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Water talks surface for Inyo & L.A. |
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Monday, 11 August 2008 |
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By Mike Gervais
Register Staff 8-9-2008
Top Inyo County and City of Los Angeles officials will be meeting on local terf next week to hash out long-standing issues related to local groundwater management, as well as hear updates on the status of various ongoing Owens Valley projects.
Discussions will get under way Monday at 1 p.m. with the quartlery meeting of the Inyo-L.A. Standing Committee, being held in the Board of Supervisors Room at the Inyo County Administrative Center at 224 N. Edwards St. in Independence.
Monday’s agenda includes talks about the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo habitat, groundwater at the Owens Dry Lake and the progress of Lower Owens River Project.
This meeting was rescheduled from June 16.
The Standing Committee will discuss the 2008-2009 Operations Plan for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power in the Owens Valley.
The Inyo-L.A. Long Term Water Agreement provides that the LADWP prepare and present a draft Operations Plan to the county and allow staff to provide comments.
From there the Operations Plan is turned over to the technical group, which will attempt to resolve any concerns on the part of the county and return the plan to the LADWP to make the appropriate revisions and implement the plan.
The Inyo County Water Department has already reviewed the draft plan and provided comments to the LADWP.
“The department’s analysis found that both the draft and final Operations Plans are consistent with the interim management plan and water agreement,” Inyo County Administrative Officer Kevin Carunchio said in his department report.
This year’s LADWP Operations Plan forecasts that runoff will be 86 percent of normal for the Owens Valley from April 2008 through March 2008. The plan further forecasts that the LADWP will be pumping 66,800 acre-feet of water during the same time period.
This is the first time in several years that Inyo County has utilized the Drought Recovery Policy that provides for the Standing Committee to establish an annual operations plan. In the past Operations Plans have been approved as described in the Water Agreement,” Carunchio said.
The Standing Committee will also be discussing the possibility of pumping groundwater from beneath Owens Lake bed to mitigate the dust problem.
The Inyo County Board of Supervisors does have an interim management plan for groundwater pumping in the Ownes Valley with a section that provides that the county will work with LADWP to develop and conduct a joint study to explore the feasibility of using groundwater from beneath the lake for dust control measures.
According to Inyo County Water Department Director Bob Harrington, LADWP has developed a request for proposals for professional services to perform a study that will produce recommendations for “realistic, economical and environmentally friendly use of groundwater under Owens Lake for the purpose of dust control measures.”
The LADWP will report on the status of the RFP in preparation for selection of the consultant, possibly later this summer or in the fall.
The Standing Committee will also be discussing habitat for the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo in the Hogback and Baker Creek areas of Independence and Big Pine.
A group working on the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo project met on July 15 and retained a consultant, Earthworks, Inc., to assist with the project.
The Standing Committee will discuss the need to mitigate fire hazards to the Bernasconi Center, which came up as a result in changes to the areas selected for habitat enhancement for the bird.
The Standing Committee will also be discussing the Blackrock Waterfowl management area flood acreage at its meeting on Monday.
At its meeting in January, the Standing Committee adopted a protocol for setting the annual flooded acreage for waterfowl. That protocol provides that in runoff years with between 50 percent and 100 percent of normal runoff the flooded acreage will be proportional to the percent of normal runoff, which yields 430 flooded acres for the 2008-2009 runoff years.
The LADWP is also scheduled to provide reports on the Water Agreement and land releases and the Lower Owens River Project.
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 13 September 2008 )
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