Red Clover TAC Meeting Minutes

April 13, 2005

Portola City Hall Council Room

Attendees: Jim Wilcox, Leslie Mink, Gia Martynn- CRM Staff; Dennis Heiman, RWQCB; Todd Hillaire, DWR; Joe Hoffman, USFS; Lori Powers, CDF&G; Dan Martynn, NRCS; Scott Thompson, Goodwin Ranch

Jim handed out a project area map, cross-sections, and project progress summary. Explained the Area of Potential Effects (APE), where direct effects are expected to occur and then the greater area designated for survey and contextual analysis purposes for archaeology and botany. He then summarized the cross-sectional data collected to date. Plans to try and access project area tomorrow, so we can get access for specialist survey work and continued cross-section surveys. Hopes to get in and start x-section work by May/June, and then flag initial design layout. Cows usually go on mid-May, but Scott is flexible. Jim will coordinate with Scott to flag after cows are out to avoid cows eating the flagging.

Contracts for botany, wildlife, and archaeology surveys have been advertised and bids are due April 15^th. Surveys for botany and arch will probably begin in June/July. Wildlife surveys will begin as soon as possible for great gray owls and on into the summer for other species. CRM staff will do amphibian surveys and help DWR with fish surveys in June. Potential resource conflicts will be addressed as the design evolves this summer/fall.

Everyone in the water schedule for the Red Clover area will be notified of the project, as agreed to between Jim and the Curtis Levine, the water master. Dan suggested that maybe additional users downstream, outside of the schedule but within the decreed area, should also be notified. It was agreed that a letter and information would also be sent to Jerry Spurlock in Indian Valley.

Leslie handed out a draft monitoring plan and discussed past and current (on-going) monitoring that affects Red Clover. We then looked at what questions we want answered from pre- and post-project monitoring and decided on the following:

• Decided the continuous recording station at Notson Bridge would be sufficient for measuring the effect on late season base flows and winter storm event flows. The complexity of the system with all its additional inputs from springs and tributaries make it difficult to find good locations to gather flow data. Also, because we are already gathering flow data on other projects, this information can be extrapolated and does not necessarily need to be duplicated on every project. Discussed possibly doing measurements above and below project once a month for a certain number of months to get some baseline data, with comparable measurements possible in subsequent years, kind of like snapshot flow data. Also, DWR may install a continuous recorder at Chase Bridge, but the soonest they can get it installed would be August. This would give us less than one year of pre-project data.
• Agreed to install Hobotemps above and below project, before (2005) and after (2007), project to measure effects on water temperature.
• Plan to do two pre-project aerial flights in June and August 2005 that would be piggy-backed onto the Stanford Last Chance flights. The aerial infrared photography would show water temperatures, where cooler groundwater sources of surface flow are coming from, and temperatures from riparian vegetation. Temps from vegetation can then tell us the rates of evapo-transpiration (ET) that are occurring. ET data could also be useful information for the water rights issue. Post-project flights would be done the same months in 2007.
• Electro-fishing will be done this summer by DWR with assistance from CRM staff, Forest Service and Fish and Game, and again post-project in 2007 and 2008.
• DWR will do two years of post-project wildlife monitoring. One year of pre-project data has already been done. Joe mentioned the possibility of USFS using the project to monitor amphibs to gather information for possible projects later on Forest lands. Also, Katrina Strathmann, a graduate student from San Francisco State, is doing two years of pre-project surveys on butterflies (‘04-05). These surveys also include vegetation transects. Agreed to do post-project surveys in ’07-08; however, it was discussed that effects to populations would probably not be seen until five or ten years and that two years post-project would only give us baseline information post project. We also talked about monitoring for aquatic insects instead of butterflies, and it was mentioned that the effects to aquatic insects are seen more readily downstream from the project. Invertebrate data was collected at the Chase Bridge CRM Monitoring Reach one mile downstream at Chase Bridge in 1997, 1999, and 2001 and could be repeated post-project.
• Agreed that aerial flights would show the effects on groundwater levels. In addition, Burkhard Bohm has a proposal through the Forum to do a study to track sources of groundwater analyzing water samples for isotopes. He would like install piezometers throughout the project area to take water samples from. If approved, it would be funded through the Forum and Burkhard would do the monitoring.
• Will do post-project surveys of floodplain design cross-sections to look at the effects on channel morphometry.
• Agreed to try and relocate three x-sections done for the Red Clover Demo project for erosion rates, and survey them again in 2005.
• Agreed the effects on vegetation could be covered by the transects done for the butterfly surveys and photo points. Also, discussed the need to measure biomass production. Dan agreed the NRCS would work with the landowner to help implement this either with utilization cages or transects. Later spoke with Holly George, UC Extension, who agreed to help NRCS and the Goodwin Ranch set up a monitoring plan for forage production.
• Agreed to not do noxious weed surveys. The plant survey work already planned will tell us what species are in the project area and photo points can document changes in proliferation of undesirable species. The landowner could also help record any changes they observe. If a need for removal of noxious weeds is determined later, we will decide then what action to take.

We did not set a date for the next meeting, but plan to schedule a field meeting sometime in early July to review the project layout and conceptual design alternatives.