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The time is 9.59.

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Okay.

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How about now? Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the December 15th

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Mojave Water Agency Technical Advisory Committee. We'll call the meeting door at 10 a.m.

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And with that, we'll ask one of our old friends Lance Eckhart to lead the pledge of allegiance.

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Thank

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you, Lance.

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So before we begin, I'll just apologize in advance for a bumpy ride today.

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I haven't run one of these in 20 years on this side of the day, so I think the last time

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I had Jack Clark helping me out.

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So I'll be leaning on Perry and Adnan in the trees to keep us out of trouble and swimming

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in the right direction, hopefully.

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So, we'll go on to item number three approval of agenda, and I'll ask for a motion.

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And can you please state your name?

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Chuck Bell.

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And a second?

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We have a second in the back.

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I'll have to learn names as we go.

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Thank you.

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Thank you.

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Any opposed?

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Good.

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And one thing I miss, lettries, if you could recognize any of the directors online or present?

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Definitely online we have Director Cox, Director Hayhurst, Director Limbaugh, Director Raleigh,

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and in attendance we have Director Page, make sure, and Director Wes, sorry about that for

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you to.

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Thank you.

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You're welcome.

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We'll go on to item 4, adoption of Committee Meeting Summary, I'll ask for a motion.

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Thank you, Tech.

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Second.

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Come on, George.

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Thank you.

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Any opposed?

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And that one passes as well.

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Okay.

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Now we'll get into the meeting and we'll go on to item 5, a ground water quality of the

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and I'll hand that over to Adnan to introduce.

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Thank you, Doug.

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So yeah, we'll just, I'll give this right over to Wes and Missal,

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who'll introduce our speaker for today.

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And I don't want to steal any thunder, so please go ahead, Wes.

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All right, so Joseph Fakrow from USGS will be presenting this.

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He is remote.

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This is kind of the next two presentations.

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Nations are a culmination of work that started in 1996.

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Some of the people in this room can probably speak to that entire body of work better than me.

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But they are here to present kind of final final findings as we move forward to citing a recharge basin in this zone.

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Hi, this is Joe Fackroll, can everyone hear me all right?

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Loud and clear, yeah.

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Alright,

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so I'm Joe Fackroll with the USGS California Water Science Center. I'm

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going to be giving a short presentation on groundwater quality of the

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Lucerne Valley groundwater basin.

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So we're gonna hear a lot more about the basin

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with Josh's talk next, but I'll give a brief introduction over here. So

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Lucerne Valley is in the Southwestern Mojave Desert. It's utilized primarily for

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agricultural purposes. It's a dependent on ground water for irrigation and

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domestic supply. So we've had a long-running study going on in cooperation with

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the Mojave Water Agency to look at questions regarding land use and

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application of imported water in Lucerne Valley. So the results of this OFR that

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I'm going to be presenting here.

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They're a complement to the larger report, the SIR,

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on hydrogeology and the groundwater model

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that Josh is going to be presenting.

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This presentation is focused on the water quality.

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So the purpose of this is to first summarize

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the findings of previous studies on water quality

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in Lucerne Valley.

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There's been a few over the years.

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We're going to be looking specifically

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specifically at a post-1990 water quality data collected by the USGS, and we're going to

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be looking more specifically at the results of some groundwater samples we collected

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in 2021, just down gradient of the of the borough effluent application site to determine

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the transport of this water in the subsurface and its water quality impacts.

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And again, to a little more of the description of the study area, I'm going to be using

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Using the hydrogeologic framework described in the SIR as a basis for interpretation of

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groundwater quality.

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That interpretation is that Lucerne Valley groundwater basin has four distinct units.

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There's an upper aquifer, it's typically less than 200 feet thick, it's made a sediment

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from the San Bernardino mountain.

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There's a widespread confiding unit.

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It's formed of lake deposits that you think are associated with previous versions of

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Lucerne Dry Lake.

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Then underneath that confining unit, there's a middle aquifer between 15500 feet thick made

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of mojave desert sediment.

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That's the primary aquifer that's utilized for irrigation and domestic purposes.

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Now underneath the middle aquifer, there's a lower aquifer.

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and that's also from Mojave Desert Direct sediment,

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it's a much older sediment.

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Here's a map of the study area and a cross-section

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along the Southeast Northwest transect.

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So most of the samples we're looking at here

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are from the portion of the groundwater basin

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kind of between the dry lake and the borough application site. There's a couple samples,

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older samples to the Northeast to the dry lake as well.

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The cross section is, you can see where

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the F1 application site is, and we serve dry lake. This is a pretty simplified version of the

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of stratigraphy, the next presentation will give a little more detailed version of this,

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but for the purposes of interpreting groundwater quality, this is what we're looking at, upper

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aquifer, middle aquifer and lower aquifer with the confining units separating the middle

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and upper aquifers.

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So for previous studies, there was some reports in the 1950s and 1960s, they found high quality

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groundwater south and northwest of Lucerne Lake and poor quality groundwater to the northeast.

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This was kind of before they had a really good idea of how the aquifer was layered,

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so most of these are probably middle aquifer samples. There's a more in-depth study by

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Schaefer in 1979, found similar kind of trends. There's poor quality groundwater

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water underlying in east of Lucerne dry lake.

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And there are some samples collected in the upper aquifer

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that had high TDS and nitrate concentrations

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that were attributed to agricultural irrigation returns.

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There are studies by John Isbicki in 2004

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looking at groundwater age.

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He determined that groundwater in the basin

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that's farther away from the base of the San Bernardino Mountains is old,

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a thousand years old, and recharge under climate conditions different in

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wetter than those of today. And that recent recharge, like within the last 50,

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100 years, is only found both to the foot of the San Bernardino Mountains and some

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along the Hellendale fault trace.

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So the approach for this study is basically

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looking at water quality parameters to interpret groundwater quality sources of groundwater

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recharge and relative ages of groundwater.

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There is a special emphasis on the samples we collected in 2021 to look at transport

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and faith of Parla S1.

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Parameters we're looking at are basic water quality indicators like pH, dissolved oxygen and

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total dissolved solids.

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We're looking at inorganic constituents, including chloride, nitrate, silica, fluoride, arsenic,

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boron, iron, manganese, and chromium, and looking at stable isotope ratios of oxygen and hydrogen

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and water.

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These are very useful tracers for looking at sources of groundwater recharge since they

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They can vary on where water initially

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fell as precipitation, higher elevation precipitation,

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and precipitation farther inland precipitation

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under colder conditions.

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We'll have different water isotopes signatures.

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We're also looking at tridium activities.

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These indicate the presence of water

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recharged after 1950s atmospheric nuclear testing, which

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released a lot of tridium into the atmosphere.

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here.

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I think here's some plots of the results for water quality. This is a straight from

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the report. Lower aquifer is pink, middle aquifer is yellow, and upper aquifer is in blue.

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Also shown on here for relevant samples are the EPA secondary maximum contaminant limits

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or maximum contaminant limits as appropriate for drinking water.

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The basic gist of this is that samples collected from the lower aquifer are consistent with long ground water residents times.

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They tend to be enriched in parameters like total dissolved solids, chloride, boron, iron,

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things that you'd expect to be higher in older water.

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They have lower values for some parameters as well,

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like nitrate and dissolved oxygen.

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These are things that will tend to be fleet in groundwater over time.

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The middle aquifer samples were generally of pretty good quality.

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They got lower TDS, lower chlorides.

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There were some samples that had elevated nitrate values and this range could be indicative

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of some contribution of irrigation or septic returns.

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The upper aquifer samples were in most respects pretty similar to the middle aquifer samples.

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This is somewhat surprising given that previous studies had found elevated nitrate in this aquifer.

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A couple reasons this could be the case.

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Since that study, there's been a pretty significant decrease in the amount of irrigated agriculture in the basin.

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And also, there's potential for bias of sampling higher quality water from upper aquifer well since the wells that have water quality issues are less likely to be maintained and service and then less likely to be sampled by us during our sampling trips.

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The

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next thing we're going to look at is water exit totes, a plot of delta oxygen 18 values

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versus delta deuterium.

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So, lower values for both these tracers tend to indicate rain that fell under colder conditions

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or at higher elevations. And as water evaporates, these values tend to increase along lines with

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characteristic slopes. So these are evaporative trans lines from water that would have initially

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fallen this rain somewhere in these regions. Also shown here is the global meteoric water

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lines. This is just a line that precipitation worldwide tends to cluster around.

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These

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These values are indicating two primary sources of recharge.

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There's this kind of cluster up here.

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We're interpreting these values as precipitation that fell in the San Bernardino Mountains under

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colder and lighter conditions in those of today.

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And we also have evidence that there's a source, some way down here somewhere, as evidenced

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by the samples along this evaporation trend.

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We're interpreting this source as precipitation itself on mountains in the Mojave Desert under

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much cooler and wetter climate conditions in the even more distant past because we don't

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get much precipitation falling on those mountains today.

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The lower aquifer samples tend to have more recharge from this older Mojave Desert source,

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though there are a couple that show some mixture.

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middle aquifer samples. We have some evidence for both sources contributing and some samples

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with intermediate values between the two sources. Upper aquifer samples, not surprisingly

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are the tend to be the more recent source. Also shown here for reference, this is what we expect

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from Barla effluent based on the one sample of that we took and this X here is an example of

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modern San Bernardino mountain precipitation. So we have a we have a couple samples that maybe show

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a little bit of influence of modern precipitation and maybe a little influence of a Barla like

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and member which is also more similar to modern precipitation. We also have a few strangely

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anomalous samples. We have this sample here 2Q2 which is located strategically in the upper aquifer

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but has these water ice and tilt values that are much more similar to lower aquifer values.

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So I have 13R3 here which is showing contribution of modern recharge

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and 3Q4 which we're going to talk about a little more later. It's a middle

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lock for sample that shows kind of an intermediate

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contribution between the two different sources.

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So getting into specifically a borrower effluent fate,

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we're looking at results from these six samples here

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that we collected in 2021.

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Also got some data from the regional water quality control

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board from these monitor wells located directly

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under the borrower, epsilon application site.

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We got TDS and nitrate concentrations for those wells.

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For the ones we sampled, we got the water quality data,

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stable isotopes and tridium activity.

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We also sampled the borrower epsilon itself,

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that was that one water isotope value,

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showed in the previous plot.

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And the basic direction of groundwater flow

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and some groundwater level contours are shown on here.

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The

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results for these samples are shown in this table.

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You can see that the borough epsilon itself doesn't have all that high of nitrate concentrations.

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The monitor wells located immediately underneath the site have quite high nitrate concentrations.

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Some of that's due to organic nitrogen and the effluent being oxidized to nitrate.

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As it infiltrates, some of it may also be related to the cultivation of the south alpha on the site that reclaimed the water.

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These are the results for the samples we collected.

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So what we're looking for to indicate presence of faraway affluent in these samples is elevated nitrate concentrations like we saw in the monitor wellus underneath and also tridium activity since the

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Estimate application started in the 1980s.

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We would expect any of that effluent to contain detectable tridium since basically any

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recharge after the 1950s should have some tridium in it from the palm pulses.

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So the results are not, don't show any really clear evidence of borough effluent in any of

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down gradient, middle aquifer wells that we sampled.

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There's one sample with pretty elevated nitrate concentrations, but it did not have any

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tridium indicating that it was recharged probably before 1950.

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So that's not indicative of faraway effluent, it's more indicative of some kind of legacy

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source of nitrate there in the subsurface.

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We did have one sample that had detectable tridium indicating that it has some recent recharge,

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but it would have low nitrate concentrations and built to 18O values that are quite different

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from what we'd expect from Barwa. So that's fairly ambiguous. We know there's recent recharge,

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but it, you know, doesn't, is not obviously Barla F1 based on those tracer values.

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So here's a East West cross section of Lucerne Valley.

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This is right around the Barla F1 application site.

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That application site is here.

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And I wanted to show this because this is the confining layer right here

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between the upper and middle aquifers, and in this area, it kind of pinches out.

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And this could be a place where modern recharge can infiltrate from the surface

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into the middle aquifer here along the Cougar deutes fault trace.

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It could also be a place where depending on pressure gradients, deeper water could flow

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up vertically.

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That one sample down gradient, 3Q4, that showed modern recharge. That's

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right around in this area and it could be related to this pinch out in the confining layer

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where some modern recharge is getting down there. Also, well, 2Q2, which was that upper aquifer

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sample that had water isotope values similar to the lower and middle aquifers.

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That's also in this area and that can indicate some evidence of vertical flow from the middle

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aquifer or lower aquifer to the upper aquifer in this area.

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So to summarize these findings, the results for the water quality indicators were the most

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part consistent with those of previous studies.

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The lower aquifer is enriched in dissolved solids and is consistent with a long, long water

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residence times.

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The middle aquifer is a higher quality.

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It's shown maybe some evidence of irrigation returns or septic returns.

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00:23:39,590 --> 00:23:44,710
Upper aquifer samples looked a lot like the middle aquifer samples and not sure if that's

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due to improvements in water quality.

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or due to sample bias of measuring water from wells that had higher water quality could easily be some combination of both those factors.

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The samples we collected in 2021 to look at the transport of Barwa effluent were not conclusive.

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There was no definite evidence of borough ethylone in any of those middle aquifer samples we looked at.

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That indicates that this ethylone is probably confined to the upper aquifer primarily at this point

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and that it's not getting through that confining layer.

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There were some interesting results though.

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We know that there's got to be some kind of legacy source of nitrate that's causing those

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00:24:40,290 --> 00:24:46,330
higher, that high nitrate concentration in that one well, and it looks like there's

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00:24:46,330 --> 00:24:54,450
some evidence of vertical flow near the coogervutes fault trace where both water may be able

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to flow up from the middle aquifer into the upper aquifer and modern recharge can maybe

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flow down from that from the surface into the middle aquifer.

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If we want to get a better idea of

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where the borough effluent is in the subsurface and where it's going it would be good to put in

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some short-screen monitor wells at strategic locations such as down gradient from the application site

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That could help us figure out if this, you know, how far this stuff has gone and where it

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is vertically.

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All we know now is that it does not seem to be in the middle aquifer, you know, even

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immediately downgradient of the echelon application site.

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Here's the references cited in this study, that's all I have for this, I'm happy to take

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00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:53,800
questions.

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Thank you, Joseph.

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00:25:58,160 --> 00:26:04,260
I would open it up to any questions or comments from anybody in attendance are online?

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00:26:07,390 --> 00:26:08,960
I have a question for you, Joseph.

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Did you see any evidence of Barlow effluent in the upper aquifer?

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00:26:17,070 --> 00:26:18,470
Yes, absolutely.

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00:26:19,090 --> 00:26:26,310
So these three monitor wells, they're quite shallow, they're completed in the upper aquifer

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00:26:26,310 --> 00:26:35,910
And they're pretty clearly, you know, have elevated nitrate concentrations consistent with the presence of effluent.

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00:26:36,470 --> 00:26:52,470
Unfortunately, we did not get access to or could not sample any wells completed in the upper aquifer, you know, anywhere close to the vicinity of the application site in this kind of down gradient area.

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00:26:52,470 --> 00:26:59,450
So, that's something we're hoping to do in the future is find wells in the

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00:26:59,450 --> 00:27:02,990
uprock for there and sample them or construct our own if we can.

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00:27:04,510 --> 00:27:09,070
Okay, and were you able to sample or collect isotope data from those samples?

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00:27:12,750 --> 00:27:19,490
Yes, these samples we have stable isotope data for, that's in this table right here

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00:27:19,490 --> 00:27:26,910
And that was one of the things that, you know, this sample here, 3, 2, 4, you know, had

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00:27:26,910 --> 00:27:27,330
tritium.

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00:27:27,630 --> 00:27:29,110
So, you know, maybe that's modern recharge.

286
00:27:29,270 --> 00:27:34,890
Maybe it's borrow as well, but the borrow as well, it looks much more, it's much more enriched

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00:27:34,890 --> 00:27:37,790
in Delta-18O than any of the samples we collected.

288
00:27:38,290 --> 00:27:43,570
So, there wasn't really good water isotope evidence for any borrow as well.

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00:27:46,310 --> 00:27:46,830
All right.

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Thank you.

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00:27:47,230 --> 00:27:51,450
Any other questions or comments at in?

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00:27:52,510 --> 00:27:53,330
Just a quick question.

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00:27:53,470 --> 00:28:01,030
Do you set one of your samples in the upper aquifer showed older groundwater?

294
00:28:01,530 --> 00:28:02,770
Is that occurring at the fault?

295
00:28:03,330 --> 00:28:05,150
And did you experience that anywhere else?

296
00:28:08,500 --> 00:28:08,680
Right.

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00:28:08,860 --> 00:28:11,260
So that's this sample right here, 2Q2.

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00:28:13,460 --> 00:28:19,220
That was the only upper, all the rest of the upper aquifer samples are plotting up here.

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00:28:19,220 --> 00:28:24,540
like San Bernardino recharge. This is the only one that's looking like this old water.

300
00:28:25,520 --> 00:28:33,320
And I'll see if I can show you where it was. Yeah, 2Q2 is right here and that's pretty close

301
00:28:33,320 --> 00:28:41,740
to the Cougar buttes fault trace. So that that was part of the, you know, 2Q2s here, 3Q4s here

302
00:28:41,740 --> 00:28:45,600
a little farther away. This is the one that looks like water might be moving up and this is the one

303
00:28:45,600 --> 00:28:48,900
and it looks like modern recharge might be moving down.

304
00:28:49,540 --> 00:28:53,760
So it's definitely something to consider

305
00:28:53,760 --> 00:28:56,840
and future interpretations of what's happening

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00:28:56,840 --> 00:28:57,600
because we haven't.

307
00:28:58,020 --> 00:29:00,220
There hasn't been a lot of specific work done

308
00:29:00,220 --> 00:29:02,520
along the co-reviewed fault traces.

309
00:29:02,640 --> 00:29:04,300
There's not a lot of samples here.

310
00:29:04,640 --> 00:29:06,600
So it's something to think about.

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00:29:07,900 --> 00:29:08,620
Thank you.

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00:29:12,860 --> 00:29:13,780
Question from Chuck.

313
00:29:17,050 --> 00:29:18,590
The question from Chuck Bell

314
00:29:18,590 --> 00:29:21,450
Are there future studies funded for this?

315
00:29:26,540 --> 00:29:31,300
There's definitely been talk of doing different things here in Lucerne Valley,

316
00:29:31,560 --> 00:29:37,460
but we don't have any hard funding right now to do any additional work.

317
00:29:42,120 --> 00:29:47,400
There are plans in the works, but nothing is funded at this point, Chuck.

318
00:29:53,020 --> 00:29:56,260
And Joseph, just one last thing before you go,

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00:29:56,260 --> 00:29:59,740
because there's a very mixed audience here as far as technical

320
00:30:00,000 --> 00:30:06,860
Understanding of hydrogeology. If you were going to tell your grandma what the three big takeaways from the study are, what would they be?

321
00:30:10,970 --> 00:30:33,170
I guess my biggest takeaways would be in terms of the groundwater quality. We don't see any big changes or shifts from what we've seen historically. In terms of the faraway effluent, I would say we don't see any evidence of it getting into the middle aquifer. It appears to be confined.

322
00:30:33,910 --> 00:30:35,250
to the upper aquifer.

323
00:30:40,670 --> 00:30:41,230
All right, thank you.

324
00:30:42,310 --> 00:30:43,170
Great question.

325
00:30:43,270 --> 00:30:44,010
That helped me out a lot.

326
00:30:44,570 --> 00:30:46,650
So, yeah, that was good.

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00:30:47,270 --> 00:30:49,810
So, thank you, Joseph, for presenting today.

328
00:30:50,150 --> 00:30:52,790
And we'll move on to item number six.

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00:30:52,950 --> 00:30:54,750
Seeing no other questions or comments,

330
00:30:54,750 --> 00:30:59,830
which is the hydrogeology and simulation of ground water flow

331
00:30:59,830 --> 00:31:02,650
in the Lucerne Valley ground water basin by USGS.

332
00:31:02,870 --> 00:31:04,350
And I'll let Adnan tee this one up.

333
00:31:06,460 --> 00:31:07,300
That's the right over to Wes.

334
00:31:07,300 --> 00:31:14,480
Yes. Thanks, Adnan. Same story here. This is just a continuation of the body of work

335
00:31:14,480 --> 00:31:20,300
that MWA and USGS have teamed together to do in the certain valley. The ultimate goal

336
00:31:20,300 --> 00:31:25,960
is obviously a recharge base and out there. And this is part of that, you know, two and

337
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:29,300
a half decade long process, apparently. So take it away, Josh.

338
00:31:29,300 --> 00:31:30,060
Alright,

339
00:31:46,470 --> 00:31:47,630
can you see my screen?

340
00:31:52,490 --> 00:32:03,410
Yes. Okay, great. So yeah, I'm Josh Larson, and I work for US Geological

341
00:32:03,410 --> 00:32:12,490
Survey California Water Science Center as a hydrologist, and I'm going to talk today about the report

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00:32:12,490 --> 00:32:18,850
hydrogeology and simulation of groundwater flow. We've seen valley groundwater basin. And this

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00:32:18,850 --> 00:32:25,050
This presentation is to serve as a summary kind of a companion to that report.

344
00:32:27,680 --> 00:32:35,830
So Lutheran Valley located in the southwestern Mojave Desert and this USGS study was done

345
00:32:35,830 --> 00:32:42,510
to evaluate the hydroology of the basin and then create a groundwater model that can serve

346
00:32:42,510 --> 00:32:45,730
as a groundwater management tool for this basin.

347
00:32:47,690 --> 00:32:56,230
The results from this study were documented in the recent reports, and there's a link

348
00:32:56,230 --> 00:33:00,150
to that report here in the slides.

349
00:33:00,790 --> 00:33:08,430
So this presentation is just going to talk about the results of the hydrogeology portion

350
00:33:08,430 --> 00:33:10,350
and the hydrologic model,

351
00:33:12,700 --> 00:33:13,080
okay.

352
00:33:13,080 --> 00:33:17,960
So the figure on the right shows the Lucerne Valley study area.

353
00:33:18,320 --> 00:33:22,520
The study area is about 175 square miles.

354
00:33:23,380 --> 00:33:29,900
And it's located around 13 miles east of Apple Valley where many of you are sitting today.

355
00:33:30,300 --> 00:33:35,260
And if you're remote, it's about 75 miles northeast of Los Angeles.

356
00:33:35,260 --> 00:33:48,220
This basin is a closed lubial filled mojave desert basin and what we mean by closed is the basins bound on all sides.

357
00:33:48,640 --> 00:33:56,380
So in the west, the basins bound by the hollandale fault that acts as a no-flow boundary.

358
00:33:56,380 --> 00:34:01,860
In the northwest, the Granite Mountains act as a boundary to flow.

359
00:34:02,700 --> 00:34:11,620
The north, the orrid mountains from the basin, and in the east, Kruger buttes, and in the

360
00:34:11,620 --> 00:34:13,740
south, the San Bernardino Mountains.

361
00:34:18,480 --> 00:34:20,960
The basin is also fairly rural.

362
00:34:20,960 --> 00:34:30,720
It supports about a population of 5,300 people as of 2016 census estimates, and another way

363
00:34:30,720 --> 00:34:38,040
to think about it is about 2,000 residences reside within the Lucerne Valley basin.

364
00:34:40,880 --> 00:34:47,440
So for this population, groundwater is the sole source of the water supply.

365
00:34:47,440 --> 00:34:52,340
There's no perennial surface water sources and the

366
00:34:52,340 --> 00:34:56,240
ephemeral surface water flow is precipitation driven and

367
00:34:56,240 --> 00:35:01,700
mostly isolated along the margins of the San Bernardino

368
00:35:01,700 --> 00:35:02,060
Mountains.

369
00:35:07,390 --> 00:35:12,010
As Joe had mentioned before, agriculture is a

370
00:35:12,010 --> 00:35:23,370
large, this is an agricultural basin and in 2016 about 2% of

371
00:35:23,370 --> 00:35:26,110
the study area was irrigated.

372
00:35:26,870 --> 00:35:28,370
So in this figure on the right,

373
00:35:28,410 --> 00:35:31,430
we can see our study area boundary in gray

374
00:35:32,210 --> 00:35:35,610
and the agricultural plots,

375
00:35:37,110 --> 00:35:38,710
which are variously colored,

376
00:35:39,110 --> 00:35:41,230
depending on the crop type.

377
00:35:41,910 --> 00:35:45,710
So now the white or green, these are alfalfa,

378
00:35:45,890 --> 00:35:51,650
which is the primary crop grown in the basin,

379
00:35:51,650 --> 00:36:02,350
about 70% of agriculture was out in 2016 and down here in the southern part of the base and

380
00:36:02,350 --> 00:36:11,950
is that Bara affluent application site as well. And just to describe some more of the

381
00:36:12,930 --> 00:36:20,430
agriculture out here, about 8% of the agriculture was orchards in 2016,

382
00:36:20,430 --> 00:36:27,090
And then about 2% was a newer crop to the base and jujubes.

383
00:36:29,790 --> 00:36:38,250
So in this study, we put together some estimates of the crop requirements from 2007 to 2016.

384
00:36:39,350 --> 00:36:48,830
So the figure on the bottom, the Y-axis shows the estimated water requirement and the X-axis shows the year.

385
00:36:48,830 --> 00:36:59,170
In 2016, we estimated about 4,000 acre feet, or about 80% of the agricultural water used

386
00:36:59,170 --> 00:37:03,010
in the basin, just towards south-false growth.

387
00:37:04,450 --> 00:37:13,610
Fortards is about 6% or 400 acre feet, and jujubes about 200 acre feet or 3% of the water

388
00:37:13,610 --> 00:37:14,950
use in the basin.

389
00:37:16,300 --> 00:37:26,700
And so to understand where this water use is coming from, most of the water is coming from.

390
00:37:27,020 --> 00:37:32,940
For water use we put together a hydrogeologic framework during this study.

391
00:37:34,060 --> 00:37:42,960
And what we see on the right hand figure is just a fan view map with some of the main geological units.

392
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:51,560
And we're really focused in this cross-sectional line BB prime that circled in red that goes from south to north.

393
00:37:52,420 --> 00:37:57,080
The figure on the bottom left shows that cross-section.

394
00:37:58,040 --> 00:38:10,960
And from this cross-section, we were able to determine the different aquifer systems that and some additional data.

395
00:38:10,960 --> 00:38:23,440
So, this yellow unit on the top is our upper aquifer, and this is upper sand, or sand-burned

396
00:38:23,440 --> 00:38:24,780
you know, direct sediment.

397
00:38:25,640 --> 00:38:34,600
These blues are lake deposits, very rich in clay in our confining unit, and we can see

398
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:40,920
that it's thicker towards the south and thick in the center and then it kind of pinches

399
00:38:40,920 --> 00:38:45,360
out as we go further north along this cross sectional line.

400
00:38:47,720 --> 00:38:55,120
This lower yellow unit that is the middle aquifer that's Mojave derived sediment and then

401
00:38:56,120 --> 00:39:04,500
the lower aquifer is in pink and this is much older material, more compact and more cemented.

402
00:39:04,500 --> 00:39:09,280
So most of the pumping we see comes out of layer three,

403
00:39:09,500 --> 00:39:11,300
especially for agricultural purposes.

404
00:39:15,030 --> 00:39:18,070
You can also look at this in east west profile,

405
00:39:18,070 --> 00:39:19,550
or west to east.

406
00:39:20,090 --> 00:39:23,150
Joe showed this picture before, this figure before.

407
00:39:23,870 --> 00:39:26,590
So aquar aquifer is here in yellow.

408
00:39:27,250 --> 00:39:32,230
You'll notice that there is light deposits

409
00:39:32,230 --> 00:39:36,010
from historic extent of looser and light.

410
00:39:37,050 --> 00:39:43,370
in the separate aquifer, and then our confining unit layer 2, the dark blue, that kind of

411
00:39:43,370 --> 00:39:50,730
pinches out as we get over here by the cougar beautes fault, kind of near the affluent application

412
00:39:50,730 --> 00:39:54,570
site, and then middle aquifer and lower aquifer.

413
00:40:00,000 --> 00:40:07,100
Joe touched on this and talked about this actually in the detail, but a previous study was

414
00:40:07,100 --> 00:40:16,460
performed back in 2004 by Isbecky and Michael and they looked at Tritium and Carbon 14 within

415
00:40:16,460 --> 00:40:22,780
the Lucerne Valley groundwater basin and other parts and the Upper Mojave River groundwater

416
00:40:22,780 --> 00:40:30,160
basin. In the takeaways from these slides is that most of the groundwater in the basin

417
00:40:30,160 --> 00:40:34,940
and from natural recharge is very old,

418
00:40:35,360 --> 00:40:38,460
and was recharged under different climatic conditions.

419
00:40:39,300 --> 00:40:42,180
So this dark pink on the plot on the right,

420
00:40:43,580 --> 00:40:47,420
waters up to about 370 years old.

421
00:40:47,780 --> 00:40:50,460
So younger water up to 370 years old,

422
00:40:51,220 --> 00:40:54,980
the medium pink, the waters estimated

423
00:40:54,980 --> 00:40:58,600
to be 370 to 5700 years old,

424
00:40:58,600 --> 00:41:07,620
light pink, 5,700 up to 10,000, and these areas in white are greater than 10,000 years old.

425
00:41:08,380 --> 00:41:17,480
That being said, this study did not measure any affluent application from Bauer's, the Bauer

426
00:41:17,480 --> 00:41:22,240
affluent application site, and was only looking at natural recharge.

427
00:41:22,240 --> 00:41:23,380
We

428
00:41:28,180 --> 00:41:35,740
also used another USGS tool to create estimates of natural recharge for the basin.

429
00:41:36,640 --> 00:41:40,000
So the basin characterization model was applied.

430
00:41:40,760 --> 00:41:49,800
And in this figure, you can see on the y-axis potential annual recharge estimated from that model,

431
00:41:49,800 --> 00:41:59,120
calendar year from 1942 to 2016, and then the secondary Y-axis is cumulative recharge.

432
00:41:59,800 --> 00:42:12,360
So they take away from these. The slide is average recharge estimates are about 628 to 940 acre feet per year, depending on what we use as the base and boundary.

433
00:42:12,360 --> 00:42:19,320
And the cumulative total for the entire study period is around 70,000 acre

434
00:42:19,320 --> 00:42:22,660
feeds of natural recharge into the basin.

435
00:42:26,380 --> 00:42:33,440
There's also transfers into the basin at the Bara Appluent application site.

436
00:42:34,300 --> 00:42:44,480
And these ranged, they started in 1980 and we looked at it from 1980 to 2016.

437
00:42:44,480 --> 00:42:54,640
and the transfers range from about 1500 to 4,000 acre feet per year or an average of about 2600 acre feet per year.

438
00:42:56,040 --> 00:43:06,640
In this figure on the bottom you can see total of fluent on the y-axis and then the year on the x-axis and the field.

439
00:43:06,640 --> 00:43:11,400
The effluent is spread over both alfalfa fields

440
00:43:11,400 --> 00:43:13,480
and into infiltration times.

441
00:43:14,340 --> 00:43:18,640
And what we can see from this figure in the yellowy green

442
00:43:18,640 --> 00:43:23,980
is that fields get the majority of the water, affluent application.

443
00:43:24,740 --> 00:43:30,360
And because of this, recharges likely a little lower due to losses

444
00:43:30,360 --> 00:43:35,240
from the baffle transpiration just based on drawing the alfalfa.

445
00:43:35,240 --> 00:43:36,240
He

446
00:43:44,980 --> 00:43:54,620
also put together estimates of pumping from historic estimates and from water

447
00:43:54,620 --> 00:44:07,660
master reports and re-estimated about 700,000 acre feet of groundwater from 1942 to 2016.

448
00:44:07,660 --> 00:44:17,080
and the range depending on the year from about 3,000 acre feet per year back

449
00:44:17,080 --> 00:44:26,160
year in the 40s and some lower years in modern times to about 18,000 acre

450
00:44:26,160 --> 00:44:35,120
feet of puppets per year during the 1980s with a peak being about 1984. So most of

451
00:44:35,120 --> 00:44:41,920
this purpose was for our agricultural purposes about 93% or 650,000

452
00:44:41,920 --> 00:44:50,540
acre feet and when we sum up the component for domestic industrial and

453
00:44:50,540 --> 00:44:57,220
municipal that makes up about 50,000 acre feet or 7%. So one of the takeaways

454
00:44:57,220 --> 00:44:59,740
from this slide is the...

455
00:45:00,000 --> 00:45:08,720
Groundwater that was extracted is about 10 times more than natural recharge that comes into the system throughout the study period.

456
00:45:13,650 --> 00:45:23,710
We looked at groundwater level contours throughout the study period, and the figure on the

457
00:45:23,710 --> 00:45:33,390
right is a composite sample taken or groundwater levels taken from about 2014 to 2016 to get

458
00:45:33,390 --> 00:45:42,970
approximate contours of the basin. And what we see when we look at the contours is that water

459
00:45:42,970 --> 00:45:51,370
levels are higher in the north, east and south than the center of the basin. And that creates a

460
00:45:51,370 --> 00:45:59,230
flow gradient where water flows from the south to the center, the east to the center, and the north

461
00:45:59,230 --> 00:46:06,730
to the center of the basin, naturally, as it tries to kind of balance out and fill that gradient.

462
00:46:12,880 --> 00:46:16,880
Long-term hydrographs were also looked at in this study.

463
00:46:17,660 --> 00:46:26,860
And what we saw from these is that middle aquifers, the primary place where groundwater is pumped.

464
00:46:27,800 --> 00:46:31,240
And we can look at a couple of these hydrographs here.

465
00:46:32,800 --> 00:46:45,140
So this 25G1 that's circled here in red, we see from about mid-1950s to about 1996.

466
00:46:46,240 --> 00:46:52,680
We have this strong study decline of about 100 feet in the middle of the basin within the

467
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:53,460
middle aquifer.

468
00:46:53,460 --> 00:47:04,960
And then in, right around 96, pumping has been decreased and we get a slight upward direction

469
00:47:05,140 --> 00:47:10,740
or the water level slightly rise to 2016.

470
00:47:12,580 --> 00:47:18,340
So, when we looked at the southern part of the basin during that same period of time,

471
00:47:18,340 --> 00:47:25,280
And we see that water levels are still declining here in the south.

472
00:47:26,080 --> 00:47:35,260
And the increases in water levels in the center from 96 to 2016 are offset by declines

473
00:47:35,260 --> 00:47:41,300
in the northern and southern eastern parts of the basin as the system is trying to naturally

474
00:47:41,300 --> 00:47:46,180
they fill that hydraulic gradient with the reduction in pumpage.

475
00:47:52,030 --> 00:47:56,090
In Lucerne Lake, there is also land subsidence that we worked out

476
00:47:56,090 --> 00:48:04,030
and we use remote sensing data to compile estimates of land subsidence

477
00:48:04,030 --> 00:48:10,130
throughout the basin. So here on the figure on the figure on the right

478
00:48:10,130 --> 00:48:17,210
can see the different stations we used as the green dots and the one that's

479
00:48:17,210 --> 00:48:22,510
circled here this is where the greatest amount of land subsiding has occurred

480
00:48:22,510 --> 00:48:29,670
in the basin and if we look at our estimates can see that between 92 and

481
00:48:29,670 --> 00:48:36,010
2010 almost a foot of subsidence occurred within the central part of the

482
00:48:36,010 --> 00:48:36,470
So

483
00:48:40,310 --> 00:48:51,290
with all of this data in mind, we created a hydrologic model to represent historic conditions in the basin.

484
00:48:51,890 --> 00:48:59,910
So this figure on the right shows the model boundary or the study area boundary in the dark thick gray line.

485
00:48:59,910 --> 00:49:07,630
The lighter gray lines are the model grid cells that we use to simulate flow.

486
00:49:08,870 --> 00:49:19,650
And we use the model flow one water hydrologic model to simulate flow from 1942 to 2016.

487
00:49:20,170 --> 00:49:25,350
We selected this because it includes farm process to simulate irritated agriculture.

488
00:49:26,310 --> 00:49:33,890
The model was also calibrated to historic conditions using 86 observation wells throughout

489
00:49:33,890 --> 00:49:39,410
the basin and you can see all of those points on the figure in blue.

490
00:49:44,680 --> 00:49:53,700
So to look at some of the calibration results, this 25G1, which is one of the wells I showed

491
00:49:53,700 --> 00:50:00,720
before you can see in the figure on the right the y-axis shows the ground water level elevation

492
00:50:00,720 --> 00:50:15,120
and feet and the x-axis is the calendar year or yeah the date and the blue line in this figure is

493
00:50:15,120 --> 00:50:22,340
the model hydraulic hot or water level which you'd like to think of it that way and the open black

494
00:50:22,340 --> 00:50:28,980
circles are the groundwater level observations from the observation level.

495
00:50:29,480 --> 00:50:36,820
So we can see that we get the trend that we were expecting, that sharp decline in water level into the 90s,

496
00:50:37,020 --> 00:50:44,480
followed by the water level slightly rising from the mid 90s up to 2016.

497
00:50:46,860 --> 00:50:54,260
You looked at the southern part of the basin, one of our multiple well-managering sites.

498
00:50:55,360 --> 00:51:02,740
We can see here that water levels are declining in the southern part of the basin and all

499
00:51:02,740 --> 00:51:03,720
three aquifers.

500
00:51:05,600 --> 00:51:11,780
So the green line is hydraulic head and the upper aquifer in the model.

501
00:51:11,780 --> 00:51:22,120
The blue line is middle aquifer, and the brown line is lower aquifer, and we match the observations pretty well in here.

502
00:51:25,470 --> 00:51:40,930
We also simulated subsidence within the model, and the takeaway from this figure right here is that we use 11 observation points throughout the model.

503
00:51:40,930 --> 00:51:55,510
and about seven and a half foot, or up to seven and a half foot, the subsidence was estimated to have occurred from 1942 to 2016, south of Lucerne Lake here.

504
00:51:56,050 --> 00:51:59,410
This is where we have the maximum amount of subsidence in the basin.

505
00:51:59,410 --> 00:52:16,550
And this is occurring based on these figures and based on the model in layer two where we have a lot, a lot of clay deposits, not much subsidence is occurring in layer one, three or four.

506
00:52:16,550 --> 00:52:17,650
When

507
00:52:22,580 --> 00:52:36,700
we move or when we look at the northwestern part of the basin if you remember from the geologic cross section that can find unit starts pinching out once we go further north into here.

508
00:52:37,900 --> 00:52:47,780
We see that only about a half a foot of compaction has occurred and this is likely due to that thinner clay rich confining unit.

509
00:52:53,020 --> 00:52:59,760
Drawdown results were also put together from the model and so the figure on the right

510
00:52:59,760 --> 00:53:08,180
shows simulated drawdown from 1942 to 2016 and how we get that is we take our initial

511
00:53:08,180 --> 00:53:15,620
condition, our initial water levels from 1942 and then we subtract the water levels that

512
00:53:15,620 --> 00:53:24,740
simulated in 2016. And this figure shows that maximum of about 135 feet of

513
00:53:24,740 --> 00:53:30,140
drawdown has occurred near the center of the basin throughout the study period.

514
00:53:34,280 --> 00:53:42,340
When we look at 96 to 2016, so using 96 water levels as our initial

515
00:53:42,340 --> 00:53:52,660
condition and subtracting 2016 water levels off. We see increases of about 15 feet in the small

516
00:53:52,660 --> 00:54:01,040
area near the center of the basin and about 0 to 5 feet. They're here on these lighter blue

517
00:54:01,040 --> 00:54:11,800
patches and then we see decreases all around the periphery of the basin. So up here in the northeast

518
00:54:11,800 --> 00:54:19,660
the north in the south. And what this is is water migrating from the south into the center,

519
00:54:20,420 --> 00:54:24,280
north east into the center, and north into the center.

520
00:54:29,380 --> 00:54:36,340
And one of the great things about models is we can put together a water budget for all of the

521
00:54:36,340 --> 00:54:44,480
simulated years. So this is kind of a complex figure, but I'll walk throughout a piece at a time,

522
00:54:44,740 --> 00:54:54,660
So the blues in this budget, this is recharge from natural recharge, agricultural return flows,

523
00:54:55,780 --> 00:55:05,840
and also from the Barra affluent facility. The greens down here is agricultural pumping,

524
00:55:06,700 --> 00:55:13,660
and then the other browns and darker colors. This is municipal industrial and domestic pumping,

525
00:55:13,660 --> 00:55:24,540
And then the yellow is storage and the confusing part about these figures is when storage is on the positive side of the axis.

526
00:55:25,300 --> 00:55:32,900
This is this represents a loss of storage from the system because it is a water bill. The top has to balance the bottom.

527
00:55:32,900 --> 00:55:34,980
So these are storage losses.

528
00:55:35,740 --> 00:55:38,960
And the takeaway from this is twofold.

529
00:55:39,280 --> 00:55:42,180
Agricultural pumping is the greatest use of groundwater

530
00:55:42,960 --> 00:55:45,960
within the Lucerne Valley basin.

531
00:55:46,660 --> 00:55:50,920
And then groundwater depletion has occurred every year

532
00:55:50,920 --> 00:55:56,440
throughout our study period from 1942 to 2016.

533
00:56:01,220 --> 00:56:03,600
We can also look at this a different way.

534
00:56:03,600 --> 00:56:15,580
So this is once again looking at pumping, so we've just taken the bottom half of that previous graph, flipped it over and plotted it up.

535
00:56:17,040 --> 00:56:29,880
So the takeaways from this slide is the groundwater removed from aquifer storage is estimated to be about 465,000 acre feet.

536
00:56:29,880 --> 00:56:44,440
So that this number includes recharge going in to the system and pumping going out to the system, going out of the system.

537
00:56:45,780 --> 00:56:56,540
So pumping within the basin, the model estimates are about 641,000 acre feet were used for agricultural purposes.

538
00:56:57,700 --> 00:57:06,680
32,000 for domestic water use, 12,000 for industrial water use, and then municipal water use used

539
00:57:06,680 --> 00:57:10,260
about 6,500 acre feet during the study period.

540
00:57:14,500 --> 00:57:21,980
So in summary, with that Lucerne Valley, the

541
00:57:21,980 --> 00:57:29,460
Lucerne Valley groundwater basin, which is near Apple Valley, and supplies water to a rural

542
00:57:29,460 --> 00:57:38,880
community, rural agricultural community of about 5,000 people. The groundwater supply has been

543
00:57:38,880 --> 00:57:47,320
depleted since about 1940, since 1942, and during the study period there have been groundwater

544
00:57:47,320 --> 00:57:58,240
water level declines about to 135 feet between 90s, between 42 and 2016. Storage loss

545
00:57:58,240 --> 00:58:07,700
from the basin has been over about 460,000 acre feet of water removed. And the primary

546
00:58:07,700 --> 00:58:10,740
use of this groundwater is for irrigated agriculture.

547
00:58:15,750 --> 00:58:18,750
Part of this study, hydrologic

548
00:58:18,750 --> 00:58:26,170
model has been created and calibrated to historic conditions. And this model, what it really

549
00:58:26,170 --> 00:58:32,890
can be used for is for resource managers to gain insights into proposed future water management

550
00:58:32,890 --> 00:58:40,510
scenarios. So one of the powerful things you can do with models is compare relative effects of

551
00:58:40,510 --> 00:58:47,570
different management strategies and even different climate scenarios. One of the other things we can

552
00:58:47,570 --> 00:58:57,150
do is track the fate of water molecules, molecules such as infiltration from Bara, or if you select

553
00:58:57,150 --> 00:59:06,130
another infiltration site to add on to, can track the fate of those particles to get an idea of

554
00:59:06,130 --> 00:59:14,850
where they're going to end up in the natural system. So with that, thank you, and I'll take any

555
00:59:14,850 --> 00:59:16,310
questions that you have now.

556
00:59:22,960 --> 00:59:25,220
Thank you, Josh. That was extremely informative.

557
00:59:27,600 --> 00:59:32,160
All I can say is, wow. I understand why Chuck is so engaged.

558
00:59:32,820 --> 00:59:36,760
I get it. With that, I'll open it up to any questions or comments.

559
00:59:40,570 --> 00:59:43,470
It'd be best up here. Everybody can hear you, especially the ones online.

560
01:00:00,020 --> 01:00:03,960
Hold on just a second. I think they're trying to get your mic active. Is that right?

561
01:00:53,530 --> 01:01:01,130
So do you want to repeat that to Josh? I don't know if Josh can hear it or if that's one. You said

562
01:01:03,500 --> 01:01:19,920
you were not able to hear it. I was not able to hear the question. I think the question was, does the agriculture that went out of production, do the recession, did that coincide with the recovery of the

563
01:01:19,920 --> 01:01:23,320
the groundwater depression, the cone in the center of the, of the basin.

564
01:01:24,660 --> 01:01:28,940
Um, so here, let me scroll back through the slides.

565
01:01:29,600 --> 01:01:29,940
I can.

566
01:01:30,400 --> 01:01:30,540
I

567
01:01:34,220 --> 01:01:35,980
repeat the question.

568
01:01:37,440 --> 01:01:39,400
Um, so he got it.

569
01:01:40,800 --> 01:01:46,520
So back here in, I think it was, um, the early 90s.

570
01:01:46,520 --> 01:01:49,020
Is this the recession that you're talking about?

571
01:01:53,070 --> 01:01:54,990
So back in the early 90s.

572
01:01:54,990 --> 01:02:07,970
We've noticed the goals we treat in the expense of agricultural production and that does correspond to when groundwater levels in the center of the basin began to rise.

573
01:02:16,750 --> 01:02:17,930
Other questions, comments?

574
01:02:21,130 --> 01:02:23,050
Yeah, this is Perry Dulles from Gold State Water.

575
01:02:24,290 --> 01:02:25,930
So we're looking at all this data.

576
01:02:26,470 --> 01:02:33,290
I think the $1,000 question is for recharge into the basin since it still looks like.

577
01:02:34,050 --> 01:02:39,150
still extract them more water than's getting in naturally and it looks like

578
01:02:39,150 --> 01:02:43,550
the upper levels pretty confined so probably the only way to get recharged into

579
01:02:43,550 --> 01:02:49,610
this basin effectively is through injection wells or something or what's

580
01:02:49,610 --> 01:02:54,690
going to any ideas or thoughts on how to manage that going forward so you can get

581
01:02:54,690 --> 01:02:59,070
water underneath the top layer that seems to be the confining layer.

582
01:02:59,070 --> 01:03:10,360
Yeah, that's a good question. And what we see in the geological data is the

583
01:03:10,360 --> 01:03:18,140
confining unit pinches out as we go to the north. So we actually refer to this

584
01:03:18,140 --> 01:03:24,440
middle aquifer, or this middle aquifer has been referred to in previous studies as

585
01:03:24,440 --> 01:03:34,000
partially confined aquifer. So back here in the southern part of the basin, the data would suggest

586
01:03:34,000 --> 01:03:41,680
that injection wells would have to be drilled to access this middle aquifer. In the northern part

587
01:03:41,680 --> 01:03:52,920
of the basin, that might not be the same story because this clay layer is much thinner. But I think

588
01:03:52,920 --> 01:04:01,860
more geologic data might need to be taken in some of these other areas to really evaluate that.

589
01:04:13,290 --> 01:04:20,910
Well, thank you, Josh. With that, we'll move on to our next item. It is Mojabi Basin,

590
01:04:20,910 --> 01:04:27,310
one water concept, and this one's being presented by Darren Polson, the GM of VVWRA.

591
01:04:28,030 --> 01:04:28,830
Thank you, Darren.

592
01:04:28,830 --> 01:04:28,910
Yeah.

593
01:04:29,950 --> 01:04:30,990
Doug, thank you very much.

594
01:04:31,690 --> 01:04:34,270
Theresa, are you going to work at the buttons or then

595
01:04:36,510 --> 01:04:37,650
you've got the, I'll give you the

596
01:04:37,650 --> 01:04:38,730
high sign and we'll move forward.

597
01:04:39,270 --> 01:04:40,230
All right, let's do a match.

598
01:04:40,970 --> 01:04:42,450
That does not want to stay up there.

599
01:04:45,270 --> 01:04:46,670
All right, well, we'll leave it right there.

600
01:04:47,330 --> 01:04:49,270
All right, and I don't like having my back, everybody.

601
01:04:59,770 --> 01:05:00,630
Oh, that's much better.

602
01:05:01,450 --> 01:05:02,950
As Doug said, my name is Darren Poulson.

603
01:05:03,050 --> 01:05:05,950
I'm the general manager over at the VVWRA.

604
01:05:07,830 --> 01:05:14,410
next month will mark 36 years for me in the water and wastewater industry. I've lived my entire

605
01:05:14,410 --> 01:05:19,650
life here in Apple Valley and most of my water and wastewater experience came on the other side of

606
01:05:19,650 --> 01:05:25,730
Go Home Pass where previously to come into work here at VVWA I did a lot of water resource

607
01:05:25,730 --> 01:05:29,790
management for a number of communities and special districts on the other side of Go Home Pass and

608
01:05:30,290 --> 01:05:38,230
One significant difference that I found once I came up here to the high desert was very

609
01:05:38,230 --> 01:05:42,210
much like the water industry back in the 80s and 90s when I got started. A lot of the

610
01:05:42,210 --> 01:05:49,050
agencies on the other side of home past were operating very separately. You were a waste

611
01:05:49,050 --> 01:05:52,970
water guy, you were a recycled water guy, you were a ground water guy, a surface water

612
01:05:52,970 --> 01:06:00,110
imported water. Nobody was really working together. And it didn't start until the late 90s

613
01:06:00,110 --> 01:06:04,330
roughly. At that point in time, I was on the board for the Chino Basin Water Master.

614
01:06:04,890 --> 01:06:10,350
I've also sat on the board for six basins, water master as well as the Spodger Basin

615
01:06:10,350 --> 01:06:16,070
Water Master, sat on a number of tech committees for the Empire Utilities agencies, then to

616
01:06:16,070 --> 01:06:20,870
another of metropolitan meetings. It was about that time period that all of these agencies

617
01:06:20,870 --> 01:06:25,790
you started realizing that there's only one water, and I don't care where it comes from,

618
01:06:25,910 --> 01:06:30,050
whether it's storm water, whether it's recycled water, it's ground water, it's surface

619
01:06:30,050 --> 01:06:34,410
water, it's imported water, and what we started seeing was the fact that we were becoming

620
01:06:34,410 --> 01:06:39,750
much more successful of developing significant grants and providing much more impact to our

621
01:06:39,750 --> 01:06:42,130
basins when we all started working together.

622
01:06:43,910 --> 01:06:47,970
Working for those cities and communities I did, I was responsible for recycled water, ground

623
01:06:47,970 --> 01:07:00,570
I was responsible for the MS-4 that a lot of work with the Santa Ana region, the L.A. County region, that a lot of Irwin projects together, with IEUA in the last 15, 20 years with them.

624
01:07:01,110 --> 01:07:13,090
When those agencies all calibrate, collaborate to write metropolitan IEUA, the number of the communities around IEUA has probably in last 10 or 15 years earned, almost a half a billion dollars were the grants.

625
01:07:13,090 --> 01:07:20,210
And I have a million dollars that they've reinvested back into their basin to build collaborative

626
01:07:20,210 --> 01:07:26,430
projects to recharge not only the storm water but also the recycled water and desalters.

627
01:07:27,210 --> 01:07:30,550
So they started managing all of this is one basin and one water.

628
01:07:31,610 --> 01:07:37,830
And since coming to the VVWA, I started noticing immediately some of the concerns I was having

629
01:07:37,830 --> 01:07:43,090
at my plan and when I started looking at those concerns and looking for possible solutions

630
01:07:43,090 --> 01:07:48,290
it kind of led me to some thoughts from some of my past experiences on hey what else could

631
01:07:48,290 --> 01:07:53,430
we do in the Mojave Basin and I started reaching out to my member agencies at the city of

632
01:07:53,430 --> 01:07:56,670
Victorville and the town of Apple Valley and the city of Asperia and the county and saying

633
01:07:57,170 --> 01:08:03,550
hey is there a way that you know maybe we could maximize VVWA's efforts started reaching

634
01:08:03,550 --> 01:08:08,790
out to the Mojave Water Agency and started having conversations with them about considering

635
01:08:08,790 --> 01:08:14,050
an optimum basin management plan, something we could do differently to create more yield

636
01:08:14,050 --> 01:08:17,950
and benefit in our basin, similar to some of the work that I had done on the other side

637
01:08:17,950 --> 01:08:18,270
of the hill.

638
01:08:18,430 --> 01:08:23,890
So, I kind of come together and put this concept and this thought of a Mojave basin, one

639
01:08:23,890 --> 01:08:24,590
water concept.

640
01:08:24,750 --> 01:08:25,750
And what could that look like?

641
01:08:25,890 --> 01:08:31,850
And today, what I was asked to do was kind of identify some of the water resource issues

642
01:08:31,850 --> 01:08:35,410
that all of us are dealing with on a daily basis and then kind of take those

643
01:08:35,410 --> 01:08:39,850
challenges and see if I can't apply them directly to this concept and these

644
01:08:39,850 --> 01:08:43,630
thoughts of what we could do on a larger scale. So these are just kind of these

645
01:08:44,230 --> 01:08:47,890
items that I'm going to cover today. The high ground water issue is actually

646
01:08:47,890 --> 01:08:51,250
something the VVWA is dealing with and I'll kind of get into more detail on that.

647
01:08:51,830 --> 01:08:55,670
But I really want to talk about effective recharge. I want to talk about maybe some

648
01:08:55,670 --> 01:08:59,690
underutilized assets here at Mojave Water Agency. The issues with the storm

649
01:08:59,690 --> 01:09:03,610
water management and the climate change and these new atmospheric rivers that we're seeing today that

650
01:09:03,610 --> 01:09:10,510
are bringing huge amounts of water to our area very quickly. I know our Mojave rivers were fortunate

651
01:09:10,510 --> 01:09:14,030
in the fact that it's not mine somewhere to some of the rivers down on the other side of

652
01:09:14,030 --> 01:09:18,670
the home path but still any water that we can keep in our upper zones is opposed to just letting

653
01:09:18,670 --> 01:09:23,290
it fall out to Afton Canyon. That would be a huge benefit. So we're going to touch based on all of

654
01:09:23,290 --> 01:09:27,030
these challenges and all of these facts today and then we're going to talk about this concept that I

655
01:09:27,030 --> 01:09:31,650
have in mind and I think I'm going to start here kind of just today I noticed and I checked

656
01:09:31,650 --> 01:09:37,870
on my newsfeed before I even came in. Today I saw three newsfeed articles hit my inbox

657
01:09:37,870 --> 01:09:42,310
today, right? One of them was Metropolitan Water District. There's a state water project

658
01:09:42,310 --> 01:09:47,070
contractor right similar to Mojave and the LA County Sanitation District. So a collaboration

659
01:09:47,070 --> 01:09:52,310
between a state water project contractor and a water treatment facility, LA County, one

660
01:09:52,310 --> 01:09:56,570
of the largest in the United States, if not the world. Today they are getting ready to

661
01:09:56,570 --> 01:10:02,550
launch almost a billion-dollar project. It's over $600 million for the project where today,

662
01:10:03,030 --> 01:10:06,190
they're going to take the Hyperion Flow, which is one of the largest treatment plants

663
01:10:06,190 --> 01:10:11,530
L.A. County San has. Today, their wastewater discharge, their recycle water discharge,

664
01:10:11,650 --> 01:10:16,390
go straight to the ocean, about a hundred million gallons per day. And now,

665
01:10:16,670 --> 01:10:21,450
right, metropolitan estate water project contractor, now has seen the vision of, hey, why don't we

666
01:10:21,450 --> 01:10:25,870
collaborate with these guys? Find a way to treat that water to a level of a higher quality.

667
01:10:25,870 --> 01:10:30,790
And let's keep it inland and let's recharge and they're building huge pipelines and larger treatment plants, right?

668
01:10:31,290 --> 01:10:32,110
That was one article.

669
01:10:32,950 --> 01:10:43,650
The other article I saw today was on, again, right, the issues with the drought and the fact that metropolitan is going to continue to push, right, more drought requirements, the fact that our state water project

670
01:10:45,130 --> 01:10:52,550
allocations are going to continue to fall, right? I saw articles on that today. So these issues and these challenges we're dealing with are hitting us every day.

671
01:10:52,550 --> 01:11:00,570
And when I look at our Mojave basin and compare it, we're probably about 20 or 30 years behind what they're doing on the other side of compass.

672
01:11:01,990 --> 01:11:17,590
The great part about that is the fact that if we can get us started on this, if we can start collaborating today with our projects and thinking beyond just our simple storm water project or our recycled water project, if we can all work together right, there's significant dollars out there available to us.

673
01:11:18,290 --> 01:11:22,650
And I think if we all start thinking along those lines, ultimately what we end up with

674
01:11:22,650 --> 01:11:26,170
is a much better and more proficient basin.

675
01:11:27,870 --> 01:11:31,030
So let's start with the high ground water levels in the transition zone.

676
01:11:31,290 --> 01:11:34,870
So, you know, if you want one, let's go ahead and hit to the second map that's kind of an

677
01:11:34,870 --> 01:11:35,710
easier explanation.

678
01:11:38,220 --> 01:11:39,240
Ah, that's awesome.

679
01:11:39,560 --> 01:11:40,380
All right, where do I point it?

680
01:11:42,160 --> 01:11:42,560
This one?

681
01:11:42,780 --> 01:11:43,200
No, just go?

682
01:11:44,000 --> 01:11:44,760
Nope, where do I point it?

683
01:11:55,970 --> 01:12:03,070
So for those of you who maybe don't know where BVWRA is, BVWRA is within the transition

684
01:12:03,070 --> 01:12:03,750
zone, right?

685
01:12:03,830 --> 01:12:06,530
We are between the lower narrows and the hellendale fault.

686
01:12:07,290 --> 01:12:13,990
So our discharge point right there, every day, we're pushing into the river about 11 to

687
01:12:13,990 --> 01:12:15,350
12 million gallons per day.

688
01:12:15,350 --> 01:12:22,110
If we're not doing a direct recharge, we have percolation pawns that we push water

689
01:12:22,110 --> 01:12:25,810
to when we're doing maintenance and we're not chlorinaire hitting it with disinfection

690
01:12:25,810 --> 01:12:26,050
UV.

691
01:12:27,090 --> 01:12:30,430
So we have both direct discharge and percolation pawns that are right on the edge of the

692
01:12:30,430 --> 01:12:33,350
river that fall very quickly into the transition zone.

693
01:12:35,350 --> 01:12:40,730
And I recently had a hydrojologist come out and help me with regards to this high ground

694
01:12:40,730 --> 01:12:44,570
water concern and I'll get to the details as to why I have these concerns.

695
01:12:44,570 --> 01:12:48,910
But what we were able to find is that within the transition zone over the last 20 years

696
01:12:49,490 --> 01:12:55,250
Those groundwater levels have ridden risen significantly primarily attributed to my discharge, right?

697
01:12:55,390 --> 01:12:59,870
Every border that we're dumping into that ground. It can't get out of the transition zone fast enough

698
01:12:59,870 --> 01:13:00,930
go ahead

699
01:13:05,920 --> 01:13:07,100
and

700
01:13:07,100 --> 01:13:13,360
And then the way we know that too, right is because within the within the central basin downstream of the Helen Delphalt area

701
01:13:13,360 --> 01:13:16,260
The central basin is seeing so you can begin declines

702
01:13:16,980 --> 01:13:20,480
So I'm really thinking of, well, if I'm putting more and more water into the

703
01:13:20,480 --> 01:13:24,280
transition zone and it's not making it to the areas that have the the low

704
01:13:24,280 --> 01:13:27,160
ground water issues or the lowering ground water issues, there's something

705
01:13:27,160 --> 01:13:30,620
wrong with our palette, right? Something's not working, right? I mean, we

706
01:13:30,620 --> 01:13:34,160
really should be thinking about really effective management of our aquifer

707
01:13:34,160 --> 01:13:38,160
recharge. Being more specific and direct makes much more sense than just randomly

708
01:13:38,160 --> 01:13:41,500
dropping it into the transition zone and hoping that it makes its way there.

709
01:13:42,100 --> 01:13:42,620
Go ahead.

710
01:13:44,760 --> 01:13:50,300
So this is a close-up of our facility. And you can see the groundwater contours where

711
01:13:50,300 --> 01:13:54,580
are even the water from those ponds that are basically on the southern end. Those are upper

712
01:13:55,220 --> 01:14:00,060
percolation ponds. Those south percolation ponds are where today when our UV disinfection is offline,

713
01:14:00,220 --> 01:14:05,120
we push water up into those ponds and allow it to recharge. The direct outfall is about where that

714
01:14:06,080 --> 01:14:12,040
pink looking number section is right there. We have lower ponds. So if you go further north and

715
01:14:12,040 --> 01:14:17,460
up against the river. You can see there's about four ponds that used to be historically

716
01:14:17,460 --> 01:14:24,780
where we used to discharge our water too. Those ponds today are completely full, and

717
01:14:24,780 --> 01:14:29,820
we have not put water in those ponds in probably 12 to 15 years. And the reason they're flow,

718
01:14:30,100 --> 01:14:36,640
the reason they're full, those ponds that water level is groundwater level. So they are sitting

719
01:14:36,640 --> 01:14:44,120
there on my property full of groundwater. And those percolation ponds in the south move

720
01:14:44,120 --> 01:14:49,900
water towards the river and to those ponds and they fill those ponds. And for those

721
01:14:49,900 --> 01:14:53,560
of you who aren't familiar with what an MPDS permit is, right, that means that I can't

722
01:14:53,560 --> 01:14:58,260
allow the water to flow off my property. My problem is, is those ponds are in a continual

723
01:14:58,260 --> 01:14:59,540
Thread of...

724
01:15:00,000 --> 01:15:07,680
Overflowing from groundwater. Not from my, you brought not from my recharge. So I'm in a constant basis. I have huge

725
01:15:07,680 --> 01:15:14,520
Godwin pumps where I pump in a circle. I literally put it in the most northern pond and pump it all the way back up to

726
01:15:14,520 --> 01:15:21,560
avoid an M.P.D.S. permit issue. Super costly, super inefficient. Law hot and water board doesn't like it. They're on my case,

727
01:15:21,560 --> 01:15:27,520
and I'm struggling with what you want me to do. I don't control groundwater, right? So the high groundwater is causing

728
01:15:27,520 --> 01:15:34,600
issues with the potential thread of an NPDS violation. Also, just to the left of our discharge

729
01:15:34,600 --> 01:15:40,240
point, I have primary clarifiers, right? So the wastewater after it grows through screening

730
01:15:40,240 --> 01:15:46,400
and brick capture goes into these large clarifiers where the sludge starts to fall out. And these

731
01:15:46,400 --> 01:15:53,020
are about 20 feet deep. And you have to go down into the basement area about 25 feet and I have

732
01:15:53,020 --> 01:15:57,500
a pump gallery where these pumps are pulling the sludge off the bottom of these clarifiers

733
01:15:57,500 --> 01:16:00,460
and moving the sludge to my digesters.

734
01:16:01,240 --> 01:16:05,220
The floor in my basement has water in it all the time.

735
01:16:05,800 --> 01:16:10,020
And I have these huge electric pumps that my staff walks around in and my submersibles

736
01:16:10,020 --> 01:16:14,960
have a hard time keeping up with the ground water infiltrating in through the walls.

737
01:16:15,880 --> 01:16:21,100
So high ground water in the transition zone, high ground water in the plant is causing me

738
01:16:21,100 --> 01:16:27,380
some significant concerns. And I started thinking about, well, the easiest way to do that,

739
01:16:27,540 --> 01:16:33,140
if you could hit the next button, right, is, well, let's just maximize the use of recycled

740
01:16:33,140 --> 01:16:37,960
water instead of just discharging it. How do I get it to my member agencies and really

741
01:16:37,960 --> 01:16:43,220
start using it? Well, now there's restrictions and issues with this, right? There's impediments

742
01:16:43,220 --> 01:16:48,300
to using that recycled water, right? There's a constraint by the MOU requirements, right?

743
01:16:48,300 --> 01:16:54,060
We have an EMOU requirement where efficient wildlife requires a certain amount of discharge to the

744
01:16:54,060 --> 01:16:59,120
repair and areas that I've got to meet every year. And then my member agencies who basically own

745
01:16:59,120 --> 01:17:05,740
the recycle water have this subarea obligation of this 23,000 acre foot of water that they've got to

746
01:17:05,740 --> 01:17:10,600
meet within the transition zone that ultimately we've got to figure out a solution for because the

747
01:17:10,600 --> 01:17:15,740
reality is is that I need to move where I'm discharging. Go ahead.

748
01:17:17,920 --> 01:17:19,240
Right. I really need to think

749
01:17:19,240 --> 01:17:23,660
think about how do I discharge someplace else other than right there in my own backyard

750
01:17:23,660 --> 01:17:25,500
and causing my own issues with high ground water.

751
01:17:26,400 --> 01:17:31,460
So I started thinking about this and I contacted a number of staff here at the MWA and I started

752
01:17:31,460 --> 01:17:37,840
thinking about that pipeline right that MWA operates today between the aqueduct all the way

753
01:17:37,840 --> 01:17:38,680
out to Daggett.

754
01:17:38,700 --> 01:17:46,360
And that large pipeline today isn't used every day, it's not an asset that ultimately gets

755
01:17:46,360 --> 01:17:49,560
used on a very significant amount of time.

756
01:17:49,720 --> 01:17:52,400
And my thought was, wow, did anybody know the fact

757
01:17:52,400 --> 01:17:54,140
that my recycle water line flows up

758
01:17:54,600 --> 01:17:55,980
to the high desert power plant?

759
01:17:57,300 --> 01:17:58,880
And that Victorville operates a line

760
01:17:58,880 --> 01:18:01,020
from the high desert power plant back to that line

761
01:18:01,020 --> 01:18:03,080
to where they could take state project water off of that?

762
01:18:03,680 --> 01:18:06,520
Literally, there is a way to connect my recycled water,

763
01:18:06,880 --> 01:18:10,400
even Victorville's recycled water from their industrial plant.

764
01:18:10,980 --> 01:18:13,080
To that pipeline, and the connections probably less

765
01:18:13,080 --> 01:18:13,920
than 50 feet apart.

766
01:18:14,640 --> 01:18:20,160
All right, so we're not talking about a huge engineering project ultimately to get this

767
01:18:20,720 --> 01:18:25,200
potentially connected and maybe get us thinking about the fact of rather than just dropping

768
01:18:25,200 --> 01:18:31,280
water in the transition zone, how do we really become effective rechargers of this resource?

769
01:18:31,420 --> 01:18:33,780
How do we utilize this resource more effectively?

770
01:18:34,460 --> 01:18:40,080
It could be used maybe someday by the city of Victorville with regards to maybe doing more landscape

771
01:18:40,080 --> 01:18:40,580
work.

772
01:18:40,580 --> 01:18:44,540
but what do we do with recycled water right now when it's 28 degrees in the

773
01:18:44,540 --> 01:18:48,520
morning when we wake up, right? Nobody's using that water today. Same thing we did

774
01:18:48,520 --> 01:18:52,700
on the other side of the hill. It was easy. You use the water on golf courses and

775
01:18:52,700 --> 01:18:58,260
landscape in the summertime and then when it got cold we recharged, right? All of

776
01:18:58,260 --> 01:19:02,500
that, that recycled water was put into recharge basins that they were using for

777
01:19:02,500 --> 01:19:06,840
stormwater recharge. Now they're also using them for recycled water recharge.

778
01:19:07,620 --> 01:19:14,420
So my thought was, is progressing down these one water concepts, is there a way to partner

779
01:19:14,420 --> 01:19:20,000
with Mojave Water Agency and our member agencies and think about finding a solution of moving

780
01:19:20,000 --> 01:19:24,740
this water where it's needed in the central basin and more effectively use our recycled

781
01:19:24,740 --> 01:19:25,100
water?

782
01:19:28,840 --> 01:19:30,980
So there are those challenges I talked about, right?

783
01:19:31,160 --> 01:19:32,920
I would love to get rid of my high ground water.

784
01:19:33,320 --> 01:19:38,740
We're going to have to find solutions with regards to what agreements would need to be in

785
01:19:38,740 --> 01:19:43,260
place, how much is the hot and going to push back on this, how much is fish and wildlife

786
01:19:43,260 --> 01:19:45,360
going to push back on this, right?

787
01:19:45,520 --> 01:19:50,040
There's a lot of things that we need to address, but all of them make really good sense

788
01:19:50,040 --> 01:19:54,180
to me with regards to maximizing the use of this resource.

789
01:19:55,300 --> 01:20:00,280
The one requirement with regards to the fish and wildlife I even found a unique solution

790
01:20:00,280 --> 01:20:04,960
to, hopefully, and that is the Mojave Desert Regional Conservation District just recently

791
01:20:04,960 --> 01:20:08,120
purchased a large section of land by the Palisades.

792
01:20:08,820 --> 01:20:14,700
My thought would be to approach the Fish and Wildlife and to create a controlled discharge

793
01:20:14,700 --> 01:20:17,880
of recycled water to that land that is managed for public benefit.

794
01:20:18,580 --> 01:20:23,860
So that in my mind would ultimately take away the concerns that Fish and Wildlife have about

795
01:20:23,860 --> 01:20:28,080
a repairing area that's being managed because now there's actually somebody who's overseeing

796
01:20:28,080 --> 01:20:31,660
that area as opposed to the area where I'm dumping it today at nobody's management.

797
01:20:31,660 --> 01:20:37,300
So there's a lot of good ideas on a lot of people involved and hopefully, you know, could get engaged in all of this

798
01:20:37,860 --> 01:20:42,620
And I'm excited to think about, you know, hopefully getting all of you interested and sitting down

799
01:20:42,620 --> 01:20:45,980
Maybe with all of you and talking about hey, what what other

800
01:20:46,620 --> 01:20:49,900
Challenges do you have that maybe projects like this could address?

801
01:20:50,360 --> 01:20:50,760
Okay

802
01:20:52,550 --> 01:20:54,970
Another big one that I'm sitting on that's kind of a

803
01:20:55,510 --> 01:21:01,810
An interesting one today for those of you probably know right? There's a significant water quality plume sitting at the old George Air Force base

804
01:21:01,810 --> 01:21:09,150
A number of VOCs and PFAS and PFOLO concerns that are there today, there's a continuous

805
01:21:09,150 --> 01:21:13,690
battle between their force and the federal government and the regional water quality

806
01:21:13,690 --> 01:21:15,530
board with regards to what they're going to do with that.

807
01:21:16,250 --> 01:21:22,170
The one thing that's actually preventing that plume from dropping into the greater flow

808
01:21:22,170 --> 01:21:24,350
of the Mojave River is our discharge.

809
01:21:25,350 --> 01:21:31,210
We have literally created this nice mound right at the plant, which is directly east of

810
01:21:31,210 --> 01:21:34,530
this plume which prevents it from going down into the river.

811
01:21:35,750 --> 01:21:39,150
The one thing that seems to make really good sense to me, and maybe this is even further

812
01:21:39,150 --> 01:21:42,730
down the road to think about, but we need to be thinking about how do we work together

813
01:21:42,730 --> 01:21:44,490
with them to mitigate this concern.

814
01:21:44,610 --> 01:21:45,790
This plume isn't going to disappear.

815
01:21:46,670 --> 01:21:50,070
One thing that stands out to me in my mind is someday somebody is going to come up and tell

816
01:21:50,070 --> 01:21:54,070
me that my recycled water is going to need to be treated for PFAS and PFOA concerns.

817
01:21:54,290 --> 01:21:54,710
It's coming.

818
01:21:55,210 --> 01:21:55,710
It's on point.

819
01:21:56,030 --> 01:21:56,090
Right?

820
01:21:56,830 --> 01:21:59,710
Well, if that's the case, then why aren't I working with the federal government and saying,

821
01:21:59,710 --> 01:22:05,250
look, you've got a plume that has PFOS and PFO. I've got PFOS and PFO in my recycled

822
01:22:05,250 --> 01:22:09,750
water. Why aren't we collaborating and building a treatment plant there that maybe we could

823
01:22:09,750 --> 01:22:14,070
even do direct-paltable reuse some day? Think about that, right? Then we could actually

824
01:22:14,070 --> 01:22:18,670
be treating that plume, treating my recycled water. And during the summertime in high demands,

825
01:22:18,670 --> 01:22:24,210
we could actually be supplementing our groundwater with this direct-paltable reuse water that we could

826
01:22:24,210 --> 01:22:29,990
treat from this plume and my water and Victorville's water. Maybe Adolanto's water, right? So

827
01:22:29,990 --> 01:22:33,610
a lot of interesting water quality partnerships that are also out there. Go ahead.

828
01:22:36,000 --> 01:22:36,680
Boy, I've

829
01:22:36,680 --> 01:22:39,600
really went way too far on that one. Let's cut a few more slides because I talked about all

830
01:22:39,600 --> 01:22:46,320
of those things. Let's get to the sixth one. So this one to me I think is a no-brainer and we're really

831
01:22:46,320 --> 01:22:51,020
fortunate and I'm hopeful that we can get people to really think about this, right? One of the big

832
01:22:51,020 --> 01:22:56,140
struggles I had on the other side at home pass was that like Kukamonga Creek and San Antonio Creek

833
01:22:56,140 --> 01:22:59,900
right that run out of the San Gabriel Mountains, they immediately went to

834
01:22:59,900 --> 01:23:03,560
concrete channels once they got into the urban areas, right, whether you were

835
01:23:03,560 --> 01:23:08,460
in North Rancho Cucamango or North The Verne, right, where those channels came

836
01:23:08,460 --> 01:23:15,380
in, water that was naturally recharging those upper basins was flowing out of

837
01:23:15,380 --> 01:23:20,380
the mountains and flowing straight to the San Ana River. Today, if you drive

838
01:23:20,380 --> 01:23:24,200
around Apple Valley, the Sparia, parts of Victorville, you can see them today.

839
01:23:24,200 --> 01:23:29,720
those open channels exist. You can see the big areas that flood during rainstorms, and the

840
01:23:29,720 --> 01:23:35,200
nice thing is they aren't concrete line today. They would make ideal spots for thinking about

841
01:23:35,200 --> 01:23:40,180
capturing these huge storm events and keeping water in your particular zones, rather than allowing

842
01:23:40,180 --> 01:23:45,740
it to flow out. And these recharge basins could be built anywhere, central basin, Baja, they could

843
01:23:45,740 --> 01:23:51,040
be built in the alto. But we need to be thinking about utilizing our combined efforts on our combined

844
01:23:51,040 --> 01:23:55,820
dollars to be able to say look if I can put if you can put stormwater in there as part of an

845
01:23:55,820 --> 01:23:59,520
urban or wind project why can't I put recycle water in there as part of it as well we should be

846
01:23:59,520 --> 01:24:03,920
thinking about funding all of these together and collaborating on our engineering projects to make

847
01:24:03,920 --> 01:24:11,360
sure that we're you know considering all those needs the next one the climate change in the drought

848
01:24:11,360 --> 01:24:15,740
and why do I bring this up because it's not going away and right now our opportunities are pretty

849
01:24:15,740 --> 01:24:20,900
great with regards to the fact that this is very visible in the public today this is

850
01:24:20,900 --> 01:24:25,060
is something that everybody in Southern California understands is a major concern.

851
01:24:25,660 --> 01:24:28,940
So when we think about funding these projects and getting the communities and

852
01:24:28,940 --> 01:24:32,580
getting our local municipalities and our constituents interested in these,

853
01:24:32,900 --> 01:24:34,000
I think it's no brainer.

854
01:24:34,180 --> 01:24:36,720
I think everybody can look at these ideas that we're talking about and

855
01:24:36,720 --> 01:24:41,460
realize that if we're going to overcome these drought and these climate change issues,

856
01:24:42,060 --> 01:24:44,660
we're going to need to think bigger and we're going to need to be thinking together.

857
01:24:44,660 --> 01:24:45,520
All right,

858
01:24:47,780 --> 01:24:53,260
we've got to be thinking about, you know, all of our, everybody in this room

859
01:24:53,260 --> 01:24:58,460
is working probably on some master plan of projects that they want to put together.

860
01:24:59,320 --> 01:25:04,840
All of those master plans need to be somehow, some way mutually collaborative with regards

861
01:25:04,840 --> 01:25:05,420
to everybody.

862
01:25:05,500 --> 01:25:09,320
Everybody needs to sit down and think about, if Victorial, I know, is getting ready to make

863
01:25:09,320 --> 01:25:12,300
a big improvement to their recycled water system.

864
01:25:13,820 --> 01:25:16,680
Why isn't that MWA line part of that decision?

865
01:25:17,440 --> 01:25:20,840
Because not only could it flow all the way north, right?

866
01:25:21,320 --> 01:25:24,500
If we wanted to pump it, we could pump it south, right?

867
01:25:24,600 --> 01:25:27,320
It could become a major arterial line for recycled water

868
01:25:27,320 --> 01:25:30,580
that could bring water all the way to the city of Asperia if we needed it to.

869
01:25:31,980 --> 01:25:37,360
So, I guess what I'm saying is that, go ahead, is that the more that we can work together,

870
01:25:37,960 --> 01:25:43,740
the more that we can realize that we're all in this together and realize this is one basin,

871
01:25:43,980 --> 01:25:50,480
one water, the better off we're going to be, right? Our cost of imported water is rising, right?

872
01:25:50,720 --> 01:25:57,480
Our availability of that state project water is diminishing, right? We need to get ahead of this.

873
01:25:59,990 --> 01:26:04,990
Let me hit the next one. Look, I just randomly went out and started looking at the funding

874
01:26:04,990 --> 01:26:10,010
that's available today and there is a ton of funding available today.

875
01:26:11,110 --> 01:26:16,850
Not only for construction but for actual studies, you know, maybe what we need to be thinking

876
01:26:16,850 --> 01:26:21,770
about doing is let's, you know, let's start getting together and thinking about, you know,

877
01:26:22,010 --> 01:26:27,210
what's the list of projects that we could do, not only from a state water project perspective

878
01:26:27,210 --> 01:26:29,050
but all of our one water perspectives.

879
01:26:29,810 --> 01:26:34,010
And thinking about can we do on maybe an optimum basin management study with regards to all

880
01:26:34,010 --> 01:26:40,630
of these sources of water that we could mutually agree on projects that would be beneficial to

881
01:26:40,630 --> 01:26:40,930
everybody.

882
01:26:41,570 --> 01:26:41,910
Go ahead.

883
01:26:45,520 --> 01:26:45,680
Right?

884
01:26:45,840 --> 01:26:47,400
I mean, what is the benefit of doing it now?

885
01:26:47,900 --> 01:26:50,920
It's, again, because we're not urbanized, right?

886
01:26:51,000 --> 01:26:52,120
We have available space.

887
01:26:53,160 --> 01:26:56,800
You know, we need to be thinking about long-term and the plans of, you know, our each individual

888
01:26:56,800 --> 01:26:57,420
communities.

889
01:26:57,880 --> 01:26:59,980
What we don't want to become is an impediment to growth.

890
01:27:00,840 --> 01:27:03,960
And ultimately, if we don't start thinking around these ways, we're going to become more

891
01:27:03,960 --> 01:27:06,440
and more of an impediment to that, right?

892
01:27:07,140 --> 01:27:11,300
We need to think about, you know, maximizing our water supplies, right?

893
01:27:11,540 --> 01:27:12,860
Protecting our water quality.

894
01:27:14,400 --> 01:27:16,320
I think all of these things are possible

895
01:27:16,320 --> 01:27:20,200
with this kind of a concept in place, right?

896
01:27:24,440 --> 01:27:25,780
Again, there's challenges, right?

897
01:27:25,860 --> 01:27:28,360
We're going to have to invite all of these parties to the table, right?

898
01:27:28,920 --> 01:27:30,260
The regional board's going to have to be there.

899
01:27:30,400 --> 01:27:31,960
The wild life's going to have to be there.

900
01:27:32,700 --> 01:27:42,720
The water master, MWA, the member agencies, VVWA, but if we each individually tried to tackle these on our own, those costs don't make sense.

901
01:27:43,280 --> 01:27:50,560
Hard to think about millions and millions of dollars spent if it was only going to benefit your individual agency and nobody has that kind of available cash just sitting around.

902
01:27:50,560 --> 01:27:55,460
So, the more we can collaborate, the more that we can present a case for these grant

903
01:27:55,460 --> 01:27:56,860
dollars on a larger scale.

904
01:27:57,420 --> 01:28:01,400
I think we become much more attractive to the people who want to award these grants.

905
01:28:02,160 --> 01:28:05,540
And I think with those costs can actually be minimized if we think along these lines.

906
01:28:09,770 --> 01:28:12,370
So, let's start it off as a high ground water issue for me.

907
01:28:12,550 --> 01:28:23,030
And my staff worrying about an MPDS violation and actually getting shocked playing in the

908
01:28:23,030 --> 01:28:26,770
initial thoughts over the last few months, I've done a lot of reaching out and I've done

909
01:28:26,770 --> 01:28:31,330
a lot of communication with a lot of people who've kind of said, yeah, I think that makes

910
01:28:31,330 --> 01:28:38,030
sense. Let's think about that. And I think, you know, that's, again, why I was invited

911
01:28:38,030 --> 01:28:43,410
here today was to kind of get this kicked off with all of you. And really, what I would like

912
01:28:43,410 --> 01:28:48,210
to do is, you know, how do we get all of everybody together to start thinking about these? And

913
01:28:48,210 --> 01:28:53,510
My thought is, is let's think about this one water concept and realize that we're all in this together.

914
01:28:54,310 --> 01:28:54,530
Go ahead.

915
01:28:55,230 --> 01:29:01,230
You know, my recommended next step, and this really, you know, this committee's decision on where they'd like to go and MWA, where they'd like to go.

916
01:29:02,010 --> 01:29:07,830
If we're going to think along this larger holistic line, but what I really like to do, and what I've done at a couple different,

917
01:29:09,690 --> 01:29:15,370
when I worked with a couple different agencies on the other side of the hill, we literally had these big workshops where

918
01:29:15,830 --> 01:29:26,250
We had these massive maps up on these walls and we'd have five or six stations and we rotate between the stations and everybody would share ideas with regards to maybe this was a storm water map.

919
01:29:26,490 --> 01:29:33,050
Maybe this was a recycle water map. Maybe this was a state water project map and where the water was available for recharge.

920
01:29:33,750 --> 01:29:40,230
And we just all started writing on this map and writing down everything that we could think of of what would be beneficial if we could work together.

921
01:29:41,010 --> 01:29:48,910
And kind of the next thought on my mind would be, you know, maybe this committee could consider, you know, putting a committee like that together, maybe it is this committee.

922
01:29:49,650 --> 01:29:59,970
And we start thinking about, you know, making sure people like Doug are at the meeting with regards to their planning and their engineering committees and making sure that, you know, let's start getting that list.

923
01:30:00,000 --> 01:30:19,040
All of this together, because in my mind, if we could get that list together, I think we could probably fund what I would call kind of an optimum basin management plan with all of these water resources that I think would benefit all of us. And that's, that's my sales pitch today with regards to where I'd like to go. So that's it for me.

924
01:30:22,220 --> 01:30:22,940
Thank you, Darren.

925
01:30:29,260 --> 01:30:32,000
We'll open it up to questions. Do you want to come Tony? Tony, what are you got?

926
01:30:33,660 --> 01:30:43,420
But he is not on my payroll, but I felt like he was plugging something that I just have to mention and bring that full circle.

927
01:30:44,260 --> 01:30:48,400
So, Mojave Water Agency is on the verge of a master plan document.

928
01:30:48,400 --> 01:30:54,820
We're out for RFP right now, that RFP period actually closes tomorrow at the end of the day.

929
01:30:55,580 --> 01:30:58,780
We're looking for a consultant to help us facilitate a master plan.

930
01:30:58,780 --> 01:31:02,800
And a significant component of that plan is stakeholder involvement.

931
01:31:03,280 --> 01:31:11,500
So anybody who's here, anybody who's involved in the water industry in our region, please look forward to that.

932
01:31:11,620 --> 01:31:15,980
It'll be coming soon in a month or so.

933
01:31:16,340 --> 01:31:20,460
We're going to the board for approval of the firm that we select.

934
01:31:21,520 --> 01:31:27,240
And like I said, you're not on my payroll, but it felt like you were preaching my project.

935
01:31:27,240 --> 01:31:30,720
So I wanted to put in a plug for the master plan.

936
01:31:30,920 --> 01:31:32,540
Please look forward to that and please participate.

937
01:31:34,240 --> 01:31:34,860
Thanks Tony.

938
01:31:35,820 --> 01:31:38,220
So, you know, I think some of this is low hanging fruit

939
01:31:38,220 --> 01:31:40,520
that doesn't have a lot of costs that, you know,

940
01:31:40,740 --> 01:31:42,340
really is the regulatory challenges.

941
01:31:42,340 --> 01:31:43,520
We're going to be facing that.

942
01:31:43,880 --> 01:31:46,400
But with this body here and with MWA's help,

943
01:31:46,400 --> 01:31:50,020
we can certainly push a little harder to get some of it realized.

944
01:31:51,740 --> 01:31:54,280
We're definitely in support of it for my agency.

945
01:31:54,300 --> 01:31:54,820
For sure.

946
01:31:54,820 --> 01:32:00,040
I think there's a lot of benefit to more than one basin, but with more heads together here,

947
01:32:00,720 --> 01:32:04,400
you know, there may be other ideas how to get some of this water elsewhere as well. So,

948
01:32:05,100 --> 01:32:07,760
I would open it up to any other questions or comments.

949
01:32:18,320 --> 01:32:21,440
Jeff Gastra, a numerous springs lake association.

950
01:32:22,380 --> 01:32:29,200
You can put your water in my house. This guy's got a water problem because he's got too much.

951
01:32:29,200 --> 01:32:31,540
And who here else has the same problem?

952
01:32:32,220 --> 01:32:32,800
Nobody.

953
01:32:34,300 --> 01:32:38,120
Those were all common sense solutions you're bringing up.

954
01:32:38,740 --> 01:32:41,540
And I'm in favor of working together to find out.

955
01:32:41,840 --> 01:32:45,440
You know, one thing that kind of worries me is all this recycled water talk,

956
01:32:45,680 --> 01:32:47,320
even up in Victorville.

957
01:32:47,940 --> 01:32:51,020
You know, your recycled water then doesn't come downstream.

958
01:32:52,960 --> 01:32:57,160
Right? So that kind of affects everybody living downstream.

959
01:32:57,160 --> 01:33:00,680
I don't know if we've ever discussed that issue very much.

960
01:33:04,570 --> 01:33:09,010
If the groundwater level in the transition zone is continuing to rise, then we're doing

961
01:33:09,010 --> 01:33:12,510
effective amount of putting water into that area, well, then how come I'm not seeing

962
01:33:12,510 --> 01:33:15,410
rising groundwater in the centre, right?

963
01:33:16,350 --> 01:33:17,190
I can tell you why.

964
01:33:17,370 --> 01:33:21,690
It's the hell of a default and it's the amount of vegetation that is gobbling up all

965
01:33:21,690 --> 01:33:25,370
that recycled water in an area that has no public benefit, right?

966
01:33:25,490 --> 01:33:29,430
And if the fish and wildlife have an issue with, yes, keep preparing an area fixed and taking

967
01:33:29,430 --> 01:33:30,230
I think you're fine.

968
01:33:30,330 --> 01:33:30,990
I've got a solution.

969
01:33:31,490 --> 01:33:35,690
Ask the Mojave Desert Regional Conservation District and their palisades area to manage

970
01:33:35,690 --> 01:33:41,150
the water based on the need and the volume of water to sustain that area rather than just

971
01:33:41,150 --> 01:33:43,750
randomly dump 9,000 acre feet of water into that zone.

972
01:33:45,710 --> 01:33:46,930
There's just so much more.

973
01:33:47,010 --> 01:33:51,250
When you think about 9,000 acre feet of water every year, that's like how much water it takes

974
01:33:52,630 --> 01:33:56,470
to irrigate probably like three or four golf courses in the summertime, right?

975
01:33:56,830 --> 01:33:58,850
It's a huge volume of water, right?

976
01:33:58,850 --> 01:34:04,110
that it has to be used for what? If you want public benefit, nobody can use that land outside

977
01:34:04,110 --> 01:34:08,570
my plant. You can't get to it. It's surrounded by public property. But if the conservation district

978
01:34:08,570 --> 01:34:14,650
is going to have public land and you want to keep a Mojave area protected, let's protect it there

979
01:34:14,650 --> 01:34:18,610
and let's be direct on how we use that water. And then let's move the water around it

980
01:34:18,610 --> 01:34:22,650
to where it needs to go and protect the fish and wildlife scene.

981
01:34:23,370 --> 01:34:29,550
I would say, let's have a motion to have a meeting, you know, and discuss all this stuff

982
01:34:29,550 --> 01:34:34,750
and, you know, and put boards up on the wall with ideas, I mean, all that, that's what we

983
01:34:34,750 --> 01:34:35,550
got to do. Thank you.

984
01:34:37,190 --> 01:34:42,190
If I make a plug as well here for Mojave Water Agency, this is a very timely presentation

985
01:34:42,190 --> 01:34:45,150
there and we're really well thought out and we appreciate it.

986
01:34:45,790 --> 01:34:49,710
And we're on the heels of an update to the Irwin, the Integrated Regional Water Management

987
01:34:49,710 --> 01:34:50,050
Plan.

988
01:34:50,050 --> 01:34:56,030
And I think that's probably a really good forum for us all to get together and talk about different issues,

989
01:34:56,210 --> 01:35:02,770
needs and wants as you put it and make joint use projects that make sense for the region.

990
01:35:03,050 --> 01:35:04,930
So there's definitely a forum for that.

991
01:35:05,130 --> 01:35:12,090
And I think we can get some support with consultant help with making sure we can run the meetings and brainstorm activities.

992
01:35:12,470 --> 01:35:17,170
So we do plan on kicking that process off early next year.

993
01:35:18,250 --> 01:35:21,770
and probably play out as a two-year process to update what we've got.

994
01:35:22,130 --> 01:35:27,090
It's probably a good mechanism as well to secure and look for, compete for grants, funding.

995
01:35:28,490 --> 01:35:30,550
So there's definitely, this is timely.

996
01:35:30,950 --> 01:35:35,470
And considering that I think the last update to our Irwin came off the back of pretty wet,

997
01:35:35,690 --> 01:35:38,670
at least wet in the state years.

998
01:35:38,890 --> 01:35:43,490
We're in a very different time right now and water projects are slow moving,

999
01:35:43,630 --> 01:35:46,650
but we also have to update on a regular cycle to make sure that they're relevant.

1000
01:35:47,430 --> 01:35:48,590
So, thank you.

1001
01:35:49,690 --> 01:35:50,170
Yeah.

1002
01:35:50,350 --> 01:35:51,890
Oh, we're not done yet.

1003
01:35:51,990 --> 01:35:53,270
I still have some comments too.

1004
01:35:53,890 --> 01:35:54,610
So, Darren, yes.

1005
01:35:55,350 --> 01:35:56,250
Great points.

1006
01:35:56,770 --> 01:35:57,450
Good ideas.

1007
01:35:57,950 --> 01:35:59,830
There are some challenges, most definitely.

1008
01:36:00,410 --> 01:36:02,310
While you were spending 30 years down the hill,

1009
01:36:02,590 --> 01:36:05,630
I happen to be spending 30 years up here dealing with this.

1010
01:36:05,770 --> 01:36:07,010
And started with the judgment,

1011
01:36:07,570 --> 01:36:09,010
and started with this whole process.

1012
01:36:09,310 --> 01:36:12,310
The whole process is,

1013
01:36:12,370 --> 01:36:14,430
and the reason why transition zone's so full

1014
01:36:14,430 --> 01:36:17,210
is because that was the terms of the judgment.

1015
01:36:17,610 --> 01:36:20,990
The reason why, because at 23,000 acre feet,

1016
01:36:21,330 --> 01:36:24,390
the loan behold gets accounted for as going to Centro,

1017
01:36:24,750 --> 01:36:26,230
but it does not get there.

1018
01:36:26,410 --> 01:36:28,110
And I've been arguing that for 30 years

1019
01:36:28,110 --> 01:36:29,630
and we haven't been getting anywhere.

1020
01:36:30,030 --> 01:36:33,730
Matter of fact, during the judgment proceedings,

1021
01:36:33,990 --> 01:36:35,850
while we were drafting it,

1022
01:36:36,950 --> 01:36:38,470
one of the comments that was made there,

1023
01:36:38,630 --> 01:36:40,990
the judgment is supposed to restore a substitute

1024
01:36:40,990 --> 01:36:42,970
for the long-term average flow

1025
01:36:42,970 --> 01:36:46,170
so that central and Baja don't become dewatered.

1026
01:36:46,270 --> 01:36:50,930
The idea was 23,000 acre feet goes in the transition zone.

1027
01:36:51,270 --> 01:36:53,670
Supposed to keep that water bridge there,

1028
01:36:53,830 --> 01:36:55,490
so when we have flows in the river,

1029
01:36:55,750 --> 01:36:57,630
they go right across the central.

1030
01:36:57,990 --> 01:36:59,730
Well, they haven't.

1031
01:36:59,750 --> 01:37:02,590
I think the hydrographs show that.

1032
01:37:03,270 --> 01:37:05,690
Been arguing that for years, but we're not getting anywhere.

1033
01:37:06,110 --> 01:37:07,810
So now that you're getting grounded out

1034
01:37:07,810 --> 01:37:09,670
because the transition zone's getting full,

1035
01:37:11,130 --> 01:37:15,010
maybe this is the time we need to reevaluate all that stuff. The other

1036
01:37:15,010 --> 01:37:20,190
challenge is the judgment did prohibit interference with storm flows because

1037
01:37:20,190 --> 01:37:25,330
again the concept is whether we don't see much going on after Afton Canyon there

1038
01:37:25,330 --> 01:37:30,410
is life out there and something does rely on the flows that goes downstream but

1039
01:37:30,410 --> 01:37:35,150
we're not supposed to interfere with the storm flows and but the long-term

1040
01:37:35,150 --> 01:37:40,870
average it was a 23,000 acre feet and oddly enough when they do their accounting balance they

1041
01:37:40,870 --> 01:37:47,590
always count for that water being in the central. My argument has always been let me see it always

1042
01:37:47,590 --> 01:37:52,770
stays in the transition zone which by the way the transition zone that we really haven't

1043
01:37:52,770 --> 01:38:00,950
gotten the details is 18 miles long it starts in the middle of the alto zone technically it's still

1044
01:38:00,950 --> 01:38:07,730
in alto gets a transition zone to Centro, but yeah, that's the problem. That's why

1045
01:38:07,730 --> 01:38:12,970
you have high water levels because the judgment called for that to help minimize interference

1046
01:38:12,970 --> 01:38:19,070
of storm flows. We've all discussed the issues at Palisades with all the stuff that's

1047
01:38:19,070 --> 01:38:26,270
grown in there that hinder storm flows, but our big road blocks there are fishing game

1048
01:38:26,270 --> 01:38:29,230
and flood control for getting in and opening up the channel,

1049
01:38:29,410 --> 01:38:30,550
let the water get out, right?

1050
01:38:31,910 --> 01:38:33,970
Those have been the challenges that we all face.

1051
01:38:34,450 --> 01:38:39,150
So, but definitely appreciate the enthusiasm

1052
01:38:39,150 --> 01:38:41,430
and the willingness to look at the stuff

1053
01:38:41,430 --> 01:38:43,330
and maybe that's what we need and get back

1054
01:38:43,330 --> 01:38:47,730
and I think TAC is the place to bring this to the whole group

1055
01:38:47,730 --> 01:38:50,570
because this should represent all the constituents,

1056
01:38:50,830 --> 01:38:51,950
the pumpers and the basin.

1057
01:38:51,950 --> 01:38:59,110
And this is where we need to take action and do these things and figure out how to get

1058
01:38:59,110 --> 01:39:04,490
more water downstream because downstream is suffering horribly because the judgment

1059
01:39:04,490 --> 01:39:07,550
in my opinion is not working as intended.

1060
01:39:07,870 --> 01:39:11,350
I don't think anybody's intention is to think about sitting

1061
01:39:13,460 --> 01:39:14,760
on as many water masterboards

1062
01:39:14,760 --> 01:39:22,220
and water master meetings still midnight and ag people and the other people who all are concerned

1063
01:39:22,220 --> 01:39:22,780
about being there.

1064
01:39:24,900 --> 01:39:28,440
But we're a significantly different basin than we were when they're due to the basin.

1065
01:39:29,380 --> 01:39:32,940
But then the transition to the zone that was a great deal more agriculture that doesn't

1066
01:39:32,940 --> 01:39:33,580
exist today.

1067
01:39:34,520 --> 01:39:34,640
Right.

1068
01:39:38,660 --> 01:39:42,840
If different sciences, we have different information, we have different data, look, I think

1069
01:39:42,840 --> 01:39:47,840
that the mission and the purpose of the adjudication can still be met, but it can be operated differently

1070
01:39:48,300 --> 01:39:52,580
and still meet those goals without breaching any big, you know, opening up of the judgment.

1071
01:39:59,300 --> 01:40:03,340
I can tell you this, I just signed a contract for eight years, so you got me for eight years

1072
01:40:03,340 --> 01:40:04,900
on this fighting side to make this happen.

1073
01:40:12,500 --> 01:40:16,320
A nice little thing for me, though, right now is fact that I get to hopefully make these

1074
01:40:16,320 --> 01:40:18,460
changes in my hometown as opposed to something.

1075
01:40:19,460 --> 01:40:20,460
That's what's exciting for me.

1076
01:40:21,000 --> 01:40:21,300
Thank you.

1077
01:40:23,670 --> 01:40:29,510
Well, I'm sure we're going to keep these discussions moving forward with MWA and VVWA and for

1078
01:40:29,510 --> 01:40:32,410
for sure, VVDBRA's member agency.

1079
01:40:32,790 --> 01:40:38,910
So now that we got Perry awake over here, we're going to move on to item eight and that

1080
01:40:38,910 --> 01:40:42,210
is the MWA history book and I'll pass it off to Yvonne.

1081
01:40:42,990 --> 01:40:43,370
Okay.

1082
01:40:43,630 --> 01:40:44,550
Thank you very much.

1083
01:40:44,770 --> 01:40:52,090
Today I am pleased to introduce Jeff Criter with Criter Public Relations and he is the author

1084
01:40:52,090 --> 01:40:53,130
of the history book.

1085
01:40:53,130 --> 01:40:55,210
We have copies out in the lobby.

1086
01:40:55,210 --> 01:41:05,590
This has been a long endeavor putting this together and Jeff is going to share some of the insights that he had writing this book.

1087
01:41:05,910 --> 01:41:15,930
He's not going to go into all the details. That is for you to go through as you read the book, but he's going to give us his perspective and he's written many history books.

1088
01:41:16,210 --> 01:41:19,630
But for some reason, our stands out. Jeff will tell us about that.

1089
01:41:21,970 --> 01:41:29,410
Thank you. Thank you. Can you hear me okay? Yeah, all right, great. So I should give you a

1090
01:41:29,410 --> 01:41:33,690
little background about, you know, who I am and what I do. I'm a former newspaper reporter.

1091
01:41:35,050 --> 01:41:41,430
Worked as a newspaper reporter for almost a dozen years and all over inland southern California.

1092
01:41:41,890 --> 01:41:46,750
Started in the Imperial Valley, then went to the Coachella Valley and then Riverside and Temecula

1093
01:41:46,750 --> 01:41:54,430
after that. And I ended up going into public relations work after that. And the company

1094
01:41:54,430 --> 01:41:59,370
I went to work for was US filter, who I'm sure many of you are familiar with. They were

1095
01:41:59,370 --> 01:42:04,010
headquartered in Palm Desert for a period of time. So I left the press enterprise, which

1096
01:42:04,010 --> 01:42:09,570
was my last newspaper. And I went to work for US filter and I was their public relations

1097
01:42:09,570 --> 01:42:16,530
manager. So I was with them in 1988 and 1999, which kind of dates me a little bit.

1098
01:42:16,530 --> 01:42:18,310
that gives you a little bit of perspective.

1099
01:42:19,090 --> 01:42:21,090
And that was my introduction to water.

1100
01:42:21,230 --> 01:42:24,310
I'd covered agriculture in inland southern California,

1101
01:42:24,310 --> 01:42:27,010
but I hadn't really gotten to know

1102
01:42:27,850 --> 01:42:30,010
what was going on in the water industry.

1103
01:42:30,530 --> 01:42:32,270
Well, U.S. filter was great background

1104
01:42:32,270 --> 01:42:35,190
because that taught me what was going on worldwide,

1105
01:42:35,190 --> 01:42:37,950
because we had operations in 95 countries,

1106
01:42:38,410 --> 01:42:40,550
and it was my job to basically oversee

1107
01:42:40,550 --> 01:42:43,190
all the press releases going out what we were communicating.

1108
01:42:43,950 --> 01:42:50,250
And so after U.S. filter, I went on to work for Storsa Communications, which was based

1109
01:42:50,250 --> 01:42:50,950
in Riverside.

1110
01:42:51,190 --> 01:42:56,170
That was a PR firm that had a lot of clients in the water industry.

1111
01:42:56,790 --> 01:43:02,130
And so I made the transition at that point and went to work for Dick Hyall at Eastern Municipal

1112
01:43:02,130 --> 01:43:03,450
Water District at that time.

1113
01:43:03,910 --> 01:43:08,110
Then I later got referred to other agencies and I basically helped them with their media

1114
01:43:08,110 --> 01:43:08,770
strategy.

1115
01:43:08,770 --> 01:43:16,310
Well, lo and behold, 24 years has gone by, and I'm still working with water agencies all over Southern California even in Arizona.

1116
01:43:16,870 --> 01:43:24,470
And what's happened over this time is I've gotten more and more familiar with what the challenges are that agencies face all over the West.

1117
01:43:25,090 --> 01:43:31,370
And I actually just finished a book for the Central Arizona Project in Arizona, so if you think the problems are bad here,

1118
01:43:31,370 --> 01:43:39,350
I, it's worse over in Arizona from everything I was able to discern and then you were talking

1119
01:43:39,350 --> 01:43:46,470
earlier about this project that's taking place in LA with Metropolitan Water District.

1120
01:43:46,730 --> 01:43:52,890
They're actually partnering with the Southern Nevada Water Agency and also with agencies

1121
01:43:52,890 --> 01:43:59,730
in Arizona on that project and the thinking is is that if they can get all of this together

1122
01:43:59,730 --> 01:44:05,670
there may be a way for metropolitan to take less Colorado River water in exchange for

1123
01:44:06,290 --> 01:44:10,550
producing, having these other agencies help them produce more recycled water for the

1124
01:44:10,550 --> 01:44:16,570
LA basin, and then Las Vegas and Arizona could take a little bit more metropolitan share

1125
01:44:16,570 --> 01:44:22,930
of Colorado River water. So these are the kinds of things I get exposed to in doing my work.

1126
01:44:22,930 --> 01:44:30,410
Well, I got involved in doing history books back in 2013 and at that time I was doing quite

1127
01:44:30,410 --> 01:44:35,890
a bit of work for San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District and Doug Hedrick was my boss.

1128
01:44:36,290 --> 01:44:41,350
And one day Doug invited me into his office and he said, Jeff, I have another project for you.

1129
01:44:42,570 --> 01:44:48,770
And his thinking was, was that he wanted to produce a history book and I thought, gosh, who's

1130
01:44:49,490 --> 01:44:51,610
going to read a history book on this agency?

1131
01:44:51,610 --> 01:44:56,470
And so I was worried about it. I didn't tell him no. I said of course I'll dive right into it

1132
01:44:56,470 --> 01:44:59,110
But I was really worried about what was going to happen with this book

1133
01:45:00,370 --> 01:45:30,150
And then I set out about the task of doing interviews and I started interviewing people who had been working with water agencies a long time and I found that a couple of them weren't really that, I mean they gave me good background but they really weren't precise in terms of dates and things when certain things happened. So I thought well for a history book we have to be accurate. Well, I started doing some database research and as I started looking back at old newspaper articles going back 100 years or so.

1134
01:45:30,150 --> 01:45:36,550
So I found really passionate quotes from people about water and it turns out that people

1135
01:45:36,550 --> 01:45:39,410
are as passionate about water as they are about anything.

1136
01:45:40,010 --> 01:45:43,930
If you want to get a room riled up, start talking about their water supply or their lack

1137
01:45:43,930 --> 01:45:44,510
of water.

1138
01:45:45,130 --> 01:45:49,790
Well, from a journalist perspective, that was really good for me because I thought, aha,

1139
01:45:50,210 --> 01:45:52,310
I can make this so that it's not boring.

1140
01:45:52,950 --> 01:45:59,950
And so what I've done over the years is I've developed this approach where I don't write

1141
01:45:59,950 --> 01:46:04,490
history as a narrative, because I love history, I studied history in college and

1142
01:46:04,490 --> 01:46:10,630
whatnot, but I find it difficult to read history as a narrative. And so what I

1143
01:46:10,630 --> 01:46:15,890
do is I write the chapters of the history books as if they're news articles. And I

1144
01:46:15,890 --> 01:46:22,090
have lots of quotes that I weave into the text. And so what I do is I try to stay

1145
01:46:22,090 --> 01:46:30,610
out of the way of the history and let the people who were there do the talking and that's

1146
01:46:30,610 --> 01:46:36,090
what I try to do in the book. So I use as much historical archive material as I can find

1147
01:46:36,090 --> 01:46:42,810
from published reports and then I weave that together with information from interviews

1148
01:46:42,810 --> 01:46:50,250
that I do with people and then I use the technical reports from USGS, from the integrated regional

1149
01:46:50,250 --> 01:46:56,610
water management plans and whatnot. And so what I do is I basically assemble all this information

1150
01:46:56,610 --> 01:47:02,270
and then try to figure out to West's point earlier, you know, how would you explain this

1151
01:47:02,270 --> 01:47:07,410
in a way your grandmother could understand. That's kind of the road map that I use in putting

1152
01:47:07,410 --> 01:47:14,990
these books together. And so I started getting involved with Ivan and the Mojave Water Agency's story.

1153
01:47:14,990 --> 01:47:18,010
This was back in 2015 when we started.

1154
01:47:18,210 --> 01:47:21,810
I had already done a book for San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District.

1155
01:47:22,170 --> 01:47:25,930
I had started on a book for Catella Valley Water District at that time.

1156
01:47:26,630 --> 01:47:28,610
And then Yvonne and I started talking.

1157
01:47:29,370 --> 01:47:35,410
And then the thing that really impressed me about this agency that I want to make sure the

1158
01:47:35,410 --> 01:47:41,790
board understands, Mojave, as many of you know, has a rough history, a very turbulent history.

1159
01:47:41,790 --> 01:47:47,930
And the waters of turbulence didn't really start to calm down, historically speaking,

1160
01:47:48,110 --> 01:47:54,150
until maybe about 15 years ago, it took a long time from a hobby to work through the

1161
01:47:54,150 --> 01:47:57,390
challenges that had to take place up here.

1162
01:47:58,190 --> 01:48:05,010
And the thing that really impressed me is that there was never a conversation, there was

1163
01:48:05,010 --> 01:48:10,650
never a phone call from anybody here at the agency saying, Jeff, you can't write about

1164
01:48:10,650 --> 01:48:20,530
that. It was hands-off, basically go do the work, and so my task was basically to interview

1165
01:48:20,530 --> 01:48:27,450
current and former general managers here. I interviewed board members. I mean, I drove

1166
01:48:27,450 --> 01:48:33,890
out to Arizona and I interviewed, interviewed Norm Kowett, who had been here almost 20 years

1167
01:48:33,890 --> 01:48:40,690
and he had kind of taken on a role of, like, an in-house historian, and after spending

1168
01:48:40,690 --> 01:48:47,870
the day with Norm, I remember I had taken my son with me to go out there because then

1169
01:48:47,870 --> 01:48:51,870
we stayed in Arizona for a couple of days, and I remember thinking, what have I got myself

1170
01:48:51,870 --> 01:48:54,330
into with this agency?

1171
01:48:54,330 --> 01:49:01,110
And fortunately though, norm was like a mentor for me.

1172
01:49:01,870 --> 01:49:08,310
And so as I would start learning more and more about the agency, I could call him up,

1173
01:49:08,510 --> 01:49:12,590
you know, send him messages and whatnot, and we could discuss things because he had

1174
01:49:12,590 --> 01:49:15,270
more of the technical knowledge of everything.

1175
01:49:15,690 --> 01:49:19,670
And then what I would do is I would take the information about what happened and then try

1176
01:49:19,670 --> 01:49:23,770
to distill it down into something that the average person would find interesting.

1177
01:49:23,770 --> 01:49:29,090
And then I interviewed Kirby Burl when he was here and then I spent time with the board members

1178
01:49:29,090 --> 01:49:35,950
I got to sit down and have like a three-hour lunch with Bev Lowry who brought me up to speed on a lot of things

1179
01:49:35,950 --> 01:49:39,610
The other thing that was really interesting and this I

1180
01:49:40,630 --> 01:49:48,170
Really appreciated a lot is Iban set up basically a two-day field trip for me where I went out with Lance and

1181
01:49:48,170 --> 01:49:57,910
and Ana Garcia, and we went out across the desert here, and Lance in particular explained

1182
01:49:58,170 --> 01:50:03,150
the challenges that we heard about earlier with the groundwater basins here.

1183
01:50:03,510 --> 01:50:09,510
The fact that, yes, there's like five major basins, but there's a gazillion subbasins

1184
01:50:09,510 --> 01:50:16,830
in there, and you could literally walk in some of those basins from this podium to the screen

1185
01:50:16,830 --> 01:50:22,910
back there and get different readings on what was going on in the basins, and so actually

1186
01:50:22,910 --> 01:50:29,770
going out there into the field really helped educate me about what this agency was facing,

1187
01:50:30,030 --> 01:50:34,590
and then that got to be really helpful later on when I started going through the actual

1188
01:50:34,590 --> 01:50:39,890
history of the agency, and studying the adjudication attempts, you know, which started back at,

1189
01:50:46,810 --> 01:50:46,810
you

1190
01:50:46,810 --> 01:50:50,830
It's really cool because that's practically 50 years ahead of the state of California

1191
01:50:51,410 --> 01:50:57,110
passing the law about sustainable groundwater management and then mandating that agencies

1192
01:50:57,110 --> 01:51:02,210
do the kind of planning that Mahabhi was trying to do almost 50 years prior to that.

1193
01:51:02,790 --> 01:51:07,790
But the interesting thing was they didn't have the data at this agency to support everything

1194
01:51:07,790 --> 01:51:08,730
that they were doing.

1195
01:51:09,570 --> 01:51:13,470
And then as Lance and I discussed a couple of times the state of California itself would

1196
01:51:13,470 --> 01:51:17,530
come out with reports from time to time that would say everything was fine in terms of

1197
01:51:17,530 --> 01:51:23,910
groundwater. And then Mojave internally would come up with its own analysis of other areas

1198
01:51:23,910 --> 01:51:29,150
and discover, you know, we're in trouble here. We need to start adjudicating the area.

1199
01:51:29,610 --> 01:51:37,150
But it wasn't an easy task because the agency would send out staff members to go take

1200
01:51:37,150 --> 01:51:42,430
readings at Wells and they didn't get a very kind reception. As a matter of fact, you

1201
01:51:42,430 --> 01:51:47,190
know and I was shocked this is first time I ever heard about this. Some of the

1202
01:51:47,190 --> 01:51:52,110
residents out here would greet the well readers with guns pointed at them, saying

1203
01:51:52,110 --> 01:51:57,390
you're not you're not going to take any measurements here. And so this gave

1204
01:51:57,390 --> 01:52:01,970
it kind of a Wild West, you know kind of feel to it which was why you know the

1205
01:52:01,970 --> 01:52:09,750
book has kind of a Wild West, you know, look to it. But it's interesting because I was

1206
01:52:09,750 --> 01:52:12,090
was always able to write about all of this.

1207
01:52:12,510 --> 01:52:15,870
It wasn't, you know, sometimes agencies can be very stiff

1208
01:52:15,870 --> 01:52:18,730
and worried about, you know, letting some information

1209
01:52:18,730 --> 01:52:22,010
come out, but Mojave was always very transparent

1210
01:52:22,510 --> 01:52:26,370
and very willing to just let me go where the facts went.

1211
01:52:26,510 --> 01:52:28,590
And so I was able to interview people,

1212
01:52:28,770 --> 01:52:31,930
talk to them, share information, you know,

1213
01:52:32,010 --> 01:52:34,670
there were periods of time in the agency's history

1214
01:52:34,670 --> 01:52:38,070
when, you know, the agency wasn't very well regarded

1215
01:52:38,070 --> 01:52:43,290
locally and employees were worried about even driving around in company vehicles that had,

1216
01:52:43,330 --> 01:52:49,450
you know, the agency's name on the side, that's in the book. And I think it's really interesting

1217
01:52:49,450 --> 01:52:56,010
because the agency went through this process over the years of, you know, mending fences,

1218
01:52:56,370 --> 01:53:00,830
working with other agencies, you know, the talk that you just had right now about working together,

1219
01:53:00,830 --> 01:53:19,890
That alone shows how far this agency has come over the last, you know, six decades because that kind of interaction would not have happened or would not have been able to happen, you know, 40 years ago because of all the turbulence and whatnot, you know, taking place.

1220
01:53:21,830 --> 01:53:26,610
Yvonne wanted me to just talk about a couple of things that stood out to me in doing this

1221
01:53:26,610 --> 01:53:27,210
research.

1222
01:53:27,410 --> 01:53:30,710
She said a lot of you are already familiar with a lot of the history, so I don't need

1223
01:53:30,710 --> 01:53:34,430
to really go through and talk about some of that.

1224
01:53:34,470 --> 01:53:38,130
But there's a couple of things that I wanted to mention.

1225
01:53:39,950 --> 01:53:44,630
One of the presentations that Anna used to do when she was with the agency is she would

1226
01:53:44,630 --> 01:53:52,230
talk about the river of gold underneath the, what is it, the Cocoaweep mountains, you

1227
01:53:52,230 --> 01:54:01,990
know, between Baker and Las Vegas. And there was this legend of a river and also of a gold

1228
01:54:01,990 --> 01:54:09,090
mine underneath Cocoaweep peak. And this was started back in the 1930s. And what happened

1229
01:54:09,090 --> 01:54:16,650
was it was this fun legend that got started and the guy that that started it was very serious

1230
01:54:16,650 --> 01:54:21,690
about it and he started getting some newspaper publicity about it and it got to the point

1231
01:54:21,690 --> 01:54:25,670
where the National Park Service actually went out to do research they found that there

1232
01:54:25,670 --> 01:54:31,790
was nothing there there was no there there but that didn't stop the stories the stories kept

1233
01:54:31,790 --> 01:54:36,810
getting produced I mean and there was even like a TV report done on this like an unsolved

1234
01:54:36,810 --> 01:54:42,490
mysteries kind of thing. And what ended up happening eventually is you ended up with people

1235
01:54:42,490 --> 01:54:46,930
the out in the desert that really believed that there was a, you know, this massive river

1236
01:54:46,930 --> 01:54:53,070
taking place out there. And that, you know, then you ended up with like conspiracy theories

1237
01:54:53,070 --> 01:54:58,050
starting to develop. Well, I was thinking about that in, you know, I have a whole chapter in the book

1238
01:54:58,050 --> 01:55:03,490
in one of the early chapters where we talk about this. And when you think about it from a communication

1239
01:55:05,070 --> 01:55:07,490
This is a challenge that every agency faces.

1240
01:55:08,270 --> 01:55:12,330
You could look at that story and say, yeah, that's a funny anecdote about, you know,

1241
01:55:12,550 --> 01:55:15,810
a particular, you know, legend that got started out in the desert.

1242
01:55:16,230 --> 01:55:20,630
But the challenge, though, is that if the public doesn't believe you,

1243
01:55:20,770 --> 01:55:26,130
you're not going to go very far with any of the policy initiatives or anything else that you want to do.

1244
01:55:26,270 --> 01:55:28,690
You have to be able to have the people on board.

1245
01:55:28,690 --> 01:55:33,390
So there's lessons that become apparent as you read this book.

1246
01:55:33,930 --> 01:55:40,130
The other thing that I thought was fascinating, we discovered in the research,

1247
01:55:40,270 --> 01:55:45,110
and I say, we, because Yvonne had assigned an intern to help me do research,

1248
01:55:45,650 --> 01:55:49,130
and that was through the Water Resources Institute.

1249
01:55:49,970 --> 01:55:55,970
And we were doing some research, and we stumbled onto some articles written back in the 1930s,

1250
01:55:55,970 --> 01:56:02,790
where there was an attempt by James Irvine of the Irvine company to try to basically redirect

1251
01:56:02,790 --> 01:56:11,130
the water of the Mojave River down Cahombas across Southern California to Irvine and Orange

1252
01:56:11,130 --> 01:56:17,330
County so that he could use that water for irrigating the orange grobes. I just thought that was

1253
01:56:17,330 --> 01:56:23,770
fascinating. There was one article where someone was quoted saying, we're worried we're going to

1254
01:56:23,770 --> 01:56:29,890
the next Owens Valley. And I thought that was such a fascinating quote because this was the 1930s

1255
01:56:29,890 --> 01:56:34,150
and the whole debacle and the Owens Valley had just happened. But as I've learned through my

1256
01:56:34,150 --> 01:56:40,870
research with other agencies, there were Owens Valley type situations all over California. I mean,

1257
01:56:41,030 --> 01:56:45,750
Coachella Valley Water District itself, I live out in Palm Desert. Coachella Valley Water District

1258
01:56:45,750 --> 01:56:54,470
itself was formed in 1918 in an effort to protect the water supply there because there was a scheme

1259
01:56:54,470 --> 01:57:01,490
underway with investors in LA and San Diego and some farmers in the Imperial Valley who wanted

1260
01:57:01,490 --> 01:57:07,730
to steal the water from beneath San Gorgonio and divert it down to the Imperial Valley. Well, that

1261
01:57:07,730 --> 01:57:12,610
scared the heck out of the people in the Coachella Valley and so they realized that they would have to

1262
01:57:12,610 --> 01:57:17,830
form a water district to start filing for water rights and that's what happened.

1263
01:57:18,210 --> 01:57:23,090
But I just thought this was fascinating because it indicates the fact that here in California,

1264
01:57:23,450 --> 01:57:24,930
we've never had enough water.

1265
01:57:25,090 --> 01:57:31,610
We've been fighting jurisdiction to jurisdiction over water for as long as great numbers of

1266
01:57:31,610 --> 01:57:32,890
people have been out here.

1267
01:57:33,630 --> 01:57:37,730
But this has just been a fascinating thing for me to get involved.

1268
01:57:37,730 --> 01:57:41,810
and I've done about, I was counting them up, I think about nine different books for

1269
01:57:41,810 --> 01:57:47,410
agencies so far, mostly in California, and what I do is I weave

1270
01:57:47,410 --> 01:57:51,570
the economic development story together with the water story,

1271
01:57:51,730 --> 01:57:56,750
because I'm writing for a general audience, and so when you tell the story of a

1272
01:57:56,750 --> 01:57:59,630
water agency from an economic development perspective,

1273
01:58:00,270 --> 01:58:03,750
I think it makes it makes it more interesting and understandable,

1274
01:58:03,750 --> 01:58:08,790
Because then you can look at it in terms of what happened with agriculture, what happened

1275
01:58:08,790 --> 01:58:13,370
with the cities in their economic growth, what happened with jobs and whatnot.

1276
01:58:13,570 --> 01:58:16,950
I did a book for Palmdale water district a few years ago.

1277
01:58:18,230 --> 01:58:23,790
And it turns out that the US military located there and developed their Skunk Works facility

1278
01:58:23,790 --> 01:58:28,850
and everything else because of water supply that was developed in that area.

1279
01:58:28,850 --> 01:58:36,610
And I found an old annual report from Palmdale Water District in their, you know, back

1280
01:58:36,610 --> 01:58:42,330
room and their archives that specifically said that the reason that the military located

1281
01:58:42,330 --> 01:58:44,790
there was because they were able to show that they had water.

1282
01:58:45,110 --> 01:58:47,770
They needed water to be able to put out fires.

1283
01:58:48,550 --> 01:58:53,310
So as they were testing the rockets and the jets and whatnot, they needed the water supply

1284
01:58:53,310 --> 01:58:55,710
to know that they could put out those fires.

1285
01:58:55,710 --> 01:59:01,470
So this has been just a really fascinating journey for me, you know, I'd never planned

1286
01:59:01,470 --> 01:59:06,690
to be writing water history of all things, but, you know, what I've been trying to do

1287
01:59:06,690 --> 01:59:12,990
is make it fun and interesting and informative, and there's agencies that tell me that they

1288
01:59:12,990 --> 01:59:18,330
use these books to educate their employees, as well as the general public.

1289
01:59:18,570 --> 01:59:25,390
And then I hear from the Water Resources Institute, which has all of my books that the students

1290
01:59:25,390 --> 01:59:31,690
use them for their research. So, as we look to the future and try to educate a new generation

1291
01:59:31,690 --> 01:59:38,170
of people to, you know, basically replace us and be able to take on these challenges,

1292
01:59:38,710 --> 01:59:44,170
these kinds of books give them perspective on the challenges and successes that the agencies

1293
01:59:44,170 --> 01:59:50,290
have had. So that's kind of what I've been doing with this. Then I appreciate it. Thank you.

1294
01:59:50,290 --> 01:59:59,870
Thank you so much Jeff again we have books out in the lobby and while we have a big supply

1295
02:00:00,460 --> 02:00:23,440
So if you want to take a couple of feel free and we'll just continue to replenish the supply. Yeah, I would encourage you to take one. It's really, really well put together and they had it at the last board meeting, I believe, right? Yeah. All right. So now we're going to look for the readers, digest version on items 9 and 10, I think, but we got item 9. So Valerie, party is pumping outside the judgment.

1296
02:00:29,290 --> 02:00:33,550
I apologize ahead of time. This is going to be awfully dry after Mr. Criter's presentation.

1297
02:00:33,550 --> 02:00:41,990
So let's see, I've done an update a few times about this project, we want to call it projects more like a court order.

1298
02:00:43,230 --> 02:00:55,510
Going back about 18 months, Judge Rimer ordered us to bring in those parties that were more than 10 acre feet that are outside of the judgment and came in later.

1299
02:00:55,510 --> 02:01:03,890
We put together kind of a phased approach and we started with the SD and OST subarea.

1300
02:01:04,430 --> 02:01:07,050
That's where we saw most of those parties located.

1301
02:01:10,020 --> 02:01:15,700
So we cataloged them, we determined water use types, our water master engineer has been

1302
02:01:16,960 --> 02:01:19,100
called as well as the water master department.

1303
02:01:20,080 --> 02:01:26,260
and in June, we filed a motion to cross-complaint,

1304
02:01:26,520 --> 02:01:28,600
which was the second-minute cross-complaint.

1305
02:01:29,520 --> 02:01:30,920
And we took that to the court.

1306
02:01:31,200 --> 02:01:33,420
And the court didn't like that approach.

1307
02:01:33,420 --> 02:01:37,220
You basically denied that approach and asked us to go

1308
02:01:37,220 --> 02:01:40,620
forth and go to the San Bernardino Court and file a new action

1309
02:01:40,620 --> 02:01:41,440
against these parties.

1310
02:01:42,520 --> 02:01:46,240
And so in August, we filed a complaint for the

1311
02:01:46,240 --> 02:01:56,720
Communication of rights to produce the groundwater and the hobby base and parties and ask if the provisions of the judgment be entered against these parties.

1312
02:01:57,740 --> 02:01:58,600
So there.

1313
02:02:01,600 --> 02:02:02,500
Sorry about that.

1314
02:02:03,880 --> 02:02:14,000
So that has been filed with the San Bernardino County Court and the parties have been served some of those parties are answering at this time and are legal as handling that side of things.

1315
02:02:14,600 --> 02:02:19,320
For S&O S&U we had about 45 locations, the number of parties is a little bit more due

1316
02:02:19,320 --> 02:02:23,000
to multiple ownerships, so we're dealing with those 45 at this point.

1317
02:02:23,680 --> 02:02:28,020
In June of this year the court said, okay you've got to finish the other three sub areas,

1318
02:02:28,260 --> 02:02:34,660
so we went forth and worked on the other three sub areas and have identified a number

1319
02:02:34,660 --> 02:02:39,880
of parcels and locations about 46 in the other three sub areas.

1320
02:02:40,580 --> 02:02:54,460
And so in the meantime we've also filed with the judicial council of California to coordinate the new San Bernardino case with the original Judication case, which is in the Riverside County courts.

1321
02:02:55,340 --> 02:02:57,000
And they have to grant that.

1322
02:02:57,620 --> 02:03:07,260
And so it's currently pending. We don't know if we're going to grant it yet, but we're hopeful that they will so that we can keep things consistent and have the same rules for both groups.

1323
02:03:09,040 --> 02:03:14,820
And then we'll also, as soon as group two, this is the other three sub areas are completed.

1324
02:03:15,400 --> 02:03:18,360
We will also add those into the San Bernardino case.

1325
02:03:19,600 --> 02:03:22,200
So that's where we're at with that. We continue to work on it.

1326
02:03:22,540 --> 02:03:29,320
At least six more months before we probably have all the parties combined into the San Bernardino case.

1327
02:03:29,560 --> 02:03:31,560
And then hopefully move to the Riverside County Court.

1328
02:03:35,900 --> 02:03:37,300
Any questions or comments?

1329
02:03:37,500 --> 02:03:39,020
I mean, this is a big deal for sure.

1330
02:03:39,740 --> 02:03:41,860
There's a lot of pumping going on out there

1331
02:03:41,860 --> 02:03:46,100
that we need to identify and somehow get accounted for.

1332
02:03:46,520 --> 02:03:47,580
Any questions or comments?

1333
02:03:51,700 --> 02:03:51,900
Okay.

1334
02:03:52,600 --> 02:03:53,440
Thank you, Valerie.

1335
02:03:54,600 --> 02:03:55,120
Keep it up.

1336
02:03:57,420 --> 02:04:01,740
And we'll move on to item 10 legislative update from Yvonne.

1337
02:04:02,400 --> 02:04:04,780
This, I will go through this very quickly.

1338
02:04:05,060 --> 02:04:07,560
This is not a typical legislative update

1339
02:04:07,560 --> 02:04:16,040
As you are aware, Congress is in session trying to get things wrapped up and the California State Legislature will be in session on the third.

1340
02:04:16,580 --> 02:04:21,420
I just wanted to give a very, very brief report to this group.

1341
02:04:21,860 --> 02:04:26,120
The Mojave Water Agency is developing a legislative priority policy.

1342
02:04:26,700 --> 02:04:32,560
We've never had one before. We have tracked legislation. We've been active, but we didn't really develop a policy.

1343
02:04:32,560 --> 02:04:39,460
The purpose for the policy is one to just keep us on track that we're following through with our mission and our strategic plan.

1344
02:04:39,560 --> 02:04:52,640
It also enables staff to move very quickly because things move very quickly on the legislative front and we don't always have time to run back to the board on on a key issue that we may need to act very quickly.

1345
02:04:52,640 --> 02:05:04,540
So, the purpose of this document is to outline some key areas that are priorities, have the board approve that on an annual or a biannual basis, and that way staff can move forward.

1346
02:05:05,120 --> 02:05:11,660
So, we're going to just walk through very quickly seven priority areas because I know people know there's lunch outside.

1347
02:05:12,260 --> 02:05:19,760
Okay. So, the first priority area is on drought. Obviously, that is a major concern to all of us.

1348
02:05:19,760 --> 02:05:33,960
I'm not going to go through every point on this slide, but I think what's important to keep in mind is that we will be looking at legislation that does support processes to streamline things, either with the state water project.

1349
02:05:34,360 --> 02:05:44,800
We're also looking at any support that we can give for local supply, again, as we were talking about supply earlier with that presentation.

1350
02:05:44,800 --> 02:05:50,140
And we have a big focus on our disadvantaged communities, as you know, we are primarily

1351
02:05:50,140 --> 02:05:53,980
made up of disadvantaged and severely disadvantaged communities.

1352
02:05:54,220 --> 02:05:58,520
We always want to make sure that we're providing that technical and financial expertise.

1353
02:05:58,520 --> 02:06:02,060
And if there are bills out there that can help us do that, we need to support that.

1354
02:06:02,720 --> 02:06:03,340
Next slide.

1355
02:06:03,760 --> 02:06:07,820
And this is more on this one is on water management reliability.

1356
02:06:08,500 --> 02:06:11,080
We're also going to be looking at groundwater storage.

1357
02:06:11,080 --> 02:06:16,860
We're going to be looking at any options that would help with local supply development.

1358
02:06:18,000 --> 02:06:23,960
Also, we are looking at, again, continuing to focus on increasing fines for water theft.

1359
02:06:24,520 --> 02:06:29,840
We may or may not directly call out cannabis because that's not our only problem with water theft,

1360
02:06:29,940 --> 02:06:31,620
although it's a huge problem right now.

1361
02:06:32,200 --> 02:06:39,440
And also, as was mentioned by Jeff, while we were ahead of the curve on adjudication here in this area

1362
02:06:39,440 --> 02:06:43,740
before we had Sigma come to us.

1363
02:06:44,140 --> 02:06:54,540
What we would like to do is to make sure that a lot of that legislation will apply to adjudicated basins, as opposed to just Sigma agencies.

1364
02:06:54,940 --> 02:06:59,640
Next slide, we'll be looking at water supply, obviously that's very important.

1365
02:06:59,640 --> 02:07:06,620
In any effort, we can look at that will help with either regulations or any other entanglement.

1366
02:07:06,620 --> 02:07:11,260
that keeps the state water project system from being enhanced.

1367
02:07:11,380 --> 02:07:13,540
That's something that we would look at supporting.

1368
02:07:14,740 --> 02:07:17,740
Also, again, as I mentioned, disadvantaged communities.

1369
02:07:17,740 --> 02:07:20,140
That is very, very important to us.

1370
02:07:20,380 --> 02:07:26,460
So any legislation that looks at funding, we would be very supportive of that.

1371
02:07:27,980 --> 02:07:30,100
Conservation, obviously, is a key.

1372
02:07:30,760 --> 02:07:35,340
Again, we're looking at for home business industrial, any kind of technology

1373
02:07:35,340 --> 02:07:39,780
that would be appropriate to help us continue to reduce water.

1374
02:07:41,240 --> 02:07:44,880
I'm also for water quality, as we know that's a growing concern.

1375
02:07:45,460 --> 02:07:50,480
And so what we need to do is look at if there's any legislation that we can be supportive

1376
02:07:50,480 --> 02:07:53,740
and I do not recommend anyone drink a glass of water that looks like that.

1377
02:07:54,220 --> 02:08:01,420
Next slide. For development, and this is really more focused on water facilities

1378
02:08:01,420 --> 02:08:31,280
is again we recognize the Joshua Tree is beautiful, it is iconic however because of what are the current requirements it can make a cost prohibitive for any of us in the water industry to continue to develop facilities and so what we'd be looking at is any kind of affordable mitigation pathways that would help us still preserve the Joshua Tree but still be able to build a project that we can afford to build on next slide.

1379
02:08:31,280 --> 02:08:38,420
And so the next steps are we will be taking these ideas to the Executive Technical Advisory Committee.

1380
02:08:39,040 --> 02:08:45,660
We have been working with our State and Federal, I call them lobbyists or advocates, and

1381
02:08:45,660 --> 02:08:48,760
they are going to help us fine tune some of these ideas.

1382
02:08:49,500 --> 02:08:54,260
This document has been sent to our business community to see if they've had any input on that.

1383
02:08:54,880 --> 02:08:59,420
And then the approval process will be, we will go to the Legal Legislative and

1384
02:08:59,420 --> 02:09:06,140
community partners committee in January and then we will bring it forward to the Board

1385
02:09:06,140 --> 02:09:08,820
of Directors for review and for their input.

1386
02:09:09,600 --> 02:09:13,440
And so this is what we are working on right now.

1387
02:09:13,540 --> 02:09:18,040
We wanted to again make sure that we are involving all of our stakeholders in this.

1388
02:09:18,420 --> 02:09:21,400
If you have any ideas, please feel free to reach out to me.

1389
02:09:22,000 --> 02:09:28,800
We will put those on the list here and we will look forward to working with you and we'll

1390
02:09:28,800 --> 02:09:33,780
be back with the final product once that's approved. And with that, I'll take any quick

1391
02:09:33,780 --> 02:09:35,320
questions, but I know everyone's hungry.

1392
02:09:37,200 --> 02:09:43,560
That was impressive. That was fast. I know the Joshua Tree is a big issue. We have

1393
02:09:43,560 --> 02:09:48,220
a well site that we can't upgrade security going from chain leak to block walk, because

1394
02:09:48,220 --> 02:09:54,700
there's a Joshua Tree 20 feet away inside. You know, it's just kind of crazy right now.

1395
02:09:54,700 --> 02:09:56,080
really really hampers you.

1396
02:09:57,780 --> 02:09:59,140
Any other questions or comments?

1397
02:10:01,580 --> 02:10:07,080
Okay, we'll go on to item 11, a certificate of appreciation.

1398
02:10:07,480 --> 02:10:08,480
I'll hand it off to Ed Mann.

1399
02:10:09,360 --> 02:10:09,860
Thank you, Doug.

1400
02:10:10,860 --> 02:10:13,220
So I'll try to be brief here, but I want to mention

1401
02:10:15,080 --> 02:10:17,960
we've had Marina West here as Chair of the Tax Committee

1402
02:10:17,960 --> 02:10:20,160
for the last few years since 2019.

1403
02:10:21,360 --> 02:10:23,340
I want to say you took on the mantle

1404
02:10:23,340 --> 02:10:30,120
Right at the heels of the start of COVID, so that's no easy challenge to overcome.

1405
02:10:30,900 --> 02:10:35,600
And yet, you kept this committee effective and relevant, so we really appreciate everything

1406
02:10:35,600 --> 02:10:40,820
you've done for the agency, for the stakeholders, for the different agencies within our service

1407
02:10:40,820 --> 02:10:45,240
area to make this an effective forum for discussion of current events.

1408
02:10:46,120 --> 02:10:51,680
You've had issues related to cannabis and water theft that you championed, a response

1409
02:10:51,680 --> 02:10:54,820
and got county sheriff department

1410
02:10:56,260 --> 02:10:59,080
and it's just been an extraordinary effort there.

1411
02:10:59,880 --> 02:11:00,560
That's ongoing.

1412
02:11:00,940 --> 02:11:02,080
County well permitting, I mean,

1413
02:11:02,640 --> 02:11:05,500
we adopted the agency adopted the Urban Water Management Plan

1414
02:11:05,500 --> 02:11:08,240
update under your tenure here as chair.

1415
02:11:08,600 --> 02:11:11,600
So no shortage of accomplishments

1416
02:11:12,080 --> 02:11:14,940
through one of the most challenging times for collaboration,

1417
02:11:15,480 --> 02:11:17,620
COVID and growing pains that came with it.

1418
02:11:17,740 --> 02:11:19,040
So thank you.

1419
02:11:19,240 --> 02:11:21,300
We're losing you as chair of the committee,

1420
02:11:21,300 --> 02:11:27,220
but we gained you as our director of the Mojave Water Agency Board, so we're very happy

1421
02:11:27,220 --> 02:11:32,740
to see you there, and I'm glad you can continue to participate on those. And I'll just say

1422
02:11:32,740 --> 02:11:36,280
big shoes to fill, but I'm sure Doug's after the challenge, so welcome, Doug.

1423
02:11:37,060 --> 02:11:41,820
I've got a certificate here, so if you could stand up, we'll hand this over to you, Marina.

1424
02:11:50,720 --> 02:11:55,900
Hi, we'll just add you made it look easy the whole time. The virtual meetings and in-person meetings,

1425
02:11:55,900 --> 02:11:57,800
That means it's, wow, thank you.

1426
02:12:25,130 --> 02:12:26,670
We didn't want to ruin that picture.

1427
02:12:28,810 --> 02:12:33,590
All right, our last item is comments and announcements.

1428
02:12:34,030 --> 02:12:39,030
So I guess we'll look to MWA staff for any comments or announcements to begin with.

1429
02:12:42,300 --> 02:12:46,100
Next scheduled meeting for the tax is February 2nd, the 10 AM.

1430
02:12:46,760 --> 02:12:48,200
That's my only announcement.

1431
02:12:49,040 --> 02:12:50,320
And anything from the public?

1432
02:12:52,620 --> 02:12:52,960
Okay.

1433
02:12:54,000 --> 02:12:54,940
Lunch is awaiting.

1434
02:12:55,800 --> 02:13:04,820
With that, I know we have a lot of items coming down the pike, so I would, the attendance today is great, I would encourage you to get more people involved.

1435
02:13:05,460 --> 02:13:08,300
I know Marina left me three pages of priorities.

1436
02:13:09,820 --> 02:13:24,720
We will be working really closely with the executive tack to really look at the purpose and purview of tack and executive tack and start not start, but to make sure we continue to bring relevant items and meet the needs of everybody here.

1437
02:13:24,720 --> 02:13:26,980
so please get involved, please reach out to us.

1438
02:13:28,120 --> 02:13:31,340
And with that, we will adjourn this meeting at 12-13.

1439
02:13:31,900 --> 02:13:33,120
There is lunch outside.

1440
02:13:33,280 --> 02:13:33,940
Thank you for coming today.