In-person Meeting

May 25, 2018

Sacramento, CA

Participants:

Sheila Greene, Mike Urkov, Rod Wittler, Ben Geske, Jim Peterson, Scott Hamilton, Erin McCreless, Victor Pacheco, Brett Harvey, Denise Reed, Chuck Hanson, Brad Cavallo, Cathy Marcinkevage, Josh Israel, Dennis Murphy, Cory Phillis, Anna Allison, Shawn Acuna, Maggie Christman, Mike Hendrick, Gabrielle Biosrame, Evan Carson

The meeting was devoted to working through each of the candidate actions and clearly defining what each action would consist of.

General comments/questions:

Question: What will the next steps be after defining each action? Are we going to undertake a review process to obtain more feedback from people that are more knowledgeable about specific actions/topics?

  • Jim: for now the goal is to ensure that each action has sufficient detail, including specific numbers where relevant, such that Scott and Will can plug the actions and their outcomes into their models.
  • If people in the group know of individuals who could provide valuable insights on specific actions, please let us know so we can consider bringing them into the discussion

Question: Are we going to revisit the conceptual models and use them to identify more candidate actions we may have missed in this first round?

  • Jim: We may do this in an iterative process, but for now it's important to focus on extending the conceptual models and candidate actions to include non-ecological objectives.

Discussion of candidate actions

All definitions and updates based on the discussion are detailed in the excel file "Definitions of Actions"

Spring and summer outflows – reducing exports and reservoir releases

  • These are ultimately two different ways of defining outflows
  • Currently, few releases are made, especially in the spring
  • For reducing exports, it makes sense to use the same volume for reservoir releases as for reducing exports – table was updated to reflect this
  • This action would affect Chinook and possibly smelt
  • Regarding locations of actions: The actions being proposed here are mostly location-specific. One strength of the NMFS life cycle model that's being developed is that it compares the effects of actions in different regions. Here, for Chinook we can take a similar approach by comparing outcomes in each of the 17 different regions defined at previous meetings. For smelt, Scott's and Will's models have ~10 regions in the delta.

Fall outflows

  • As above, agreement that it makes sense to reduce exports by the same magnitude as reservoir releases

  • Comment: outflow actions can also be thought of as X2 actions. This led to a discussion of appropriate distance for X2 and how to achieve appropriate distances of X2 based on fall reservoir releases. Flow is the mechanism to get to the desired value of X2.

  • Additional action was added to table to reflect fall outflow X2 actions and a range of options

  • Comment: Perhaps the focus should be less on the specific value of X2 and more on the ecological response and the model outputs. Fall outflow actions would increase habitat availability, but ultimately we want to know the effect on the species.

  • How to choose appropriate X2 value? Based on monthly averages, or minimums that shouldn't be crossed? A hydrodynamics person would be helpful here. Also it depends on what the operators can achieve.

  • General consensus that a monthly average is good. CalSim uses this approach. BiOp focuses on Sept-Nov.

  • There are two relevant groups here: modelers who will run CalSim, and operators who will run specific scenarios. Each group has a specific set of constraints. Suggestion: a good first step would be to look at previous model runs to see if they've taken similar approaches; based on this, we can further explore and refine models.

  • Jim comment: we should bring operators into this discussion soon; in a previous project in the Willamette, the SDM team proposed many scenarios but later learned from the operations people that many of the proposed actions were not actually possible. In this case, we want to propose specific numbers (e.g. 80-200 TAF) as a starting point but then let operations people guide us re what is possible.

  • Rod will check with Liz Kiteck (sp?) about this; Dave Mooney will talk to Jeff Reeker (sp?)

  • Comment: all of these proposed actions are exploratory. We should be willing to "break the rules" to cover the full spectrum of possibilities. We don't want initial/assumed constraints to limit the exercise early in the process.

  • Outflow actions will also impact human health and agriculture.

  • Jim updated the fall reservoir release action to specify that we would remove constraints related to Fish & Wildlife, but not remove those that are designed to protect people

  • Discussion of consistent flows spread out over a season vs. pulse flows

  • Can try running and comparing scenarios of steady flows across March-May vs. pulse flows e.g., every other week in April-May

  • Target species: we can evaluate the proposed release and X2 numbers for smelt, but it's harder to do this for salmon. These actions may be risky for winter and spring-run Chinook.

  • For now, the goal is to pick specific actions and separately assess how each one might affect salmon, smelt, or both

  • Ultimately, the goal is to choose a wide range of actions and compare the likely outcomes on the species

Delta Cross Channel gates reoperation

  • Proposed action of installing fish friendly diversions (FFD) – it was suggested that the FFD action would replace the DCC (re)operation action. These could potentially also be two separate actions that could be modeled by different flow splits and fish splits.
  • A FFD is a method for diverting water in sensitive ecosystems; removes water from the bottom of the water column rather than the side, so that changes in vertical velocities are imperceptible to fish (definition from Scott Hamilton)
  • DCC operations: proposal to operate gates during the day when fewer fish are moving. Follow-up comment that fish diurnal activity is a release effect, not natural behavior pattern. DCC gates are already closed during most of the juvenile outmigration. This action is related more to water quality than to fish survival.

Decrease entrainment into central delta – Georgiana Slough

  • Action defined as installing a bio-acoustic fish fence (BAFF); prioritize between November-May depending on whether there's an early migration event

South Delta agricultural barriers

  • This isn't a fish-related action
  • Decision to ignore/remove for now – may revisit in the next iteration of SDM process if DWR BDO shows relevant findings regarding fish and ag barriers – report is currently in process

Head of Old River rock barrier

  • Currently, the rock barrier is installed when the river isn't too high – usually from April 1 – June 1 for smolts, and Sept – Nov for adults
  • Alternative option is to install an operable barrier, bio-acoustic gates, or FFD
  • For operable barrier, would need to specify when it would be implemented
  • We need to compare these four different options
  • NMFS may have better ideas how to operate such barriers

New proposed action: Trap juvenile salmonids upstream and transport them (by barge?) to western Delta in December-May – updated in excel file

  • Need to decide on trapping location and release location

Facility entrainment: reduce exports for Old and Middle Rivers (OMR flows). Divided this into two actions (detailed in Excel file)

  • The first action, reducing export flows Jan 1-June 15, is already being implemented based on BiOp. The action is to do it or not.
  • There is currently an enhanced sampling program for smelt; when fish are detected at Jersey/Prisoners Point, OMR flows are reduced; however, there are no set rules determining exactly when/how this is done
  • For modeling, would need to look to BiOps to find specific numbers for necessary export reductions
  • The second action, reducing exports during first two weeks following first flush, is based on the idea that smelt disperse when water is turbid.
  • The action is designed to protect fish but allow more pumping when fish are not at risk

Facility entrainment: Reduce exports for San Joaquin I:E Ratio. Divided this into three separate candidate actions (all detailed in Excel file):

  • Comment: this action is determined by how much water can be pumped based on what is available.
  • Better to discuss this with the people doing CalSim modeling than with operations people
  • Another action is to not operate based on I:E ratio (this is added in excel file)

Improve salvage efficiency

  • Discussion of need to establish a specific objective.
  • Could model different percentages survival to explore how this would affect numbers of fish leaving the delta, e.g. if we can increase efficiency from 50% to 75%
  • Cathy will send out some text about this

Tidal wetland restoration

  • Discussion of the spatial extent and location of restoration activities – updated in Excel file

Franks Tract restoration

  • Should focus on big projects, similar in magnitude to the 11K acres proposed in the tidal wetland projects
  • HCP should have details on this

Reducing contaminants – storm water action

  • Scott can probably incorporate this into his model, if we can estimate how much this action would increase smelt recruitment

Remove predator hotspots

  • One hypothesis is that nighttime lighting increases predation; thus one possible action is to reduce lighting
  • How to model? Could use the background predation rates from Cyril Michel's study and/or the values SIT is using, then model removal of specific predator hotpots based on regions

Remove predators

  • DWR's Bay-Delta Office completed a study in Clifton Court Forebay in which they removed predators 4 days/week. They removed large numbers of predators and still didn't see a significant change in numbers of predators collected, likely because the area was quickly repopulated
  • It was mentioned that The Resiliency Strategy suggested that predator removal isn't worth pursuing
  • Comment: we should still pursue this, because many people are interested in it; there is benefit in modeling it to show the relative benefits and risks

Conservation hatchery – Delta smelt

  • The current facility is not set up to produce the numbers we've proposed (10,000 spawning adults and 1 million eggs)
  • Success of this action depends on ensuring the habitat is appropriate for fish survival, e.g. sufficient food availability
  • This should be viewed as a temporary action to keep the population alive while working to mitigate other threats in the Delta
  • Juveniles may be the best stage to propagate
  • In the Rose model, can explore changing recruitment and survival rates from one life stage to the next
  • Release sites: best to release adults where they will be most likely to interact and interbreed with adults that are already present and spawning; probably in late fall-winter
  • Eventually genetic diversity should be considered here as well

Summer reoperation of Suisun Marsh salinity gates

  • Need to get specific information about water residence time based on this action
  • Cliff Feldheim at DWR and Mike Williams (sp? affiliation?) [is this Michael MacWilliams from Anchor QEA?] are good contacts for this

Next steps

  • Build out the ecological objectives and effects of the candidate actions for both smelt and Chinook – we will cover this in the next conference call
  • Discuss remaining objectives (non-biological)
  • Need to follow up with the operators to narrow down specific on realistic numbers for changes in releases. Jeff Rieker and Liz Kiteck manage the "operators" in the Central Valley Operations office. Jobaid Kabir manages the Calsim modelers in Reclamation's planning division.
  • Discussion about needing to "break rules" for these exercises (examples; D1641, RPAs)
    • Need to make a list of rules that we want to break, and why we want to do so
  • Talk to Ted Sommer DWR about how to release flows for food production action.
Last updated on Dec 5, 2018