DONNER SUMMIT AREA ASSOCIATION

Water Seminar Minutes

Saturday, September 15, 2007 – Sugarbowl Village Hall

Presenters:

• Peter VanSant, Sierra Watch

• Otis Wallen, Placer County Water Agency District 5 Directory

• Jason Rainey, South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL)

Peter VanSant, Sierra Watch:

CEQA Process:

Peter gave an overview of the CEQA (California Environmental Quality Act) process and the Placer County planning process. He supplied a flow-chart of the CEQA process. The developer submits a pre-application to the county, then an application, which starts the EIR (Environmental Impact Report) process. The EIR outlines impacts of proposed development and mitigation measures to address these impacts. Impacts may be mitigated to “less than significance” or Placer County may accept the impacts as unmitigatable. A draft EIR is first created, followed by a final EIR. Both are submitted to the Placer County Planning Commission and Board of Supervisors. The EIR process typically takes 18 months.

Water Supply:

New development water supply issues are governed by Placer County code 4.C.1:

“The county shall require proponents of new development to demonstrate the availability of a long-term, reliable water supply. The County shall require written certification from the service provider that either existing services are available or needed improvements will be made.”

The service providers who would certify water supply for the Royal Gorge proposed development are:

• Sierra Lakes County Water District (SLCWD)

• Donner Summit Public Utilities District (DSPUD)

Water districts are like mini governments governed by elected officials. They have a service area and a sphere of influence defined by LAFCO (Local Area Formation Commission). The waste from the Royal Gorge proposed development is not in the DSPUD service area, but it is in the DSPUD sphere of influence. Any new development MUST go through the local service provider (SLCWD and DSPUD). A developer cannot provide its own water/sewer service. In order for a new development project to get through the planning process, the local service provider must provide a “will serve” certificate to the county.

Do the developers of a resort community need to base their water calculations on 100% occupancy? A recent legal precendent, the Vineyard Case states that “speculative sources and unrealistic allocations (“paper water”) are insufficient. Because this legal precendent is so new, it is unclear exactly how it would apply to other development projects.

Climate Change:

AB32 is California Assembly Bill 32, which states that California must reduce Carbon emissions by 2012. AB32 is already being applied to new development in many cases and should be addressed in EIRs. AB32 is a big deal for new development.

Otis Wallan, Placer County Water Agency (PCWA) District 5 Director:

Donner Summit Water Rights

PCWA became the service provider for the Martis Valley development because there were no other agencies serving that area and because Martis Valley is a ground water basin. However PCWA will NOT be the service agent for any Donner Summit development because the area is not a ground water basin, but is rather a fractured rock groundwater system.

PCWA will be responsive to inquiries from Royal Gorge but will not assist them in securing water for the project aside from that.

SLCWD has ~1000 Acre Feet of existing water rights. It is virtually impossible to get a new water right on the American River or Yuba River. Many agencies down-river will intervene and resist any new water rights. There has never been a calculation of how much water each household in the SLCWD service area needs based on occupancy or what the other non-consumptive water needs are (for recreation, future build-out of the existing Serene Lakes development, margin of error, etc). SLCWD will have to determine what its existing water needs are in order to determine if there is water available for any proposed new development.

Erosion and sediment must also be considered as part of any new development. Donner Summit is a fractured rock groundwater system with a soil mantle on top. Water moves through the soil mantle to the lakes. This is a very delicate balance that must be understood. Any change would impact that balance. We don’t really understand how water moves on Donner Summit, where it travels or how long it takes to travel through our watershed.

Modeling can help us understand how water moves. Physical models are superior to black-box models. In one case (not on Donner Summit), a physical model showed that it took 30 years for water to travel from the soil mantle to the river. Whose burden of proof is it to provide the physical model? Probably the developers.

Climate Change

Otis showed us a climate change calculator available from http://arwi.us which allows one to enter various known factors about a region, such as percent forestation, elevation, etc. and several variables, including ambient temperature change and precipitation change and shows the impact these changes would have on existing snow pack. As part of his quick demonstration, Otis did a calculation that showed that a 4-degree temperature increase would change the average snowpack on Donner Summit on January 1 dramatically – to as little as only a couple inches of snow on a wet year on January 1. The snow level would typically be 6500’; we would have “rain on snow” conditions and most of our runoff would occur in the winter instead of the spring. What impact would such climate changes have on the area? Occupancy rates might increase dramatically if there is much less snow in the winter and if it is hotter in the Sacramento Valley and San Francisco Bay Area. Climate change will be dramatic on Donner Summit and should be considered as part of any EIR.

SLPOA Questions

Otis handed out answers to several SLPOA questions that were submitted in advance of the seminar (see attached). The answers were written by a member of the PCWA team.

Jason Rainey, South Yuba River Citizens League (SYRCL):

Local Watersheds

There are three watersheds on Donner Summit:

• Truckee River Watershed

• North Fork of the American River Watershed

• South Yuba River Watershed

The Yuba watershed is the third most volumous of the Sierra rivers and drains into the Feather River system, which drains into the Delta and eventually San Francisco Bay. It is a 1300 square-mile watershed.

Summit Valley (Van Norden Meadow) is the most significant valley in the Yuba River watershed. Meadows moderate extreme water changes and are very important watershed components. The Yuba river has a low pH of ~ 5-5.5 as it leaves Summit Valley. Optimal pH for aquatic life is ~6.8. Lower pH values are commonly associated with treated waste water.

Jason recently toured DSPUD to look at recently completed upgrades. DSPUD is alsow working to meet new 2010 regulations which address several new pollutants but do not address pharmaceutical waste.

Water is a public resource. An agency may own rights to the water and put the water to beneficial use, but does not own the water itself.

FERC (Federal Energy Regulatory Commission) Licensing

Any non-federal hydroelectric power plant must be licensed to operate a dam. Licenses are typically valid for ~50 years. After that period the license must be renewed. Because licensing typically only happens twice a century, it is critical to address as many concerns as possible at re-licensing time. Dams that are currently up for renewal were licensed ~50 years ago, before modern environmental and ecological ways of thinking were established.

Spalding Reservoir is a PG&E reservoir with a hydroelectric dam. It is a main fulcrum for consumptive water use in the area and it is up for re-licensing in 2013. SYRCL is looking at this reservoir.

http://foothillswaternetwork.org

Q&A:

Q: How can we get a climate change profile for the Donner Summit area?

A (Otis Wallan): Contact Otis Wallan after October 7 (otis@foothill.net)

Q: What process is SLCWD following to determine the water needs of its existing customers (per dwelling usage and other non-consumptive uses).

A (Gene Bowles, SLCWD): SLCWD cannot comment on this process outside of what is already on public record. SLCWD has contracted Jones & Stokes to do appropriate studies to allow SLCWD to set their policy. The process should take approximately 4-6 months to complete.

A (Otis Wallan): SLCWD must determine its own water budget. PCWA uses a consumptive use calculation of 0.6 Acre Feet per dwelling. If we use this calculation as an example, the existing ~800 dwellings in the SLCWD service area, plus ~200 currently undeveloped lots would put consumptive use for existing dwellings and lots at ~600 Acre Feet per year, not including other non-consumptive water uses, such as recreation, margin of error, etc, which would also need to be determined.

Q: How can we get a physical model of our local watersheds built?

A (USGS employee): Good models require good data. There is no good data about the Donner Summit watersheds. Be very skeptical of models that are not built on good data.

A (Otis Wallan): Physical models demand good data and as such are much more reliable than “black-box” models, which allow you to manipulate the data to match watershed in-flow and out-flow. There is a study being done on local watersheds. You can get a free kit to measure the water level fluctuations in your well from http://groundwaterwatch.org and your data will be part of the study. Lev Kavvas from UC Davis has generated some excellent physical watershed models.

Q: How are watershed concerns addressed in an EIR?

A: Look for a section on Cumulative Watershed Effects

Q: The proposed Royal Gorge development spans two counties. If one county determines that unmitigated impacts are acceptable, can the other county disagree and not accept the unmitigatable impacts?

A (Peter Van Sant): It is not always clear how a development that spans two counties is handled in terms of unmitigatable impacts. Such questions might be decided in court. The CEQA process should consider the entire development project and is not designed to address projects piecemeal.

Q: Concerning occupancy rates and water usage calculations, if a project calculates occupancy rates of less than 100%, would it be possible to include deed restrictions which would not allow the dwellings to be occupied for more than the occupancy rate used to determine water usage? (For example, if an occupancy rate of 75% is used to determine water usage, could a deed restriction be imposed that limits occupancy of the dwellings to 75% of the year?)

A (Peter Van Sant): A Development Agreement is reached between the county and the developer. Development Agreements are legally enforceable. A Development Agreement can include such things as transfer fees, etc and could possibly include a deed restriction as suggested.

Q: Can Royal Gorge build a dam to dam Summit Valley (Van Norden Meadow)?

A (Otis Wallan): You can’t just build a dam in California without water rights. Any dam would impact downstream water rights.

Q: Can Royal Gorge capture the overspill that flows out of Serene Lakes and use that water for their development?

A (Otis Wallan): Every drop of water is allocated. In addition to water rights, there are also Prescriptive Water Rights. That means even if you are not using all of your water rights, if someone downstream is using that water they gain “prescriptive rights” to that water over time.

Q: Can water rights be transferred from one agency to another?

A: Water rights are governed by the California Water Board. Water rights are not part of a free market. If an agency gives up some or all of their water rights, the water rights go back to the California Water Board to be allocated to another agency.