July 13, 2018
Participants:
Gabrielle Boisrame, Griffin Hill, Jim Hobbs, Mike Eakin, Rod Wittler, Ted Sommer, Rene Henery, Sheila Green, Evan Carson, Matt Nobriga, Erwin Van Nieuwenhuyse , Victor Pacheco, Noah Oppenheim, YC Chao, Shawn Acuna, Brad Cavallo, Mike Urkov, Anna Allison, Erin McCreless, Jim Peterson
Updates
Erin sent out a PDF project progress report on July 9. This document contains links to all meeting notes to date. These are held on a temporary web portal until Mike Urkov can create a permanent site to hold all project documents.
We will hold two Progress Report conference calls. These will be the same so if you’re interested you only need to join one of them.
Mon July 16, 10-11 am
Mon Jul 23, 11-12pm
Call-in information:
https://oregonstate.webex.com/join/peterjamoregonstate.edu
1-888-251-2909
Code – 4453133
Candidate actions that have changed since last meeting
- X2 actions: Delta Smelt subgroup decided on three values for summer (65, 74, 81 km); removed the 89km value (note that one remains in the fall action)
- OMR flows: Chinook group suggested < -5,000 cfs
- Sediment supplementation for turbidity: Chinook group suggested timing sediment supplementation with planned flow pulses
Discussion of non-ecological objectives (see meeting ppt file for the list of objectives)
Water metrics: Ag revenue
- At the last in-person meeting, there was discussion of using 1/salinity*farm acreage
- Discussion of whether we should use ag acreage or ag revenue, which has also been proposed
- How to get revenue information?
- For the Yolo Bypass, the EIR has some information
- Dave Mooney could provide GIS tools as his group has worked on related economic issues
- Erin has talked to Chris Campbell (CBEC Engineering) about relevant modeling his group has done
Summaries of subgroup discussions – see meeting ppt file for all summaries
NOTE: If anyone wants to join a subgroup, please contact Ben, Erin, and Jim
Delta Smelt subgroup – see ppt file for main points
Water Delivery subgroup
For water availability and reliability, should we use shortage costs or total exports for NOD and SOD?
- Shortage costs were suggested by Jennifer Nevills. We would likely get this through expert elicitation.
- Questions: how is water delivery related to economic output? This varies by year but in general is there a relationship?
- Comment: if the purpose of this part of the model is to make more water available, does it make sense to include cost rather than simply water availability, as that’s the bottom line we care about?
- Comment: It may be more useful to compare volumes of water. There will be variation in these estimates and CalSim would allow us to calculate a coefficient of variation. We could do this separately for SOD and NOD.
- Comment: costs are tricky because they have so many different components, e.g., costs related to fish management, commercial salmon fisheries, habitat restoration, stormwater management. It’s hard to isolate different cost components and no single component will be representative. Including only some cost components could misrepresent cost-benefit tradeoffs. Water availability may be a better metric.
- SO: The water delivery subgroup will need to explain the justification for using costs and if/how this can be done.
Pulse flow effects on water quality
- The Yolo EIR/EIS report focused on mercury
CalSim Modeling
- We may be able to piggyback on the ROC-on LTR CalSim results to get information we can feed into DSM2. If this isn’t possible, there will be delays in the CalSim modeling.
- May be worth including some of the fish barrier and fish population actions in CalSim runs, since some BiOp actions are triggered by fish presence (e.g., Action IV.2.3 in the 2009 NMFS Biological Opinion, which states “From January 1 through June 15, reduce exports, as necessary, to limit negative flows to -2,500 to -5,000 cfs in Old and Middle Rivers, depending on the presence of salmonids.”).
Effects of fish related actions on water delivery
- Water delivery subgroup agreed that salmon routing actions (DCC gates, BAFF, etc.) are unlikely to affect deliveries
- However, wouldn’t re-routing fish change the way that pumps could be operated? Some of the BiOps actions related to CVP and SWP operations are triggered by the presence of certain types of fish. e.g., if fewer salmon present near facilities, then more pumping might be allowed.
Chinook subgroup
Routing fish through the Delta
- Question: is the idea to implement the management actions, or is the focus on how different sized fish need different conditions for movement? Some discussion of size and timing of arrival in Delta, influence of different pathways on risks, and fish behavior when they arrive in Delta.
- There was a recent CAMT discussion about whether fish can be controlled halfway through the Delta to keep them in more favorable places
- There may be different ideal pathways for fish at different stages; however, it may not be possible to model size-selective routing
- The SIT model is able to make predictions based on size, timing, and distributions of an outmigrating cohort
Water Quality subgroup
- Group hasn’t met yet; working on scheduling a meeting
Ag revenue
- We can take the tools from Reclamation and present these to the group
- Delta Science Program scientist Yumiko Henneberry’s drought synthesis report should have some relevant information for the agriculture subgroup
Overview of the SIT Chinook model – see meeting ppt file
- Model summary, data inputs, and sources are included in Progress Report PDF that Erin sent out on July 9
- For Delta project, need to determine the time period we will use for modeling. Could use 1980-1999, but this is open for discussion
Next steps
- Parameter estimates and literature sources will be compiled into a Google drive folder
- Will include notes section for people to provide feedback
- Will create R functions to analyze Chinook movement, growth, and survival through the Delta, and will share these for feedback
Next in-person meeting – July 27, 2018
8:30 to 4:00 P.M.
980 Ninth Street - 3rd Floor Suite 350, Sacramento CA 95814