Agenda Item No. 10 – From Director Cerda

WATER EDUCATION FOUNDATION BAY DELTA TOUR

June 5-7, 2019

Report by Director José F. Cerda

Day 1, Wednesday, June 5, 2019

At 8:00 am, our two-tour bus group of 100 participants, including policymakers, technocrats, lawyers, scientists, engineers, and students left for the City of West Sacramento Civic Center from Sacramento Airport to get a tour introduction and set expectations about supply and demand of water flows, conveyance and preview Delta and its tributaries. Among some of the notable places we previewed were/are Flood Plain: appurtenances and weirs; confluence of Sacramento and American Rivers; Natomas East and West Main drainage canals, and . Geography and geology were also prominent in the Delta discussion.

Jessica Pearson, the Executive Officer of the Delta Stewardship Council and Greg Farley, Branch Chief, Delta conveyance, Department of Water Resources, and Steve Heringer, Trustee, Reclamation District 999, gave a broad topic discussion about the Delta and it’s importance to California; they discussed the major players and issues; and lastly what were some of the farming, water sources, and voluntary water reductions.

I have aggregated some documentation that I will leave with Board secretary to archive.

From West Sacramento, we departed to a quaint Clarksburg Community Church in a small farming town, where Erik Vink from the Delta Protection Commission, Campbell Ingram, Delta Conservancy and Bruce Herbol provided a preview and discussed how the DPC has a role in protecting farming, agriculture, recreation, natural resources, and river culture. The ecosystem and its restoration were also discussed. We then traveled by bus across the Sacramento River and , an incredibly large water systems that moves almost 4,400 cfs of water.

We arrived at an old speak-easy and “house of ill repute” from the 1920s now converted to the Ryde Hotel. We enjoyed a delicious lunch and two speakers. There we heard from Michael George and Tina Cannon Leahy, both attorneys with the State Water Resources Board they discussed water conveyance legal standards, operations within the Endangered Species Act and salmon protection; in addition, Central Valley Project and the salinity and tides were touched upon. A special emphasis was given to water allocation rights and the weather “whiplash” meaning the problem of California weather from drought to flood and back to drought. The talk also centered on water quality and voluntary agreements within the Bay-Delta Plan.

After lunch, we left for Brannan Island State Recreation Area to listen to Eddie Hard and Randall Neudeck, Branch Chief with California State Parks Division of Boating and Waterways and Metropolitan Water District of Southern California, respectively. The main topic of discussion was a Brazilian invasion called nutria, it’s a furry and buck-tooth rodent like creature that has altered the riparian ecosystem; thus, when nutria is introduced into the environment, they can quickly raze the landscape, eliminating a host of important flora. Rather than just chomping on leaves, they eat the entire plant, including the roots, which means it's less likely to grow back. Another invasive species is a

Page 1 of 3 plant called water hyacinth, a floating aquatic plant with bright green, waxy leaves and attractive, violet flowers that have yellow stripes on the banner petals. Water hyacinth can quickly dominate a waterway or aquatic system because of rapid leaf production, fragmentation of daughter plants, and copious seed production and germination. It degrades habitat for waterfowl by reducing areas of open water used for resting, and when decomposing it makes water unfit for drinking. It displaces native aquatic plants used for food or shelter by other wildlife species.

Water hyacinth causes problems for humans by obstructing navigable waterways, impeding drainage, fouling hydroelectric generators and water pumps, and blocking irrigation channels. Real nasty buggers. The speakers discussed ways that that various agencies are combating including herbicides and other mitigation measures like trapping nutria.

At about 3:30 pm we arrived at where we heard Bryan Brock and Joel Dudas, a pair of engineers with California Department of Water Resources where they diagramed the Delta levee and its special flood control panels, subsidence, mitigation, and wetland restoration programs, along with greenhouse gas sequestration projects.

We departed for University Plaza Waterfront Hotel in Stockton for dinner and then shut eye.

Day 2, Thursday, June 6, 2019

We arrive at , a reservoir in the San Joaquin River Delta region of eastern Contra Costa County. The body of water was created in 1969 by flooding a large tract of land as part of the California State Water Project. It serves as the intake point of the for transport to Southern California and feeds the Delta–Mendota Canal (a part of the Central Valley Project) to recharge San Joaquin Valley river systems. While admiring the built water environment, we were treated to a discussion from Mary Hildebrand and Dino del Carlo, a director and farmer, respectively.

We then toured Jones Pumping Plant and Delta-Mendota Canal with Jake Oxenrider, operations supervisor and Paul Sterns a manager at the Canal. We toured the massive 6-turbines that carry water above and over the berms and levees into the canal that ultimately irrigate fields in the Central Valley.

We couldn’t tour the Fish Conservation and Culture lab, managed by UC Davis.

We arrived at Los Vaqueros Reservoir to lunch and listen to speaker Jennifer Allen, Frank Garland, Jill Mosley, Cary Richardson, and Peter Stabb, engineers and for Contra Costa Water District. We also heard from Jerry Brown, General Manager for Contra Costa Water, certainly not the former governor. They spoke about the Contra Costa being a large supplier and municipal water distributor and how they are expanding the reservoir, Canal Replacement Project and Modernization Program; also touched on salmon restoration and predation salinity where Delta meets Bay.

We rode over to Big Break Regional Shoreline to hear Mike Moran. There we saw a large-scale Delta model on the floor with all the physical features including mountains, rivers, and bays. We walked towards model by studying tidal sloughs, open water, freshwater marsh, and riparian areas of support.

We left to go to Randall-Bold Water Treatment Plant with John Parsons. We saw the new state of the art water treatment plant that uses ozone disinfection. From there we left for Hilton in Concord for dinner and rest. While at dinner, we heard from Jennifer Bowles with Water Education Foundation, Steve Richie, assistant general manager, San Francisco Public Utilities commission and Benjamin Bray,

Page 2 of 3 civil engineer with East Bay Municipal Utility District. The trio discussed class projects for the Water Leaders; the drought and how to emerge from it unscathed; opportunities for the lower San Joaquin River Plan, and the OneWaterSF vision that encourages staff to provide greater water and energy resource resiliency and reliability, create opportunities to optimize water infrastructure, and contribute to the livability and sustainability of San Francisco and the environment. There was also a brief overview EBMUD and its water supply considerations.

Day 3, Friday, June 7, 2019

On our last day, we head for San Francisco and Sausalito where we met John McManus, president of Salmon Association that discuss current state of affairs in California fisheries, and how Delta impacts ocean fishing.

We then cruised over to the Aquarium of the Bay. At the Aquarium we got to see all the different species of fish and water animals. We walked over to the Bay ferry for a trip to Sausalito. We then traveled to Army Corp of Engineers model. It’s a 3-D hydrological model that shows all the cities and waterways and the different flows. The model is used to highlight different project needs. We then listened to Ramona Swenson and Melissa Foley discuss restoration and regional monitoring for water quality in .

Our last stop was rush Ranch where we heard the advancements in hydrodynamic modeling, Delta outflows, , Montezuma Slough Salinity Control Gate, and the tidal wetlands and restoration. We discussed brackish water marsh ecology, salinity, endangered species, and waterfowl nesting. The last discussion centered on tidal wetlands versus managed marshes. It was the last of the presentations, upon completion, we then left for Sacramento International Airport. We boarded and arrived in San Diego around 10:30 pm.

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