage, we solve half of the problem but 
we haven't addressed the other half.
	Can we address half of the problem without addressing 
the whole?
	MR. WRIGHT:  Again, I am not personally involved in 
our efforts to deal specifically --
	MR. BROWN:  Well, that's what you are suggesting 
here. 
	MR. WRIGHT:  No, I am suggesting that the Board adopt 
and work with the parties on an implementation plan for this 
standard, which is the same recommendation that you are 
hearing from the Association of California Water Agencies 
and the California Urban Water Agencies, that a salt load 
reduction program should be implemented as a part of a 
broader program in the valley to deal with agricultural 
drainage.
	That's all we are prepared to say at this point.
	I recognize, as other Board members have suggested, 
that we need to make more progress on specifics.  We are not 
hearing a lot of specifics from any of the parties right 
now, but we would be happy to participate in discussions and 
work towards an implementation plan that is flexible and 
deals with the issues that you have raised.
	MR. BROWN:  Thank you, Mr. Wright.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Mr. Stubchaer.
	MR. STUBCHAER:   About three weeks ago, I believe, 
Secretary Babbitt issued a press release on a habitat 
conservation plan agreement for terrestrial species in 
Southern California that guaranteed a certain life of, he 
said 15 years or a decade.  
	I am wondering if Club Fed is considering such an 
agreement or such a plan, a conservation agreement to give 
the certainty that was discussed earlier in connection with 
the Bay-Delta proceedings.
	MR. MEDLIN:  I could try to answer that.  We are 
acutely aware of that effort on the part of Secretary 
Babbitt, and I would like to indicate that was a national 
policy.  It did focus on a wide area of planning issues and 
the ACP planning effort in the southern part of the State, 
but indeed, the concept that he is talking about is being 
looked at and implemented nationwide on all of the Service's 
activities on the Endangered Species Act, so I would like to 
clarify that wasn't for just the southern part of the State.
	And specifically to the Bay-Delta and to a long-term 
approach that I have visited with a little bit earlier, and 
Dan visited a little earlier on, that's indeed our hope that 
we can be planning ahead long enough in an areawide plan 
type of concept that we can address reversing the downward 
decline of the many many species that are on the proposed 
list or the candidate list for federal listing, and indeed, 
reverse that trend through the process we are talking about 
here, and I tried to emphasize the water quality standards 
are a very important part of that.
	So, indeed, we are thinking along that line and we 
are looking to implementing those kinds of things.
	MR. STUBCHAER:   You emphasized the long-term 
process.  What about a tie to the standards that we are 
working on and thereby gaining the certainty and shelf life 
we have been referring to, or maybe a couple of triennial 
reviews, not decades.
	MR. MEDLIN:  That is the point I was going to make.  
Indeed, I understand certainly the significance of setting 
this criteria this year and going through the consultation 
process with EPA's proposals.  We have to do that.  We are 
forced to move toward that but, indeed, we should look at 
the setting of standards in the near term over maybe a 
couple of triennials, or whatever you call those, the three-
year review, to get to where we have to be, and the litmus 
test for all of that is going to be reversing that downward 
trend of all the species.
	MR. STUBCHAER:   Thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Just for clarification on that, does 
that mean, Mr. Medlin, that you would pretty much -- 
regardless of what happened, let some agreed upon period of 
time expire to see what those results are, and I am talking 
about shelf life again?
	I realize it is difficult for you in terms of the 
traditional approach of the Federal Government to listing 
and how you react to them, but I think this is really a 
critical point that there needs to be some certification for 
the sake of reliability that at least for some period of 
time we are going to observe what happens to the species.  I 
don't know if they are going to dip slightly before they 
climb or what.  
	How are you going to deal with that?
	MR. MEDLIN:  I think the way we are visualizing that 
is to establish a monitoring program and try to understand 
through the framework agreement process and try to detect 
this reverse in the downward trend; in other words, that 
this will really assist in reversing that and actually 
conserve species and increase the species.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Mr. Del Piero.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Mr. Medlin, let me suggest our staff 
has -- I saw them yesterday for the first time and they are 
very good -- has charted out the monitoring the California 
Department of Fish and Game has been doing on population 
declines on virtually large numbers of species, not just 
target species, and those are available from our staff.
	If you would like to get those, they show over the 
last two or three decades what's been going on.
	MR. MEDLIN:  I am certain my staff has been involved 
in that and has copies already.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  You might want to avail yourself of 
those so you can see what the current situation is.
	One question I have of Mr. Wright and then I have no 
more questions after that, Mr. Chairman.
	Mr. Wright, in the event the Board chooses not to 
pursue the proposal that you have recommended, basically the 
Board chooses not to pursue addressing the salinity problem 
in as comprehensive a fashion as EPA would like, and whether 
the Board chooses not to pursue it through a permitting 
process or some kind of enforceable voluntary program, 
although that's a contradiction in terms, wouldn't EPA's 
recommendation for outflow go back up again?
	MR. WRIGHT:  No.  The answer is no, it would not.  
Each of our standards are directed at protecting different 
designated uses, although certainly there is overlap between 
them.
	There is no mechanism under the Clean Water Act for 
us to specify any kind of implementation measures to begin 
with.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I am not asking you whether or not 
you can specify limitation measures.  I am asking about your 
recommendations.  You have indicated a reduction in what you 
anticipated the outflow requirements were going to be, based 
on modifications to your proposal, one of which is the 
recommendation to us that we implement a salinity loading 
control program.
	MR. WRIGHT:  Right.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Maybe I wasn't clear.  In the event 
we don't do what you have recommended and what your 
subsequent modifications downward in terms of water 
recommendations are, will your recommendation for outflow go 
back up again?
	MR. WRIGHT:  Okay.  Clearly, if the State Board 
chooses not to implement a program to reduce agricultural 
drainage and chooses instead to increase reservoir releases 
to meet that standard, obviously that would have an 
increased water supply impact.
	We are not recommending that.  In fact, I think it is 
probably safe to say that we would not recommend increased 
reservoir releases to meet that standard under any 
circumstances.  
	Certainly, it's always been EPA's policy that you 
should not be using dilution essentially to meet a standard.  
You should be trying to control it at the source.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Would you sue the Board then to 
enforce water quality standards -- I don't want to ask you 
that.
	Is it likely that EPA would consider suing the Board?
	MR. WRIGHT:  I think it would be unlikely, but I have 
to defer that to our attorneys.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Then, what is the impact of your 
recommendation on salinity standards?
	MR. WRIGHT:  Then, our recommendations on 
implementation measures have no legal or other impact.  We 
have no authority over implementation.  That is completely 
up to the State.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I am not asking that question.  I am 
not trying to pin you down to that.  I am talking about from 
a substantive ecosystem standard.
	If the Board chooses not to address the salinity 
problem, what would EPA's recommendation be?
	MR. WRIGHT:  Our recommendation would not change, 
just as it wouldn't change if --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  So, your recommendation would be fix 
the salinity problem under any circumstances, and if the 
Board chose not to do it, then EPA has no other position 
other than fix the salinity problem?
	MR. WRIGHT:  I would say we wouldn't treat it any 
differently than a copper standard for South Bay.  If the 
dischargers refuse to implement it, in that case, we have 
direct authority.  In this case, we don't.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  You answered my question.  Thank you.
	MR. WRIGHT:  I am not trying to evade your question.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I don't think you are.  You answered 
it.  You said you would deal with it in the same way you 
would with the copper standard in the South Bay and we know 
how you dealt with that.
	MR. WRIGHT:  No, as I said, we would not because we 
do not have direct authority in this case, where in that we 
do have direct permitting authority.  It is a very different 
situation.  We have no direct authority, so in that case it 
is possible, I understand from our attorneys, that there 
could be some litigation under State law, but under Federal 
law, I don't know that we have any authority to require 
implementation of the standards.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Okay.  Then, let me ask the last 
question again.  Under your water quality authority under 
the Clean Water Act where this process started, what 
recommendation could you make for water quality standards in 
the Delta since as part of this recommendation you have 
reduced your recommendation for outflow on the assumption of 
certain things taking place.
	MR. WRIGHT:  I'm sorry, I don't follow the question.
	MR. CAFFREY:  I didn't follow it either.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Mr. Wright, I will help you out.  I 
will write it down and send it to you.
	MR. WRIGHT:  Okay, that would be helpful.  We would 
be happy to discuss this with you further, and clearly, what 
we are trying to do here is --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  The one regret that I have is this is 
the last hearing where I get to ask the questions.
	MR. CAFFREY:  That is not the case.  We are going to 
be meeting in October and hopefully on a positive note where 
the parties and the agencies bring back perhaps something 
that the Board can use as a preferred alternative.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I guess the point I am trying to get 
to, Mr. Chairman, is that the recommendation here assumes 
that the Board is going to implement -- candidly I don't 
think there's any big secret here about what's been 
considered to be a very onerous process, a very onerous 
permitting process and permitting scheme by the farmers in 
the San Joaquin Valley for a good number of years, long 
before I arrived here, and if that is the key to resolving 
the water quality problems in the Delta from the standpoint 
of federal agencies, the reduction in outflow being proposed 
by Club Fed may cause it to appear that Club Fed is being 
particularly flexible, and then putting the State Board in 
the position of regulating every agricultural discharge in 
the San Joaquin Valley.
	I don't know if that's ultimately a particularly good 
position for the State of California to find itself in.
It may be realistically the position we find ourselves in, 
but if it is, then I just hope everybody understands what is 
being recommended to us.
	MR. WRIGHT:  I am not sure that you are in any 
different position with this standard than you are with the 
existing selenium criteria in the same water bodies and the 
toxic pollutants that are there.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I don't disagree with that at all.
	MR. WRIGHT:  Given that you will be receiving 
recommendations from a number of parties to include 
reductions in salt loadings as part of the comprehensive 
plan, perhaps it would be appropriate for the parties to 
hold a workshop on that topic and come back to you with a 
set of recommendations that provides the flexibility you are 
looking for.
	We would be happy to participate in that kind of 
process.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Any other questions? 
	Ms. Leidigh has a question.
	MS. LEIDIGH:  My question is for Mr. Medlin.  You 
were asked several questions by Mr. Stubchaer about the 
fishery agencies' process with the ecosystem protection 
habitat conservation plans, so I want to ask a little more 
directly with regard to the Delta whether you have any 
specific recommendations for requirements at times of the 
year other than those that you have already specified in 
biological opinions.
	For example, you have other fish, in particular the 
splittail, that are under consideration for listing.  If 
there were standards that would protect those, it seems 
possible that you might not have to list them, but we 
haven't heard from you as to what sort of standards might be 
needed in order to achieve that.
	I think as part of the framework agreement and part 
of this proceeding, it would be helpful to the Board if you 
could tell us right away, as soon as possible, what 
potential standards would help with that overall ecosystem- 
protection approach.
	MR. MEDLIN:  I am not prepared personally today to 
answer that, but I agree conceptually with what you are 
asking, and certainly in the process that we are going 
through right now with EPA's consultation process on the 
standards, that's the very things that will be addressed.
	On the candidate species, I agree, in fact, we need 
to be thinking ahead far enough so that we can look at the 
candidates and try to develop some standards and provide 
inputs on those measures that would actually reverse the 
downward trend.
	Conceptually what's good for the Delta smelt are also 
going to be good for many of the other estuarine species 
that we are talking about, so that's the way I would answer 
that right now.  
	I agree with the need to provide additional 
information.
	MS. LEIDIGH:  Is there any change that in the fairly 
near future you would be able to provide the Board with 
additional information on that?
	MR. MEDLIN:  Yes, I think so.
	MS. LEIDIGH:  If you can, I think the Board would 
certainly appreciate that.
	MR. MEDLIN:  Okay.  
	MS. LEIDIGH:  Mr. Caffrey outlined the method for 
sending copies to the Board and copies to the parties, and 
we would appreciate that as early as possible.
	MR. MEDLIN:  Okay.  
	MS. LEIDIGH:  Thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Any other questions from staff?  
Anything else from the Board members?
	Mr. Brown.
	MR. BROWN:  Mr. Wright, I thought I was through with 
the salinity problem in the San Joaquin Valley until I heard 
you say, control salinity at its source.  
	Are you familiar with the evaporation box?
	MR. WRIGHT:  Generally.
	MR. BROWN:  You take the tailwater and tile water 
from agricultural drainage and growers have developed these 
large ponds through a drainage district and such to contain 
the drainwater, evaporate it off to control salts at the 
source.
	Those ponds are under critical fire right now because 
of the accumulation of the toxics that are gathering in the 
evaporated water and the condensing of the salt and such to 
the point where there is considerable support from various 
communities to close the ponds off.
	What ideas did you have in mind when you say control 
it at the source?
	MR. WRIGHT:  I was merely trying to say that we would 
certainly recommend that the standards be dealt with as part 
of a comprehensive plan to deal with the drainage issues 
rather than the reservoir releases, and certainly, we would 
be happy to work with you and your staff to talk about what 
EPA staff recommends would be on that long-term program as I 
talked about before.
	But we don't have any specific recommendations today 
on how we believe the Board should implement the standards.
	MR. BROWN:  Okay.  Thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Let me just say to you gentlemen, 
you've heard concerns of some of the Board members today and 
I continue to be very hopeful that we are going to be able 
to work something out that all the parties can be satisfied 
with and provide reliability for all of the beneficial uses, 
and I hope and trust that you gentlemen and your agencies 
are going to participate in the meetings with Mr. Pettit, 
and then thereafter in the workshop with the Board again in 
trying to narrow the alternatives and come up with something 
that is acceptable.
	We thank you very much for your exchange today and 
your presentation.  We appreciate your being here.
	MR. WRIGHT:  Thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Dick Daniel from the State Department 
of Fish and Game.  
	Good morning, sir.
	MR. DANIEL:  Good morning.  
	For your record, I am Dick Daniel, California 
Department of Fish and Game. I serve as the Water Management 
Coordinator for the Department.
	Very briefly this morning, it is our understanding 
that the recommendations that the Department of Fish and 
Game has offered as the trustee agency for fish and wildlife 
for the State of California have been considered and are 
being modeled as part of your ongoing process of evaluation 
and consideration.
	Therefore, we won't present any additional formal 
testimony today, but we do feel it is appropriate at this 
time to restate several of the basic principles that we have 
advocated through this summer's process in order to keep 
those in focus as you go off and commence your deliberation.
	First of all, the interim goal:  We stated very early 
on that we thought it was appropriate to use the population 
levels or the fishes in the Delta that were present during 
the mid-sixties and the early seventies as an interim goal.  
We want to continue to remind you that the overall objective 
should be restoration of the ecological integrity of the 
Delta.
	We believe that is reflected in both State and 
Federal law in terms of the doubling objective that we have 
before us.
	We very strongly continue to support the 
comprehensive ecosystem approach that we and others have 
advocated.  We think that the regulations that are 
eventually implemented should use the basic mechanism of 
outflow and export restrictions in order to achieve their 
goals.
	Further, we want to reiterate that year-around 
protection is particularly essential if we are going to 
reach our goals of ecosystem restoration.
	We believe that in an effort to restore the ecosystem 
of the Delta as a whole, it will be necessary for all water 
rights holders who divert runoff which would otherwise reach 
the Delta to participate in an equitable allocation of 
responsibility for additional outflow.
	This is particularly important on the San Joaquin 
side of the Delta and may well have a relationship to the 
problems associated with salinity.
	We support the idea of establishing a Delta ecosystem 
restoration fund which could be used to purchase water, 
could be used to support water conservation measures, and 
which potentially could serve as part of the State's cost 
share for activities under the Central Valley Project 
Improvement Act.
	Specific to the Suisun Marsh, we continue to support 
the existing Suisun Marsh Preservation Agreement and its 
standards.  We believe that some refinements in terms of the 
day-to-day management and use of water would improve the 
quality of the habitat in the Suisun Marsh as it is driven 
by the Suisun Marsh Agreement.
	We believe that something like a water master service 
could be instituted that would further improve habitat 
quality under the existing standards.
	We suggest that it is appropriate for you to admonish 
all State, local and Federal agencies who regulate or affect 
the Delta ecosystem to work together to develop a 
comprehensive plan and regulatory program that complements 
your efforts and those of the EPA, and hastens our eventual 
success.
	Finally, it goes without saying that this is an 
urgent matter.  Mr. Del Piero referenced the rather 
distressing statistics that have accumulated over the last 
three or four decades.  This is not something that we can 
put off much longer.  We urge you to go forward with as much 
implementation as you possibly can as soon as you possibly 
can.
	Thank you, that's all I have to say.  I would be 
happy to respond to any questions.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Daniel.
	Any questions from the Board members?
	Mr. Brown.
	MR. BROWN:  Mr. Daniel, you stated all water rights 
holders should be responsible.
	Do you think there should be any distinction made 
between junior and senior water rights holders?
	MR. DANIEL:  Frankly, the recommendation that we are 
making can't be implemented under the State water rights law 
without very dramatic reformation of that law.
	We believe it is essential that contributions to 
Delta outflow come from all its tributaries.  Part of the 
problem that has not been comprehensively looked at is the 
fact that production of fishes upstream of the Delta hasn't 
been dealt with yet as well.
	And our proposal for an ecosystem approach shows 
upstream issues are a part of the problem and have to be 
resolved.
	There are a number of water rights decisions that are 
currently pending before your Board that go a long ways 
toward dealing with that problem, but it is going to be very 
very difficult within the context of our appropriative water 
rights system to go in and comprehensively re-evaluate the 
appropriateness of those original appropriations.
	But we think it needs to be done and in doing so, I 
think you are going to have to under current law address the 
priority that the vast majority of the currently 
noncontributing water rights holders have.
	MR. BROWN:  A second question:  I didn't understand, 
a water master service to improve the habitat?
	MR. DANIEL:  I really don't have the right term to 
present to you, but it is a fact that because the vast 
majority of the landowners in the Suisun Marsh are absentee 
landowners, because they rely on caretakers to manage the 
water for them, there are inconsistent applications of 
water, inconsistent timing of use of water, and we are not 
deriving the full benefits of the standards that currently 
exist.
	MR. BROWN:  Thank you.  That's very good.  Thank you, 
Mr. Daniel.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Anything else from the Board members?  
Anything from staff?
	Thank you, Mr. Daniel.
	David Anderson, Department of Water Resources.  
	Good morning, Mr. Anderson.
	MR. ANDERSON:  Good morning, Mr. Chairman and members 
of the Board.  
	I am David Anderson representing the Department of 
Water Resources. 
	I have just delivered to Barbara 20 copies of 
comments.  I neglected to provide those earlier.
	I also provided 10 additional copies of the 
memorandum that I delivered to the Board yesterday and I 
will refer to in my comments.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Mr. Anderson, does the Department 
have any agricultural drains that discharge into the San 
Joaquin River?  I am just checking.
	MR. ANDERSON:  I am making no comment on that.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Do you want any?
	MR. CAFFREY:  The record already shows that Mr. Del 
Piero said he wasn't being hard today.
	Please proceed, Mr. Anderson.
	MR. ANDERSON:  Thanks, Mr. Chairman.
	We have three points to make today on the topics that 
have been noticed by the Board for this workshop.
	The first is the issue of the Board's authority to 
adopt planning objectives for flow and diversion. 
	The second is our specific request for the Board to 
adopt the suite of agreements for the protection of the 
Suisun Marsh and the Suisun Marsh area, and the related 
Suisun Marsh preservation monitoring agreement to satisfy 
the water quality objectives for the Suisun Marsh area.
	And the third is support for the Board's recognition 
of the need for the Board to entertain a thorough and open 
discussion of the various control parameters and that are 
the basis of the various protective standards for aquatic 
resources that have been proposed in your alternatives 
solicitation.
	The first two issues I think we can deal with in 
fairly short order.  I refer to the 10 copies of the memo on 
the issue of Board authority that I gave to the Board 
yesterday and an additional 10 copies to Barbara.
	I think that the authorities that are described in 
that memo enable the Board to develop and adopt a plan for 
flow and diversion at the same time that it adopts a 
comprehensive water quality control plan for the estuary.
	We have discussed this topic frequently with the 
Board twice in this workshop and I think the memo pretty 
much stands on its own.
	I would note that we firmly believe that the Board 
may combine the water quality and non-water quality planning 
efforts into a single document under essentially an 
identical analytic approach.
	I note that Mr. Del Piero was concerned when we 
talked about this originally, that this might create some 
obstruction or impediment to the Board's quickly proceeding 
with the business it has at hand.
	I think looking at this rather deeply that this 
should not delay at all or otherwise create an impediment or 
complication to the Board's accomplishing the adoption of 
new objectives within the time frame that the Board has set 
for these purposes.
	As we indicated in the first of these workshops in 
April, we are making specific recommendations to the Board 
on the Suisun Marsh.  It is basically the same one I think I 
heard Dick Daniel make, and it is a recommendation that we 
made several times before to the Board, both in the context 
of water quality planning and in terms of implementation 
scenarios, one as a petition for an interim standard pending 
the achievement of the Board's water rights phase-Bay-Delta 
hearings, and then, again, as a recommendation for 
implementation in the D-1630 hearings.
	We think that the agreement provides a flexible and 
cooperative planning and management approach by the four 
public agencies signatory to it and it is a process which is 
attended regularly by the Board staff, and it is an 
excellent approach for dealing with needs and uncertainties 
of the beneficial uses of this important wetland area.
	I would note that we negotiated and entered into 
these agreements with the express purpose of their becoming 
a substitute for water standards in this area, and Congress 
specifically authorized the Bureau to execute and 
participate in them.
	The third issue the Department wishes to address is 
the need for the Board and the parties to engage openly in 
an inquiry into the diverse factors and control parameters 
which have been put forward as the basis for standards, and 
this is the point that the Chairman addressed up front in 
introducing this workshop, and we certainly support what the 
Board is intending to do.  We think it is absolutely 
warranted and it is going to be extremely beneficial to have 
the Board run through these things with the public, with the 
biologists mainly, and have them discuss the various aspects 
of these things and what they think of them.
	We think we have prepared a matrix here which simply 
sets forth control parameters.  It is attached to the back 
of the statement, a copy of it.
	The various control parameters which are mentioned or 
used in the various alternatives which have in some sense 
come before us, not only the ones we mentioned in the recent 
Board staff memo requesting analysis, but also, includes the 
various EPA proposals, biological opinions for Delta smelt 
and for winter-run salmon.  
	These regulatory schemes and scenarios present 
different parameters for different seasons and different 
durations under differing degrees of restriction to protect 
fish and wildlife uses.
	And we think that these differences reflect in great 
part the fundamental uncertainties which pervade our 
understanding of the Bay-Delta system, its condition and the 
effectiveness of measures proposed to protect it.  
And yet, it is from these proposed parameters that the Board 
must choose something which both affords reasonable 
protection to aquatic resources with some reasonable 
assurance of providing material benefit, and which gives 
urban and agricultural users a reliable and useful water 
supply.
	We think that as the Board proceeds over the next few 
weeks to analyze its planning alternatives, we think it is 
essential that it take this opportunity to hold this 
colloquy on the proposed factors to explore and understand 
with the biologists what they think is important.
	It goes without saying that there's been a community 
of good scientists devoting virtually their entire 
professional lives to enhancing our understanding of the 
Bay-Delta system, and it also goes without saying that what 
they produce is what we call good science.
	But unfortunately, good science has not produced 
scientific certainty, or putting it obversely, is it has not 
diminished uncertainty, fundamental uncertainties in certain 
important areas.  And it has not given us what I would call 
reliable solutions to the problems that we perceive exist.
	We have said many times before that this uncertainty 
issue must be addressed directly as the Board considers 
alternative standards or objectives for the Bay-Delta 
estuary.
	Decisions in systems as complex and uncertain as the 
Bay-Delta estuary certainly must be made notwithstanding the 
fact there is uncertainty.  But, as we have said before, the 
Board's decisions must reflect, not mask, that underlying 
uncertainty; and to be reflected whether it is in the 
weighing and balancing processes of the Board's decision 
making or the in the ultimate decisions themselves, it must 
first be recognized and understood.
	We propose this matrix as perhaps one vehicle that 
may be used, certainly it can be flushed out for the Board 
to look at.  I think a number of the parameters that are up 
there give an indication of the kind of problems that we 
would like to see the Board discuss with the biologists.  
For example, one of the parameters is cross-channel gate 
closure and this is an issue on which most of us, I think, 
have thought we had some degree of consensus that it 
provides some benefits to anadromous species on the 
Sacramento site, although we will admit that the degree of 
benefit, I think, has always been an issue.
	Today there seems to be a growing school of thought 
that closing may be detrimental.  We would like to see that 
discussed as to what people think and what the consensus 
view is, where the uncertainty lies.
	Pulse flows is another issue.  A few years ago we 
were thinking it was a good sounding idea to transport fish 
to Suisun Bay by the mechanism of pulse flows.  I think we 
even recommended trying pulse flows in our D-1630 
recommendations.
	Now, I think the idea is greatly in question not only 
because we wonder how the management size of releases could 
overcome the effect of huge tidal flows slushing back and 
forth in the western part of the Delta, but also, because of 
our recent experience with Delta smelt.
	Pulse flows were provided.  It seemed that either the 
flows were inadequate, or which seems to me to be more 
likely, that the smelt did not respond to flow as a cue to 
move west.
	QWEST is another one, which is another parameter that 
I think raises a lot of questions and a lot of uncertainties 
which we would like to see the scientists address.
	What is QWEST really trying to accomplish?  Is it 
intended to protect organisms from reverse flow in the lower 
San Joaquin River?  Does it even stand for reverse flow at 
all times in this portion of the river?  Is it a surrogate 
to control reverse flow in other portions of the channel?  
Is it really a mechanism for export control, or is it a 
mechanism for entrainment control?
	We would like to hear these issues joined.
	Another issue to QWEST is do the swimming fish, 
anadromous out-migrating salmon even recognize or respond to 
differences in QWEST, much less benefit from them.
	We have a category there called Delta habitat and it 
lists a number of factors under that.  Are those really 
habitat factors or is what is being described or attempting 
to be controlled there really an issue of direct loss as 
opposed to alterations of habitat?
	Then, of course, there is X2.  I am not going to say 
anything more about X2.  We have talked at great length 
about what it is really intending to accomplish.  It looks 
for the most part that it is intending to be an outflow 
mechanism for transport or for removing organisms from the 
influence of diversions, but again, we need to make sure 
that people who propose X2 have a common view as to what 
they are trying to achieve by it.
	We propose that at the workshops that the Board will 
be conducting, that parameters of this matrix if the Board 
chooses to use such a vehicle as this, be discussed with 
reference to at least these following points:
	The nature and degree of biological benefit 
that the parameter is purported to confer;
	The certainty of that biological benefit;
	The ability to model or predict the benefit 
and/or cost of that parameter;
	The existence of agreement or consensus of 
scientists on the scientific justification for 
the proposed parameter and how it is intended 
to work;
	The impacts on water supply reliability of 
using a particular parameter;
	And the efficiency of water use for the 
proposed benefit; that is to say, may we select 
a parameter that is less water costly than one 
which may perhaps be proposed.
	This is all by way of addressing this question about 
certainty, an unenviable task by the Board but a necessary 
task.
	It is also true that if uncertainty is central to the 
Board's arriving at standards for fish and wildlife uses, it 
gives reasonable protection based on best scientific 
understanding of the estuary, an absolutely equal concern, 
and one we have heard today already in your discussions with 
the federal representatives, is that the regulation of the 
Delta provide the greatest degree of certainty and 
reliability to other users of water in the Bay-Delta system.
	This is one of the key themes of Governor Wilson's 
water policy statement of April, 1992, to restore stability 
to Delta water supplies.
	We think water supply is an equally key point in the 
recently signed Federal-State framework agreement, and as 
Mr. Stubchaer noted, most recently Interior Secretary 
Babbitt sounded this same theme in regard to endangered 
species regulation.  He announced a federal policy of no 
surprises, which we have heard discussed here.  This is the 
cornerstone for agreements reached on habitat planning for 
endangered species.  This policy recognizes the critical 
need for certainty and predictability for private, State and 
local decision making.
	Finally, it embraces, first, the virtue and 
importance of federal agencies actually entering into an 
agreement, planning agreement, with nonfederal interests, 
and then, it declares that the paramount rule to govern 
these agreements is that a deal is a deal, that federal 
agencies should not disturb but should respect the 
expectations and autonomy of nonfederal parties to the deal.
	We believe that what the Board should now be crafting 
is an ecosystem management plan, and we see that phrase 
being used by CUWA and others, for the estuary, which will 
constitute a sensible and reliable deal with the federal 
interests which will allow California to resume fundamental 
control over its natural resources and its social, economic 
and environmental future.
	To provide certainty and reliability for water users 
of the State, the deal must include the following essential 
features with respect to the role which is to be played by 
water users and the water angle of this recognizing, of 
course, that there are factors in parts of this deal that 
are broader than those things which may come directly under 
Board regulation.
	First, it must allocate a specific quantity of water 
by water year type to the fish and wildlife resources of the 
estuary so that other users may plan based on the most 
reliable indices of water supply.
	Second, it must have multiyear shelf life or freedom 
from new restrictions attended, of course, with reasonable 
review and the possibility for minor real-time 
modifications, but shelf life.
	It must satisfy us that as an ecosystem management 
plan, it will produce no jeopardy biological opinions for 
the water project in the Delta, the imposition of no 
quantitative take limits in the incidental take statements, 
and the assurance that new species listings will not impose 
new regulatory constraints on Bay-Delta water use.
	We think those are the essential elements of what 
ought to be produced at the end of this process which ought 
to give us those benefits.
	In closing, I would underscore the fact that we 
strongly support the Board's announced intention to hold 
further sessions to discuss and critique the parameters that 
appear in the various sets of proposed alternative 
standards; and second, I want to assure everyone here that 
it is our view that there should be no backing off the time 
frame the Board is currently working under.
	We see these future sessions that Chairman Caffrey 
announced as not being an added step, but certainly an 
integral part of the Board's deliberation and consideration 
of planning objectives for the estuary.
	Those are my comments.  Thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Anderson.  That's an 
interesting matrix.
	I think Mr. Stubchaer has a question.
	MR. STUBCHAER:   I want to thank you for the matrix.  
You have one column there called EPA Proposals, December 
'94.  
	That's three months in the future.  How do you know 
that?
	MR. ANDERSON:  Obviously, this is a living document 
and something which we hope will get filled in.
	MR. STUBCHAER:   There must be some basis.
	MR. ANDERSON:  I am not sure exactly what the state 
of EPA's proposals is currently, but we understand EPA is in 
the process of making some new proposals, or as Patrick 
Wright said, modifying the ones that they have.  That is 
what we intended by that.  
	Maybe that's not the best way to describe these 
proposals, but that's what is intended by it.
	MR. STUBCHAER:   Thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Any other questions from Board members? 
	Mr. Del Piero.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I have one question, Mr. Anderson.
	In terms of the proposal that you put forward, you 
indicated the necessity for a degree of certainty, and you 
articulated the number of criteria that you felt were 
appropriate to be incorporated.
	This Board is obliged to do a balancing act.  The 
Department of Water Resources is obliged to represent the 
Department of Water Resources.
	What would you consider to be the other criteria to 
be incorporated into your so-called proposal that would be 
sacrosanct and from which no deviation would be allowed in 
terms of environmental resources.
	MR. ANDERSON:  This is in terms of the ecosystem 
management plan?
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I'm talking about in terms of -- we 
are going through this process underlying the 1992 water 
policy statement made by the Governor in San Diego.  It 
included a lot of things.  The most often quoted line from 
that presentation is that the Delta was broken.
	That's a reflection of the precipitous declines in 
the specific species.  
	In your proposal you articulated a series of criteria 
that you thought should not be allowed to be deviated from 
as part of your proposal.  What criteria does the Department 
of Water Resources propose in terms of the environmental 
resources in the Delta so as to help this Board decide from 
a balancing standard what we should do?
	MR. ANDERSON:  I think that the word balance is 
exactly it.  Maybe at this point it precludes the 
identification of hard and fast criteria.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  It didn't preclude you from those 
hard and fast criteria you articulated.
	MR. ANDERSON:  The reason I am a little bit confused 
is I had two sets of criteria, one with respect to the 
parameters and the other with respect to conditions we would 
like to see in the ecosystem management plan, the deal, and 
I am simply using that because a deal is a deal was the 
phrase that secretary Babbitt used.  We will stop using it.
	I certainly agree and I don't disagree whatsoever 
with the idea that the Board must balance, balance and 
achieve reasonable use which implies balancing.  Obviously, 
there are a number of policies which have been announced by 
the Legislature and other sources which influence and which 
weight the factors in that balancing.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I am looking for specific criteria.  
has the Department of Water Resources established specific 
criteria in regard to species?
	MR. ANDERSON:  No, sir.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Any other questions?  Anything from 
staff?
	Thank you, Mr. Anderson.
	Our next presentation will be by David Fullerton and 
Gregory Thomas.  I believe these gentlemen are here.
	Wait a minute, I am out of sequence here.  I 
apologize.  I have got two stacks here and we are still on 
the public agencies.  
	I apologize to Mr. Thomas and Mr. Fullerton.
	Our next speakers are Dave Whitridge and Alex 
Hildebrand.  We will get to you other gentlemen.
	MR. WHITRIDGE:  Good morning, Mr. Chairman. 
	I am David Whitridge on behalf of the South Delta 
Water Agency.
	We have commented at previous workshops on the 
implementation and the objectives, and I am not going to 
repeat those or further elaborate on them.
	Today I just had one comment relating to the 
alternative standards which the Board has asked DWR to 
evaluate.  And our concern with these is the fact, and we 
have confirmed this with your staff, that the model runs 
that are being done apparently place a 70,000 acre-foot cap 
on water quality releases from New Melones.
	This, unfortunately, will result in overstating the 
amount of water that's available for fishery objectives 
which you are considering.
	As you know, the Bureau this year has released well 
over 70,000 acre-feet for water quality from New Melones and 
will continue to do so, and in fact, is required to do so by 
your Decision 1422.
	Mr. Del Piero mentioned earlier concern with losing 
lawsuits.  I don't know what he was referring to, but there 
is one which you won very convincingly.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Take your pick.
	MR. WHITRIDGE:  One which you won very convincingly 
and rightfully is the one concerning Decision 1422, which 
the Board felt compelled to take all the way to the United 
States Supreme Court at great effort, and one of the 
conditions, as you know, in Decision 1422 is the release 
requirements without any 70,000 acre-foot cap to maintain 
500 parts per million salinity at Vernalis for agriculture.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I was thinking about the inland 
surface waters plan.  That was one that was sticking in my 
mind.
	MR. WHITRIDGE:  The United States Supreme Court 
overwhelmingly confirmed this provision and the Board's 
authority to impose it, and this certainly predated the 
CVPIA and many of the other statutes that we are analyzing 
now.
	Our concern then relates to assumption No. 4 in your 
modeling handout which assumes then that water necessary to 
meet the pulse flow requirements on the San Joaquin River 
should be released from New Melones, so we would just 
caution the Board there's an error in the modeling, or at 
least are aware of the modeling with that limitation on it, 
and we don't believe that the modeling should entertain 
studies that seriously violate Board standards and rely on 
that to determine the amount of water that's available.
	Mr. Hildebrand would like to comment, I think, in 
regard to some of the discussions on drainage control this 
morning.
	MR. HILDEBRAND:  Good morning.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I thought Alex was going to say 
something about drainage.
	MR. HILDEBRAND:  Before I get to that, let me comment 
a little further on the analyses that were requested by the 
Board staff of DWR.
	It is our understanding that the studies do not 
provide Vernalis flows in June, July and August, that are 
sufficient to supply the riparian and other superior pre-
1914 water rights in the South Delta.  To the extent that 
these flows are not provided, the studies then overstate the 
availability of water in the watershed to meet the proposed 
fish flows, and this, of course, is superimposed in part at 
least on the error caused by the 70,000 cap.
	Furthermore, it is our understanding that no New 
Melones water is assumed to be delivered to Eastern San 
Joaquin County for replacing groundwater overdraft in 
accordance with the Bureau contracts.
	We believe that the assumption of noncompliance with 
these contracts for this purpose should be clearly 
acknowledged and the consequences addressed.
	If we are going to provide or is it proper to provide 
fish flows by continuing an unsustainable overdraft of 
groundwater in San Joaquin County?  I think it is a question 
that should be recognized and not just swept under the 
carpet.
	Now, on the question of drainage, in your discussions 
with Mr. Wright a while ago, you discussed this business of 
implementing a requirement that the salt load be kept in the 
valley, in effect.  And Mr. Brown addressed the question are 
we going to give up all that food production down there as 
the only way to stop it, and Mr. Del Piero addressed some of 
the permit problems.
	It was suggested by Mr. Wright this was a matter of 
implementing the interagency drainage program, but that 
program itself talks about retaining the salt in the valley.  
It doesn't address the question of how to create a salt 
balance.  Neither does it address the effect of the measures 
in the drainage program on the salinity of the river.
	Actually, I think it is pretty clear that if you 
carry out the proposals in the drainage program, you will 
actually increase the salinity in the San Joaquin River, not 
decrease it.  It will decrease the load but increase the 
salinity.  So, it works counter to the objective here.
	Now, the opportunity is not just to hang onto that 
salt or somehow fly it out to the ocean.  There's another 
way to get around the problem at least in part, and that is 
to insist on more multiple use of water.  
	We previously testified that more than half of the 
annual water quality release requirement for New Melones 
typically occurs between March 1 and the late April start of 
the fish flows which are now proposed to be further 
increased.  This need is almost all in order to dilute 
drainage entering the river from Salt and Mud Sloughs during 
that time.  That drainage comes in partly because of 
draining the wetlands down there of the material they have 
been holding through the winter, and that comes into the 
river at about 3,000 parts per million.
	And then, at the same time you have the drainage that 
is mobilized from the other drainers which comes as high as 
4900 parts per million.
	And now, in 1993, which was a wet year, it would have 
taken, according to the Bureau, about a 100,000 acre-foot 
addition of New Melones release to meet the standard in 
March and April if the standard had been met, which it was 
not.  
	If the salt in Mud Slough drain was retained from 
release during the spring fish flows, the annual New Melones 
water quality release requirement would, therefore, be very 
substantially reduced.
	In view of the overcommitment of available water in 
New Melones and in the entire San Joaquin watershed, we 
believe it is important to adopt a requirement that drainage 
and fish flows must be managed so that fish flows serve also 
to dilute drainage flows.
	If you use that approach, you will get rid of some of 
the salinity problems without exacerbating the problem of 
retention of salt in the valley.  You may actually improve 
that situation.
	So that's all I wish to comment.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you very much, Mr. Hildebrand.
	Ms. Forster.
	MS. FORSTER:  Alex, to do that, to try to manage the 
drainage and the fish flows so that the fish flows help 
drainage, it seems that the alternatives that are proposed 
are different months.  
	What months are you talking about?
	MR. HILDEBRAND:  You would only have to hold it up 
for a few weeks.  Later in the year you still have and it is 
not as easily corrected then.  But during this period of six 
or seven weeks in the spring, if you hold up that material 
for that short period, it is not going to cause the problems 
of evaporation ponds because it won't evaporate very much 
during that period, so that the material you drop in the 
river will be almost identical six weeks later than it is 
when they do it at the present schedule, and it would come 
down then with ample dilution.
	We have more dilution than we need during the fish 
flows by quite a bit.  There are various ways to go about 
that, but it shouldn't be insurmountable or extremely 
difficult to just pond for that long a period and since 
there are no concentration problems and there are also 
opportunities which are a little less flexible than a 
discharge rate of hanging onto it subsurface and then 
discharging so far as the preirrigation mobilization is 
concerned.
	In the case of the drainage off the wetlands, I don't 
know of any easy solution other than to either pond it or 
pump it back up to the DMC and hang onto it by recirculation 
during that brief period, but that's also a possibility.
	There are various ways you might go about it, but it 
is a very different problem to merely hang onto it a few 
weeks in order to make these flow releases coincide than it 
is to have evaporation ponds or to get it out to the ocean 
some other way.  
	This would be much simpler, so it would seem to me 
that it is something that might be accomplished without all 
the permit implementation problems that Mr. Del Piero 
mentioned.
	Somebody might have to put up a little money, but the 
benefit would be very substantial.
	MS. FORSTER:  I'm trying to think what does it mean 
to planting cycles, but we will have to talk about it more.  
I mean, it sounds so reasonable to say, let's fix two 
problems with one slug of water.  I just don't know all the 
other parameters to know how it works and when it works, but 
the --
	MR. HILDEBRAND:  I understand your reluctance that 
anything is reasonable nowadays.
	MR. CAFFREY:  That is our goal.
	MR. HILDEBRAND:  I don't really think it had anything 
to do with the planning schedule.  The primary problem 
actually would be whatever you have to do to keep from 
draining off the wetlands during that period, and if you 
don't want to sacrifice a piece of the wetlands for six 
weeks or so to impound it, then they have the recycling 
alternative to get by that short period.
	It's the period of year when the total demands on the 
system are not totally high, so there is a lot more 
flexibility than you would have in the later part of the 
season.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Mr. Brown.
	MR. BROWN:  The idea is very sound.  I hope staff 
will take that under consideration and it may mean that we 
have to continue the evaporation ponds or something similar 
thereto in the wetlands or someplace for a short interim 
period, but that might be more acceptable to the 
environmental concerns than the way it is being done now.
	Certainly with drainage issues in the San Joaquin 
Valley, this is a good idea but we are to the point now that 
even bad ideas count in trying to figure out something.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Let's say less popular ideas, not bad 
ideas.
	MR. BROWN:  That's good, thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Brown.
	Anything else from Board members?  Anything from 
staff?
	Thank you, Mr. Whitridge and Mr. Hildebrand.
	Good to see you both.
	Let me just say that there is one public agency left 
to speak and that's Kern County Water Agency, and they have 
asked to speak after lunch.
	That, then, takes us up perhaps to the presentation 
by the panel of Western United Dairymen.
	Is the panel here, Mr. Conover and the others?
	Please come forward and make your presentation.  We 
have Gary Conover, Jay Gould, Dwane Paul and Linda Wear.
	While we are setting up for this panel discussion, 
let me announce to the audience what the schedule appears to 
be for the afternoon.  We will try to break for lunch no 
later than 12:30, which is about half an hour from now.  
	We have asked Mr. Del Piero to represent us at a 
meeting this afternoon for a while, so he will be leaving at 
that time and be back later.
	In the afternoon there will be a panel discussion led 
by Kern County, I believe, and then we will go to Mr. 
Fullerton and Mr. Thomas, Mr. Bishop and Mr. Wodraska, Mr. 
Haroff and then Mr. Krautkraemer, Mr. Bobker, Mr. Hall, Mr. 
DuBois, Mr. Nelson, Dr. Brown, Mr. Vogel and Patrick 
Porgans.
	That is the order of the cards we have thus far, to 
give you all a feel for what the breakdown is this 
afternoon.
	Good morning, ladies and gentlemen.  Good to see you.
	MR. CONOVER:  Mr. Chairman and members of the Board, 
my name is Gary Conover.  I am Vice President for the 
Western United Dairymen.
	We appreciate your allowing us to speak today.  
	When I spoke before the Board at your last workshop 
on July 13, I indicated that we were in the process of 
retaining an economic consultant that would provide us with 
a document that we do submit into the record which would 
assist the staff and the Board in their deliberation of the 
economic impacts of your decisions.
	We feel there is an obligation by the Board to go as 
deep as you can in securing that data.  We are pleased today 
to present that document.
	Western United Dairymen is a 1400-member milk trade 
association.  We represent dairymen basically from 
Bakersfield to Humboldt.  We represent 70 percent of the raw 
milk produced in the State.  Therefore, we are the largest 
trade association in the State. 
	We have had concerns all along regarding the 
treatment of some of our many commodities within the 
discussions of the Board, certainly within some of the 
bulletins provided by the various departments, particularly 
alfalfa, the treatment as the lowest economic value crop, 
and we hope to present evidence that would throw away that 
concept.
	We in the industry look at it not as a commodity but 
as a resource for our animals, which is really our link to 
our commodities which is the milk.
	We have with us today Mr. Jay Gould on the far left.  
Jay is the Executive Vice President of Western United 
Dairymen.  He has over 35 years in the business and has an 
immense amount of information.  
	Our presentation will be made by the economic firm 
that we retained, Northwest Economic Associates, and we have 
with us today Dr. Dwane Paul and Dr. Linda Wear.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Welcome to all of you.
	MR. CONOVER:  Dwane will carry on the conversation.
	MR. PAUL:  Thank you, Gary.  
	My purpose in being here today is to discuss the 
effects of the proposed Bay-Delta standards on the 
California dairy industry as a large representative part of 
California agriculture overall.  In doing so, I would like 
to start with an overview of the California dairy industry, 
follow that with a review of our analysis of what the 
standards announced last December mean for agricultural crop 
production, and then, relate these to what this means for 
California dairy producers, both in general and particularly 
in the San Joaquin Valley as a regional example.
	My objective is to demonstrate to you that decisions 
on water quality standards as they affect water availability 
will have major effects on the viability of regional crops 
and regional dairy production.
	We believe that sound decision making in California 
water allocation requires more detailed rather than less 
detailed analysis.  We believe that analyses which focus on 
very large geographic regions without regional 
considerations, or that generalize about an industry as 
large as California agriculture without realizing its 
diversity miss many critical institutional, social and 
economic issues that we feel have to be part of the water 
decision process.
	Let me start with a brief overview of the California 
dairy industry.  It is the single largest sector in 
California agriculture with annual farm-gate receipts of 
approximately 2.9 billion dollars.  It represents about 14 
percent of California's agricultural cash receipts overall.
	Employment in the dairy industry is about 42,000 
people considering both production and processing.
	And annually the industry overall contributes 
approximately six billion dollars to the State economy and 
supports more than 80,000 jobs.
	There are about 1.2 million milk cows in California 
and they produce annually about 22 billion pounds of milk.  
Milk cow productivity in California is the highest in the 
nation and near the highest for many reasons, but key among 
them are climate and availability of high quality feed.
	The demands for California dairy products has grown 
dramatically in the last two decades because of the very 
rapid population growth and increases in consumer income.
	The University of California in a recent study 
estimated that by the year 2010 the demand for California 
milk products will increase to about 36 billion pounds 
annually, about a 60-percent increase from current levels.
	Feed costs represent about one-half of the total 
production costs in the dairy industry.  The feed to go into 
the dairy rations include both roughages and concentrates.  
High quality alfalfa is by far the most important roughage 
feed to dairy cows in California and is valuable because of 
its energy protein and vitamin and mineral content.
	It is one of the most important factors that account 
for high cow's milk productivity in California.
	The California dairy industry uses more than half of 
the alfalfa grown.  The dairy industry also uses large 
amounts of agricultural by-products that would otherwise 
have limited use.  For example, approximately one-fourth of 
the State's cotton is processed into cottonseed meal, and 
virtually all of that cottonseed meal is used in the dairy 
industry.
	The industry also uses large amounts of sugarbeet 
pulp, citrus pulp, vegetable wastes and brewery and 
distillery grain waste products.
	In the past, dairy producers in California relied on 
pasture for much of their forage requirements, but as the 
number of cows has increased per herd and as the cost of 
water has increased, the use of pasture for dairy cows has 
decreased, the notable exception being the Del Norte and 
Humboldt region of the State where herds are relatively 
small and where pasture will be maintained with little or no 
irrigation because of high rainfall.
	Because there are many linkages to the crop 
production side of agriculture, the dairy industry has a 
real interest in the California water situation and the Bay-
Delta standards.
	The standards have some very disturbing implications 
for crop acreage and crop availability, particularly south 
of the Delta.
	One scenario in the U. S. EPA analysis concluded that 
the economic impacts of the standards on production 
agriculture would be relatively small and would be limited 
to a permanent idling of approximately 138,000 acres of hay 
and pasture.
	The analysis assumed that those acres would be spread 
uniformly throughout the Central Valley and that water could 
be traded freely throughout the Central Valley.  The 
analysis also assumed any cutbacks in surface water would 
not lead to increased groundwater pumping.
	Our company did an analysis of standards and our 
analysis indicates that there would be much larger impacts 
spread across more crops but in  a smaller geographic area, 
primarily the Southern San Joaquin Valley where the 
alternative water supplies are the most limited.  Our 
analysis is, we believe, reflective of what actually happens 
in water shortage scenarios for at least three reasons.
	First, water shortages affect different regions in 
different ways.  As I mentioned before, California 
agriculture is so large that it can't be characterized as 
one large homogeneous sector.
	Secondly, not only is hay affected by water 
shortages, and in fact, in 1991, more than 250,000 acres of 
crop land in the San Joaquin Valley were idled, and this 
included 160,000 acres of cotton, 13,000 acres of 
vegetables, as well as substantial acres of hay and other 
crops.
	Third, under the proposed standards, we believe that 
the occurrence, duration and magnitude of water shortages 
would all increase relative to the current operating 
requirements, and we believe as a result, impacts in 
agriculture would become increasingly worse over time.
	Our estimated acreage impacts based on the standards 
show that State Water Project contractors can expect at 
least a 40 percent shortage four and a half years out of 
ten, and that's versus two and a half years out of ten now.
	Central Valley Project contractors can expect at 
least a 40 percent shortage four years out of ten versus one 
year out of ten now, and at 65 percent shortage, which we 
call critically dry years, it can be expected two years out 
of ten.
	When these water supply scenarios are incorporated 
into the analysis of impacts of standards on agriculture, 
the results are much greater than those indicated in the U. 
S. EPA analysis, and we estimate that instead of merely 
identifying 130,000 acres of hay and pasture land, the 
standards would cause an idling of nearly 200,000 acres, 
including 21,000 acres of alfalfa, 104,000 of cotton, 41,000 
acres of vegetables, and 10,000 acres of permanent crops 
with a combined production value of approximately 250 
million dollars per year.
	In a critically dry year much more land would be 
temporarily idled and total land idled would increase to 
about 460,000 acres, and this would include 78,000 acres of 
alfalfa, 227,000 acres of cotton, 43,000 acres of vegetables 
and 109,000 acres of grain.
	These acreage impacts have onerous implications for 
farmers throughout the Central Valley, and for the many 
smaller economies in the valley where agricultural 
employment makes up to 40 percent of the total employment.
	The acreage impact, I think, also has disturbing 
implications for the California dairy industry, particularly 
in the San Joaquin Valley where most of this idling would 
occur.
	Because of the alfalfa acreage restrictions in that 
area, delivered alfalfa prices to dairies would increase by 
an estimated 15 to 20 dollars per ton in normal years, and 
up to 30 to 50 dollars in critical years as more alfalfa is 
shipped in from outside the area.
	We estimate that alfalfa grower prices would increase 
by anywhere from $2 per ton in normal years up to about $7-
1/2 a ton higher in critically dry years.
	Dairy production costs would increase, there would be 
a resultant decline in dairy income ranging from 5.1 million 
dollars in normal years to 18.6 million dollars in 
critically dry years.  Those figures are for the San Joaquin 
Valley.
	And for a typical San Joaquin Valley dairy, the 
reduction in annual net income could range from 25 to 95 
thousand dollars, or roughly 15 to 57 cents per 
hundredweight of milk.
	The dairy and production cost data from the 
California Department of Food and Agriculture showed that 
many peak dairy producers in the area under this environment 
would be marginal at best and nonviable at worst.
	One additional note:  Because of higher grower prices 
for alfalfa, all users of alfalfa would feel the impact.  We 
considered only the dairy industry throughout California, 
but we estimate because of these increases and because of 
the increases in the San Joaquin Valley, the income and job 
impact would range from 20,000 to 20,000,000 and 250 jobs in 
a normal year up to an income effect of about 71 million 
dollars and a thousand jobs lost in critically dry years.
	As you read through our report, you will see our 
analysis, our assumptions and our conclusions.  We feel that 
the estimated impact of water shortages on agriculture will 
be much greater than those typically believed.
	While the focus of our report is in particular on the 
San Joaquin Valley, as an example of the importance of 
regional considerations, many other regions of California 
agriculture, we feel, are vulnerable as well, including the 
Sacramento Valley, the mountain regions and the coastal 
regions.
	We tried to build reality checks into our analysis by 
looking at the types of adjustments that occurred in the 
last drought, by looking at differences in agriculture up 
and down the State, and by talking directly with water 
districts and growers to glean some insight into the ways 
they have adjusted to water shortages in the past.
	We believe that the Bay-Delta standards will have a 
much larger effect than those originally presented and we 
believe that crop and livestock production will be both 
adversely affected; and finally, we feel that there's far 
more at stake than the idling of 100,000 acres of hay and 
pasture land.
	There are, instead, entire subregional areas of the 
Central Valley that are looking at severe setbacks to both 
their regional economy and to their standard of living.
	I thank you for your time.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you.  Does that complete your 
presentation?
	MR. CONOVER:  We are available for questions.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We do have questions.  We have Mr. 
Brown, then Mr. Stubchaer and then Mr. Del Piero.
	MR. BROWN:  Bulletin 160 of DWR estimates there's 
about 9.5 million irrigated acres in California.  I believe 
that there are about 800,000 acres of irrigated pasture 
within the State.  I don't recall the irrigated acres of 
alfalfa.
	What is the payment capacity of alfalfa today?
	MS. WEAR:  About 800 to 1100 dollars.
	MR. BROWN:  And cost run?
	MS. WEAR:  It runs about, I think, 85 or 90 percent 
of that, so you are talking about margins to ownerships.
	MR. BROWN:  Alfalfa has a payment capacity in the 
neighborhood of 100 to 150 and maybe if you get six or seven 
cuttings, maybe up to $200 an acre.
	MS. WEAR:  That would be returns to ownership land 
management, right.
	MR. BROWN:  It is a pretty good crop in California.  
I agree with what you are saying.
	What would you estimate the payment capacity of 
800,000 acres of irrigated pasture on a per-acre basis?
	MR CONOVER:  I really don't know.  I guess it depends 
on the animal unit.
	MR. BROWN:  Maybe $50 an acre on irrigated pasture if 
you have a good year?
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Why don't you tell him it is more 
than he gets paid.
	MR. CONOVER:  I don't know.
	MR. BROWN:  Consumptive use of water on pasture is 
about four acre-feet?
	MR. CONOVER:  It used to be when it was much more 
prominent.
	MR. BROWN:  Alfalfa is maybe five?
	MR. CONOVER:  Two and a half to five up and down the 
valley.
	MR. BROWN:  If the State is short of water two 
million acre-feet today out of a 35 million acre-foot water 
usage referencing prior Bulletin 160 with projections going 
to five to seven million acre-feet of shortage by 2010, if 
we intend to pay our own way in water resources, do you 
think that water would probably come from agriculture -- pay 
our own way and quit mining the groundwater basins?
	MR. CONOVER:  I think that obviously this is one of 
the whole issues of discussion in the Bay-Delta standards, 
is the reallocation of water between agriculture and the 
environment and urban.  I think there probably will be more 
coming from agriculture.
	MR. BROWN:  Most people, unfortunately, think and 
probably believe that we will eventually be making up the 
shortfalls out of the agricultural community.  
	Three major water groups in the -- community.  
	Three major water groups in the State, environmental 
needs, the domestic, M&I water and agricultural community 
needs make up the total combined 35 million acre-feet we use 
annually.
	So, if there is a plan some day in the near future to 
pay our own way in water resources, many believe that would 
probably come from the agricultural community.  If it comes 
from the agricultural community then, would the payment 
capacity of crops or on a per-acre basis be a good indicator 
of where to take that water?
	MR. CONOVER:  I think there are two ways to look at 
that.  One, I think if you look at statewide averages, that 
probably gives a ballpark range of where things should come, 
but I also believe that the ultimate decision has to reflect 
as well regional considerations.
	MR. BROWN:  An acre-foot saved in Imperial 
Valley is one acre-foot less you have to export from the 
Delta.
	MR. CONOVER:  Right.
	MR. BROWN:  You made the statement here that the 
cutback in surface water would not lead to greater 
groundwater mining.
	MR. CONOVER:  That was one of the assumptions in the 
U. S. EPA analysis of the Bay-Delta standards they released 
in connection with that.
	MR. BROWN:  Do you think that was a good assumption?
	MR. CONOVER:  No, I think the drought has proven 
exactly the opposite.
	MR. BROWN:  If we were to make up some of the 
shortfalls existing and projected from the lower payment 
capacity crops and if that would be starting with the 
irrigated pasture, I think alfalfa, and I concur with your 
statement -- if we were to make up some of the shortfalls 
existing and projected from the lower payment capacity crops 
and if that would be starting with the irrigated pasture, I 
think alfalfa, and I concur with your statement that it's a 
higher payment capacity crop than some people believe it to 
be, but if we were to make it up with some of the hay, 
irrigated pasture and such, how much of the hay that we grow 
in the state right now is exported out of the state.
	MR. CONOVER:  Not very much actually.
	MR. BROWN:  Ten percent?
	MR. CONOVER:  A ballpark, probably 10 and roughly 85 
percent of the hay produced is alfalfa.
	MR. BROWN:  Can we buy hay?
	MR. CONOVER:  We can, although the last ten years 
average hay production in the states from which we buy has 
averaged five to six million tons a year and not all of that 
is dairy quality alfalfa hay, and most of that hay is being 
used in those states for their own milk production sectors.
	So, we don't feel that the California dairy sector 
can look at imports from other states as a gross part of the 
total supply.
	MR. BROWN:  That's important to know.  Thank you very 
much for your presentation.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Mr. Del Piero.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I have one question.  You indicated 
during the course of your presentation that the impact, the 
average economic impact of the various proposals on the Bay-
Delta decision would have greater effect on certain 
subareas, but you didn't indicate which of those areas of 
the San Joaquin Valley those subareas are located in.
	Can you articulate where those are, where the 
greatest impact would be?
	MR. CONOVER:  I apologize for that oversight.  We 
have it included in our analysis.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I haven't had a chance to read it 
yet.
	MR. CONOVER:  We feel that the greatest impacts are 
going to be in the southwestern part of the San Joaquin 
Valley.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Kern or Tulare County?
	MR. CONOVER:  Probably more towards Kern.  We feel 
the main issue there is that many of the lands down in that 
area, particularly in that part of Kern, don't overlie a 
groundwater basin so they wouldn't have the option of using 
groundwater to fill the need.
	Assuming that surface water shortages could not be 
made up long term from other surface water supplies, we feel 
those would be the most vulnerable areas.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Can I ask one more?
	MR. CAFFREY:  Go ahead.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  You would not recommend then 
permanent reliance upon imported water for permanent water 
uses in that area?
	MR. CONOVER:  Let me get through that -- permanent --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  From the standpoint of reliability, 
given the context of what's going on in terms of the Delta, 
in relationship to those areas that are mined or absent any 
groundwater resources readily available, you would not then 
from an economic standpoint recommend relying on imported 
supplies given what the potential consequences of this 
decision are for permanent uses in that area?
	MS. WEAR:  You mean for permanent crops?
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I mean for any uses, including urban, 
and maybe more importantly, specifically urban uses.
	Mr. Brown was talking about converting water use from 
agriculture to urban and one of the implications that we 
have seen is whether it is done directly, intentionally or 
negligently is probably the inappropriate term, probably the 
appropriate term is inadvertently.
	There has been a transfer of water resources from ag 
to other uses.  This process and the Club Fed process and 
the CVPIA process has redirected water from ag primarily to 
environmental uses.  Less direct but more permanent is the 
redirection of water from agricultural uses to urban uses.
	The question I have for you is in the event that 
transition is taking place, as Mr. Brown indicated, from an 
economic standpoint, is it a smart or not so smart thing to 
do to rely upon imported water supplies for alternative 
permanent uses in those areas of Kern County?
	MR. CONOVER:  I will be honest with you, I don't know 
how to respond in totality to that.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Can you respond in part?
	MR. CONOVER:  I think one of the issues that comes up 
again is regionality, and I guess when you look at the 
regional economics in that part of the San Joaquin Valley 
and the fact that the economy that was created there was 
initially set up resolving around agriculture and continues 
to revolve around agriculture, I personally have kind of a 
difficult time in terms of potentially saying go ahead and 
turn the water off, and we allocate it to other places.  I 
have a hard time to do that.
	I understand the difficulty that you all face in 
terms of making these decisions with what is a limited 
supply and almost an unlimited demand.  I am appreciative of 
that.  
	I think, again, and not trying to be redundant at 
all, the  --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  The wedge of cheese is getting 
smaller for us to carve off.
	MR. CONOVER:  The regionality issue, I think, is 
probably the most important and I think when you look at any 
one subregion of California agriculture, undoubtedly there 
are going to be certain crops that look less favorable in 
terms of their use of water and the value that can be 
imputed to that water than in others, but again, I think it 
has to be in the perspective of if the water is diverted 
away from an area that is so heavily dependent on 
agriculture, then what happens to the area?
	I am not trying to beg your question, but --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Other than Southwest Kern, is there 
any other area that is going to be hit, Southwest Tulare?
	MS. WEAR:  In the CVP the Westlands area because they 
have less access to groundwater.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Thank you so much.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Mr. Stubchaer.
	MR. STUBCHAER:   I have a simple question.  Is there 
any methodology in your report that would enable our staff 
to evaluate the cost, the economic cost to your industry at 
various levels of shortages?
	MR. CONOVER:  I think our method is generalizable, if 
that's the right word, and we would be happy to share that 
with you.
	MR. STUBCHAER:   Is it stated in the report in enough 
detail to be applied?  Would it have to be obtained 
separately?
	MR. CONOVER:  There's enough detail in the report, 
although any questions you or your staff have, we are in 
Sacramento and we would be glad to provide any information 
you need.
	MR. STUBCHAER:   You have an address on Capitol Mall 
as well as Vancouver, Washington?  Is that a full-time 
office?
	MR. CONOVER:  Our Vancouver office has been in place 
since 1977.  We have been in Sacramento since 1991.
	MR. STUBCHAER:   Thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Ms. Forster.
	MS. FORSTER:  I had a cost question to ask you.  When 
you estimate your costs, do you estimate direct costs or do 
you throw in indirect costs when you are doing this 
analysis?
	MS. WEAR:  We did it both ways and we tried to be 
real clear which was which.  There is only one table in 
there that estimates what we felt to be the linkage effect 
to the rest of the California State economy.
	The bulk of the numbers that are in there are direct 
impacts to the dairy industry.
	MS. FORSTER:  I just ask because doing economic 
impacts on environmental issues is sort of on the cutting 
edge and I have been reading different papers and I just 
finished one from Harvard, and in reading there were 11 
recommendations they have.
	It is my own feeling that to be able to get a 
layman's understanding of the economic impacts, we have to 
be more focused on direct costs so that people can 
understand and compare because the indirect costs just get 
you going in all different ways and they are pretty 
subjective in some ways.
	So, that's why I was interested.
	MR. CAFFREY:  I believe that completes the questions 
from the Board members.
	Anything from staff?
	MR. HOWARD:  No.
	MR. CAFFREY:  All right, Dr. Paul and Dr. Wear and 
Mr. Conover, Mr. Gould, we very much appreciate --
	MR. CONOVER:  Mr. Chairman, if I could make a 
concluding remark, I think the purpose of the industry as a 
commodity and the submittal of the document is to insure 
that while there are many other commodities that you look 
at, cotton, rice and so on and so forth, the commodity here 
we want to make sure you pay attention to in addition to 
alfalfa is our commodity, which is milk, and milk is much 
like rice and cotton and other groups.  Milk is a substance 
that both State and Federal legislators have identified as a 
substance that is needed by the Merced County people, so we 
want to raise that Merced County flag and have you look 
frequently at that product when you look at alfalfa.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We very much appreciate your efforts 
and we have copies of your report which we will look at with 
interest, and we also appreciate the local availability and 
perhaps you will be participating further in Mr. Pettit's 
public meetings on the various alternatives.
	Thank you all very much.
	Let me say we will now take a lunch break and we will 
resume the workshop at l:30 this afternoon.  Thank you very 
much.
	(Noon recess)




THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 1, 1994, 1:30 P.M.
--o0o--
	MR. CAFFREY:  All right, we will resume.
	Are the representatives from Kern County -- have 
they arrived yet?  They were scheduled to go first. They are 
not in the room, so let's go with Mr. Thomas and Mr. 
Fullerton.
	MR. GREGORY:  We are actually here to praise Caesar 
rather than bury him.  We wanted to respond to the CUWA 
recommendations.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Would you prefer to go later on?
	MR. GREGORY:  If that's convenient for them.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Okay.  Let's go then with them.  That 
would be Mr. Bishop, Mr. Wodraska -- why don't you gentlemen 
come forward.
	Good afternoon, welcome. 
	Even though you are famous individuals, please 
identify yourselves first for the record.
	MR. BISHOP:  For the record, I am Wally Bishop, 
General Manager of Contra Costa Water District, but I am 
here today speaking on behalf of the California Urban Water 
Association which you probably have seen us at many 
meetings.  We are comprised of 11 agencies that constitute 
service to over 20 million customers in the State of 
California and a large portion of the commercial and 
industrial activities.
	With us today on our panel will be the General 
Manager of Metropolitan Water District, William Wodraska, 
who I will introduce later, and inform the Board as to what 
we will be covering, and also, we have with us today 
Attorney Kevin Haroff, who will be making very specific 
presentations to the Board on our plan.
	We have prepared for the Board for your 
consideration what we consider to be a coordinated 
comprehensive plan.  That plan is dealing with a wide range 
of the issues before the Board.  
	We heard comments this morning and I thought I would 
address them up front, of concern about specifics.  
	We completely understand the scope which CUWA and 
the team of consultants have undertaken is a very 
comprehensive approach to the problems of the Bay-Delta.  
Consequently, we will as we present the plan, even though we 
have attempted where possible to provide specific comments, 
that in some areas with respect to, say, the standards, we 
are very specific, even to the point, if you look at the 
attachment, we have drafted a draft resolution the Board 
might want to consider for the standards.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We noticed that.
	MR. BISHOP:  We just want to be helpful, and in 
other issues that we have dealt with such as the operational 
controls, you will see that we have proposed outlines and 
requests for some time for more information, all of this 
trying to be helpful, but giving the Board a full sense of 
the wide range of issues we want to deal with.
	I will give the Board an overview probably in the 
next five minutes.  Woody will be talking to the Board and 
what you are seeing is a phrase used often in our plan, 
ecosystem management plan, and we will also be talking about 
various management strategies that we see as ways to 
approach this both in terms of not only what to implement, 
but how to phase it, and the timing for that.
	And finally, Kevin will follow and take the Board, 
depending on your time and how much you want to get into 
very detailed specifics, and really, at that point when 
Kevin makes his presentation, we will rely on the Board -- 
if you feel we are getting too much into the details and you 
want to move on, by all means let us know.
	At the last workshop CUWA expressed accord with the 
State Board's efforts to develop standards and other 
requirements.  We stated that progress had been made for 
developing recommendations for the State Board but 
additional time is needed to make those recommendations more 
specific.
	We think we have made considerable progress since 
the last workshop.  Our scientists and staff have met not 
only among ourselves but with other interested parties, both 
in the environmental and agricultural communities.  
	As you may have heard this morning, at least in the 
EPA presentation and others, the CUWA process at least with 
respect to the standards is getting mentioned in many cases 
as the approach that's being at least used as the baseline 
for others to consider.
	We think that is a measure of success.  Our 
recommendations contained in the plan incorporate several 
interrelated elements, what we call the coordinated estuary 
protection plan.
	There are three components of that plan.  The first, 
what we considerable to be the fundamental baseline, is the 
recommended estuary habitat standards to be adopted by the 
Board in lieu of standards previously proposed by EPA.
	While you may have heard various members of the 
testifiers this morning talk about consensus on that plan, 
we think there is consensus on the broad concept, what is 
referred to as the sliding scale.  There are two ways to 
measure.  
	We are not here to tell you there is absolute 
consensus across the Board on very specific elements of that 
plan.  So, we have consensus, we think, in areas 
particularly among the urban community that the way we are 
proposing the standards be implemented with the sliding 
scale and the two ways of implementation, but we are not 
here to tell you all parties agree with all the aspects of 
that.
	The second part of the plan is a recommendation for 
development and implementation of the operational 
requirements.  
	I am here to tell you we have a very broad approach 
in the report.  
	We are also asking that the administrative record in 
this particular area be kept open until the end of October.
	We have a commitment inasmuch as we have spent 
considerable time on the standards and development of that 
because that was the original focus of this with the EPA 
proposal, that we would like to now turn our attention to 
looking at the various recent proposals that have come 
forward, both from the State Water Contractors as well as 
the agricultural community and DWR for various operational 
constraints for the operation of the Bay-Delta.  We consider 
that to be an integral second part of this plan. 
	We do not have a specific plan for you today, but we 
feel if we could work in our consensus-building mode with 
our scientists at some time by the end of October we would 
be able to make a specific proposal to you.
	And finally, a third part of our plan is a series of 
recommendations for the regulation of additional 
biodegradational factors that have adversely affected the 
species abundance in the estuary.  
	Such things as poaching, you talked this morning 
about land-derived salt pollution discharges, restoration of 
habitat wetlands.  These are all issues that we think need 
to be dealt with in the comprehensive plan.
	In implementing CUWA's proposed coordinated program, 
we believe that a high priority should be given to the near-
term adoption of standards.  While standards alone are not 
sufficient, they would provide a necessary baseline against 
which the success of the other actions proposed can be 
measured.
	CUWA supported the adoption of a broad estuary 
habitat standard and incorporates key aspects of the water 
quality standards proposed earlier this year by EPA.  This 
includes the two parts per thousand salinity criteria.
	At the same time, CUWA is making very distinctive 
changes and modifications to the EPA proposal that will 
allow the standard to be applied in a biologically more 
appropriate manner.
	We have objected to the application previously at 
three locations in the Delta.  After further analysis and 
discussion with EPA and others, CUWA's current position is 
that standards should be imposed at Rowe Island if 
implemented in the way that we have described with respect 
to the sliding scale and three ways to measure compliance.
	CUWA's recommended estuary habitat standard is 
designed to reflect actual conditions in the estuary while 
using the sliding scale approach and determining compliance 
on a month-to-month basis.
	It also incorporates biological equivalent flow 
criteria, applied flexibility in achieving, and compliance 
has been measured as well as habitat protection.
	We believe that the recommended standards should and 
can be adopted by the State Board in the near future.  In 
doing so, however, the State Board needs to move forward in 
the identification of the operational requirements and we 
are committed to help you in that, and that's our request, 
that we be allowed to present by the end of October what we 
feel to be a consensus plan that can be derived from those 
requirements.
	Without a determined effort to implement the full 
range of strategies identified by CUWA, it is necessary 
apart from the coordinated Bay-Delta plan that the future 
health of the estuary will continue to remain in doubt for 
years.
	The second part of our proposal today is also 
dealing with the issue the Board was questioning this 
morning.  We have a plan.  There's clearly components of 
that plan that can be adopted now and there are still areas 
of particularly the ecosystem management approach which need 
to be worked out.  There has been a considerable amount of 
time in our testimony talking about how to phase in this 
plan.  
	We deal not only with the preparation, but the 
timing for phasing in various components.  We start with a 
process for identifying criteria that the Board might use 
for identifying on an interim basis where the water would 
come from to meet the initial standard requirements.  We 
talk about an approach that would implement a water impact 
cap using a restoration fund, and we also talk about an 
approach in which the Board would set up a banking system 
for logging mitigation credits.
	In the beginning mitigation credits would be for 
water for the ecosystem plan, the overall plan to come 
together and it can be used for habitat restoration as well 
as water costs.
	We urge the Board to consider the comprehensive 
nature of this plan.  We will acknowledge that we need to 
come back to you with more information, particularly what we 
call the second part of the plan.
	At this time, I would like to turn it over to Woody 
Wodraska, who will talk to the Board about the ecosystem 
plan approach and some of the strategies of both.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Bishop.
	I would just have one observation at this point.  
Certainly I don't want to jam your good work or stifle 
anybody, but the schedule that we are about at the Board and 
how long it takes to properly write and document a plan is 
problematic for us, and to the extent that you could maybe 
have this good work done even before the end of October, 
perhaps more in keeping with the series of meetings that Mr. 
Pettit is going to be conducting, it would be extremely 
helpful if you would go back and maybe take a look at your 
schedule and see if that's a possibility.
	Hopefully it will be, and if it is not, we need to 
know that, too.
	MR. BISHOP:  On the operation requirements?
	MR. CAFFREY:  Yes.  
	MR. BISHOP:  Maybe Woody can speak to this also.
	We discussed how long it would take us.  The key for 
us is not so much our putting together a plan and putting it 
before you, but trying to find a way if we can have some 
consensus between the various approaches we have seen up to 
now.
	If the idea is for us to move as quickly as we can 
with our scientists to carve out what we think and maybe use 
another process, either at Walt's meetings or whatever, to 
bring consensus from that, I am sure we can move quickly.
	We have not missed a schedule.  We put our minds and 
our money where we need to go so we can do it as quickly as 
we can, but we may not be able to build this consensus we 
are hoping for.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Some of this timing may be based on 
the success of the meetings where we discuss the 
alternatives.
	MR. BISHOP:  I would think so.  If the parties are 
far apart and we are coming in with another plan that may 
not be in the envelope, then it may not help, but if we can 
come up with something that moves everybody to one position, 
it may help you.
	But if the challenge is for us to try to get 
something in earlier, I can't speak for all the Board 
members, but I think we will consider it very strongly.
	MR. CAFFREY:  I appreciate that very much.
	Good afternoon, Mr. Wodraska.
	MR. WODRASKA:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman and Board 
members.  
	It is good to be here and I will pick up on the 
point that you raised about where do we go and how do we put 
this together.  
	The last time I appeared before you was in April of 
'94, and I shared with you the Standard & Poor's, kind of 
described it as the morning shadow of doubt for California 
on how we have to come out of this gridlock that is 
strangling the Bay-Delta and our future economy according to 
Standard & Poor's credit rating.
	The other point I tried to make then was what I have 
come to learn is pretty unusual in California's recent 
history, and that is the urban interest, Northern and 
Southern California coming together and presenting a joint 
position through CUWA.
	And the third question that I have been asked quite 
a bit, and I want to make the Board understand why CUWA did 
this.  Why didn't we just wait and see what EPA comes up 
with and under the Clean Water Act had the CUWA alternative 
not been put on the table in response to the December 15 
federal proposal, there are restrictions on what the Federal 
Government can do and what they can consider, and the 
bargaining position that the State of California gained by 
having this alternative out there really gave us a lot more 
flexibility as we have gone forward, and I think in 
retrospect all those were right things and really put us in 
a key position today to move forward.
	And the reason I am here before you today, I think I 
see a plan coming together, and under your leadership I 
think I see a way to get there.
	Since my April testimony, three significant other 
events have occurred, all of which I would classify as very 
positive in helping us move in this direction.
	The first was signing of the Federal-State framework 
agreement.  Critical, and actually I want to change that 
around.  I view that as a State-Federal agreement with State 
primacy, State leadership in this, and I see that coming 
together and I'm very optimistic about everything we hear in 
that regard.
	The second thing, on June 30, 11 of the top 
businessmen in the state, in response to the Standard & 
Poor's letter, sent a letter to the President and the 
Governor and they said two things in the letter.  They said, 
Mr. President, you have to do something about the Endangered 
Species Act.  It has a stranglehold on the future of 
California and you have to provide some relief and some 
predictability and certainty in the Endangered Species Act; 
and they said Mr Governor, you need to provide leadership.  
We are looking forward to the State to assume the leadership 
role necessary to solve this problem.
	On August 11, just less than a month ago, Bruce 
Babbitt announced in a press release in dealing -- we had 
several meetings with the Department of the Interior 
Secretary Babbitt on ESA related issues, and with the White 
House.  The memo was called a deal was a deal.
	Now, I have got to tell you that we were concerned 
in reading that press release.  
	It could be argued it was a terrestrial base and 
more of a private property, which certainly is a problem 
with the ESA, but the question came up, does it apply to 
aquatic systems.  Will this be applicable in the Bay-Delta 
related issues?
	We received assurances, and I wrote a letter on 
August 18 to Secretary Babbitt saying I was planning on 
testifying on September 1 before the State Board, and it 
sure would be nice if I got the concurrence from the 
Secretary that his August 11 proclamation on ESA applied to 
the Bay-Delta.
	We are assured by the Department of the Interior 
that this pronouncement on the deal is a deal, and in 
providing flexibility under the existing law under ESA, was 
intended to apply to aquatic systems.
	Let me spend a moment and tell you why I think this 
is so important.  As you know, the Federal Endangered 
Species Act was up for reauthorization.  I believe the State 
of California should heighten this, and in the deliberations 
that are going to take place, and obviously it is not going 
to happen in this Congress, but it is going to happen at 
some point in the future, and if the Endangered Species Act 
can work, I would say, let's use the Bay-Delta as a litmus 
test.
	I think we ought to say, here is the perfect example 
for the administration to show us, indeed, that the ESA has 
the flexibility that they say is included in it as Congress 
goes through their deliberation about what should be the 
future of the ESA.
	I think it is in our best interest to elevate it to 
that issue.  It's a key part of the strategy that I think 
California should embrace.
	Let me close by saying I have tried to put myself as 
if I was sitting on the Board and I was listening to all the 
testimony and going through the different hearings, what 
would I do or how would I take all this information that you 
have gotten and what would I do with this?  And although a 
clear plan hasn't emerged as to what is the clear path and 
everybody will tell you, by gosh, here is the right thing to 
do, but I think what is emerging, particularly using the 
standard as the starting point, I think there's a plan that 
you are going to hear or have heard from people in the 
environmental community.  We are going to say, no, it is not 
the best plan, there are faults with it, but it is something 
we can work with, the sliding-scale concept, and how we can 
protect the important estuarine habitat.  It forms the 
basis.
	I think you will hear from people in the 
agricultural community who will say, no, there's still a lot 
of questions unanswered, but in looking at the science 
that's driven this and what we have come up with so far, 
maybe represents a kind of a beginning point or foundation 
as we go forward.
	And on the question of the time frame, Category 2, 
and how we deal with that, I think if we start coming 
together and rather than having a CUWA initiative and having 
an agricultural and environmental and various State agencies 
all working on alternative plans, if we can start narrowing 
down and saying, without making a commitment, but saying 
this is the direction we think will get us where we need to 
be, I think the proposal that Kevin is going to go through 
in some detail, and I want to tell you I have spent more 
hours than I care to, and we have details that will bore you 
to death, and we are prepared to go into them to any extent 
you want to.
	My purpose is really kind of to lay out a strategy 
and we have challenged the people in the environmental 
community, agricultural, State agencies, tell us where the 
fatal flaw is in the plan CUWA has developed, and I think we 
can present to you a plan that would be the basis for where 
we go from here, and that would be my recommendation to the 
Board.
	In closing, I am a newcomer to this, but one of the 
things that was really exciting and what brought me to 
California was the rest of the nation is looking at 
California for really deciding how we are going to deal with 
these tough problems.  It is happening in the water 
resources or natural resources management, it is happening 
in California.  It can be part of making history.  This is 
an exciting time.
	You have a chance to seize control of California's 
future in the actions that are going to be coming out of 
this.  
	There's a game plan that I hear people who have been 
frustrated by this for more than a decade saying, I can see 
a light in this tunnel, but it is going to require what the 
businessmen ask of the State, show leadership, start 
channeling our efforts and attention on the focal point of 
where we end up, and I'm convinced we can do it.
	Thank you very much.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Wodraska.
	MR. BISHOP:  I should mention before Kevin gets up 
we also have Austin Nelson here, who was one of the primary 
authors of the sliding scale and the three components, so if 
you have any questions on that, he has also modeled the 
water costs relative to our position, so he is also here in 
case you have any questions.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Bishop.
	Mr. Haroff, good afternoon, sir.
	MR. HAROFF:  Thank you very much, Mr. Caffrey.
	I think my presentation has been a bit overbilled in 
terms of level of detail I am going to be going into.
	What I will try to do is to go through some systems.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I was looking forward to asking you 
questions.
	MR. HAROFF:  I think it might be more useful for us 
to skate through given our time constraints a little more 
quickly with some level of detail what we put together in 
the package of recommendations that we have submitted to you 
in the last couple of days, and I will be here, as well as a 
variety of other people who have participated in the working 
group that developed our recommendations, to respond to any 
questions that you may have.
	Mr. Bishop, in particular, did a pretty good 
introduction and overview of the package which is why I 
hesitate to repeat too much.  A lot of focus in that 
presentation really related to one of the key elements in 
the recommendations that we have prepared and that is our 
proposed estuarine habitat standard.
	I'll talk about that standard a little bit, but one 
of the things I want to do is give you the flavor of the 
theme that runs through the recommendations that we propose, 
which is that standards alone are not the only answer.  We 
have characterized our package of recommendations as a 
series of coordinated, or rather, as a coordinated estuarine 
protection program, Bay-Delta protection program, and we 
think the different program elements that we have identified 
in our recommendations are all equally important to the 
success of the program.
	After all, standards are important but they are not 
the only answer.
	Walt, you can indulge me by putting on the first of 
several overheads.  Walt is with the Santa Clara Water 
District.  He should probably be doing this and I should 
probably be sitting there.
	Again, the first component of the recommendations 
that we put together in our package is the estuarine habitat 
standard.  That's set forth in detail in Appendix 1 of the 
materials we submitted to the State Board last week.
	A couple of guiding principles have motivated us in 
thinking about estuarine habitat and putting together a 
standard.  The first is an overall emphasis on the standard 
itself on general estuarine habitat protection, which is 
protection directed at the Bay beneficial uses to which the 
estuary is put, both fish, wildlife and other beneficial 
uses.
	Second, a motivating principle is to recognize the 
natural hydrological variability of the system and not 
attempt to put together a regulation that ignores the 
variation on an annual basis and an interim basis.
	Third, we have been guided in putting together our 
recommendation by the desire to insure that the regulation 
allows for operational flexibility.  The single focus on 
salinity that we have seen people look to in the past, we 
don't think is adequate.  
	I was at least encouraged to hear this morning some 
of the remarks from Mr. Wright recognizing that equivalent 
flow ought to be part of a regulatory standard.  That is 
part of our standard and it is an important part of our 
standard.
	As Mr. Bishop pointed out, our standard incorporates 
the EPA X2 approach with the three compliance locations, 
including compliance location at Rowe Island, which is not 
part of the original comments that we had submitted to you 
earlier this summer. 
	We do include within our regulation standard 
alternative salinity and flow criteria and we do include as 
an important part of our standard to recognize hydrological 
variability in the estuary, the use of the sliding scale 
approach.
	On individual species protection, we are not 
recommending a specific standard to address a salmon smolt 
survival or striped bass as EPA has.  We don't think an 
individual standard for individual species protection is 
appropriate.
	We think that our estuarine habitat standard will go 
a long way toward protecting individual species, plus we 
also think it is important to focus on the adoption of 
operational requirements which will also go a long way 
towards protecting a variety of different species that 
depend upon the estuary, which leads to the next overhead.
	We have proposed in our package of recommendations a 
second program element for our coordinated program.  This 
would address the water inflow/outflow in other management 
measures that people have talked about during the course of 
the testimony earlier today.
	Again, we have been motivated by a couple of guiding 
principles in our thinking about this issue because we don't 
have as much of a specific recommendation as we do with 
respect to a habitat standard.
	The guiding principles we believe are important in 
developing these management requirements are minimizing 
adverse impacts to water users consistent with biological 
requirements that will be reflected by and large in the 
estuarine habitat standard that we are proposing.
	In addition, we think it is important to recognize 
the need for coordination with other agencies, other 
agencies like the projects that will be required to be 
involved in carrying out some of these activities, not just 
simply a process alone, although we think it is important 
for the State Board to exercise leadership in this issue and 
move forward on that basis.
	As we have already discussed, our proposal on this 
aspect of the program is not specific.  We think we have 
made a lot of progress.  CUWA scientists and staff have been 
meeting with representatives of agencies of organizations 
over the last few months.  We think we have made a lot of 
progress in identifying specific management requirements we 
think will be part of the answer long term, but we do think 
additional work is required on that issue.
	I think our plan is very much consistent with the 
schedule that the Board proposed earlier this morning in 
terms of allowing parties to get together to try to develop 
consensus, to work with State Board staff and try to get 
something that is specific and concrete by way of proposals 
to the State Board in accordance with the end-of-October 
deadline.
	The third component of our coordinated estuarine 
action program is what we have called regulation of 
biodegradation factors.  We had a hard time coming up with a 
good term for this part of the program.  We started out by 
saying regulation of other factors.  People didn't really 
like that because that suggested that some of the factors 
that we think need to be addressed in this component are, in 
fact, secondary in importance to salinity, flow and some of 
the other things we have talked about in the first two parts 
of the program. 
	We don't think that.  We think these are very 
important factors that need to be considered up front by the 
State Board.
	Not all of the actions that may be required to 
address these factors can be done in the very near term.  
Some can.  We think it is very important as part of the 
overall coordinated program to keep in mind the need to deal 
with some of these factors and move forward on that basis.
	Again, the guiding principle behind what we propose 
in our recommendations is a recognition that salinity and 
flow are not the only factors that affect species abundance 
in the estuary, a recognition that estuary protection 
requires a multipronged and multiagency effort with the 
State Board exercising a leadership role, but recognizing 
the fact that other agencies will have to be involved in 
carrying out some of these requirements.
	We have in our package, and I won't go into a lot of 
detail on what we set out in our written materials, but we 
have various recommendations, some with greater specificity, 
some with less specificity on a number of different factors 
we think are important to be addressed over time.  
	I have listed some of these up on the slide; 
unscreened diversions, pollution prevention and additional 
requirements on waste discharge, enhancement, control of 
fishing, both legal and illegal, on the issue of land- 
derived salt which was an issue discussed at some length 
already this morning, control of exotic species and habitat 
control and restoration.
	Again, in the interest of time, I think if the Board 
has specific questions about any of these, we do have myself 
and others who can respond to those questions and get into 
some level of detail.
	The last part of the package of recommendations that 
we have submitted to the State Board has to do with 
implementation.  Several guiding principles that motivated 
our thinking on this issue are:
	A need for shared responsibility of all users whose 
	use of the watershed have contributed to some of the 
	problems the Bay-Delta is facing, a need for 
	coordination among the different program elements 
	that we have identified in our package, including 
	standard, but also, operational requirements and 
	the regulatory approaches to address biodegradation 
	factors;  
	A need to facilitate water transfers in order o 
	minimize impacts on individual parties;
	And finally, consistency with the framework 
	agreement to reflect, again, that the different 
	regulatory strategies that will be required here 
	will involve different agencies at both State and 
	Federal level, and will also require some phasing 
	implementation approaches.
	The phasing is an important concept of our 
recommendations.  We think some things can be done earlier 
than other things.  We think the adoption of an estuarine 
habitat standard can be done at an early stage as part of a 
water quality control plan adopted by the State Board in the 
beginning of next year.
	We endorse the concept of the framework agreement to 
have the Board enter into negotiations with the State Water 
Project and the Central Valley Project to develop agreements 
about their contribution towards achieving estuarine habitat 
protection.
	We recognize that in the long term there will be 
required a water rights proceeding in order to make sure 
that all parties are brought into the process in a fair and 
reasonable way.
	The actions to address biodegradation factors, this 
will require, again, a range of regulatory strategies, but 
we think many of those strategies can be identified and 
addressed up front by the State Board, provisions adopted by 
the State Board to address some of these factors and 
specific recommendations the State Board can make to other 
agencies that may have more direct jurisdiction to deal with 
those matters.
	The last two items on the slide deal with a variety 
of issues that we have endorsed conceptually in the package 
of recommendations that we submitted to you.  These relate 
to implementation and to issues dealing with the relative 
impacts to users that will have responsibility for 
implementation as time goes on.
	We have included some discussion and recommendations 
on water impact caps, mitigation credits and mitigation 
funds.  I think there might be a little confusion about what 
we are at least suggesting in terms of impact caps.  What we 
are talking about here is a level beyond which other 
mechanisms may be required to allow individual users to meet 
obligations that they would otherwise be required to meet 
through purchase of water.
	The concept of mitigation credits, we think, would 
be an important part of implementation initially to allow 
individual users to meet their obligations through money, 
but ultimately possibly also through other mitigation 
efforts.
	That, basically, covers my quick and dirty overview 
of the recommendations that we put together.  I appreciate 
the opportunity to appear before you this afternoon.  I 
think the package of recommendations that have been put 
together is a good one.  It reflects a lot of hard work by 
CUWA's technical staff and others, and we are ready to 
answer questions.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Haroff and thanks to 
the other gentlemen.
	Let me ask the Board members if they have any 
questions.
	Ms. Forster.
	MS. FORSTER:  Your submittal was outstanding, very 
thorough, very thoughtful, and I can tell you entailed lots 
and lots of hours of work.
	MR. HAROFF:  By a variety of different people.
	MS. FORSTER:  Very well done.
	Did you pick up this table, I think it was a summary 
of comparative water supply impacts that was out on the 
front table?
	MR. HAROFF:  I noticed there was a table out there.  
I haven't personally had a chance to look at it.
	MR. BISHOP:  The way CUWA is organized, we have used 
the Contra Costa Water District modeling water resources 
group, using our Fisher model for most of the water costs.  
	I will give you two numbers we are using.  The 
particular X2 standard that we are proposing has an average 
year water cost of 160,000 acre-feet and a critical year 
water cost around 300,000.  Now, clearly that's not 
equivalent to some of the other numbers that you have heard 
in the millions of acre-feet because the operation 
requirements are not plugged into that, and that's why it is 
critical we get the operational components, but you have 
heard water costs for some of the EPA X standard initially 
in the millions of acre-feet of water, so that's why we 
think the variability and flexibility of this particular 
approach with the 160,000 acre-foot on average and the 
300,000 on critical is something that we think the Board can 
look at in your balancing approach.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Mr. Brown.
	MR. BROWN:  Mr. Bishop, I also compliment you and 
your associates on the product that you presented and thank 
you for your interest and help. 
	I notice on the drainage issue that you also address 
that in the San Joaquin Valley and you have considerations 
in there for what some call the short-term solution, which 
is controlling the salt accumulation and releases into the 
streams and such, but there's nothing in there right now for 
the long-term solution which probably will require a salt 
balance of some sort.
	Do you have some consideration or ideas that you 
might be able to submit in the final document to address 
that issue also?
	MR. BISHOP:  We can elaborate on what we have put in 
and Roger James, who at one time was Executive Director of 
the Regional Board, participated very heavily in, but the 
Board has various tools available to them right now.  You do 
have a nonpoint source plan which talks about a series of 
ratcheting it up, again the voluntary type program.
	It is not the solution but it talks about how you 
start moving.  
	The Coastal Zone Act requires a revision of that and 
more ratcheting up, if you will.
	There have been other techniques used in my old 
days.  On the pollution side the Board has strong powers 
with respect to reimposing monitoring requirements on 
various people as part of either permits or other issues.  
You have a waste-to-land discharge permitting process which 
is not an NPDES process.  There are various tools out there.  
	I think the issues that were asked about this 
morning, which is what is the solution, that's a little more 
difficult, but I can recall in days when water quality 
management plans were put in place and objectives 
established where people were building secondary, tertiary 
or whatever treatment plants, and the solutions came from 
goals, objectives, standards, but you do have tools 
available to start moving this problem forward without 
saying we have to know whether it is going to be an 
evaporation or trucked to the ocean or whatever.
	MR. BROWN:  I was wondering if you were going to 
address it in your document?
	MR. BISHOP:  We have addressed what tools are 
available in terms of the solution, what the Board ought to 
do.  We could go into more detail on how we see a scenario 
using available plans you have now in a phased approach.  We 
could do that if you would like.  We have touched around the 
edges.  If you would like us to pull that together, that is 
something we could do.
	MR. BROWN:  I think the long-term solution needs to 
be to see what options, if indeed there are any, that are 
reasonable that might be available to you.
	MR. BISHOP:  I think we could provide that, say, in 
a technical memo to the Board.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Any other questions from Board 
members?  Anything from staff?
	MR. HOWARD:  I had a question.
	These X2 standards have generally been established 
at various levels of development.  What was the level of 
development that's presently incorporated in CUWA's  
proposal?
	MR. NELSON:  This was based on the level of 
development that represents conditions in the late 1960s to 
early 1970s.
	MR. HOWARD:  I notice that you said that the X2 
standard alone costs 160,000 acre-feet of additional outflow 
between the February and June period on average.  Is that 
correct?
	MR. NELSON:  That's on average based on the historic 
period 1968 through 1991, yes.
	MR. HOWARD:  It just seems that would imply that 
there has only been between the late sixties and early 
seventies and the present approximately 160,000 acre-feet of 
additional water development between February and June.  
That seems to be what that number implies to me.
	Is that your characterization?
	MR. NELSON:  I had not thought of it in those terms.
	MR. HOWARD:  Okay, thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  That seems to conclude the questions.   
	I want to thank you gentlemen for all your 
continuing efforts.  We very much look forward to your 
participation in the meetings Mr. Pettit is going to hold 
with all the parties and the involved public agencies, and 
we think that you can be a very important integral part of 
forming some kind of an alternative that we can perhaps 
identify as a preferred alternative in our efforts here at 
the Board, so we commend you and all the other parties who 
are working in this way.
	We appreciate very much your coming here.  Thank you 
very much.
	I think what we will do now, because Mr. Fullerton 
and Mr. Thomas asked if they could follow the CUWA 
presentation, they have asked for ten minutes and we will do 
that next, and then we will go the public agency 
presentation of Kern County and Tulare Lake Basin right 
after this presentation.
	Good afternoon, gentlemen.
	MR. THOMAS:  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman.
	MR. FULLERTON:  I will start off.  I am Dave 
Fullerton of the National Heritage Institute.
	Greg Thomas -- and Greg Thomas is my colleague.
	We appreciate your willingness to hold another 
workshop to take more testimony on standards.  We have 
already provided extensive comments in previous workshops, 
and what we want to do today is talk about the CUWA document 
which we have had a chance to review over the last couple of 
days, and we would like to give the most attention to the 
elements which we think are most pressing for you today, 
which are the standards.
	But we also have a couple of words to say about 
implementation strategies.
	The Bay Institute and the Environmental Defense Fund 
are also here today and I think that they will want to 
discuss some other elements of the other recommendations.
	Over the past several months, the urban and 
environmental communities have worked diligently to narrow 
our differences over the appropriate form of Bay-Delta 
standards and how those standards should be implemented, and 
we have made a great deal of progress.  
	In particular, we have achieved substantial, albeit 
not total, agreement on the details of an estuarine habitat 
standard, and we seem to agree in principle on how to set 
and implement a salmon smolt survival standard.
	In general, I have to agree that we are very pleased 
and impressed with the CUWA recommendations.  
	The urban agencies have acted in good faith to 
provide scientifically based, proactive recommendations 
designed to help solve the problems in the estuary, and this 
is a major step forward and we are very appreciative of what 
they have done.  
	We don't agree with everything in the document, but 
we seem to be talking now more about how best to achieve a 
goal which is estuarine protection than whether or not it 
should be achieved.
	We believe that this convergence provides a firm 
basis on which to erect standards.  And in this regard, we 
particularly note the CUWA endorsement of the Rowe Island 
standards.  
	However, while acknowledging CUWA's constructive 
contribution, we would like to point out several areas where 
we have some differences with what they have put forward in 
this document, and that is what we would like to turn to 
now.
	With respect to the estuarine habitat standard, 
which is the X2 standard, we agree with almost everything 
which has been suggested by CUWA on the X2 standard and, in 
fact, we worked with CUWA to develop the methodology upon 
which the sliding scale was based.  
	We have basically two concerns that we would like to 
bring out with the standards.  
	One is the level of protection which is imbedded in 
the standards.  CUWA proposes that the standard should seek 
to replicate salinity conditions at the three control points 
based upon 1968 to 1975 conditions, which in terms of the 
mathematics, natural setting days, our understanding is that 
translates into 1971.5 conditions.  That's what you plug 
into the mathematical equation.
	We believe that under the State's antidegradation 
policy, that the State Board cannot seek to replicate 
conditions based on any time later than the 1968 level of 
development, and that it may need to go to an earlier date 
in order to protect the resource, and we provided a great 
deal of testimony on this at length in our comments to the 
EPA, and those were provided as an attachment early on 
during these hearings; therefore, we don't support the 
numbers in the CUWA appendix, Tables 1, 2 and 3.
	We think that the equations need to be rerun using a 
target date of 1968 or earlier.  I don't think this would 
provide a major difference in the outcome, but it would, I 
think, put the State Board on firmer ground.
	The second point on the estuarine standard is the 
question of the trigger, the Rowe Island trigger.  We are 
not convinced that a trigger is needed to the extent that  
correlations are accurate between unimpaired flow conditions 
and the number of X2 days of Rowe Island.  It is not clear 
to us that a trigger is necessary.
	But if a trigger is necessary or warranted, we would 
like to see the Board move toward a standard which is based 
upon the natural hydrology, and then they cannot be 
manipulated through project operations.
	The trigger as currently proposed could be 
untriggered.  In other words, if you are on the borderline, 
it is possible to hold the water back in storage and, 
therefore, insure that the Rowe Island standard is not 
triggered, and this doesn't seem to be right.  It should be 
independent of the project operations.
	The second area that we would like to discuss is the 
striped bass standards.  CUWA does not support such a 
standard, arguing that such a standard could have 
significant impacts on various native aquatic species.  
	We don't read the evidence this way, and in 
addition, we think that there's an important regulatory 
principle at stake here in that discharges of agricultural 
drainage in the lower San Joaquin very clearly impair water 
quality in this reach and in the estuary, and that, 
therefore, to prevent impairment, we believe that the 
standard should be set at the levels suggested by EPA, not 
through dilution but through control of saline discharges 
into the river.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Will you repeat that last thought?  
I am going to ask you the same question later on.
	MR. FULLERTON:  Yes, I ask time to prepare my 
answer.  
	The last point that I would like to bring up before 
I turn it over to Greg is the question of the salmon smolt 
survival standard proposed by EPA.  I think we have 
agreement in principle with CUWA on how to go about that, 
which is to set a goal and then to set a standard -- well, 
the standard is a set of management practices which is 
designed to meet a goal, and compliance with the standard is 
compliance with the management practices.
	Our provisos on our support for this formulation are 
the following:
	That the management prescriptions should be 
	calibrated to attain a preproject level of abundance 
	of anadromous fish and should at least be sufficient 
	to attain the doubling goals of the Central Valley 
	Project Improvement Act;
	And secondly, that the goal and the management 
	measures should encompass the needs of all salmon 
	runs, no just any one run, but should work for all 
	of them.  And in this regard, I would note that we 
	presented a proposal for a spring-run standard in 
	July, at the July workshop; 
	And the third condition that we think is important 
	for such a formulation of a salmon standard is that 
	the State Board should make clear that consistent 
	failure to meet the abundance goal will trigger the 
	development of performance standards at the next 
	triennial review.
	Those are basically my comments.  We are certainly 
interested in participating in the workshops that have been 
suggested, both by CUWA and by the State Board.  I think 
they have been very successful over the last several months 
and we would like to keep that ball rolling.
	Now, I will turn it over to Greg.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Good afternoon.
	MR. THOMAS:  Good afternoon.
	As you know CUWA has been giving some thought to an 
implementation strategy for State Board standards as have we 
at NHI.
	I just wanted to trip lightly through some of our 
thinking, not by way of critiquing what you heard from CUWA 
earlier, although I do think some of their proposals have 
some practical difficulties with them, particularly the idea 
of the mitigation credit bank, but I do think it is 
important to begin now to look at implementation 
alternatives and strategies because the standards ought to 
be designed obviously in such a way as to lend themselves to 
ready implementation, and we have been quite interested at 
NHI in thinking through along with the water users a less 
cost approach, a less economic cost approach to 
implementation, on the theory that if a way can be found to 
put meaningful standards in place without significant 
economic relocations, we may finally be able to bring this 
standard-setting process that has been going on for so long 
to closure, and that's in everybody's interests to 
accomplish.
	Our notion on how to do this was presented to you 
previously by Dave Sunding, our staff economist, who did an 
analysis, as you recall, of how implementation could be 
accomplished using market mechanisms whereby the water that 
was needed to comply with either EPA standards or State 
Board standards would be acquired through voluntary and 
compensated transfers from existing uses looking to those 
uses in California that are now providing the least economic 
value, if you will, and indeed, one would expect the market 
to, first of all, tap exactly those uses and, as you recall, 
the numbers were pretty dramatic looking at the cost to the 
California economy of complying with EPA standards as a 
marker and with the ESA add-on, the numbers that we came up 
with were in a normal year less than 4 million dollars in 
lost economic activity in the State, and even in periods of 
sustained drought, less than 45 million dollars a year.
	What I want to think out loud with you about just 
briefly this afternoon is how to get there.  Can this be 
done?  Is this a practical suggestion?
	We have built on the notion that you, the Board, 
developed in 1630 the idea of establishing such a purchase 
fund through assessments of water users on some kind of a 
formula, and then using those moneys as you proposed, both 
to finance the technical fixes such as those that are 
envisioned in the Central Valley Project Improvement Act, 
but also, then, to have this funded money available for 
meeting the environmental water demands of these standards.
	We support that approach very much.
	The problem is engineering that around a legal 
barrier.  
	We believe from our research that it is permissible 
for the State Board to put in place an assessment program of 
a sort and to create a fund.  The problem is controlling 
those funds should you do so, and that's a function of a 
section of the Government Code that essentially provides 
that money coming into State hands from any sources has to 
be turned over to the general fund, and then appropriated if 
they are to be used for a particular purpose.
	So, the narrow question is how to engineer around 
that.  One obvious solution is to legislate around it, if 
the State Legislature could be induced to provide that 
authority specifically to the State Board, but let's not 
indulge in charitable assumptions here.  Let's assume they 
won't do that.  Are we dead in the water?  We don't think 
so.
	What we are playing around with conceptually at this 
point and wishing to invite the water users and State Board 
staff into a dialogue on is a process that would work 
approximately as follows:  In a water rights phase, the 
State Board will of necessity need to make decisions as to 
how to apportion their responsibilities, the obligations, 
for meeting the estuary standards among the water users 
using whatever formula you may in your wisdom decide to use.
	Once those individualized responsibilities are 
fixed, we think it should be possible to allow water users 
to either provide the water or an in-lieu payment of money 
instead into a fund.  But that fund, of course, could not be 
a fund held by the State Board or any other governmental 
entity as we view it.  
	Instead, it would appear to be necessary to create a 
nongovernmental agency to hold the funds and to actually 
engage in acquisition of the compliance water, if we can use 
that term.
	We would think that this would be a nonprofit 
corporation, that it would acquire water per instructions 
from the State Board so that water could be acquired when 
and where, and in quantities that would be necessary to 
comply with these standards.  And it might be called 
something like the environmental water trust or some such 
term.
	Why do this?  Can't the water users themselves, once 
they have this responsibility, go out into the market and 
pay somebody else to meet their share of the responsibility?  
Yes, they can, but a centralized approach might do two 
things that otherwise would be a problem.  It can avoid the 
possibility that the price of the compliance water will be 
bid up through competitive attempts to acquire by water 
users, so this could be a lesser cost approach.
	Secondly, it is important that this strategy be 
coordinated with the federal restoration fund that was 
created under the Central Valley Project Improvement Act.  
Again, a centralized entity would be a more practical way to 
do that.
	Let me close with just a couple of design 
implications if we were to think seriously about an approach 
like this.  One would think that it would be appropriate for 
those that contribute into this fund to have a measure of 
control over the entity that uses the funds to acquire 
water, so if it is a corporation, some number of seats on 
the Board of Directors it would seem ought to be set aside 
for the regulated community, if you will.
	Secondly and maybe most problematic, what to do 
about the risk of failure of an alternative compliance 
scheme like this working?  If it doesn't perform as 
expected, as advertised, whose problem should that be?  We 
think that as a matter of both law and practicality, it has 
to remain the problem of those who have the regulatory 
obligation.  In other words, this would not alleviate them 
of regulatory liability.  But that may not be a show 
stopper.
	Why couldn't this be set up in such a way as to 
carry with it something in the nature of an insurance 
premium where the funds would be initially set up through 
contributions that were designed to be more than adequate to 
purchase the necessary water, with the understanding that if 
that does end up being more than necessary, that premium 
could be rebated, if you will, to the contributors?
	These are all just rough ideas at this point, but my 
point in mentioning it to you at this stage is there does 
not seem to be a show stopper, practical show stopper in 
setting up an approach like this.
	The benefits would be, indeed, to permit you to put 
in place a very aggressive program without concern about the 
economic dislocations in California, and we think that it is 
not too early to begin playing around with these kinds of 
alternatives and opening the dialogue.
	End of message.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Thomas and Mr. 
Fullerton.
	Are there questions from Board members?  
	Ms. Forster.
	MS. FORSTER:  This is for Mr. Fullerton.
	In reading different documents that have been sent 
in to us there is a little bit of lack of understanding 
about X2, or outflow, and I wonder if the outflow meant the 
same as X2, if you had problems with that, and the reason is 
I think outflow is a more understandable term than an X2 
isohaline sign standard, and one of the things that I hope 
when this process is done is that it is understandable to 
Californians.
	I run into so many people who don't understand any 
of the lingo, so they don't even pay attention to what's 
going on.
	To me, in reading it, the intent is there.  It's the 
wording.
	MR. FULLERTON:  I like X2.  In some ways I think it  
actually has advantages over flow as a management tool in 
that it allows you to essentially get credit for flows that 
come in in excess of a standard.  A pure water flow standard 
doesn't allow you to do that.
	This is a tidal estuary and my understanding is that 
it's really the salt gradient, it is the movement of water 
back and forth that really drives what happens out there.  
It is very difficult to even measure a flow in the areas 
that we are talking about.
	I can understand the desire to look at flow because 
it is in a sense something people are more comfortable with.  
It is something that modelers like better because it is 
easier to put into your equations, but I think as a 
management tool X2 may end up being a superior approach.
	MS. FORSTER:  Thanks.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Other questions?  
	Mr. Del Piero.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Mr. Fullerton said he wanted me to 
ask and he is just ready to deliver it.
	MR. FULLERTON:  It doesn't matter because I am going 
to refer to Greg anyway.
	MR. THOMAS:  Maybe we should put Marc to the trouble 
of asking the question.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Do you have an opinion on that?
	MR. THOMAS:  Yes.  There are a number of ways to 
address it.  One is, sure, you should be worried about it 
and why don't we have a workshop where we can all address 
it.  We didn't think through just what we wanted to say 
about this for this workshop, but, of course, it is a 
problem.
	As you know, some 60 million dollars and 5 years was 
spent looking at it by the Federal/State San Joaquin Valley 
Drainage Program.  As you may know, we had a role in 
evaluating the legal and institutional opportunities and 
barriers.  The result was a rather weighty tome, some 1100 
pages of analysis on both the problems and potential 
solutions.
	I don't think you need to be thinking necessarily in 
terms of a permit program that has to be administered with, 
you know, several thousand discrete dischargers as a target.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Pardon me, but I have to tell you, 
you know, I am sitting here talking to Ms. Forster after 
some of the comments this morning, and historically we have 
received advice that in order to resolve the salinity 
problem in the Delta, fresh water releases were necessary to 
meet the requirements, and then EPA comes in this morning 
and says they are going to back off what their recommended 
flows are because they are recommending the State Board 
address the salinity problem on site at the source.
	And when I raised my questions, then Mr. Hildebrand 
got up and said there's an easy solution.  All you have to 
do is to reach 150,000 acre-feet of fresh water and you will 
resolve the salinity problems, and I sort of thought we went 
around in a circle on that.
	That takes care of the problem for six weeks, and 
then the rest of the problem identified by EPA and everyone 
else in terms of salinity either is dealt with by more fresh 
water or desal plants at the end of Mr. Anderson's 
discharges.
	So that's the concern that I have and I have had 
three people so far tell me you don't need to be concerned 
about the permitting process, except no one is really 
capable of giving me a guaranteed implementation schedule 
that is going to achieve the goals, and truly what, in 
effect, is taking place here, if we establish a goal and it 
is not achieved, we have a problem.
	And all the proposals for voluntary compliance in 
the world won't save us from that problem if there's not 
voluntary compliance and if the goal is not achieved.
	MR. THOMAS:  It has been some years, really, since I 
have looked at this very much, but a couple of thoughts:  
	One is what may be needed here is some enforcement 
action, not unlike the role that regulation played in 
developing technological solutions to automobile emissions, 
for instance.
	In other words, perhaps you should purposely set 
standards that you are not sure can be met with current 
technology or institutions to force the development of them.
	But having said that, I do think that a focused 
workshop on ways to approach that problem would be in order 
and, you know, talk about things like constructing a 
regional drainage management entity which could be the 
single recipient of a discharge permit, for instance, for 
the State Board.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  There are a number of statutes, as 
you well know, that are on the books that effectively 
preclude that.
	MR. THOMAS:  You may know more about that than I do.  
Without trying to figure out what the solution is, the so-
called rainbow report that the drainage program produced, 
laid out a spectrum of fixes, some technical, some land 
requirements, some regulatory, some source control, and we 
probably ought to just feed that all into a more focused 
session on this subject. 
	We would be delighted to engage with you on that.  
We have never been chary about offering gratuitous advice, 
and we will be glad to do it on this subject as well.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Other questions from Board members?
	Anything from staff?
	Thank you, gentlemen, very much.  We appreciate your 
input.
	Then, Mr. Clark, Mr. Moss and Mr. Nordstrom, 
representing Kern, Friant and Tulare Lake Basin.
	Good afternoon, gentlemen.
	MR. CLARK:  I am Tom Clark, General Manager of Kern 
County Water Agency, and appearing together as a panel today 
is Dick Moss, the General Manager of the Friant Water Users 
on my left, Mike Nordstrom, General Counsel for Tulare Lake 
Basin on my right.
	I think you recall at your last workshop we all 
presented testimony separately, that type of thing.  We had 
a meeting earlier this week where a number of San Joaquin 
Valley ag agencies met and discussed the various issues 
related to the State Board process.  I can report to you 
that there's a community of interests now among the group.
	I have got a written statement that I think should 
be in front of you, and we are working on a pretty short 
fuse in the ability to take these things through our Board 
of Directors.  For example, the day we met, I followed the 
meeting with a meeting of my board, so I was actually able 
to get specific board action.  Some of the others, for 
example, Mike and I think Dick, have not had board meetings 
yet, so you have to take that into consideration.
	What we would like to do today is I will start with 
the written statement that's prepared and in front of you, 
and then I will be followed by Dick first, and then, by 
Mike.
	One thing so that you understand, we are three 
agencies, but yet, among the three we represent 47 different 
water agencies, public agencies, and that should be on a 
separate 8-1/2-by-11 sheet.  Mike will probably elaborate on 
it, but you will notice with Tulare Lake is Dudley Ridge, 
Empire, Westside, County of Kings, Oak Flat Water District.  
They are not an organization per se.  They are all San 
Joaquin Valley State Water Contractors, agricultural 
contractors, and I think they share a lot of work among 
themselves as a group, so Tulare Lake as a group, for 
example, works very closely with these other agencies.
	With that, I will get started.  I am going to try to 
make it quick because, frankly, I drove up this morning and 
I am trying to go camping.  I've got a '76 Dodge parked out 
on the street with a car carrier on it.  I have five kids 
and a labrador in the back seat, and the air conditioning 
just broke.
	Okay, I don't want to leave it but that's a lie.  I 
am by myself.  I am going camping and I have got lots of air 
conditioning.
	What I would like to do at this time -- sometimes I 
jump around too much, but I would like to start you through 
this written statement and then I will try to ad lib as I 
go.
	But as I mentioned to you earlier this week, we did 
meet.  I think there is a community of interest among the 
agriculture agencies, the urban agencies, and environmental 
groups, to try to come together with some type of common 
plan between now and December.
	I see this is where I am going to get into trouble 
trying to read some of this and talk to you at the same 
time.  I am not going to read this thing.  I am just going 
to talk to you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We will read it.
	MR. CLARK:  Okay, thank you.
	We generally believe that there has to be a coming 
together.  One thing I would like to clarify for the purpose 
of the Board, because I don't know if you are a party to all 
the same outside discussions that I am, but --
	MS. FORSTER:  No, we are not.
	MR. CLARK:  There has been some sense of -- I don't 
want to call it a debate, but if you will recall the last 
time Kern appeared in front of you, we didn't talk about a 
technical plan, and again, I am going to emphasize what I 
call the policy issues, but I would like to address for a 
moment the technical plans.
	CUWA gave you their presentation of what that group 
has put together.  Without addressing specifics, I am 
certain there are many good points to the CUWA plan as well 
as holes in the CUWA plan.
	I have representations out there and this is a rumor 
now, the so-called Hansen/Bratovich is what it is referred 
to, but basically Dave Schuster is kind of the sparkplug in 
the whole thing of trying to develop a plan that might gain 
acceptance by the Board, and ultimately EPA.  I think some 
people are starting to perceive these things as competitive 
plans.
	That is not the position of the Kern County Water 
Agency, nor do we, however, reject the work Dave is doing, 
and I have heard some statements that, well, Kern County 
Water Agency doesn't even support Dave's work.  Absolutely 
wrong.
	I think it is well known, and I don't have to repeat 
it in here in terms of Dave's technical expertise in the 
Delta.  He is widely respected by everyone, but I would like 
to make it clear that although we think that it is good 
science and we have reviewed it with Dave and others, we 
didn't feel that it was appropriate or conducive to the 
process for us to come in and hang our hat on that plan and 
say, here is the answer, folks.
	I don't think that CUWA is doing that even with 
their own plan, so I think most everyone is going in the 
same direction, and I did hear, I guess this morning, your 
are going to do something on the 21st which we actively 
support.
	I would like to see a forum where the scientists get 
together and there is an open critique in front of the 
Board.  I don't know if that's part of the plan or not, but 
I think you need to hear the debate so that ultimately what 
comes out of this is whatever everybody is talking about.
	MR. CAFFREY:  If I can interject, what we did say, I 
read in the statement, that on the 21st of September, Mr. 
Pettit will start a series of public meetings which will be 
announced in the next few days by public notice for all the 
parties who want to participate.  Hopefully, all of them 
will come in and look at all the alternatives and features 
of alternatives for comparison, for modifying, combining 
whatever needs to be done, and we are very hopeful that that 
kind of process will maybe be the impetus for what several 
of the parties who have come this morning and this afternoon 
are talking about, as are you.
	The Board will come back in a public workshop after 
that for presentations on, hopefully, a coming together to 
some degree, if not just one alternative, but a winnowing 
down of the universe so we will be back into it, and we see 
that happening in the second half of October.
	You understand and I know the other parties 
understand our problem with the timing it takes to draft a 
plan, so we don't want to jam you all, but we think all the 
work you have been doing is really outstanding and we 
appreciate your comments today, and if we can bring that all 
together by, say, mid-October, there is a chance and I feel 
strongly that the Board can put something out there as a 
draft that not only we and you, but the U. S. EPA and the 
members of Club Fed can hopefully embrace.
	MR. CLARK:  Just as an additional comment, take the 
National Marine Fisheries Service and the Fish and Wildlife 
Service, they are very clearly players in the process.  They 
have their own technical people again with respect to their 
plans.  Even though ESA is destroying us, I think they 
should be part of the process in terms of the feedback on 
the technical aspects so that hopefully, and I don't propose 
this necessarily myself as a negotiation, you know, among 
these people, but a technical critique so that hopefully out 
of that evolution comes the best plan.
	So, I think that's great.
	So, enough said about the technical aspects and Dave 
is authorized by our board to work in this process with you 
any time you want to access him or any of our other 
consultants, please feel free.
	Now, I will go to the issues we had discussed at 
your last workshop, and I really kind of ad libbed from a 
list of items then and I felt it was really important to 
follow that up in writing so that you know specifically what 
we are talking about.
	But again, where our Board of Directors are is that 
any plan must insure that the ESA will not be a wild card 
that continues to ratchet the amount of water even higher, 
and to create certainty as to the future water supply that 
will be available to use throughout the state.
	Mike Nordstrom will talk a little more about the 
certainty.
	One thing I would like to add to the issue of 
certainty, I don't want somebody in the process to get the 
idea that certainty is taking two million acre-feet from the 
water users and telling us what's left is pretty certain.  I 
think you should be governed by Secretary Babbitt's 
statement that we should be meeting fish and wildlife needs 
with the minimum amount of water, so we are looking for 
certainty with the minimum amount of water, not the maximum.
	Let's see, I will just read through a few of these.  
	Furthermore, on the issue of certainty, in Kern 
County we believe to all California water users certainty is 
a mandatory component of the Bay-Delta plan.
	As I stated earlier, we recognize whatever the State 
Board does in these proceedings and the water rights 
hearings to follow, California's consumptive use of water 
supplies will be significantly reduced and the economy 
suffers.  Any Board decision will be unacceptable if it is 
treated by anybody else as merely another floor from which 
the next increase will be demanded.
	The amount of water reallocated from consumptive 
uses to the environment would be treated as a specific 
allocation of additional water to meet all fish and wildlife 
needs, including ESA requirements.  Once the extent of this 
new allocation is known, water users will know prior to the 
start of each water year, the specific obligation for fish 
and wildlife protection.
	The concept that's being thrown out here is that if 
our objective is to really get certainty, as long as we have 
got take limits, in particular take limits, we view that as 
a real wild card in the process and I think you have had 
some discussion about it this morning.
	Somehow you have got to develop allocation of water 
for fish and wildlife purposes, and once you have identified 
that block, whatever it is, then as we go into a water year 
the project will know how much water must be used for 
specific purposes.
	Frankly, I don't see a way you can get to that point 
of being able to tell our water users what their water 
supply is as long as the take limit issue is out there.  And 
I would encourage you to develop mechanisms so that the take 
limit aspect is not governing in terms of operation with the 
federal agencies.
	I point out here that both the Clinton and Wilson 
administrations have stated that their policies are to 
implement the Endangered Species Act on a multispecies, 
ecosystem-based approach.  
	We believe both groups are sincere, but in reality, 
Delta operations are currently controlled by single-species 
approaches for winter-run salmon and Delta smelt.  According 
to the Department of Water Resources, that approach is 
costing the State Water Project and the Central Valley 
Project more than 800,000 acre-feet per year.
	I might add and I think I reported at the last 
meeting, this year take limits alone prevented 1.4 million 
acre-feet from being pumped at Tracy and Banks.  That 
translates not directly into a water shortage because some 
of that water could not necessarily have been used because 
it may have been in January, but I have got to think the 
shortage created this year and maybe this is something your 
staff could look into, is at least on the order of a million 
acre-feet.
	So, so far take limits have been a footnote to 
everybody's plan.  It's got to become dominant.
	In going on, we believe that if the State Board's 
comprehensive plan passes muster as good science for a 
multispecies plan, the ESA agencies must agree that water 
project operations consistent with that plan will eliminate 
the need for jeopardy opinions and take limits under the 
ESA.
	In addition, as to other identified species for 
special concern, the fishery agencies must provide assurance 
that no additional quality, flow, or operational 
constraints, in addition to the State Board's plan, will 
need to be imposed to protect such species.
	If, in the future -- everybody has been asking the 
question, you know, let's assume that the ESA agencies don't 
weigh in on the State Board process and they say, well, ESA 
is there and we've got to do what we have got to do, how do 
you deal with it at the State Board level?  
	One possibility is that, as we say here, if in the 
future, in spite of these assurances the ESA regulatory 
agencies mandate the reallocation of more water for listed 
species, the Board should immediately adjust those elements 
of its Bay-Delta plan that are unrelated to endangered 
species so that the total water allocated to fish and 
wildlife does not exceed that amount determined through 
these current proceedings.
	So, in other words, the allocation doesn't change, 
but in terms of your standards, you adjust them to 
accommodate any new listing that comes in that might require 
more than the total allocation.  I think that is worth 
looking into.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I don't understand what you mean.
	MR. CLARK:  Let me give you an example.  Let's say 
that --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Why don't you go ahead and finish 
your presentation because I have a question to ask you.  It 
will be the same question that I asked the representative 
for the Department of Water Resources.  You are being real 
specific in terms of what Kern County Water Agency wants in 
terms of specificity, in terms of what the Board ultimately 
decides.
	What are you prepared to accept in terms of 
specificity as to what this Board is advised to do in regard 
to its balancing?
	MR. CLARK:  How much water would we be willing to 
lose?
	MR. DEL PIERO:  No, what standard are you prepared 
to agree to meet in terms of sustainment of the endangered 
species?  It is not only what are you prepared to lose, it's 
what are you prepared to do if the standards for the 
protection of the endangered species don't work?
	MR. CLARK:  I think if you had a situation -- let's 
assume we all sit down in good faith and we develop a plan 
and let's say five years down the road -- what I am thinking 
is that the plan ought to include an allocation, specific 
quantity of water by year type so that you have this 
certainty.
	And despite all our good faith and good science, it 
doesn't work.  Then, what do you do?  I think the whole 
program is blown at that point and to come back, and I think 
the Board will have to rebalance and address it, but I am 
saying if it happens in a major way, I personally don't 
think it is appropriate.  
	I think there is a lot of flexibility in ESA and, in 
fact, the agencies are saying that.  So, let me give you a 
specific example.  If, despite --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I heard EPA say it today, the 
flexibility is there, but then, the tough decisions were 
left for the State Board to make.
	MR. CLARK:  Right.  I just think what I would hope 
-- as far as the weigh in by the ESA agencies, that you have 
a basic working relationship with them, where if you set the 
allocation, that somebody has a wild card isn't going to 
come in, let's say, on the splittail, that you have got a 
plan that truly has Delta protection in it.  
	If Fish and Wildlife Service comes in after the fact 
and says, sorry, we need 400,000 more acre-feet, I think the 
first step for the Board is to look at the existing 
allocation that you have got to fish and wildlife and see if 
you can accommodate the demands for this new species within 
the existing allocations.
	If you can't --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  But I don't understand how that 
would work.  If they are coming in demanding an additional 
400,000 acre-feet, they aren't doing that unless something 
is going very wrong in terms of the ecosystem, so where is 
this water that you are talking about going to come from?
	MR. CLARK:  I think what the ESA does is forces 
compromises that none of us wants to make.  So far the 
compromises, and this is probably my bias, have come from 
the water users.  Every time there is a new listing, every 
time there is a new action, it isn't, don't look at the 
existing uses of fish and wildlife water, let's take another 
block from the water users.
	What we are saying here is, listen, the Board within 
its power to balance; in fact, your obligation to balance --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  This is why I keep asking what is 
the standard in terms of species.
	MR. CLARK:  I think it is scientific personally.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I don't mean to interrupt your 
presentation, Mr. Clark, but --
	MR. CLARK:  You are struggling with an issue here.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  We are obliged to balance and we're 
having a group of people coming in telling us what they want 
one side of the equation, and sort of like my old algebra 
class, there has to be something else on the other side of 
the equal sign and I am having real difficulty discovering 
what that is that the parties --
	MR. CLARK:  Actually, if we can talk about this 
maybe when we get through, but I honestly believe that this 
isn't just a one-sided proposal.  I think there is honest 
and sincere effort here to try to deal with the very 
difficult issue, which is ESA, and in discussions I have had 
even with federal agencies, they are all struggling with the 
same thing, and I think -- and I am not proposing this as an 
adversarial thing at all.  It is to engage the federal 
agencies and try to make sense out of it.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  My concern is I saw a series of 
charts yesterday where some of the species declined that 
aren't even listed and are even more significant than those 
that have been listed.  That's the problem we are going to 
be confronted with.  
	We are being faced with a situation where pursuant 
to the environmental evaluation that we are going to be 
doing, we are going to have to be doing a balancing act, and 
I really want to know.  I just haven't been getting -- I 
know what you all want, but I am not hearing what anybody is 
willing to accept on the other side.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Can I interject something?  I haven't 
seen this list, but I think what you are saying really 
argues for the ecosystem-approach solution, and if I could 
for my own clarification try to understand your answer, I 
think when you were answering Mr. Del Piero's question about 
where is the water going to come from, I presume you were 
answering from the context of your supposition that we would 
have a block of water for the environment.
	MR. CLARK:  Right.
	MR. CAFFREY:  And you would look at that block and 
say, is it being properly managed?
	MR. CLARK:  Exactly.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I thought that was the answer, too, 
but then, if the answer is yes, and the system is not 
working, and God forbid we end up with something listed 
going extinct, then what's the solution?  Where does this 
Board find itself?
	MR. CLARK:  I think at that point in time, again I 
think you better talk to your lawyers and these people, but 
I would assume where you are is that you have got to reopen 
hearings and rebalance.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We are required to do a triennial 
review.  That means every three years.
	Although a lot of people don't like to probably hear 
this, this isn't the last time this Board is going to 
establish standards for the estuary.  We are here for the 
duration.  And the point is that we have a process that we 
all understand and are parties to, and that is somewhat 
predictable, and that we set up a framework so that we can 
operate, and as some of the discussion centered around here 
today that if we put something in place and if we expect it 
to do something and it doesn't do that, then we have to look 
at it again and rebalance.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Mr. Clark, I am asking, because 
hopefully over the course of the next several meetings that 
are held either by Mr. Pettit or the last meeting this Board 
has, we will be able to hear at least some suggestion as to 
what the other side of the equation ought to be.
	MR. MOSS:  If I might take a shot at that.  It seems 
to me that all we have ever asked for is on the other side 
of the equation being good science and supportive of what 
Mr. Caffrey said. 
	If the best science that we have that we are willing 
to support isn't working, then we have got to go back and 
look at the good science again, and then rebalance.  
	But that's consistent with what we have always asked 
for.  Tell us what is needed to fix the problem.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I think the problem that we have is 
that there are a variety of opinions as to what good science 
is.
	MR. MOSS:  True.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  And those choices that this Board 
has made in the past when this Board has chosen to make 
choices, have obviously not worked as effectively as some 
people would have hoped, and so the question as to whether 
or not good science really means the same thing to everyone 
remains to be seen.
	I am trying to figure out what that definition is.
	MR. MOSS:  And that, quite frankly, is what has 
impressed me, what has gone on here over these last couple 
of months in these most recent proceedings is I see a 
coalescing, a convergence coming together of opinion as to 
what that good science constitutes, and that, to me, is very 
exciting and presents, I think, this Board with a unique 
opportunity to make some real progress in this debate.
	MR. CAFFREY:  I don't think that we can define what 
good science is.  I think science is the interpretation of 
data.  We hope the data is good.  
	I think the key here is the Board is going to have 
to act, and hopefully, the Board can do it in a way based on 
some developed consensus.
	If we have all the parties and interests in this 
agreeing to accept some interpretation of the data and call 
that science, that is what we will implement and live with 
as long as it works.  If it doesn't work, we will be back 
here again all going through this process, hopefully in good 
faith again, but I think it is that process that if we stick 
to it, will allow us to protect the estuary and the 
beneficial uses.
	I didn't mean to make a speech, but we are having a 
bit of a colloquy, if not a debate, up here about these 
issues and I think there's a lot of good faith in this 
effort, and we don't want to lose sight of that.
	Ms. Forster, did you have a comment?
	MS. FORSTER:  Well, I just want to inject something 
that I think brings some optimism.  
	When the first Club Fed meeting happened when EPA 
was ready to come out with their December 15 standards, I 
remember several people questioning the attorney for one of 
the federal fishery agencies about this take formula and how 
it was developed and how sound it was, and she admitted that 
it was the best they could come up with.
	They didn't know if it was perfect, one of the 
discussions that I thought was very valuable is every time a 
fish is in decline it doesn't mean you have to add another 
block of water.  The goal would be to find that magic block 
of water mixed with when the Delta is fish friendly for 
spawning and looking at the habitat to make it work better.
	So, even if there's charts out there today showing 
things aren't doing too well, this whole process is moving 
towards how to make it measurably better.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Maybe we ought to design a better 
screen.
	MS. FORSTER:  I just think that we are going to do a 
lot of work on how to make this whole process -- you have 
fish and wildlife and we're not even talking about the other 
beneficial uses because everybody agrees that they are 
pretty okay.
	So, I think that a lot of work will be done and 
that's what we were talking about with Patrick today -- does 
their standard need this magical block of water that would 
show great increases in ecosystem productivity, and we will 
keep moving that way.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We are not trying to keep you from 
camping here.
	MR. CLARK:  Well, I appreciate that.  I wasn't doing 
well in my talk anyway.
	MR. CAFFREY:  You were doing very well.  We have 
taken a lot of your 20 minutes.
	MR. CLARK:  Maybe this is one of the congressional 
rules, can the gentleman from Kern County have another extra 
five minutes?
	MR. CAFFREY:  We have been stopping the clock for 
all interruptions in the presentations anyway.
	MR. CLARK:  I think we have actually had a very good 
exchange on this particular issue because I think it is 
fundamental to the whole thing and why we came in to talk 
about policy issues and not the technical merits of all the 
plans, because we want that debated in the right forum, is 
that our folks down there are taking, you know, Kern has a 
50-percent shortage this year, the federal agencies a 65-
percent shortage.  We have people that are going out of 
business, and I have to sell them the concept of taking 
shortages, taking even greater shortages for the sake of 
trying to settle the Delta issue.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  No wonder you are going camping.
	MR. CLARK:  It is up on the North Coast, by the way.  
	But I think it is really important that you focus on 
how you can provide this certainty to the water users 
because if we can't tell our water users that there's going 
to be certainty that comes out of this, what have we got to 
sell, because I will tell you that this take limit thing is 
absolutely something you can't operate with.
	DWR, as they go into the water year, they don't know 
how many of these fish they are going to take and the 
scientists are continually surprised.  If you take the 
counts on smelt earlier this year, the projects are wiping 
the smelt out.  Remember that?
	And then, they did the silver tow net surveys and 
found out, my God, there's smelt everywhere, you know, and 
it wasn't a matter that the projects were wiping the smelt 
out, there were jut a hell of a lot more of them.
	So, I think that as long as we have those take 
limits and the take limits are governing, then I just reach 
the conclusion in reviewing all of this, we just don't have 
certainty, so those of you that are sitting as the 
regulators, including EPA and the others, if you can't 
deliver on certainty, say it, because everybody has been 
saying it.
	So, anyway, it's just an important issue and the 
time, I think, supports that.
	I'm on page 4 now, but I am going to try to make 
this quick.  I just got a report the dog passed out.
	The linkage to a long-term solution, I know that 
BDOC is going to be involved in something else, but I have 
seen a few letters from some of the environmental groups 
that are already admonishing us that this proceeding is 
merely going to be the floor to the next step, and on the 
long-term plan it is going to go up.
	We don't buy that.  We think that ultimately when we 
get to the long-term solution that there should be a 
standard-setting process for long-term standards that are 
co-terminus with that, and those standards should be set 
objectively in a process based on the conditions that are 
occurring at that time.
	On the upstream Delta participation issue, I have 
got an upstream interest sitting here with me today in the 
form of Dick Moss.  The Kern County Water Agency's position 
has been consistently that everybody that is tributary to 
the Delta does, in fact, contribute to the problem one way 
or another, and we do, however, continue to support the area 
of origin statutes, but we do not believe that those 
statutes absolve upstream and Delta interests from 
mitigating their own impacts.
	In addition, we believe that water rights should 
definitely play a role in whatever decision-making process 
there is terms of the relative contributions by the parties.
	On project flexibility again, I emphasize again that 
we are going to be losing a lot of water during the dry 
period, and those of us that operate projects are going to 
need to do everything we can to mitigate those impacts by 
moving water south of the Delta and moving it south during 
periods when it is not environmentally damaging, and moving 
it in such a way that we can store it in our groundwater 
basins and south of the Delta storage.
	I don't know exactly how the staff is going about 
it, but I don't know if there are things you can put into 
standards where you can create some flexibility so if we 
get, let's say, we get a freshette during February, there is 
a big slug of water, we have got tons of outflow, water is 
coming out of our ears, I would caution you not to have 
operational constraints that prevent us from pumping and 
moving the water.  Somehow there should be flexibility in 
those standards.
	South of the Delta facilities -- I brought this up 
before -- I am hearing from DWR in terms of their 
engineering experts and even our own, south of Delta 
facilities which were paired with standard setting by the 
Governor in 1992, are becoming increasingly important as the 
existing pumps become constricted.
	As far as their pumping pattern, it becomes 
extremely important to be able to pump as much water during 
these short pumping windows as we can.
	I realize the Board can't merely approve South Delta 
facilities, but I would ask you to use your influence in the 
standard-setting process to advocate construction of South 
Delta facilities and possibly consider marrying South Delta 
facilities with any kind of EIR/EIS process you might do 
here.
	I see South Delta facilities as being an emergency 
project for water users in the same way I see standard 
setting before the Board this year to protect fish and 
wildlife.
	Funding and monitoring -- we have not bought off on 
the idea that it is an automatic given that you are going to 
set standards and an allocation for fish and wildlife where 
automatically there has to be a fund generated to go out and 
buy more water.  Most people have seen this mechanism as a 
way to minimize the water impact to water users under 
standard setting while tipping our hat to the fish and 
wildlife people and saying, you can buy more water.
	If that's absolutely necessary, then maybe look at 
it, but so far it has just been a negotiating chip in a big 
puzzle.
	Talk to the Miller/Bradley people, the CVPIA and 
find out how well they are doing with their fund.  I have 
heard actually from one of the environmental groups that 80 
new federal positions have been authorized using that CVPIA 
money that is supposed to be for environmental restoration.  
Maybe their idea is getting people off the street and 
working.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Mr. Clark, Mr. Brown has a question.
	MR. BROWN:  You've got to say that again -- 80 new 
positions have been authorized to the CVPIA environmental 
fund?
	MR. CLARK:  I won't identify my source and you have 
to consider it hearsay, but I definitely heard it from an 
environmentalist that is reviewing what they were doing with 
the CVPIA money in Washington.  The exact number that I 
remember was 89 positions, is what they found were 
authorized as a result of the CVPIA.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  They are hiring former CVP 
recipients.
	MR. CLARK:  Probably farmers.
	MR. BROWN:  We will check into it.
	MR. CLARK:  It is kind of a secondhand type thing.
	MR. MOSS:  It's a common thing between the 
environmental community as well as the CVP contractors and 
we are actually working together on beginning an overview 
and review of how the money is being spent.
	MR. CLARK:  Continuing on the funding, we do, on the 
other hand, see a need for a comprehensive monitoring 
program.  We think you ought to conduct an across-the-board 
review of all the money that is being spent currently in the 
Delta.
	I know that I have been working on the State 
contractors side.  I can give you numbers on how much we 
spent.  We are going to provide you a report on it.  We are 
spending a lot of money already, more than 200 million 
dollars today on specific project type things, but why don't 
you review that, review how CVPIA money is being used, what 
money does EPA have and the ESA people, and let's see if we 
can get people together to decide how best to use the money 
we have got rather than immediately going out with another 
funding source.
	From the point of view of our water users we are 
paying 70 million dollars a year for our right of  
entitlement from the State Water Project, but we are only 
getting half of the water, and we have to pay the full bill.  
We are in bad shape.
	If you come out with a plan that takes more water 
from our users, and then adds to our bill, I will ask you to 
come down and announce it for me.
	On my last issue, voluntary compliance, after 
talking with you at the last workshop, we really gave this a 
lot of thought.  I wouldn't take this statement in an 
absolute sense, but you are asking the question, will the 
Central Valley Project and the State Water Project 
contractors voluntarily comply for immediate implementation 
of standards.
	I think my answer at the last workshop was, well, 
really, that depends on what are the standards.  It's a hard 
question to answer right now, but having given it more 
thought, I believe that what there should be is a program 
for voluntary compliance commencing January 1, but that 
voluntary compliance include everybody across the board, not 
only the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project, 
but also include the upstream interests.  The upstream 
interests have got to come into this process.  
	I mention at the end of this issue, I think if you 
can actually use this as a way of bringing in the upstream 
people on a voluntary basis, I'm sure that the upstream 
interests are very nervous about a water rights hearing, and 
I know that it will be controversial and bloody, but maybe 
this is a way of bringing people in so that they will agree.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I will move down to Kern County and 
make that announcement if you want to come up here.
	MR. CLARK:  But the other thing about voluntary 
compliance is that you have got to have the ESA agencies, 
Club Fed, weighing in on this plan.
	For us to agree in January to a State Board plan 
without any commitment from the federal agencies, then we 
are setting ourselves up to be doubled up by two regulatory 
agencies.  So, voluntary compliance, I think it's great, we 
should all do it, and now is the time to pull it off and 
bring it together, and I honestly believe we are on the cusp 
of really putting something together that may mean 
something.
	So, that's what I have got.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Clark. 
	Do any of the other gentlemen have a comment?
	MR. MOSS:  Yes, we do.
	MR. CAFFREY:  I know Mr. Nordstrom was here this 
morning.  I'm not sure about Mr. Moss, but we did have some 
discussion about the positioning and the importance of the 
shelf-life issue, and you may want to consult with your 
cohorts on that and to give you an update on what some of 
the discussion on that was.
	Mr. Moss.
	MR. MOSS:  Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman and 
members of the Board.
	I very much appreciate the opportunity to appear 
before you today, especially alongside such distinguished 
company, I think.
	My name is Richard Moss and I am General Manager of 
the Friant Water Users Authority.
	I have not heretofore appeared before you in this 
most recent set of hearings and workshops, but that's not to 
say that our agency and our members are not very much 
interested in what is going on here.
	Quite to the contrary, we have come to view this 
current set of workshops and the actions that this Board 
will take within the next couple of months as being quite 
critical to returning the State to control of its resources, 
critical to establishing some certainty in the State's two 
largest water projects, critical to answering some of the 
nagging questions that the bankers and others who would 
otherwise want to invest in California's future have been 
asking, and critical to halting the decline of the 
biological resources of the State's most important estuary.
	We have been impressed with the Board's effort to 
provide a forum for technical as well as policy-related 
exchanges of ideas, and more importantly I think, your 
apparent desire to make interim standards work and work for 
everybody.
	I speak today without the formal endorsement, as Tom 
mentioned, of my Board of Directors but I am confident, and 
I think this goes without saying, that what I will say today 
will be supported by all of our 25 member agencies; and Tom 
mentioned that it was only earlier this week that we got 
together and determined that it would really be of value to 
you and to the overall process to come collectively in front 
of you here today, and to tell you that we think we are 
getting close, close to a plan that truly makes some sense. 
	That is not to say that we have a plan or that we 
support anyone's particular proposal.  It is to say that the 
differences we see between the various alternatives are 
growing smaller and smaller, thus allowing the Board to hae 
a greater and greater confidence that they can select from 
all or part of the various alternatives and prescribe a plan 
that will be acceptable to a large number of Californians, 
and thus, enjoy a higher likelihood of being successfully 
implemented, because after all, implementation is where the 
true success of this effort will lie.  We have no plan if it 
can't be implemented.
	It was interesting to listen to the discussion this 
morning of a deal is a deal.  While I know everyone disdains 
the idea that there is a deal to be had, it clearly is an 
easy way for my constituents to understand what's going on 
here and, in fact, I often get asked when discussing the 
Bay-Delta issue, okay, what's the deal?  In other words, 
what does the San Joaquin Valley get in exchange for 
agreeing to reduce water supply to a region that we know is 
critically and chronically overdrafted and water short, 
knowing that the water that we do get is going to be more 
expensive, and the bottom line, knowing that during this 
period there's going to be some people that end up going out 
of business.
	If I respond to them that we get nothing in return, 
then I can tell right now as far as we are concerned there 
is not going to be a deal.
	However, if I respond to them that we see some true 
scientific validity to what's being asked for, that there 
will be a reprieve in the water wars over the Bay-Delta, 
that there will be some certainty and timely predictability 
about our water supply, and that that will immediately 
happen, and that there is some clear linkage to a long-term 
solution to meet our existing and future needs, I believe 
that then they will agree that there is the basis for a deal 
here.
	In order to provide the kind of guarantees that I 
just spoke of, it is clear that the deal, as Tom has 
mentioned, must extend to other entities that regulate or 
influence the operation of these projects and the diverters 
of water tributary to the Delta, in particular the Federal 
Government.  Those agencies that are responsible for 
implementing endangered species protection must agree that 
project operations consistent with your plan will not 
jeopardize the continued existence of current and potential 
endangered species.
	Additionally, it seems to me that you must be able 
to guarantee to us that if other regulators impose 
additional requirements on our projects for related fish and 
wildlife activities, adjustments will need to be made by you 
to the plan so that no more water will be allocated to fish 
and wildlife than is determined necessary as part of these 
proceedings.
	As Tom has said, to state it another way, the 
agreements reached as part of these proceedings cannot 
become the new floor which subsequently will be used as a 
base to reach for additional water to be reallocated away 
from our region.
	To speak a little bit about this allocation of 
responsibility -- as I know, you are well aware that 
developing a plan is the easy part, and as you mentioned, 
the difficult part is going to be the allocation of the 
responsibility to the respective parties.
	While this phase is not immediately in front of us, 
I think it is important to talk about it a little bit 
because it clearly does constitute part of the deal, if you 
will.
	I have yet to hear any one of our constituents say 
that they would not be willing to contribute their fair 
share of scientifically sound fish and wildlife requirements 
for the Bay-Delta.  Of course, the definition of a fair 
share is the difficult part and everyone has a little bit 
different idea of what exactly that is.
	The implementability, if you will, of your plan will 
ultimately rest with your ability to be abundantly fair in 
your allocation of that responsibility.  That includes the 
requirement that everyone who stores and diverts water 
tributary to the Delta be included as a responsible party 
and involved in its management.
	It also includes consideration and acknowledgment of 
the legally established priorities of all water right 
holders.  It further requires that consideration be given 
for the water and financial contributions that are already 
being made by the various parties.
	In this regard, let me speak to one potential deal 
breaker that I see on the horizon here that I haven't heard 
a lot of discussion about, and in some respects, this is out 
of your control, yet it clearly will have a major effect on 
your ability to find a fair allocation responsibility to the 
plan.
	This concern lies in the Interior Department's 
determination as to how they are going to account for water 
that is provided by the Central Valley Project as a result 
of these proceedings.  The Central Valley Project 
Improvement Act provides 800,000 acre-feet of Central Valley 
Project yield for wildlife purposes of the Act and to assist 
the State in its efforts to protect the waters of the Bay-
Delta.
	The Central Valley Project also provides that the 
new obligations of the Central Valley Project that arise out 
of this and future proceedings of the Board are to be 
credited against that 800,000 acre-feet.
	As I am sure you are well aware, there is active 
debate within Interior as to whether or not this credit is 
going to be provided as we believe it should be and as we 
believe it was called for in the law.
	The ability of the CVP contractors to evaluate the 
fairness of any additional allocation of responsibility is 
going to be directly dependent and tied to that final 
determination as to how this 800,000 acre-feet of water is 
going to be accounted for.
	It would seem to me it would be clearly in your best 
interest as well as ours to have a final interpretation of 
this part of the law prior to finalization of your plan.
	One other important --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I seem to recall a provision for 
that in D-1630.  Isn't that correct, Mr. Caffrey?
	MR. CAFFREY:  I seem to recall such a thing.
	MR. MOSS:  One other important note relative to 
implementation:  I believe the success of the implementation 
of the plan will also depend on your ability, quite frankly, 
our ability to be creative and flexible in meeting these 
allocated responsibilities.  Some regions could face 
tremendous difficulty in meeting their fair allocation of 
this responsibility.  Consideration of alternatives must be 
provided for these cases.  There must be reasonable ways for 
meeting these new obligations.
	In summary, again we are getting close.  The unique 
opportunities to make some historic progress in developing 
an implementable plan for the Bay-Delta are clearly before 
all of us.  There are a number of reasonable conditions that 
I think we have collectively brought to you here today, and 
we acknowledge that all of these things may not be in your 
direct control, yet we believe that you will be instrumental 
in establishing the basis for a balanced solution to all of 
these concerns.
	It is our sincere hope that we can return control of 
California's water resources back to California by helping 
you develop a plan for the Bay-Delta system.  We are here to 
help and I think that's perhaps the most important message 
that I bring to you today.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you very much, Mr. Moss.
	Mr. Nordstrom.
	MR. NORDSTROM:  Thank you, Mr. Chairman.
	As Tom mentioned, I am General Counsel for Tulare 
Lake Basin Water Storage District.
	The District has been coordinating our efforts with 
other districts that are listed on that sign-in sheet.  
	I won't reiterate everything that Tom and Dick said.
	We have been coordinating our efforts with the Kern 
County Water Agency.  I will highlight just a couple of 
issues mentioned in his presentation:
	One, there is not a lot of discussion on certainty 
and reliability, and highlighting that fact, we desperately 
need that in the valley.  As the water attorney I am getting 
more and more calls not only from the farmers trying to give 
answers to the banks, but now I am getting calls from the 
banks asking what kind of assurances can you give us as far 
as water reliability and what their supply is going to be, 
and with these take limits, it is becoming very very 
difficult to give them any type of assurances, and all I can 
give them is a best estimate with a number of caveats on it.
	I mean, that just highlights that we have got to 
move forward and get some type of certainty and reliability 
on the water supply.
	The issue I really wanted to touch on a little bit I 
know is important in Kern, and also, Dick's clients and in 
Tulare is these long-term projects have effects that CUWA 
referred to as biodegradation factors.  The project shave 
been bearing most of the brunt of these things and it is 
going to fall on the shoulders of instream users also as 
they start contributing to some of these outflow standards.
	For instance, the poaching issue, we need to get a 
better handle on that.  The State Water Contractors have 
been contributing money to the Department to buy a couple of 
boats, and also, funding wardens.  
	We need the help of both the Department of Fish and 
Game and U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to get a better 
handle on this.  These exotic species, introduction of them, 
such as the Asian clam, that's definitely going to have a 
continued effect in the Delta.  And all the diverters from 
the Delta are going to have to solve that problem if we 
don't get a handle on it.
	So, I believe that you ought to urge the Department 
of Fish and Game and the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service to 
do further studies on that, if there's some control 
mechanism to implement, or perhaps eradication programs that 
can be implemented.
	And then, the last issue was the pollution and toxic 
issue.  I believe we need to push forward to continue 
upgrading the water quality plans as far as discharges in 
the Delta for the pollution.  It is definitely having an 
adverse effect in there, and again, all the diverters are 
going to bear the brunt of that if we don't get a handle on 
it.
	That is all I have to add.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you very much, Mr. Nordstrom.  
We appreciate your comments.
	Are there questions from the Board members?  
	Mr. Brown.
	MR. BROWN:  Not a question so such as recognizing 
what I call an attitude which is very pleasing to see coming 
forward as groups have today with ideas and suggestions of 
how to agree and resolve the problems, and we are very 
appreciative of that.
	I do have a question here.  I heard, I think it was 
Mr. Moss, say 800,000- acre-feet of Central Valley Project 
water.  It is actually probably closer to 1.5 million, which 
I am sure you recognize -- 200,000 acre-feet out of the 
Trinity, plus I think they are required to develop 120,000 
acres of wetland, which would be about 400,000 or 500,000 
acre-feet.
	MR. MOSS:  Pretty close to that.
	MR. BROWN:  So, it could total a significant figure, 
as much as one and a half million, and did I hear you say 
that the 800,000 would be a portion of those requirements?  
Is that what I heard you say?
	MR. MOSS:  The way we understood it to work when the 
CVPIA was passed, there was 800,000 acre-feet provided for 
fish and wildlife purposes of the Act, as well as for 
helping the State with improving the Bay-Delta estuary.
	And it was our understanding that there would be a 
crediting that if additional requirements are placed on the 
Central Valley Project after the passage of the law, 
additional requirements additive to what existed at the date 
of passage of the law, that the water to meet those 
requirements would be taken out of the 800,000 acre-feet for 
both endangered species as well as for additional water 
quality requirements.
	What we are concerned about is the potential for 
Interior to take that 800,000 acre-feet and use it solely 
for fish doubling and allow the requirement under these 
State Board actions, or as a result of additional endangered 
species actions, to become additive to that and that would 
be very difficult for us to manage.
	MR. BROWN:  Have you received any feedback from the 
Bureau of Reclamation or ongoing EIS as to how that is going 
to be treated?
	MR. MOSS:  It has been a subject of active 
discussion within Interior.  The Bureau, I believe, has a 
position very similar to what we see in the law, but we also 
hear that Fish and Wildlife Service has the exact opposite 
opinion, and it's been somewhat of a struggle for them.  I 
know they have been intending to have some workshops and 
have tried to have some workshops.
	It is a very complicated issue and a lot of times it 
gets wound up in a particular year's operations.
	Again, it is very critical to our analysis of how 
big an additional impact would be suffered by the project as 
a result of any requirement coming out of this Board.
	MR. BROWN:  Thank you.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  The language of the Central Valley 
Project Improvement Act is ambiguous so there is a real 
question as what the intent of the Congress was.  
	The reference I made to Mr. Caffrey, earlier before 
you were on the Board was that the order indicated all 
800,000 acre-feet was to be credited for the Delta.  That, 
obviously, didn't happen and the Federal Government 
allocated a large chunk of that water for wetland purposes, 
and at this point, there is a question as to whether or not 
that can be credited to the Delta.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Other questions from Board members?
	Anything from staff?
	Gentlemen, thank you very much.  We look forward 
certainly to your continuing participation.
	MR. CLARK:  I just want to apologize for the length 
of our testimony.  I just got a report from my street that 
the dog died.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We do hope you have a nice camping 
trip.
	We will now have a very brief break, five minutes, 
and then we will hear from Mr. Bobker and Mr. Krautkraemer.
	(Recess)
	MR. CAFFREY:  If you would please take your seats, 
we will try to get as much of this as possible today.  There 
is a possibility we may have to come back tomorrow.
	Good afternoon, Mr. Krautkraemer.  Thank you for 
your patience.
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  I think I can confine my remarks 
to 45 minutes or so.
	MR. CAFFREY:  That will be helpful compared to some 
of the other presentations.
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  My name is John Krautkraemer.  I 
am Senior Attorney with the Environmental Defense Fund and I 
have submitted a written statement to the Board, and I will 
do my best to be as brief as possible.
	In fact, I think I will just refer you to the 
written statement based on what I have heard here today.
	It is interesting to come to these things and end up 
talking about things you never thought you were going to 
talk about, such things as drainage.
	MR. CAFFREY:  You are entitled to 20 minutes and to 
make a showing if you need more time than that.
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  I think I can make it in ten 
minutes.
	I would just like to make a few key points:
	The first is that I would agree with some of the 
other speakers today that I really do see movement toward at 
least some agreement on some of the key standards that are 
being discussed.  For the first time, I have to say I am 
hopeful that this process will actually lead to State 
standards.
	You know, having gone through or been involved in 
this process now for eight years and having gone through the 
1988 draft and D-1630, maybe I am crazy to say this, but I 
really do see that maybe things are coming together and we 
can finally get the State re-engaged in the standard-setting 
process.
	I think one of the major potentials that has 
occurred is that recognition, I think, of a need for Rowe 
Island standards.  
	In many ways we are very close on complete agreement 
with CUWA.  Now, there are some details that we are not in 
complete agreement on and those have been talked about in 
some of the other statements.
	I would say the key difference probably between 
where we are and where CUWA is on the estuarine standard is 
at the confluence, something that hasn't been talked about 
too much.  But CUWA would propose a sliding scale at the 
confluence which would result in fewer than 150 days during 
the applicable period, whereas in our view, that 150 days is 
an essential override for any kind of concern about 
variability that is needed in order to move fish species, 
including certain endangered species, downstream of the 
Delta channels.
	But as far as the sliding scale, we have always said 
we agree with that in concept and we haven't seen anything 
in the sliding scale used so far that would cause us to have 
a problem with that.
	So, I think we have a lot of common ground with CUWA 
on that aspect of this proposal.
	There is a major hole remaining in the proposal 
which I think they acknowledge and that is the management 
measures that would be developed for fish migration and 
other fishery protection measures.  
	We have been involved with the urban agencies in 
ongoing discussions for some time now.  We have had the 
technical meetings that have been discussed and we hope to 
continue and plan to continue the dialogue with them on 
these management measures over the next couple of months, 
and I am hopeful that we can come to some agreement on 
those.
	I would also note there has been a discussion of 
good science, at least in terms of estuarine standards, that 
we are starting to coalesce around the science that was 
presented to this Board back in 1987.  It was a little bit 
different.  The knowledge has been refined, but I think 
really the problem has been not so much the lack of good 
science, but too much bad politics, and I am hopeful that 
people will start coming around and recognizing it is good 
science and has been good science.
	There are also a lot of areas of agreement among 
ourselves and the urban agencies at least, and I think 
perhaps some of the agricultural agencies, on some of these 
issues.  Certainly one of the areas where we have agreement 
with the urban agencies is the concept of this restoration 
kind of approach.  We see that as a mechanism for reducing 
the economic impacts on water users in allocating more water 
to the Bay and Delta. 
	Certainly, there are a lot of issues that need to be 
worked out.  The problems with the CVPIA restoration fund 
have been discussed, this rumor that 80 full-time 
equivalents have been hired with that money.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Have you been talking to the same 
people as Mr. Clark?
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  He works for our organization, I 
think, but we don't know for sure that that's the case, but 
the point I want to make is that last week we had a meeting 
that included representatives of the Central Valley Project 
Contractors, representatives of urban agencies and other 
stakeholders that have come together to try to make the 
restoration fund work, and there's a letter being put 
together.  I don't know if it's gone out or not, and it is 
going to ask the Federal Government, what gives here, what 
is going on with this money, and identifies some of the 
other problems we see in the administration of that, and my 
point is I think this fund is something that various 
interests can coalesce around.
	It's something that everybody has a stake in making 
work.  We want to see it work because we want improvement in 
the environment.  Water users want to make it work because 
they are paying the money and they want it to do 
environmental good because they are going to pay the money 
anyway, and they would rather it go to fixing the 
environmental problems than pay for bureaucratic salaries.
	So, you know, there's a lot of common interest here 
and I think that's one of the major positive aspects of this 
kind of approach.  I think it helps bring people together to 
try to identify how to make this fund work and how you are 
going to put the money where it will do the most good.
	Another aspect of the implementation that I would 
like to mention that hasn't been talked about today is this 
immediate implementation, the notion that is embodied in the 
framework agreement that there's going to be some kind of 
immediate implementation in the coming water year.
	If you can get a voluntary agreement on that, it 
would be great, and certainly, I think you should strive for 
that.
	The question is, if you can't do that -- we view 
this as a very important part of the overall framework 
agreement between the State and Federal Governments, and 
indeed, I think the prerequisite to an effective long-term 
process where people can say, okay, we've got something in 
place now, let's start doing short term at least with the 
problems of the Bay-Delta, so I think we need to start and 
you need to start giving some attention to what happens if 
you can't get the voluntary agreement.
	Are there other mechanisms out there for agreement 
in the immediate implementation by the State and Federal 
projects?  
	And I also urge you to focus more attention even on 
the longer-term implementation.
	The Federal Government is going to have final 
standards in the middle of December.  Your standards are 
going to lag several months behind that at best.  I think 
you have got to be thinking about how we are going to 
implement these standards, putting in place the processes, 
the planning processes that have to go in place for the 
interim water rights allocation and the longer-term water 
rights allocation.  You can't focus just on the standards.  
	In fact, I think your immediate priority should be 
how are we going to get things implemented as we move down 
the line?  That's going to be a critical element of all 
this.
	Certainly, there's a lot of discussion about 
certainty.  You know, I'm sympathetic to the concerns that 
the water users have expressed.  On the other hand, I am 
also hearing that, well, we want certainty, but we want to 
limit the amount of water we give up front.  We want you to 
do the best you can with the amount of water we are willing 
to give, and in my view, that is not the way it works.  You 
determine what is necessary to deal with the problem and you 
can't cut corners on the front end.  You can't cut corners 
and say this is all we can live with.  
	If you are going to start talking about something 
that is certainty, I don't think you will ever get complete 
certainty because you need to comply with the Endangered 
Species Act.  You can't let species go extinct.
	But at the very least, you have to make sure that 
your front-end plan is as comprehensive as possible.
	I am going to steal an analogy that Gary Bobker made 
which I think is very good.  Since he comes after me, I get 
to say it first.  It's sort of like the difference between 
an adjustable rate mortgage and a fixed-rate mortgage.  If 
you want an adjustable rate mortgage, you pay a little bit 
less at the front end, but you have a lot less certainty.  
If you want a fixed rate mortgage, you pay a little more at 
the front end, and I think that's not a terrible analogy.
	If we are going to be talking about trying to put in 
place a plan that is going to avoid having to go back and 
revisit the plan in the future as much as possible, you've 
got to try to make it as complete as possible at the front 
end.  You can't say, well, we have got to fudge here a 
little bit, and then be surprised when it doesn't work later 
on.
	Finally, on this biodegradation, the other element 
of the CUWA approach, we would endorse the idea that 
certainly the adoption of the standards that are being 
contemplated here isn't all that's needed to be done by the 
Bay-Delta estuary, but we also stress and I know this is 
consistent with what CUWA is saying, that there's an 
immediate need here for standards and you can't delay those 
standards while you are dealing with those other problems.
	Let me say something specific about one of the 
factors that's listed in the CUWA document and that is 
drainage.  First of all, there is a difference between land-
derived salts in the San Joaquin River that come from 
drainage and the salt-water intrusion problem which I think 
is appropriately dealt with by flow.
	The second point, I think, is a response to Mr. Del 
Piero about the problems of permitting all the drainage 
discharges.  EDF has just come out with a report, maybe a 
month or so ago.  I was not closely involved in the 
production of that report, so I am only generally aware of 
its contents, but one of the key parts of that plan would be 
to create a regional drainage district so that you create an 
entity that is charged with coming up with a plan for how 
you are going to address the drainage discharge problem.  
That then becomes the permanent entity.  
		We are cognizant of the administrative problems of 
having to permit every individual farmer out there.  So, the 
Board or the Regional Water Quality Control Board would 
permit this regional entity which would then have an 
obligation for meeting whatever the requirements were of 
that permit, and they would be the accountable party.
	It would be a party that the Board dealt with in 
terms of compliance and enforcement and those kinds of 
things, but that regional entity would be responsible for 
working with the landowners within its district to come up 
with a plan that's going to meet the requirements that are 
written into this regional permit, and you can do that.
	With a drainage problem, it is somewhat easy to do 
that because the discharge points are consolidated.  You may 
not be able to do that with every nonpoint source problem 
that exists.
	And another aspect of that part of the analysis is 
the use of economic incentives such as effluent fees and 
allowing trading of allocations within the regional entity 
among the drainage dischargers.  Those who can afford to do 
more might do more if we can sell part of their credit to 
other users who can't do as much, and it tremendously brings 
down the cost of compliance.
	In this case, the cost is targeted on selenium.  
That's another key point.  You've got a problem out there 
that's independent of the salt problem, and I think probably 
more important, at least as a first priority, is the 
selenium problem and the report is targeted towards how you 
address the selenium and other toxic contaminant issues, how 
you meet the water quality standards in the San Joaquin 
River for selenium, but I think the same kind of approach 
would apply to the salt-loading problem as well.
	That's really all I have and I would welcome any 
questions you might have.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you very much, Mr. Krautkraemer.
	Before I ask my fellow Board members, I would 
certainly agree with you that the voluntary implementation 
aspect of all this is critical.  Otherwise, we look forward 
to being able to work out some kind of arrangement on that 
as well.
	Are there questions of Mr. Krautkraemer from Board 
members?
	Mr. Del Piero.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Mr. Krautkraemer, I am going to ask 
you the same question I asked Mr. Anderson, and I want to 
know what the other side of your equation is, what 
commitment you are prepared to make to water contractors as 
to the issue of reliability.
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  Well, under the Endangered 
Species Act, I don't think you can say a deal is a deal, 
that we are never going to revisit this if there is a 
problem.  I think what you can do is sit down and try to 
come up with a package that you think is going to address 
the problem, and then do the best you can to try to develop 
a process and procedure for monitoring and identifying how 
things are working, maybe give some time period to see how 
things are working, and then sort of contingent mitigation 
approaches if it doesn't work, so at least the process 
doesn't seem to be quite as ad hoc.
	In other words, part of your plan includes, what are 
we going to do if this doesn't work?  How are we going to 
adjust things?  What might the impacts be?
	Frankly, I think that's the best you can do because 
if the plan doesn't work and you have got species that are 
going extinct, you have got to do something, you know.
	First of all, you can't ignore the Endangered 
Species Act.  But beyond that, you don't want that to 
happen, so you can't ignore that problem.
	I guess I would be as optimistic as I can and say 
that you really must sit down and try to put together a 
comprehensive plan that deals with the problem, and I think 
it is incumbent upon the environmental community to make the 
best use possible of water that they can, to figure out a 
sliding scale as an example of that.
	I think it is a concept that we have come to accept 
because we acknowledge that it fits the hydrology better and 
avoids some of the anomalous kinds of year type that would 
lead to.  It is incumbent upon us to try to do the best we 
can with the water we have, but you can't offer a 100 
percent guarantee that if this isn't fixing the endangered 
species problems, you are not going to do something else.
	I think what you can try to do is think ahead as far 
as possible and find out how you are going to determine and 
what kind of steps you are going to take if it doesn't work.
	Another idea I had, and this is only an idea, is you 
can get a restoration fund up and working, and you might be 
able to target some of those moneys as a priority or set 
aside for that if the plan doesn't work.  Your first call is 
going to be on the restoration fund to try to buy additional 
water, try to pay users to reduce exports, so at least 
further steps would be compensated for by voluntary kinds of 
transactions rather than additional regulatory approaches.
	But in order for that to work you need a restoration 
fund that was up and working and functioning in a way that 
it could be called upon quite readily.
	Those are just my ideas and that's really the best I 
can do.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  What is your reaction to a comment 
by Mr. Moss in regard to credit on the CVPIA?
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  First of all, I am not quite sure 
why Dick is raising that, but there is a difference of 
opinion on that between the environmental community and the 
water users.
	Our interpretation of the CVPIA is that the primary 
purpose of that 800,000 acre-feet of water is to meet fish 
doubling requirements.  Now, the reality, in my view, is 
there is going to be a substantial overlap between what is 
needed for the doubling program and what is needed to 
protect the endangered species and what is needed for the 
Bay-Delta, and so, if you sit down and really put together a 
doubling program that incorporates the Bay-Delta needs, 
there is going to be a huge amount of overlap, and I am not 
sure that the problem ultimately is going to be as serious 
as people make it out to be, but assuming in terms of legal 
priorities, I think he priority is to put that water to be 
used as part of the doubling program.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Thank you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Mr. Brown.
	MR. BROWN:  Mr. Krautkraemer, on the issue of a deal 
is a deal, and I like your analogy on the fixed rate and 
variable rate mortgage.  I think it is a good analogy.  The 
problem is when you drive through Firebaugh and Mendota and 
towns like that through the valley, they have 40 percent 
unemployment and it is going higher.
	If more water is taken away from the current 
contractors and that causes more consternation and 
environmental problems in those areas, would you be 
receptive if a water quantity was identified on the lower 
end for your variable rates, and that's going to take water 
away from existing water users at a real financial cost and 
burden, would you be supportive of maybe the State's next 
best program to build a project if additional water was 
needed beyond that, a new project like Los Banos Grande Dam?
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  It would depend on the project 
and the conditions on it, but I am not opposed to any new 
projects.  There are certain ones we wouldn't want to see.
	MR. BROWN:  You don't want to see any new projects 
happen?
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  No, there are certain projects -- 
Los Banos Grande south of the Delta we support in concept if 
it could be done consistent with sound environmental 
standards.  They have been talking about building Auburn Dam 
to supply flows to the Delta and I don't go for that.
	But there may be other projects out there, yes.
	MR. BROWN:  Once these decisions are made to take 
water away from existing water users, which is one kind of 
consideration that has a negative impact associated with it, 
it is a tremendous hit if you live in those communities and 
if you rely upon that water for your job, to put your kids 
through school and pay the bills -- that quantity of water 
we are talking about identifying and using to meet the 
requirements environmentally that are needed, if there is a 
quantity of water beyond that, I guess the question is, 
could you identify a project that would not take water away 
from existing users that you could help support in order to 
meet the additional water requirements?
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  If I understand your question, it 
is actually something I was going to talk about and didn't, 
and that is that I think what you are suggesting is not 
unlike what was originally in the Governor's water proposal, 
and what I actually see playing out here is that you develop 
interim standards and then while those standards are in 
place, you start this long-term solution process that has 
been talked about, and in my view, one of the things that 
should be thrown in there is longer term protections and 
maybe there are projects that could provide water for 
consumptive use as well as provide additional water or 
additional protections for environmental uses, so I don't 
think I disagree with you in concept, but a lot of it 
depends on the specifics.
	It depends on what are the standards that are put in 
place while we are going through this exercise.  It depends 
on what the project environmental consequences are that are 
attached to that project.
	MR. BROWN:  Using your variable rating -- it's a 
good one -- going to the variable rate standard recognizing 
that there may or may not be additional water requirements, 
the point I am making is if you go into and you use your 
best science and come up with the best program we can, and 
we go into it in order to give some certainty which is 
really important to the water users right now when they are 
having to go to the banks to get refinance and such, but if 
something then is needed beyond our best efforts today, if 
it could come from a new source, that could have a different 
kind of impact on the water users.
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  That is very possible.  I think 
there are certain minim requirements.  I think these 
standards that you are setting now are going to have to meet 
minimum requirements of the State and Federal law, but --
	MR. BROWN:  Say that's done.
	MR. KRAUTKRAEMER:  The goal of this Board, the 
predecessor Board, the goal set back in 1978, was to fully 
mitigate the effects of the State Water Project in the short 
term and ultimately to go to recent historical levels -- my 
point is the longer-term goal was beyond what is being 
contemplated today.  
	We are just looking at the 1968 or before, but 
roughly that period of time.  To go beyond that, it might 
entail some kind of facility.  It might entail certain kinds 
of storage.  
	To my mind, it is going to work best if those are 
facilities coupled with strategies that are going to benefit 
everybody, provide more supply, enhance reliability of water 
supply, and also, provide additional environmental benefit.  
	Something like that could fit with the kind of 
ecosystem approach that CUWA has proposed where you are also 
tackling other problems.
	We have some concerns about their mitigation credit 
approach where you would allow credit for non-water kinds of 
approaches to substitute for flow or salinity.  There are a 
lot of concerns about that, but yes, I see with this longer-
term solution process that is being talked about, I see that 
as the kind of thing that would be on the table, not just 
the facilities but the whole range of management measures, 
you know, reclamation, a whole range of things.  That's part 
of the whole plan, the setting of more protective standards 
now so we can get to the point where we are talking about 
those kinds of things and trying to find those longer-term 
kind of answers.
	MR. BROWN:  That would help.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Anything else from Board members?
	Anything from staff?
	Thank you very much, Mr. Krautkraemer.  I hope you 
are going to participate in the future discussions with Mr. 
Pettit and back to the Board.  Thank you.
	Mr. Bobker, good afternoon.
	MR. BOBKER:  Good afternoon.  My name is Gary 
Bobker.  I am a policy analyst at the Bay Institute of San 
Francisco.
	I think I will start by anticipating Mr. Del Piero's 
question to everyone, sort of approaching the balancing, by 
saying that looking at what all the interested parties bring 
to the table as a balancing act relies on a premise that I 
am not sure I agree with, and that is the premise in the 
Governor's water policy of two years ago, and that is that 
every interest group and every part of the affected parties 
in the Bay-Delta arena can't have gains at the expense of 
others, they all need to be linked together, and I think the 
flaw there is that it presents an even playing field.
	The point of the regulatory process that we are 
going through now, I think, is to make sure that one of the 
players stays at the table, and when we get to the point 
that we have a process of standards and other protections in 
place so that we have stabilized the Bay-Delta environment, 
then that's the point at which we can look at a broader and 
more rational approach as to how we manage water in the 
state using both broader water management measures than we 
have heretofore used in the state, as well as looking at 
physical solutions that may include both facilities as well 
as physical restoration of habitat.
	There's a lot of things we can do, but I am not sure 
we are at the point where we are able to do those.  What I 
want to do is summarize some of the concerns that we have 
presented in the past that are in a lot more detail in the 
written comment, and I will try to breeze through some of 
them.
	But rather than do the old song and dance about 
continuing deferral by this Board of action and our 
continuing support of the federal standards, what I want to 
do is take this opportunity to say what should the Board do 
and not do with the resources that it has.  What are the 
opportunities that are available in this process?
	And as I have said before, I think one thing that I 
don't think that the Board needs to is duplicate the very 
expensive process EPA went through in proposing criteria.  
Those criteria are based on the extensive technical record 
before this Board, the science that was presented to the 
Board, as Mr. Krautkraemer pointed out in 1987, the estuary 
project, workshops, and the other components of that 
process, and EPA has invited the comment participation of 
all stake holders.
	What I think is the most appropriate use of the 
Board's resources is to supplement EPA's proposed criteria 
in the water quality objectives and measures that aren't 
addressed by EPA which will, therefore, assure we have 
protection of the estuarine resources, and to do it in a way 
that it doesn't delay the adoption of standards that are 
more important than the implementation process that follows.
	The core element, as we and other groups have said 
over and over again, of any comprehensive water quality 
standard package is the provision of low salinity habitat in 
Suisun Bay.  The scientific basis for the standard is 
strong.  I think that is reflected in the growing consensus 
that we are seeing among many different water users to 
support the standard.
	There is a lot of agreement that the standard 
provide an adequate mechanism for the protection of the 
resource and we appreciate the movement of some of the water 
users that we have been talking with in the urban sector 
toward coming to a greater consensus on it.  
We obviously will have to disagree on some of the details 
which were talked about by one or two other speakers, and I 
would just detail a little more some of our concerns on the 
issue of the two parts per thousand salinity isohaline in 
the Sacramento and San Joaquin.
	We believe that it is necessary to have that 
standard in place for the full period for protection of the 
aquatic organisms, and especially to protect the endangered 
species from unsuitable habitat that's upstream of the 
confluence.
	It's been suggested by some of the parties that we 
have dealt with in our meetings and negotiations that that 
requirement would unacceptably limit variability in the 
estuary.  We agree that variability is a key objective of 
standards, and a lot of the scientific work that was done, 
including the estuary project workshops, included that 
variability on the seasonal, annual and interannual 
variability in salinity and other properties is 
characteristic of healthy estuarine ecosystems.
	On the other hand, it was also concluded that while 
you shouldn't have constraints to the downstream position of 
your  salinity isohaline, you did need upstream limits.  
	We believe that the confluence requirement is, 
therefore, consistent with the findings of the estuary 
projects and other scientific processes that have led to the 
standard.
	We also have some concerns that the Rowe Island 
criterion may not be invoked adequately enough.  I believe 
that NHI made some comments about that also.  I am not going 
to go into the reason why we feel Rowe Island is 
particularly important.  We have said again and again our 
concern is simply that periods of attainment of low salinity 
habitat at Rowe Island and downstream will be reduced in 
occurrence and duration under the proposed criterion.
	We also have concerns, and this sort of relates to 
Rowe Island criterion, about the lack of direct protections 
for other important estuarine habitat areas such as the 
brackish tidal marshes of Suisun Bay and San Pablo Bay.
	We are very encouraged to hear that EPA is 
considering narrative criteria to protect the brackish tidal 
marshes.
	I would like to point out that there is a foundation 
to build on to work towards numeric criteria both for the 
marshes and the downstream areas.  Starting back in 1987 
environmental groups and urban agencies made a number of 
detailed recommendations on salinity and flow criteria to 
protect all these estuarine areas.  Those recommendations 
for Suisun Bay were, in fact, the foundation for what has 
eventually become the X2 standard.
	I believe that EPA and the Board need to go through 
the same process to develop a fully refined set of numeric 
criteria for these other estuarine habitat areas.
	Another area of agreement that I am really pleased 
to see is over the nature of the kind of mechanisms that we 
need to protect fish migration.  There seems to be pretty 
general agreement on the set of measures, closure of the 
Delta cross channel gates, minimum flows on the Sacramento 
River and the San Joaquin, and in my comments we provided 
some of our specific recommendations based on the Fish and 
Wildlife Service's submittals to you in the past and on our 
subsequent meetings with agency staff and with interested 
parties on what the specific levels for flow and periods of 
closure should be.
	What we want to emphasize is that those protections 
should include protections for all salmon runs; otherwise, 
you are postponing the day of reckoning.
	Also, the use of the salmon smolt survival index as 
modified by EPA is an important way of measuring the success 
of a package of standards, and failure to achieve the index 
values should automatically trigger review by this Board.
	I also want to make another point that CUWA and 
others have raised about the species, specific standards 
that address the needs of only salmon.  There are a number 
obviously of other species whose eggs, larvae and juveniles 
are subject to diversion in the Central Delta entrainment.  
Chinook salmon represent the best data that we have in terms 
of protecting those fish.
	So, salmon provide an adequate basis for standards 
which will protect overall fish migration.
	The last time I was before the Board and just about 
every time environmentalists have participated in the 
workshops, we have mostly focused on the estuarine habitat, 
and the salmon standards, as Mr. Caffrey pointed out.
	You haven't heard much from us about striped bass 
spawning habitat, so I want to say a few things about that, 
especially as I know Mr. Del Piero is interested in this as 
well.
	Number one is that I think the evidence remains 
uncontroverted that there is a salt-loading problem to the 
river which presents a spawning limitation for striped bass.  
I haven't seen any data that suggests that is not the case.
	The concerns that have been raised about that really 
relate to the other issues, not a scientific basis for 
standards themselves.  Number one, there has been a concern 
expressed that enhancing the striped bass population will 
result in predation of the San Joaquin fall-run chinook 
salmon.
	I believe, after looking at the data, that salmon 
will prey on bass in tributary waters or the scene of 
hatchery production, but generally you will find that salmon 
are not going to be a significant food item for them in the 
Delta.  And there doesn't seem to be, therefore, a reason to 
think there's just going to be a major impact on native 
species.
	We agree that if there were a conflict, the native 
species and the estuarine habitat would take a higher 
priority.  I don't think that conflict is there and given 
the absence of such a conflict, this sport fishery resource 
represents a secondary beneficial uses equal in importance 
to offstream water use and should be protected.
	I also think that akin to the salmon protection, the 
protection for striped bass also serves as an umbrella 
protection for other estuarine and fresh-water species in 
the South Delta.
	One thing I want to focus on is that obviously the 
problems that are associated with selenium and other trace 
elements to the San Joaquin River is well documented.  We 
know the bioaccumulation properties of the trace elements 
and the biological problems they cause.
	However, studies that have been done to look at the 
impacts of drainage water throughout Western water projects 
have shown that even when you take the trace elements out, 
the other constituents in drain water can be toxic to salt-
tolerant organisms, so we are looking at a form of 
pollutants that's probably affecting a wide range of Delta 
fish.
	We don't have data on those other Delta fish.  We do 
on striped bass, so striped bass spawning habitat really 
serves as a surrogate for a number of other species, and I 
hope that we will be able to develop that data over time so 
we can, in fact, make sure we are protecting those other 
species as well as we are protecting striped bass.
	The Board has included in its consideration of 
alternative water quality standards and their water supply 
impacts new outflow requirements, export restrictions and 
caps on the percentage of Delta inflow diverted and this 
would be operable during the summer, fall and early winter 
period not covered by EPA's proposed criteria.
	We think that is a real important direction for this 
Board to go.  The feeling is we are paying a lot of 
attention to what we agree are critical winter and spring 
spawning and migration periods.  We can't squeeze it all out 
of the rest of the year.  It is hard for us to make specific 
recommendations about what the new restrictions for summer 
and fall ought to be, but I encourage you to go in that 
direction.
	I think the idea of using percentages outside of the 
spring and winter periods is really a good one.
	The final point I want to bring home is the 
ecosystem versus species specific protection.  Kind of a 
very common theme that we hear is the preference for 
ecosystem management over protection of individual species. 
	I agree that ecosystem management is the highest 
priority.  It certainly has been the position of the 
environmental groups that standards that protect overall 
estuarine and wildlife habitat and protect the needs of a 
range of different species in which you address ecosystem 
functions, are the highest priorities for a standard-setting 
process.
	However, sometimes for an estuarine habitat standard 
we have science to be able to base standards on those kinds 
of habitat ecosystem-wide protections, sometimes we don't.  
When the data is not available to set water quality 
standards that incorporate the nonhabitat requirements for a 
range of different species, we have to base them on what is 
the most sensitive understood use of the Bay-Delta waters 
and the measures to protect those species serve, as I said 
before, as an umbrella for protection of other species.
	I believe that it is appropriate, therefore, to use 
striped bass in these formats to reach other species that 
are affected by Delta water project operations and salt 
loading.
	And I have to emphasize that the failure to do 
either ecosystem or species specific standards is going to 
continue to lock us into enforcement of the Endangered 
Species Act, and we are going to continue to press for 
rigorous enforcement of the Endangered Species Act until 
these kinds of protections are implemented on the ground and 
I am not sure how long that is going to take, but right now 
the Endangered Species Act is what we have to rely on for 
protection of these species.
	Having said that, let me also say that we are 
committed to a comprehensive ecosystem management.  We are 
extremely encouraged by the sincere commitment that we feel 
comes from some of the other water users, especially the 
urban water users, and in our talks with them we know they 
are very serious about going ahead with comprehensive 
ecosystem management.
	We look forward to working with both them and the 
regulatory agencies on that kind of management, and I think 
that's all I have to say.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We appreciate your comments, Mr. 
Bobker, and your willingness to work with all of us in this 
very important process of standard setting.
	Are there questions from the Board members of Mr. 
Bobker?  
	Anything from staff from Mr. Bobker?
	Thank you, Mr. Bobker.  We appreciate your being 
here.
	Let me just say that depending on how the 
presentations go, we need to adjourn sometime between five 
and five-thirty.  Some of the presentations that remain are 
somewhat lengthy.  We will hear from at least the next two 
presenters, hopefully three, Steve Hall, Dan Nelson and Bill 
DuBois.
	Good afternoon, Mr. Hall.
	MR. HALL:  Good afternoon, Chairman Caffrey and 
Board members.  
	I know the energy level is low and I will --
	MR. CAFFREY:  You are entitled to the same amount of 
time as anybody else.
	MR. HALL:  I appreciate that .
	MR. DEL PIERO:  I have a whole series of questions 
to ask.
	MR. HALL:  Actually, against my better judgment, I 
am even going to mention a couple of things about which you 
have been asking questions while trying not to reignite the 
drainage debate.
	For the record, I am Steve Hall, Executive Director 
of the Association of California Water Agencies.
	I appreciate the opportunity and appreciate your 
endurance.  I have noted, however, that Ms. Forster in 
particular, has been a little bit lower, a little bit lower 
as the day has gone by.
	I will try not to make her disappear entirely.
	I need to begin my presentation with an update and a 
clarification.  The update goes back to your July 13 
workshop wherein we presented a rather comprehensive 
economic analysis of the EPA standards and we promised at 
that time to deliver to you at this workshop an analysis of 
the impacts of those standards, and frankly, all of the 
alternatives that were on the table, on the ability or the 
capacity to generate hydroelectric power within the state.
	We continue believe that's a very important 
component in the economic analysis.  Unfortunately we are 
not able to present that today because that relies upon the 
hydrologic computer model runs that DWR is doing for the 
State Board and we don't yet have enough data to run our 
computer models to simulate what the hydroelectric impacts 
will be.
	We expect to have that data very shortly and as soon 
as we have it and can run our runs, we will provide you with 
that information either at the September 21 technical 
meeting or at the workshop that you scheduled.
	Next, the clarification of the record on the 
drainage issues.  The U. S. EPA, I guess, started in this 
morning by alluding to factors such as land-derived salt 
discharges to the Southern Delta and we all know the 
discussion that has ensued.  This referenced the Association 
of California Water Agencies as supporting that approach.
	I just want to say that in the documents that we 
presented to the Board at the July 13 workshop we did 
include a list of what have now been called biosystem 
degradation factors, a fancy term for all of those nonwater 
factors.
	Well, in the list that we presented is an item 
called land-derived salt discharges to the Southern Delta, 
and, in fact, we do favor looking at that.
	We do not, however, favor a new regulatory process 
to somehow insure compliance with that because, frankly, 
this Board took a very thorough look at the Western San 
Joaquin Valley and the San Joaquin River specifically, and 
adopted a regulatory plan that, frankly, is working quite 
well and is being administered by the Central Valley Water 
Quality Control Board and we think if the State Board looks 
at the results of that regulatory regime, what has happened 
is that the salt load and the selenium load have been 
substantially reduced primarily through BMPs on the farm and 
within the water agencies that serve that area.
	So, we don't think you need another regulatory 
program to insure compliance.  We think you are already 
seeing good results because the farmers and the water 
districts out there are doing their job.
	So, let me, if I may, just add that clarification to 
the record about what we think on the issue of drainage.
	Now, let me get to the main topic for the day.  I 
was very pleased to hear what the Chairman said about 
continuing to keep the record open, and continuing to keep 
the process open and encouraging technical discussions about 
the merits and demerits of various alternative proposals.
	We think that's an excellent way to go about the 
business of adopting this comprehensive plan about which 
there is an emerging consensus, and you have heard it over 
and over again today.  People want to see a plan that's 
comprehensive.
	In fact, let me anticipate -- I don't know that you 
plan to ask this, Mr. Del Piero, but let me anticipate the 
question by saying I don't believe, and I want to make this 
very flat-footed statement, I don't believe water quality 
standards will do the job.  In fact, we have made that 
pretty clear from the outset.  We don't think water quality 
standards and operational constraints will do it either.
	What this requires, in our view, and there is an 
emerging consensus, not just within the water communities 
but even the Secretary of the Interior has said what you 
need in these complex ecosystems is a comprehensive 
multispecies approach, and that's what we are supporting.
	Certainly water quality standards and operational 
constraints will be components of that, but it cannot stop 
there.  In fact, we believe that if it does stop there, the 
plan will fail and, in fact, we think this estuary is the 
perfect place to adopt the approach that the Secretary of 
the Interior outlined in his press release, that we have to 
know that a deal really is a deal.
	A deal can't be one sided, as you and Mr. Del Piero 
have pointed out.  It's got to require something from each 
side.
	What we need, and we have said this repeatedly, is 
certainly not complete certainty, but a much higher level of 
certainty than we have today.
	We are prepared to work with the Board in developing 
standards and operational constraints that we know up front 
will require some water, and we are going to leave it to you 
to decide who gives up how much.
	We don't want you to prejudge that, but we know that 
you will have to address that issue.
	But on the other side of the coin, we must get 
ourselves out of the ESA trap we find ourselves in, and 
frankly, I think it is as much of a trap to the biologists 
as it is for us because we have dedicated enormous 
quantities of water to protect single species.  It simply 
has not worked to preserve the habitat, as again, you have 
pointed out, Mr. Del Piero.
	Species other than those listed have been declining 
in numbers.  We are not getting the job done and a 
comprehensive plan is the kind of umbrella approach that we 
need in order to finally accomplish that complete 
protection, while at the same time, providing some water 
supply reliability.
	Let me just tick off what we think needs to be in 
the Board's plan in order to accomplish this.  First of all, 
we all agree it's got to be based on sound science.  It's 
got to provide some shelf life.  
	I am just repeating some of the common phrases now, 
but I want to simply reiterate what others have said about 
them.
	Finally, and the Chairman mentioned this earlier in 
the day, it has to be compatible with the comprehensive 
plan.  It may or may not be possible within the window of 
time that you have to work between now and the end of this 
calendar year, it may not be possible to fully develop a 
comprehensive plan, but we can certainly begin the process 
of developing that comprehensive plan and put the early 
stages of it into effect.
	That means, though, that those early stages have to 
be compatible with the long-term plan.  We believe that that 
can be done, that we can take some first steps that we know 
are not by themselves the comprehensive plan.  What we need 
to do, though, is design them well enough so that they are 
compatible with that long-term plan.
	Now, as I said before, we know that there will be, 
or are reasonably confident -- I don't want to put words in 
your mouth, but we are fairly confident it will include some 
standards, and when I say standards, that could either be a 
salinity standard or outflow requirement.  We expect 
operational constraints will be a part of it.  
	But the clear goal of these requirements, in our 
view, must be to protect the habitat rather than focusing on 
single species.  It needs to pre-empt the need for 
additional ESA requirements to the extent possible and as 
much as possible it should reduce the need for take limits 
at diversions.
	Let me just say we are putting a lot on the table, 
we believe.  Is it any wonder why we are willing to do that, 
when take limits have created so much uncertainty as other 
have said today?  They have cost so much water in such a 
short period of time.
	We are willing to do this because take limits to us 
are simply an unacceptable way to manage this ecosystem, and 
certainly, to manage the water projects.
	Obviously, we want to see it limit water costs and 
my job is fairly simple.  I represent all of the water 
interests, most of the water interests you have heard from 
today.  Most of them are members.
	I, somehow, have to agree with all of them and still 
say something meaningful.  Fortunately, that isn't all 
difficult because there really is this converging of ideas.  
There is an emerging consensus about the elements of this 
plan.
	Not all my members would agree, but this is advice 
from ACWA that represents not only the exporters but those 
upstream.  We think you should avoid prejudging any water 
rights allocations as a part of the water quality phase.  
It's tempting because you need to figure out what comes from 
where and things like pulse flows may be included in that 
water quality plan, but to the extent that you possibly can, 
we advise you to avoid that until you get to the water 
rights phase.  It will be difficult enough then.  We think 
it would be nearly impossible to do now.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  No, Tom Clark is going to do it for 
us.
	MR. HALL:  Oh, that's right.  But with as much faith 
as I have in Tom, I have to say even he should wait.
	Now, I have made this point before, let me repeat 
it.  We believe, and there is really no equivocation here, 
we believe that if you adopt water quality standards or 
outflow requirements and operational restraints and stop 
there, you will fail.
	We want you to succeed, we need you to succeed.  You 
have to look at all of the factors affecting the Delta 
because if you fail to do that, we believe you will not 
fully protect beneficial uses in the Delta and that that 
failure will lead to political and legal chaos where water 
interests seek to protect their legitimate interests, and I 
want to be careful in saying that because it could sound 
like a threat.
	I don't mean it that way.  It is an observation 
based on what I have heard from the water user communities, 
that if standards and constraints dedicate a lot of water, 
and we believe they are likely to do that, that once that 
water is dedicated, water users will resist further taking 
until those other factors are addressed and a list of those 
other factors laid out.
	It may not be all inclusive, but they must be 
examined, those and any others that get added to the list as 
a part of the overall comprehensive plan, or we believe the 
plan cannot fully be successful.
	The Board is the central figure in this.  You alone 
have the authority and responsibility to orchestrate the 
activities of all the parties, including the federal 
agencies, and you alone have the authority and the 
responsibility to balance the competing needs within the 
Delta.
	You are fortunate in one respect because there is 
this emerging consensus that I spoke of.  The recently 
signed State/Federal framework agreement and the broad 
support of that agreement is evidence of that, but the Board 
should not merely hope that the parties to that agreement 
carry it out.
	We believe the Board should direct the parties to 
carry it out by directing them to do the various things that 
we and others have outlined that should be part of the 
comprehensive plan.  It must be comprehensive in scope, 
focused on the habitat and balanced in the approach.  If it 
is, the water community will support it.
	But we are also going to be looking for the Board 
and the other parties to do their part in building this 
comprehensive plan.
	I thank you and I trust I have responded to your 
questions before they are asked.  At this late hour, I don't 
imagine there will be all that many anyway, but I am happy 
to --
	MR. CAFFREY:  Don't presume too much, Mr. Hall.  Let 
me see if you are right or wrong, only because of the 
thoroughness of your presentation.  
	Anything from staff of Mr. Hall?
	Thank you very much, Mr. Hall.
	Dan Nelson.  Good afternoon, Mr. Nelson.
	MR. NELSON:  Thank you for this opportunity, Mr. 
Chairman and Board members.
	The San Luis Delta Mendota Water Authority is 
comprised of 41 water agencies with contracts with the 
Federal Government through the Central Valley Project.  
These districts include nearly all the water users south of 
the Delta that receive water pumped through the federal 
Tracy pumping plant and represent over one million acres of 
prime farm land predominantly on the west side of the San 
Joaquin Valley from Fresno on the north to Kettleman City on 
the south and San Benito County.
	It serves up to 150,000 acre-feet to urban users in 
the Santa Clara Valley Water District and over 100,000 acres 
of wetlands in the Pacific Flyway.
	There probably isn't any group of water users in the 
State that has been impacted more through the current 
situation in the Delta.  Because of this, we understand that 
until Delta resource issues are addressed comprehensively 
and improved, we will continue to experience unworkable 
restorations in our water supply without real benefits to 
the Delta resources.
	It is in this context that we submit these 
suggestions and ideas.  As we have stated in previous 
workshops, we recommend that the State Board take a very 
broad and comprehensive approach to the Delta.  Generally, 
what this means is that you should do as much as you can 
under your authority and that you weigh in or make 
recommendations on the rest, in general, continue to take a 
leadership role.
	We suggest that we need to develop a package.  This 
package needs to include three general components:
	One, standards;
	Two, Delta flow, flow and other requirements, and we 
commonly refer to these as operational stuff; and
	Three, other factors such as storm drainage runoff 
and industrial pollution, poaching, et cetera.
	The California Urban Water Agencies or CUWA has 
included as part of their comments the specific proposal for 
standards.  We think there is a lot of merit in what it is 
that CUWA has proposed, but at this point in time, we can't 
commit to those standards until we see how they fit into the 
other components of the package.
	We agree with the Association of California Water 
Agencies that there appears to be a strong potential 
developing for water users coming together to put together 
this package on a consensus basis.  We will continue to 
strive for this comprehensive consensus approach prior to 
the October workshop with the goal of developing a complete 
and specific package.
	As to the objectivity of the package, we believe 
that the package needs to include protection for Delta 
resources and needs to use a multipurpose habitat approach 
emphasizing the needs of endangered species.
	The package needs to also include flexibility for 
project operations to maximize the ability to manage water 
through the Delta while meeting resource objectives.
	Last, but not least, it must result in certainty for 
water users, certainty through shelf life, certainty through 
a better defined reliable and reasonable water supply, and 
certainty through a sustainable and healthy habitat.
	Finally, we would like to thank the Board for their 
patience, and I would like to re-emphasize and thank you for 
your patience.  This has not been an easy process.  It's 
taken a lot of time, and as you know, it's been a struggle 
but I think we are making some real progress, and we believe 
that a consensus package can be achieved.
	And, again, we remain committed to continue to work 
with you and all other water users to accomplish this in a 
timely manner.
	Thank you again and I remain open for any questions, 
and also, I have B. J. Miller with me, who has done a lot of 
our technical support.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Nelson.  Good to see 
you.
	Are there questions from Board members?  
	Anything from staff?
	Mr. Nelson, I realize you represent a public agency 
and you did have a long wait, and we apologize and thank you 
very much for your patience.
	Bill DuBois.  Good afternoon, Mr. DuBois.
	MR. DUBOIS:  Good afternoon, Mr. Chairman and Board 
members.  Thank you very much for affording me the 
opportunity to appear before you.
	I particularly want to compliment the Board because 
I have been monitoring these hearings since 1970, and I 
think this is the first time that I have heard the Board so 
obviously aware of the dangers of regulating the drainage 
from the San Joaquin Valley.
	In my opinion, it won't be a shortage of water that 
does agriculture in.  In the long run it's going to be the 
shortage of drainage, and I very much appreciated the 
questioning done by the Board members of EPA when they were 
before you.
	My purpose in appearing today is to present a long-
held conviction that part of the fish problem is caused by 
overfishing.  
	A couple of weeks ago Stan Barnes gave me a copy of 
a book on the subject of ocean fishing resources.  After I 
read it, I circulated it to several others and in the 
process became convinced it should be made a part of the 
present Delta proceedings.  It is a study by World Watch 
Institute, Paper No. 120 by Peter Weber.  It is titled Net 
Loss, Fish, Jobs and the Marine Environment.  
	My point in asking that this paper's conclusions be 
considered is that as I read it, it claims the fish problem 
will get worse in spite of what we do here on land to help 
the fish, unless much is done to implement a moratorium on 
fishing worldwide. 
	Our fear is that unless this is done and Mr. Weber's 
paper is correct and fish supplies continue to worsen, 
agriculture could be clubbed to death so that even more of 
their water could go to raise fish that cannot survive the 
fish harvesters.
	We think that ocean fishing limits are one item that 
should be on the other side of the equation, as you have 
frequently asked the witnesses.
	Thank you very much.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you very much, Mr. DuBois.  It 
is good to see you, and thank you for waiting.
	Any questions from the Board members?
	Mr. Brown has a question.
	MR. BROWN:  It is interesting, Bill, that you bring 
that up.  I have just come from up in Washington where 
salmon fishing is usually very great, and it hasn't been for 
the last number of years, and they credit the loss to the 30 
miles of gill nets out in the ocean, and a lot of the blame 
is in that direction, so you bring up a very interesting 
point.
	MR. DUBOIS:  This book says that there is twice the 
fishing capacity than there is harvesting supply.  There are 
twice as many fishermen in fish boats and equipment as the 
world supply of fish can satisfy.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. DuBois.
	Let me say that we have a bit of a dilemma up here.  
We have certainly all day scheduled, but we are down to 
three presenters, all of whom are entitled to 20 minutes 
each.  The Board has got about 15 minutes and we have other 
commitments that we must make tonight.
	I will make an offering to the remaining three 
individuals that if they can limit their presentation to 
five minutes and supplement those presentations with a 
handout to be submitted later or now, we can give you each 
five minutes now, or we would be happy to come back 
tomorrow.
	What time are we scheduled for tomorrow, Mr. Howard?  
Is it ten o'clock?
	MR. HOWARD:  There is no scheduled time.
	MR. CAFFREY:  There has been no notice of the time, 
so we could state whatever the time is. 
	The third choice is probably not very attractive.  I 
am speaking specifically to Dr. Brown, Mr. Vogel and Mr. 
Porgans.  I don't want to give any --
	MR. PORGANS:  I can do mine in five minutes.
	MR. CAFFREY:  You can do yours in five minutes -- 
why don't you come on up.
	DR. BROWN:  Dr. Brown and Mr. Vogel cannot do theirs 
in five minutes.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We will have to see them tomorrow 
because we are out of here in about 15 minutes.
	MR. PORGANS:  I appreciate being here.  I am Patrick 
Porgans.  I am independent regulatory specialist and I am 
participating in these hearings as a member of the public.  
I am not representing anybody but myself.
	I heard a lot of good things today and this word 
comprehensive is really coming home. I can remember talking 
comprehensive back in the seventies.  I don't want to date 
myself, but nevertheless, I want to bring you up to date on 
a couple of things about dating.
	I talked with Bob Stackhouse over at the Bureau.  
He's the Chief Fiscal Division person, and what he says 
about those 89 positions, or how many positions, he said if 
anybody wants to volunteer for them, he is open -- his door 
is open and he is not hiring anybody.
	As a matter of fact, they are talking about down-
sizing over there.
	MR. BROWN:  That's not true then; is that what you 
are saying?
	MR. PORGANS:  That was as of 4:10.
	MR. BROWN:  So that's a bad rumor that's going 
around?
	MR. PORGANS:  According to him.  He said they are 
reorganizing the Bureau, but in the end they are going to 
have less people.
	The other thing that I talked to him about, the 
800,000 acre-feet because I was in another meeting this 
morning and I went to bed at 4:30, got up at 7:30 and 
attended that meeting until at least 10:30 on the CVPIA on 
the 800,000 acre-feet, and that's still up in the air, and I 
had brought up integrating the 800,000 into everything else 
everybody else is doing because we are not going to need 
800,000 plus 800,000 plus 800,000.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Is that meeting over now?
	MR. PORGANS:  According to  my sundial, yes.
	Getting back to the issue at hand, I looked at the 
framework agreement and I am all for agreements, believe me.  
I have them with my wife every day.  It's been going on 30 
years.
	My point is, I have little faith in the agreement 
because the bottom line, this agreement has less teeth in it 
than I have in my mouth.  It's a good concept and I think 
it's a framework, but it doesn't have any real -- you know, 
I am from the old school, I have to have teeth.  They charge 
me with being a junkyard dog.  Once I bite in, I am in 
there.
	At any rate, I want to suggest to you, there were 
several issues brought up here today bout a comprehensive 
plan, but we need a transitionary implementation plan in 
order to fulfill whatever the objectives are.  By that I 
mean it would be very difficult for us to go out and get 
everybody in the counties and areas of origin to voluntarily 
come up with their share of water in order to meet the 
standards, whatever they may be.
	That's going to take a little bit of time.  
Nevertheless, I suggest that under Federal and State law, 
and according to a document signed by Mr. Robert Potter, it 
says here that one of the reasons, and I am talking about 
the coordinated operating agreement, and it states that the 
purpose of that proposed agreement and, of course,  we know 
that's been signed back in the mid-eighties, is that both 
the Central Valley Project and the State Water Project bear 
the fair share of their obligation to protect beneficial 
uses of the Delta.
	HR 3113 provides that the Federal Government will 
meet those standards.
	Now, what I am suggesting, and I wish the Department 
and the Bureau were here because they are going to like 
this, I suggest that when you were talking 40-40-20 at one 
point on the amount of water that each particular -- give or 
take a couple of percents, who cares -- my point is that 
maybe what we should do is set an interim standard and say, 
okay, this is what the standard is going to be.  It is not 
going to please everybody, but this standard could change 
with what the results of having that standard in place are.
	Set the standard and set it at 50-50.  Okay, 50 
Bureau, 50 DWR.  Now, in the interim, you set the process in 
motion to get all the other upstream depleters based upon 
the amount of water they have or the amount they are using, 
and you start surcharging them. They are going to be 
surcharged for that water because the State and Federal 
water projects aren't going to be putting that water up, and 
over time, they are going to be required to pay this water 
back, sort of like a water banking concept, but it is a 
delayed water banking concept based upon the actual 
implementation of what amounts of water they are required to 
provide for the project.
	MR. BROWN:  I don't follow, Patrick.  Try it again.
	MR. PORGANS:  I know it is late.  Under the current 
law, and this is not taking fully into account Racanelli.  
Racanelli says let's get everybody in and everybody is going 
to have their fair share.
	HR 3113 and the water rights conditions that are 
attached to both the Bureau and the Department's permits, if 
this Board sets new standards, they are going to meet those 
standards and they will provide that water.
	I am suggesting to you that they shouldn't bear the 
full responsibility over time to meet those standards 
because we all know there are other users.
	I am suggesting that if you set a standard, whatever 
the standard is, that both the Departments in the interim 
share the responsibility to meet that standard knowing full 
well that in time the other depleters are going to have to 
make good for whatever water they put up.  It is a water 
banking concept, but a delayed water banking concept.
	Now, the last thing, because I'm getting pretty 
close to my time  -- I did two things:  One, I'm going to 
give the Board a copy of a report I put together against my 
wife's best wishes.  This is one of the dreams that didn't 
work out and this is on the state of the State Water Project 
supply, demand, financing and management.
	I present six options in here on how we can create 
more flexibility in the operation of the State Water Project 
and increase water supply yield with existing facilities.  
	The other things that I am saying in this particular 
report is we can provide a source of revenue to help us 
sustain those water contractors, especially in the ag sector 
that are having financial problems.  That is all in here.  
It is all within the existing source of funds.
	The other thing I would like to mention -- I mean a 
lot of people come back in and say we didn't know back when 
that this project would only have about 1.8 million acre-
feet of yield, the State Water Project.  
	I have every Bulletin 132.  I try to get my wife to 
read to me because my eyes are bad.   Bulletin 132-82 states 
that by mid-1985, or shortly thereafter, the firm yield of 
the State Water Project would be at 1.6 or 1.8 million acre-
feet of water and that would be attributable to increased 
demands from the areas of the counties of origin.
	So, we are talking about 1.6, 1.8 now, but the 1.6 
or 1.8 is for different purposes.  It is to protect these 
public trust resources.
	The last thing I have done in my spare time --
	MR. CAFFREY:  Are you going to leave the report with 
us?
	MR. PORGANS:  I am going to give you one.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Do you have copies for the other 
parties and the 20 that we have asked for?
	MR. PORGANS:  I don't.  This report is not for 
everybody.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Could you get us more copies in the 
next couple of days so we can fulfill the fairness -- I am 
not trying to give you a bad time.
	MR. PORGANS:  I appreciate that, Mr. Chairman, but I 
would have to talk to my wife because she also handles the 
budget.
	MR. CAFFREY:  You are going to have to bring your 
wife to one of these proceedings because we would like to 
meet the power.
	MR. PORGANS:  She will beat me up for that. 
	At any rate, the last thing I did, just so that you 
can appreciate, I did a report for some people in the marsh 
and this establishes a report on what has happened this year 
for water deliveries.  It is interesting to note with all 
restrictions that are imposed with ESA, et cetera, the State 
Water Project was able to provide almost as much entitlement 
water this year as they did in 1987, which is a good sign, 
and we are suggesting now that we don't have a plan in the 
event we go forward because that rule curve is out there 
somewhere, and I realize these biologists -- I can't find 
out who they are, but they are running the projects -- have 
them contact me.
	What I am suggesting is that there's latitude here 
and if somebody really wants to sit down, you know, and work 
towards the short- and long-term integrated solution to deal 
with this problem, call my wife and see if she can book me 
in.
	Thank you for your time today, and I didn't have an 
actual written presentation, but I can get you something.  I 
will call Alice Book and have her give you a copy, and then, 
I will give it back to you.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Thank you, Mr. Porgans.  If you can 
get some more copies of your handout, that would be helpful.  
I realize that you're a single representative of the public 
and your funds are limited.
	Thank you, Mr. Porgans.
	Let's see, we will be back tomorrow.  Let's resume 
at 9:30.
	Mr. Pettit; is that correct.  Mr. Pettit is 
reminding me that we will proceed across the street tomorrow 
morning at 9:30 in our hearing room at 901 P Street.
	(A brief off-the-record discussion was held.)
	MR. CAFFREY:  We are going to have a little change 
in plans.  We have had a consultation and there are 
apparently two more presenters.  We don't expect any more 
sign-ups tomorrow, so we will finish tonight.  We are going 
to give each of the presenters 15 minutes and we are going 
to hold to that pretty carefully, and that won't include 
questions, but are Dr. Brown and Mr. Vogel still here?  Yes, 
they are.
	Dr. Brown, why don't you come forward and I believe 
you wanted to go first.  I think Mr. Vogel wanted to follow 
you.
	MR. VOGEL:  If we can switch them around, I would 
appreciate it.
	MR. CAFFREY:  All right, Mr. Vogel, why don't you 
come forward.
	MR. VOGEL:  Good afternoon.  My name is Dave Vogel.  
I am President of the Natural Resources Control Science, 
Incorporated.  
	I am here today on behalf of Delta Wetlands 
Corporation.  Specifically, I am here to discuss the value 
of real time monitoring and informational standards as 
useful tools for the Board to consider in protecting Bay-
Delta estuarine resources.
	We are presently working on a technical report which 
we will provide to the Board staff in the next several 
weeks.  It describes some of the important facets of how 
real-time monitoring and informational standards would be 
employed by the Board to protect the resources, and I am 
here to talk about some specifics.
	I know a lot of the time today people talked about 
generalities, and fluff, and so forth and policies.  I am 
here to talk about real fish and real water.
	Specifically, real-time monitoring, you have heard 
it mentioned a few times today and it's sprinkled throughout 
many of the documents within this summer's workshops, and I 
am here to tell you it is not a misnomer.
	A lot of folks say you can't do it.  I am here to 
tell you we can do it.  I can give a very specific example.  
Again, this is just a highlight.  I am going to give you an 
example to perk your attention and other aspects of this 
will be presented in the technical report.
	I believe you have a copy of an analysis that is 
dated July 24, 1985.  You should have that.  This is a 
letter that describes the very first pulse flow that was 
ever utilized in California back in May of 1985.  I wrote 
the letter.  It was signed verbatim by the Regional Director 
of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Portland.  It 
describes each and every phase of how that pulse flow effort 
worked in moving salmon from the upper Sacramento River out 
through the Delta estuary.
	It was a three-day pulse-flow effort and to 
characterize why it came about and how it came about, you 
have to think about what 1985 represented.  It was a drought 
year, there were very adverse conditions present throughout 
the Central Valley.  We had very low winter flows at that 
time.
	Many of the monitoring programs which I was in 
charge of on behalf of the U. S. Fish and Wildlife Service 
on the upper Sacramento River demonstrated there were 
literally millions of salmon still holding and rearing in 
the upper Sacramento River and have yet to migrate down 
through the river system and Bay-Delta estuary.
	I was also responsible for programming about 8 
million salmon out of the Coleman National Fish Hatchery, 
the largest federal hatchery we have in California.  
	And at that same time, because it was a drought 
year, agricultural diversions came on line early and we had 
very severe conditions in fish passage at the Red Bluff 
diversion dam.
	Also, at the Glenn-Colusa Irrigation District 
because of riverbed degradation conditions and a 
dysfunctional fish screen, there were very adverse 
conditions present as well, so the State was set for an 
environmental disaster.
	Working with the Bureau of Reclamation at that time 
in a very creative proactive fashion and working with all 
the State and Federal agencies, specifically Fish and 
Wildlife, the Bureau and Fish and Game, we were able to 
develop a pulse-flow idea and put it into practice.
	But it would have been employed -- the Bureau told 
us, you have got to demonstrate this is going to work, 
because it is 50,000 acre-feet of water.  So we employed a 
real-time monitoring program.
	The first graph you see here is the monitoring I did 
at Red Bluff.  It was all orchestrated to time the passage 
of these fish and the release of millions of fish from the 
Coleman Fish Hatchery in concert with this pulse of water 
out of the Shasta Dam.
	The data points you see here are a result of our 
hourly monitoring at Red Bluff diversion dam and we timed it 
so when those fish were released, they hit the confluence of 
Battle Creek where Coleman National Fish Hatchery is located 
at the same time the increased flows from Shasta came down 
the mainstem of the Sacramento River.
	To do that we had to get the hatchery people out 
there at three o'clock in the morning and pull the screens, 
and that wasn't a random haphazard scheme.  It was based on 
a lot of years of research that demonstrated that we knew 
the time when these fish would pass downstream, we knew the 
rate of travel, and the Bureau knew the rate of water 
movement, so we tried to integrate real life biology with 
water management and get them to converge on behalf of the 
resource.  
	It worked extremely effectively, such that we were 
able to plan the water release and fish release to get fish 
past Red Bluff Dam at night.  You can see in that graph 
there the peak of the movement occurred about ten o'clock at 
night.  The following night we continued monitoring and 
confirmed that the bulk of the fish had passed.
	We also found that it had dramatically reduced 
predation at the dam and that is described in detail in the 
letter.
	But moving downstream to the Delta, the arrows on 
the left identify key sites within the upper Sacramento 
River where these fish passed downstream.
	The fish were released, like I said, at three 
o'clock on the 13th, and then, on the bottom you see the 
dates in May, until ultimately when the bulk of those fish 
-- and we knew those were our fish because we tagged about 
200,000 of them at the same time they were released.  We 
released nearly eight million fish at the same time.
	You can see about a five-day window.  About eight 
days after the release, they passed River Mile 0 down at 
Chipps Island, a passage of nearly 300 miles.
	Now, since then, there have been subsequent 
modifications to this technique, the addition of additional 
sites to monitor these fish and we have demonstrated that it 
does work, and so, I simply throw that out as an example to 
give you the background of the pulse-flow concept, and I am 
not intending here to say the pulse flow is the answer.  The 
intent is to talk about real-time monitoring as a useful 
tool.
	MS. FORSTER:  Do the fishery agencies do real-time 
monitoring now?
	MR. VOGEL:  I would have to say no, not by the way I 
would define real-time monitoring.  They do monitoring, but 
it is monitoring to pretty much monitor the status of the 
resources.  
	Much of what you hear about good science, bad 
science -- I'm a believer that it is good science, but the 
design of the monitoring programs isn't designed to 
accommodate what you need to achieve, and that is how to 
react to a situation before you have a problem.
	You always hear about the problems of the take 
limits.  Well, take limits are down here.  That is the worst 
place to monitor because then it is too late.  
	The salmon of the Sacramento River have already 
migrated down there.  The San Joaquin River fish have 
already been pulled toward the pumps.  The Delta spawn, the 
striped bass spawn have all been pulled down in the South 
Delta.  It's too late.  By the time you react and shut off 
the pumps, the fish are already in the South Delta.
	What I am suggesting with this type of real-time 
monitoring program is to place your sites to allow the 
reaction time to occur before you have a disaster -- this 
point right here.
	So, their study sites are not set up at an 
appropriate location such as in the Sacramento River where 
you can respond in sufficient time to avoid the entrapment 
of the fish into the South Delta.
	So, the monitoring they are doing is good, but it is 
not designed to allow reaction time and that's what this 
technical report will cover.  Daily acquisition is possible.  
We even do it on an hourly basis.
	I won't go through all of these, but the key item 
that you just brought up there is item No. 2.  Throughout 
the Delta, throughout the San Joaquin and many of the rivers 
that I am currently working on in the Central Valley, the 
techniques and the abilities are there to do it.  But it 
won't work unless people want it to work, so it is a 
different type of a monitoring program than you have heard 
about in the past.
	Again, I won't go through each one of those in the 
interest of time, but I want to talk briefly about the last 
three.
	One is nighttime sampling.  All the monitoring 
programs you have heard discussed, almost none of those are 
conducted at night.  You hear of problems with hazards to 
people, boat traffic and so forth, but the irony is that 
that's where the action is.  That's when the fish movement 
occurs, and that's when you get the least amount of gear 
avoidance by the fish.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  That's when you have to pay people 
time and a half.
	MR. VOGEL:  You are absolutely right.  That's 
probably the biggest stumbling block.  When I said getting 
the hatchery people out there at three o'clock, it took me 
two weeks to get approval.  We had to pay them double time.
	It's a serious problem.  I can do it now in private 
practice.  My employees all worked at night, but I can do 
it; but in the government, it's a real problem.
	We will discuss the importance of that.  It's 
critically important for the resource, and obviously, it is 
important for the water supplies, but that's when the real 
action in nature happens.  That is when you really discern 
what is happening in fish movement.
	Now, the thing about this real-time monitoring, it's 
worthless if you don't have a quick way of entering the data 
in the format that anybody here can use, the Board can use, 
I can use, Fish and Game and Fish and Wildlife.  They have 
got to be able to do that.  They are doing it on the 
Columbia River.
	In the last workshop I discussed some of the most 
sophisticated tools that they are using, such as passive 
integrated transponders, detection devices in each of the 
dams.  Just recently, in fact, two or three days ago, I 
found out that Fish and Game was up there looking into the 
possibility of developing a parallel database at the 
Portland fish passage center using such things as passive 
integrated transponders.  
	It will work.  In California perhaps the best tool 
would be to CDEC, the California Data Exchange Center.  That 
information is available to anybody.  All you have to do is 
call up, give the password, it is free.  Call up on your own 
phone, access the microcomputer and you can have 
instantaneous readout on immediate real-time data such as 
streamflow gages and hourly readings.
	The same thing can be achievable with biological 
data.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Where is that phone number based?
	MR. VOGEL:  I believe it is right here in Sacramento 
but it is accessible anywhere -- it's upstairs.
	MR. CAFFREY:  You just use your phone Complus and 
plug in and away you go?
	MR. VOGEL:  Exactly.  It's a beautiful system.
	But the biological data can all be entered in the 
same fashion and what we would envision with the real-time 
monitoring station is to establish key modes or control 
points and every night this data could be up-linked or down-
loaded into the computer, and literally by the next morning 
anybody can access that database.
	It is not just a pie-in-the-sky dream.  I mean, 
people are doing it right now.
	Think of the value of that and how water operation 
folks could respond when they see these peak movements of 
the fish going through the Delta.  They can make management 
changes and you could open and close gates or reduce 
pumping, increase pumping, and so forth, and again, a lot of 
fish would be saved and a lot of water could be saved.
	Anyway, that's the key aspect of the presentation 
and we are going to put all this down in a technical report 
and bring it to the Board.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Mr. Vogel, have you had any 
opportunity to present your findings, your actual 
experiences into the CUWA development effort and some of the 
other parties?
	MR. VOGEL:  No, I haven't.
	MR. CAFFREY:  You haven't.
	MR. VOGEL:  No, I would like to, though.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Have you approached them at all?
	MR. VOGEL:  This was all news to me.  I just 
recently got a copy of the draft plan.  These are techniques 
that we are working on in four states throughout the West; 
Idaho, Washington, California and Oregon.
	MR. CAFFREY:  I have heard your presentation before 
and I, for one, have been impressed with the practicality of 
your approach, and so, I commend you for your continuing 
efforts and I just think it is fascinating. 
	It would be good, I think, if some of the others 
could have the benefit of some of your thinking and some of 
your actual data.
	MR. VOGEL:  Sure.
	MR. CAFFREY:  It's too bad the way things get 
scheduled, the way the cards get submitted, and we have you 
on late in the day because it probably would be good for 
some of them to hear this.
	I can't tell you what to do, but I suggest you show 
them some of this data.
	MR. VOGEL:  I will.
	MR. CAFFREY:  I imagine you all agree.
	MR. BROWN:  I agree.  I would like you to make it as 
strong as you can.
	MR. CAFFREY:  And certainly, please participate in 
the meetings Mr. Pettit is going to be holding starting the 
21st.
	Does anybody have any questions of Mr. Vogel?  
	Anything from staff?
	MR. HOWARD:  I had a question.  I was just glancing 
through the memo.  I guess it was written in response or as 
part a study you have done, and I notice that on the 14th or 
so you increased the flow from 9,000 to 14,000, and then you 
track it through the graph, as you indicated.
	Has this same monitoring program been done without 
the pulse flow?  I mean, if you had done it without the 
pulse flow and you had the same monitoring program, would 
you have seen essentially --
	MR. VOGEL:  Yes, it was.  In fact, it was done many 
years preceding that.  That is what prompted this type of 
monitoring program, and that is how we knew when to release 
the fish.  All these years historically the hatchery would 
release the fish during daylight hours, usually in the 
morning, and the way they track these fish downstream, they 
tend to move in spurts.  During the daylight hours they tend 
to hold back and move very slowly, and when nighttime hits, 
at twilight, they start moving to the center of the channel 
and start moving very rapidly, and by midnight they are 
really moving downstream at a very rapid rate.
	So, based on that prior monitoring without pulse 
flow is how we were able to schedule release of the fish and 
the actual release of the water out of the reservoir.
	MR. HOWARD:  So, it's a good idea to release them at 
night, or during a pulse flow, or both?
	MR. VOGEL:  Definitely both in my mind.  In fact, 
getting back to this scheduling people at night, I tried for 
years when I was with the Fish and Wildlife Service to get 
all hatcheries in the entire Central Valley to release all 
their fish at night, and I ran into a brick wall because of 
this double time and overtime, and so forth.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Maybe we ought to think about a 
recommendation to the Fish and Game Commission.
	MR. VOGEL:  You heard, I think at one of the last 
workshops or one of the publications where striped bass 
fishermen know where to go fishing in the Delta is when the 
hatchery trucks are there.  There's a reason for it.  The 
fishermen wouldn't be there just to get their lines wet.  
They are there for different reasons.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Anything else of Mr. Vogel?
	Thank you very much.
	Dr. Brown.
	DR. BROWN:  Is there any chance of getting this in 
the morning or do you want me to go through it tonight?
	MR. CAFFREY:  There is no chance tomorrow now, and 
you have 15 minutes tonight. 
	Let me point out that as stated in the notice, when 
you give us your written material, we read it.  It may seem 
amazing, but we do read everything, so what you tell us 
verbally is not the limit of what we consider as your input.
	DR. BROWN:  I understand.
	So, I want to just review some of the concepts we 
have introduced at the previous workshops, but remember I am 
leading to a full set of recommended standards that we came 
up with that illustrate adaptive management.
	And we are hoping that by running through what these 
particular objectives are, that you would get a better 
understanding of what we are suggesting.
	Remember from previous testimony, we are suggesting 
a very different set of standards than what appears in D-
1485.  We have introduced the concept previously that the 
idea of looking ahead by water year type and by month, and 
presetting flows or salinity standards for fish and wildlife 
is not going to be an efficient, and may not even be 
effective for managing the fish.
	So, leading off from what Dave Vogel has just 
presented, we have come up with the tic-tac-toe diagram 
which says there are basically three major beneficial uses 
of concern, the water supply, the salinity control which now 
includes estuarine protection and fish protection.  And to 
provide protection, the comprehensive -- all those words, 
there really are three types of standards.
	Dave has just been talking about the daily 
information needs, and really, all we are suggesting 
different than the monitoring plan which appears in D-1485 
or appeared in the D-1845 draft, or the D-1630 draft, is 
that beyond requiring that the monitoring go on, you should 
literally require that that monitoring data show up in CDEC 
the very next day, or soon as possible, because one of the 
problems that we observed is that the monitoring is going on 
but it has no chance of affecting the Delta management 
because those reporting requirements are out.
	I think it would be similar to an NPDES permit that 
did not require monthly compliance reports.  They didn't 
have a mechanism for being able to go from monitoring to an 
evaluation to incremental management.
	The middle screen of tic-tac-toe are the minimum 
protective standard that everyone is sort of talking about 
that just have to be there.  Once they are decided on, they 
are fixed ahead of time, and we have broken them down in our 
written document in terms of what you would be providing for 
water supply, and the two that we are suggesting there is 
that the riparian diversions that occur sort of get built 
in.  Those are happening.  Those may have prior water 
rights, and that's happening in the Delta.
	The ot her one that you might consider is a fixed 
minimum pumping limit, so this was in the D-1630.  Almost 
not matter what is going on, there is some minimum amount of 
pumping that ought to be going on and similar for salinity 
control, you can come up with salinity minimums and these 
would be the base Delta outflows that would be required to 
prevent salinity intrusion, and we have attached some 
numbers to those in our recommended set of standards that 
are in the document and that are one of other alternatives 
considered for Tom's work.
	We have a minimum protective estuarine habitat that 
is essentially the confluence part of what people are 
suggesting which is in the order of 7,000 cfs for the five 
months.  And similarly, for fish protection, what would be 
the minimum operational changes that may be required?  
	Well, two things that people are talking about would 
be the cross channel closure and what they are thinking is 
you have to close it this whole time since we don't know 
when the fish will be there.
	What Dave Vogel is saying is that if you had good 
daily information standards, there is some opportunity for 
the real-time monitoring to come across and actually reopen 
the cross channel when it was free of fish at some 
designated density, but in general, you could imagine some 
absolute changes to the Delta that would be fixed and 
required.
	You could add up the water cost of this and this may 
amount to, just making up a number, five million acre-feet 
of water.  Well, that's about the requirement under D-1485. 
So, perhaps that's what we are talking about in this middle 
category.
	We have the actual numbers that we are suggesting in 
the document.  Then, there would be these adaptive 
allocation objectives, and now we are getting down to what 
we really suggest that you implement.
	Rather than working on the monthly time scale by all 
of this adaptive allocation would be done on a daily basis.  
The Executive Director, as was suggested in D-1630, we are 
using the term Delta master to refer to that operation.
	If we could have the next slide -- and I want to 
just briefly go through the idea here.  These adaptive 
management standards can no longer be specified as salinity 
or flow for a given month in a given year type.  That is not 
in enough specificity for what will actually be required.
	Rather, what is needed is that there be daily 
monitoring of the Delta conditions and the fish responses 
that are going on, then some evaluation activity happening 
in this Executive Director's office or the Delta master's 
office.
	The sort of things that he would be doing is what we 
people have been talking about, adding the fish protection 
and habitat analysis to the already very exact water 
analysis, evaluating habitat conditions, estimating these 
transport patterns, like Dave showed the example on the 
Sacramento River, estimating the distribution and abundance 
of fish, the early warning he was suggesting, knowing when 
spawning is happening is another, and actually estimating 
entrainment losses as is done with the salvage records, 
although we are agreeing with some of the fish folks as to 
the adult or juvenile fish that you think you are salvaging, 
and that's too late in the life history.  It's the eggs and 
larvae that should probably trigger pumping cutbacks.
	There are just a limited number of things that these 
adaptive standards could then actually control, and we're 
saying put a person in charge of it.  That water quality 
plan will not have the ability to live through the future 
and make the adjustment, but we are hoping that there would 
be a way to put these objectives in the standards with this 
structure for decision making in place to sort of take the 
comprehensive control and the balancing on a day-to-day 
basis and take on that responsibility.
	The only thing we can do is control the salt 
gradient location with outflow, and that's very expensive in 
water to provide an extra day at Rowe Island, for example.
	Schedule the transport flows -- that's the kind of 
things that Dave Vogel was mentioning, and almost all of the 
recommended standards, all six of them, if you have already 
looked at them, have a San Joaquin transport flow.
	The only trouble with that is that they have already 
chosen the dates for such and such.  The dates that you 
would want to do the San Joaquin flushing flow, as you 
already wrote in D-1630, will depend on conditions that 
year, and just as you made that a function of the Executive 
Directors, coordinating with the fish agencies deciding, we 
are saying that is the kind of daily decision making I want 
for every aspect of the Delta control:
	We do operate the gates and facilities, we do 
control the pumping and scheduling of hatchery releases, or 
doing other sorts of things.
	We are just about out of time, but I wanted to 
emphasize -- will you put up our next overhead.  This, 
again, is a review graph.  Perhaps this works into the next 
workshop where we can consider these alternatives.
	In our paper we are saying that evaluating these 
potential alternatives with monthly water supply models is 
impossible because it does not provide the right 
information.  The monthly water supply model knows nothing 
about the fishery benefits that might result.
	If you take the matrix that DWR just released this 
morning giving you the water costs, you will notice that 
four out of five alternatives that they have evaluated all 
have approximately the same water costs.  That is sort of 
curious to me, but let's say that is true, they are each 
going to cost 500,000 acre-feet a year.
	My question is, how would we decide which of the 
four to go with?  They have equal water costs, they have 
unknown fish benefits, and we are suggesting that one of the 
reasons that you can't go any further with the monthly water 
models is that it doesn't even consider the realistic 
hydrology and operational constraints, let alone try to 
calculate the effect on fish.
	We introduced two workshops ago our initial version 
of a daily Delta operations model called Daily SOS.  I don't 
have time to show it to you, but we are now introducing at 
this workshop the existence of a daily fish transport model 
that sits right on top of the Daily SOS model.  We call it 
Daily Move.
	And what you can do with that is bring up a year of 
real daily data, apply a set of standards to it, and 
determine what the channel flows throughout the Delta are.
	This is an example for three months where the main 
important ingredients of the three months are the water 
coming into South Delta through the San Joaquin, the east 
side or cross channel.  This is with the cross channel 
closed and almost full exports going on in early April, and 
then, as the water supply is limiting, they had to fall off, 
and then the current standards applied 6,000 cfs pumping in 
May and June.  During that pumping cutback to six, it 
provided a little bit of QWEST flow, which is the white 
line.
	What we then did is open the cross channel gates.  
Now under the current set of standards when they are telling 
you close it for a month, open it for a month, the cross 
channel would have remained closed, and so the following 
situation would exist.
	Show us the next one.  We are just contrasting the 
idea of opening or closing the cross channel gates.  They 
would normally be closed with the current set of 
recommendations because we are still talking April and 
there's the possibility of salmon, so they are just shut.  
So, what that does is it leads to a stagnation of the San 
Joaquin.
	So, what we did with our daily fish model, this is 
simply to prove that it exists and that it is available for 
other people to look at, is we spawned 10 million eggs a day 
of salmon for the first ten days of April.  That's the 
little black line coming across, and then watched where 
those larvae ended up.
	Coming out of the lower San Joaquin, there are only 
two exits.  You can either exit to the confluence, and for 
striped bass it's their preferred habitat and safety, or you 
can exit to the South Delta, in which case they have 
approximately a two-day shelf life, we might say.
	And what we find is that --
	MR. DEL PIERO:  That's not a long enough shelf life.
	DR. BROWN:  When the cross channel is closed as in 
the top diagram, as it would be to protect the salmon, the 
ending of those hundred million fish spawned in the first of 
April was that 54 percent made it to the confluence, to 
relative safety, but 28 percent made it to the export pumps.  
An additional 4 percent made it to the ag diversions.
	For the same period of time, when we opened the 
gates, we are now providing more outflow to the confluence 
because we held pumping constant, and in that case a higher 
fraction, approximately 10 percent more, made it to safety, 
so here is an example where we find a 10 percent difference 
in fish survival which might be a significant number simply 
by opening the cross channel gate, which would be against 
conventional wisdom because they are to be closed for the 
salmon.
	So, we are introducing the idea that there is 
conflict in running the Delta and specifying month-long 
closure or opening, and again, when we are talking day-to-
day decision making, the timing of when salmon are there and 
when striped bass are there, it might be able to work out.
	One last point.  We spawned 100 million fish, but at 
the end of 10 days the most fish that we see in the San 
Joaquin is 30 million.  What this means is that 70 million 
of the fish within the 10-day spawning period are already 
transported to wherever they were going to go.
	This is to emphasize that right on top of the 
spawning peak is when transport is working.  So, setting 
average monthly flows at a month's time may not have given 
the conditions that were needed right then.
	I have my story now for you.  You may have wondered 
what this is.  This is my monitoring equipment and this 
little thing on me is my pump.  It is a very little pump, 
but I take daily measurements of my blood sugar since this 
is an insulin pump, and based on those measurements and what 
I want to eat and what I know my blood sugar needs to be, I 
control my pump, and I do this every day for every meal that 
I eat, and it gives me a peak of insulin.
	My story is that we have some big pumps and setting 
them at a certain level or the gates leading to them for a 
month at a time is not going to be adequate.
	There will not be any set of prespecified monthly 
standards that will provide efficient fish protection.  But 
if you set up a Delta master, daily information, and the 
flexibility to work day by day, it is possible we can 
protect fish at the lowest possible water cost.
	So, thanks for the late time and you have my stuff.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Dr. Brown, thank you very much, sir, 
and I would observe that Mr. Brown was very impressed by 
your ability to count millions of fish and he can't find one 
to catch.
	DR. BROWN:  These are computer fish.
	MR. CAFFREY:  We know you have done al ot of very 
interesting work and I think I would ask you the same 
question I asked Mr. Vogel before:  Clearly, we are the ones 
that have to make a decision, but have you had any exchange 
of information or discourse with some of the other parties, 
like the CUWA folks that are working on their packages?
	DR. BROWN:  No, we don't get any kind of notice from 
CUWA or the Department.  I know they have been having some 
premodeling deliberations and you will notice our 
alternative isn't even on their matrix, so we do not have 
any kind of direct interaction.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Let me suggest that you contact the 
CUWA representative, and also the representative of the 
environmental organizations.  I think they would find it 
very interesting.  
	I understand DWR has been somewhat reluctant to 
spend time doing evaluation of the model.  Nonetheless, this 
Board is not hamstrung by any predispositions one way or the 
other, and I think the Chairman's suggestion that you all 
get in touch with CUWA and share that information may well 
prove to be beneficial evidence.
	MR. CAFFREY:  You are basically presenting to us a 
well stated and very creative technique for operating the 
system, and that is a methodology for attaining or keeping a 
standard that is set. 
	You know, if we could, in a real world, operate that 
way, I'm sure that besides water quality benefits, there's 
certainly water quantity benefits, too.
	How this Board plays a role in implementing that 
kind of management scheme, good as it is and interesting as 
it is, is somewhat problematic.  That's why we say to you 
that it might be worthwhile for you to also try to enter 
into this process through those other avenues with the 
people who are charged with doing the operation.  
	If they can be intrigued or interested in this as we 
develop our standard which cost water, it might heighten 
their interest on how to save some of that water.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  One more additional thing.  Dr. 
Brown, do you afford Mr. Howard the opportunity to see your 
model runs and how you do your evaluations?
	DR. BROWN:  We remain interested and are able to do 
runs on our model for Tom in addition to having DWR SIM runs 
using these fish effect models.  That is certainly possible.
	MR. DEL PIERO:  Does he take advantage of that?
	DR. BROWN:  Well, he has just gotten started with 
the six cases released a couple of weeks ago.  So, the offer 
is in the paper.
	MR. CAFFREY:  Does staff have any questions of Dr. 
Brown?
	MR. HOWARD:  No, we have already seen Dr. Brown's 
stuff.
	MR. CAFFREY:  All right, thank you all very much.  
That concludes this fifth workshop and we will have a public 
notice out shortly describing the proceedings and the scope 
of the proceedings on the meetings that we have announced 
for September 21 that will be chaired by our Executive 
Director, Mr. Pettit.
	Thank you all for your attention and thank you all 
for your input.
	(Proceedings concluded)


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