Area Council - Regular Meeting

to discuss. Okay. I call this meeting of the Scots Valley Advisory Committee to order at 17 after 5. I'll ask for a roll call. Uh Jody, yes. And Joel here. And Cornia, Jared here. And Greg, we have a full house. We do have a quorum established. So I'll make a receive a motion for the acceptance as the as the agenda that's printed. Do I have a motion to accept? Second.

Okay. So Jody uh I mean I'm sorry Joel made the motion to accept the agenda and second by Cornelia. All in favor by saying I. Nays. Motion carries. Agenda is accepted as printed. It's now time for public comment. Members of the public can comment on anything that's not an agendaized item and you have three minutes to do that. I ask if you do want to address the council, please step, say your name and location you live and uh three minutes. Anybody from the public have anything to offer? Joel, I mean, sorry, Sky.

Yeah. Yeah.

Testing. Test test. Check. Check. Check.

Okay. So, I just I just noticed that the zero to 5 foot regulations for vegetation management are back in the news and uh there's been some some debate about it about like I don't know if you know Berkeley went ahead of the deadline and they did it and they had a lot of push back on it. I think it was Sonoma County now is considering it and they're modifying the zero to 5 foot thing. So I don't I'm not really suggesting we need to talk to it immediately, but I think we should get that agendaized on, you know, on the agenda for recurring visiting it because it's going to be a huge issue in Scots Valley, I would imagine.

Sky, are you referring to the five foot clearance from structures of any flammable vegetation that part? Yes, I believe I believe that's a correct explanation. Yes. Right.

Yeah. you know, zero to five, which I mean, I I'm just looking at what what they said in I mean, I watched it kind of in Berkeley because I came from Berkeley, you know, and I heard some of the debate over it there, man. And people just had a fit about it and and they're really pushing back over it and it was, you know, totally transformed their landscapes. And I go look at my house and I go, "Wait a minute, zero to five, I got a bunch of stuff there, too." You know, and so it's it's a significant thing. Um, and but I did see now just the breaking news is they're going to modify it. So, I think this advisory council, we should get that on our radar. I don't know exactly what that means, but we got a CalFire connected man there. He can keep us up on that. Right. We'll try to see where that goes. I've been watching it. Right. Thank you.

Thank you, Sky. Anybody else have any comments? Anything not on the agenda? Not hearing any sign. We'll go on to the next uh item which is our guest speaker. This is uh today we're have a pleasure having a consulting ecologist bi biologists presenting on the BLM projects and other aspects of Scott's uh creeks uh wershed. He is has lots of years of experience in this area. So, let's welcome Larry Ray for the presentation today. Mr. Mr. Ray.

Yes. Thank you for coming. Okay. This isn't so much for all of you as it is whoever else is out there in the world, right? Is there anybody online by chance? Not yet. Okay. Okay. Well, I'll speak in the microphone irregardless. Are you recording it or anything?

Recording. Okay. Okay. So, hi. Yeah, I'm my name's Larry Ray. I'm I'm an ecologist. I've done a lot of work in in the Scots Creek wershed over the last say 20 years or so for different organizations and government agencies and so on. Originally, I had asked uh to come to address this group about uh a concern that I have for a really nasty, noxious weed that grows in the BLM land that's called goats room. And I'll start with that and just go over that real quickly. Let's see if I can find my Oops, I got it lost in here. I've been too busy working. Uh so goat r is a an invasive non-native plant originally from the Middle East. Uh it was unfortunately brought into this country for feed for goats as you might guess.

Big surprise. Um it brings in the milk of the females and so it was used as a feed supplement to help uh them lactate. However, it got into feed and got into California in an unknown way. I discovered the very first place that it's been seen in the state of California, which is happens to be up in uh the BLM South Cal Mountain unit. I can't seem to be able to find my presentation here where I lost it. Give me just a second here to try and find it. I'll just keep talking. So, as I said, goat is a invasive non-native plant. It is poisonous to livestock and wildlife and it's there's a lot of it up there in uh 8 mile valley in particular although it started on private property just above uh the Menescino County line um on a ranch just to the west. And this thing uh when I when I was doing a restoration plan for the 8 mile valley project it showed up in the valley and I didn't know what it was. Uh so it took me quite a bit of time to actually figure out what it was because I wasn't familiar with the plant. But it is a federally listed A-Listed noxious weed, meaning it's like one of the bad boys. Like it's something you definitely don't want. And if you have it, there's a federal law that says you must eradicate it. So BLM's been eradicating it now since 2016 and uh unfortunately because of not enough funding and really not enough manpower, it's barely been able to keep it under control from moving.

When I say that, I mean that it's moving down the watershed and it is now for the first time this last year. We found it outside of BLM land and almost all the way to Blue Lakes. So, I know all of you probably are familiar with that length of creek. That's it. It's so pretty. That length of creek all the way from the BLM's property line all the way to Blue Lakes is probably a good 10 miles. So, we surveyed that last year and found very few plants, but in the spots that was accessible, we did locate it. Let's see if I got here.

It does like water. It is a riparian plant, so likes to be wet. I don't know how well you can see this on the It's kind of grainy blowing it up. That's a clump of it. That's more of it. You see how it chokes the creek completely out? So, how tall does it get? How big? Maybe six feet. Oh, that big. Yeah, it gets up to six feet tall. It kind of depends on where it's growing. Okay. So,

that is the same spot that you couldn't see through once we pulled the hand fold it. So, we've been hand pulling it and clearing it out and getting it out of the watershed. Problem is, it's got seeds. It's got seeds that last for a good 20 years. So, they get into the environment, it takes 20 years before that seed won't germinate anymore. So, it's a long live seed. It's going to be persistent in this watershed for a long time. And I guess the reason that I really wanted to bring it to your attention is because Now that I know for certain that it is out and about here we go into the watershed bigger watershed.

It's uh it's now on private property. I know I got a certain thing I got to click here to get it display. Which one is it for display mode? Anybody from current from beginning? From beginning. There you go. I haven't done that. Okay. So, we did start this project with the BLM. It's funded by the egg department. So, I've been working with the egg department on uh trying to get this thing under control. They still sell the seeds. Yeah, they probably sell plants, too. somewhere.

So, you see it online, huh? Yep. Well, that's news to me. That's disturbing. Let's see. Now, how do I How about your arrow on your keyboard? Will that work? I don't do this very often, so I'm stumbling around. But, so there we go. That's a nice picture of it. Got a real like she was mentioning. What is your name?

Cornelia. IA was saying how it's a pretty flower. It kind of is. It's in the pea family. So, it's a legume and it's got kind of a pea like structure to the flower. And they're kind of pretty little pale lavender with a little pink sometimes white. And then that's the nasty seed pod. Oh, that got better all of a sudden. Did you turn it up? Oh, okay. But so that plant is is it can grow four to six feet. Yeah. It gets as tall as me. Yeah. It kind of depends. Like this is in a canyon so there's limited sunlight. So when the sun comes in, it's reaching for it and there's

plants around it and trees around it. It grows in the willow thicket and whatnot. So it's trying to reach for sunlight. If it's got more sunlight, it'll be maybe three feet tall. So it kind of depends, but it can get that tall. And that's the pot. That's what you don't want to have. Once it gets to the seed stage, you know, then all the all bets are off. So, we're trying to pull all of it we can when it's flowering. And of course, it shows it's flower. Lets us know where it's at. So, it's easier to find when it's flowering. And then we I put together a Oh, actually, no. This is uh uh there was a PhD student in Utah because it's also in Utah who did a very exhaustive study on this plant and that was one of the reasons that we kind of knew how to deal with it and what to do about it and its seed seed viability and such. It's got the seed biology uh that this guy did a lot of lot of work on and apparently it was in Pennsylvania and a couple other states that helped him kind of figure some of that stuff out too. And then uh the egg department did put together a flyer, although I've never seen it. It's got pictures of it with the seeds and flowers and a little description. Now, I had talked to the egg department about a better flyer or a new flyer. So, I think they might be coming up with something better. These maps are small. You can't really see them very well, but this is the USGS map. That's 8 Mile Valley uh in the South Chow Mountain. This is a bigger and then I put this red line here that shows the known at the time the known uh population all the way down from 8 Mile Valley to the confluence of Scots Creek. So these tags basically say

8 Mile Valley and Scots Creek. So that's the main stem of Scots Creek, but like I said, it's all the way down to the other gate where private property starts, which I'm sure you all know where that's at. And those are some thickets. Kind of shows it's going to fill up the entire riparian area. I've got more pictures. I've got tons of pictures. And then we wrote a plan, a weed management plan, and the BLM has a weed management plan. It needs updating. So, I'm going to be working with the BLM to update the plan. We were originally going to use herbicides. There's a problem with that. riparian area. It's got water. So, we have to wait till the water dries out and then spray because we don't want the pollution to go downstream. So, we've been hand pulling. These are pictures of us just hand pulling and uh in there hand pulling in the willow thicket. You can see this doesn't show you very well. I should have put a ruler there. The roots are like a foot, maybe even more than that sometimes. Now, it's not like other plants where if you break the root, it respouts. Break the root, it's going to die. So, fortunately,

but you know, it's it's well rooted. Oh, this first year we had to we didn't discover it until there was already gone to seed the first year. Well, actually, we didn't get funding to back up. We didn't get funding. So we had to put it in bags, sit it in the sun, solarize it, and uh try and kill the seeds and then take them all to the dump to keep get them out of the waterhed. So that was a lot of work. But fortunately, that was 2018 and there had been a fire and we still had fire crews. So I was able to get a fire crew of 25 people and that helped a lot. And the BLM hauled all of it away. So this is showing before pulling. You can't even see through it. There is after pulling. So you can see how dense it is. It'll fill the whole place up. So it's really a habitat destroyer. Like it crowds out all the other plants and kind of chokes everything and takes up all the space. There again is a closeup of a before and an after. And you can see native plants there. Now, the more we pulled it, the more the native plants came back. So, is there some silver lining? There it is again. Choked and cleared. Oh, I don't know what that's Oh, these are seeds sprouting. See the tiny little plants? So, like we'd pull the bigger plants and then later in the summer because this place doesn't really completely dry out, the germinating seeds along that edge would just start showing up. So, there it is again. Same spot,

choked and cleared. And then this is the herbicide that we were using initially. Tricopore and uh it's a broadleaf general broadleaf herbicide but it's not really safe to spray in water. So it sprout we spray it kill 90% of it but we've so we've been able to make some headway. There it is again. Sprouts and weed. Oh this is our end of the funing. So, we ran out of money. Now, this last year, uh, the egg department did, we wrote a grant in the egg department did get the most significant funding we've ever gotten in 10 years.

$120,000 for four years. So, that's 40,000 a year. We've had half that. So, I don't work for them anymore, though. So, I don't know what who's going to handle it or who's going to take care of it. I pass it on to somebody else. But, Just want to let you know about this plant and if anybody sees this thing around, let the egg department know. Anywhere down Scots Creek, it could show up. So, it's poisonous to livestock but not to goats. The root is used. So, the foliage is poisonous. So, in the commercial application, they're growing the plant, cutting the root off, using the root to make some something that they put into the feed.

So, the foliage is toxic. the root apparently. I don't know if it's not toxic or if they process it. I've never really researched that, but that is what it's used for. So, the foliage is toxic. Now, I'll tell you in all the years that I've been in there doing this work, never seen brows. I'm an ecologist, so I know what how you know what animals eat, how they eat, and I look for habitat and the plants that certain animals like. Never seen anything ever eat it. There was one thing though when I was in there working. Oh, this just picture of mushrooms. Now, when I was in there working, there were a lot of bumblebees eating the, you know, feeding on the flowers. Okay. So what I did was I had my crews collect loopin seed from the from the meadows and increased the loopins in the meadow because we did a bento restoration project. So we increased the loopins and as we got rid of the the bees started using the loopins and as we got rid of the goat R they switched over to loopins so that we made sure we didn't cause any kind of like habitat loss for the bumblebees which I'm sure all of you are aware are not doing so well. Bumblebees are really in trouble. I think it has to do with not just not just loss of habitat but pesticides. See if I can find some pictures of that meadow. So that's the thing that I really wanted to talk about initially and then Jared said there was an awful lot of interest about sediment and erosion and impacts

to the lake with phosphorus and that's a huge issue and I know a lot about it. I've worked on that same issue. 8 Mile Valley was uh I was actually involved in Well, now I'm not getting anything. I got stuff on my screen here, but it's not showing up over there. Do you have any idea why, Jared? Is there issue with it? So let me just start with telling you that uh as an ecologist, one of the primary reasons that I do my work is to try and you know and and also I I do a lot of squa and compliance work. So water pollution is something that I deal with and I've written numerous 319 grants which are clean water act grants to try and prevent erosion that is specifically tied to uh I'm trying not to use jargon here too much uh total daily maximum loads of pollutants a TMDL. So I was involved in the TM formulation of the TMDL for Clear Lake and the Fi and the updates for several updates. Uh and I was in all those meetings and uh I did also maintain an erosion control certification for many years. So I know a lot about erosion control and sediment as erosion and pollution and uh the issues in the lake with phosphorus with the TMDL as it relates to soilborn phosphorus. Why am I not getting anything on the screen? All of a sudden it wasn't showing me anything. So anyway, that's a mouthful, but

I did a big restoration project at one of the sites that was identified through the process of the TMDL and the update to the TMDL and it was 8 Mile Valley in South Cow Mountain and it was actually tied to the TMDL overview that recommended specific actions to take to reduce sediment phosphorus. entering the lake. So, this was considered one of like a half a dozen major sources. Now, I'm not an engineer and I don't recall the exact numbers and I wouldn't want to try and pretend I do, but it was significant. The amount of phosphorus coming from that one location, 16 acre meadow that was seriously damaged and runoff was just rampant. the the tonnage and the the number the amount of phosphorus coming from that one place was very large.

That's crazy. So, I'm trying to show you pictures, although it doesn't seem to want to flash anything up on the screen right now. Jared's trying to figure out what's phosphorus from the soil. The phosphorus is in the soil. So, there was erosion in soil coming down that brought the I think what they did was leave out the natural water. making it a pasture, right? Originally, you guys speak originally. Yeah. Yes. Do you want her to ask the question again? You can repeat it. So, she's just asking if it was soilborn phosphorus, right?

That's basically what you're asking. So, yes, soilborn phosphorus. Um, it's naturally occurring in this county in a lot of different soil types. This particular soil here has a very significant amount of it. It's a a young volcanic soil that hasn't been degraded. In other words, it hasn't been methylated or worked on by biology. So that when the water actually gets to it, it becomes water soluble and it enters the water stream and goes down through the wershed. So you know this that's great, but we can't see it up there. So anyway, 8 mile was identified as a major source. We wrote a a plan to address that issue and did have an engineer do all the calculations to figure out how much tonnage was coming out of it. We did monitoring for three years. We took samples of all the water above and below the meadow, had them all analyzed, did all the math and produced a final report that showed the significance of the pollution and the plan to address it. Then we did continued monitoring, did the work. After the work, it was a 52% reduction in phosphorus. So it's pretty significant amount of phosphorus that got is is not coming out of that meadow anymore. A little more than half. So it was deemed as a pretty big success.

Yeah. About that the is that the phosphorus like from the pasture or is that the phosphorus that ends up in Clear Lake? Well, it's the phosphorus that ends in Clear Lake, but it's not chemically applied to the the pasture. It was actually bound in the soil itself. So, as Cordelia was uh Cornelia, sorry, was asking about, did the meadow get damaged? The answer is yes. It was farmed. It was dried out, turned into a pasture, used for hay production, for livestock, and diversion of all the water was taken out of the meadow and put into a small channel that ran along one side.

Well, that was eroding over there, but not until there was a failed attempt. And this is I think what people are confused about with this specific project and this specific meadow is that there was a failed project that was done in 2005 that the BLM did which was a I'm going to use some words here and don't sue me. It it was a faulty design. Okay. They didn't take certain considerations into into the plan that had to do with the soil and and hydrarology and some other aspects of it. they just didn't do a good enough job figuring those things out, but they learned from the failure. So, when my team came in and I was actually hired by through the US Fish and Wildlife Service to do this plan um in conjunction with uh the Scots Valley Band of Pomo Indians. So, we put this plan together, did all the calculations I mentioned, figured out how to take care of this problem, implemented the project, which ended up being very successful. I'd sure like to see those on the screen. I've got pictures here of the prior to the project showing all the big gaping gap gaping holes and

and and and all the massive massive gullies and the head cutting and so I mean it was eroding a lot and it Lenovo yes it's IBM She's trying to figure it out. I'm sure everybody in this room knows more about how to do it than I do. Sure.

Sure. So we brought in big yellow pieces of equipment and we altered the topography. So this is called a reset or a stage zero. There's a lot of jargon in the hydraologic geomorphological world about describing how you actually take it back to something that was there originally close to as best you can. And from what we can determine from a lot of study of looking at pictures from the past, you know, all the various things we can find out historically about what this metal looked like, it was relatively flat. The water inputs came in and just kind of soaked into the meadow. There's evidence that uh from the layers of uh of of sediment that uh there was never really a stream per se.

It was a wet And it had a lot of sedges and rushes and deeprooted plants. And so that all got altered by drying it out and changing it over to pasture. So all the deep rooted stuff died. All that stuff wasn't there anymore. It didn't percolate water down deep anymore. The water table was maybe at 10 or 12 feet. After the project, the water level is about two feet or three feet. So, we brought it up a good 10 feet from the level it was at after it got dried out.

Altering the typography. If you could see the pictures, you'd see these big gullies that are 10 15 feet deep with sheer walls. Wide as this room. I went up there when you guys were starting that and it was just amazing. I didn't see the end just the beginning. It was like canyon

big canyons. So what happened with the failure was they they did what they called in the past and you don't hear this anymore. Plug and pond was a method of restoring meadows in the past that some guy came up with that supposedly worked somewhere. I don't know where because it sort of failed here. When these ponds filled up, they actually overtopped the the bottom of the burm. And because the soil here was not cohesive, it fell apart, releasing all that water like a catastrophic flood. Once that happened, of course, it formed gullies very quickly. All that sediment went down the watershed, filled up. The area below it was just all full of sediment. So it made a big mess, monstrous mess. Now once that level of water went down and gullying occurred, that lowered the water table. It started to scour. The head cuts started to take off. And so basically, it means the place unraveled. So once it fell apart, we had to just figure out how to put it back together again. So I've got pictures here of us with our heavy equipment. We also did a slope analysis of the top of the meadow and the bottom of the meadow to see how much of a drop there was and then where it is a drop. And once we recontoured it, we also came in and figured out exactly where we would place uh rock structures basically downs. So those significant spots where the elevation would drop and would cause erosion. We put rock there to prevent it. scouring and to catch sediment from above wall which functioned very well. And so, you know, as we went through the meadow and we placed these structures in strategic locations that prevented it from gullying again and of course the water table came up

which enabled us to plant plants there that wouldn't grow before because it was too dry. You know, if I was to explain to you what plants were there prior to the project, they were all star thistle and, you know, really dry, you know, rangeand, rocky, dry, hot rangeand type plants. None of that's there anymore. The stuff that's there now, I could show you pictures. It's all native bunch grasses and forbes and things that really grow in a meadow of this type, very little non-native stuff. 90% of the non-native grasses are gone. I've got pictures of beautiful stands as big as this room of native bunch grass that

that are now in in the meadow. They're all in good shape and those are deep rooted 10 feet deep, six to 10 feet deep roots. So, one of the functions of roots that you need to understand is that they don't just hold soil together. They also allow percolation of water. meaning that when the rain falls, instead of it all running off, those roots actually allow water to percolate into the soil because they create gaps and spaces for the water to be able to infiltrate. So that allows for more recharge, more storage of water, and then more roots grow and everything just kind of goes from there. We did grow 125,000 plugs of six different species of plants that we planted plugs and I got beautiful pictures of these huge areas of the plugs that took off um which I'd love to show you and and you know I'm sorry it's not working. I I don't know why

so well in the beginning you could hold it up. Yeah.

Yeah. Larry, of all that silt that blew out from the failure went on down the creek, uh I mean, is that silt is that still adding silt into the creek system now, you think, or you think it's probably stabilized? So, there was another project done below 8 Mile Valley that trapped that sediment, a huge willow thicket. Uh, and another project that addressed the same issue was done just below 8 mile and there's a thicket there of alder and willow. That's probably a good five acres in size that literally trapped all that sediment. When you walk in there now, it's like a sandy beach. Pardon me?

Almost. It's like a sandy beach. It's just All this sediment in this area is just completely full of sediment.

So we have a lot of sediment coming down after heavy rains, you know, Scotts Creek. Is that from the I guess BLM property up there? Is that is that being mitigated in any way that you know? So, on my computer, I also have a copy of a recent 319 grant that the county was successful in in in getting. And uh in that 319 proposal, they recognize significant areas for erosion control that need to be mitigated. One of those is I believe it's the last it's the first three miles of the Lakeport to uh Yukaya Road right at the south entrance to South Cow Mountain as it goes up that hill. There's a about a mile of uh pavement on the really bad part and then it gets to gravel. But that road is a major source of it's not as major as eight Mile Valley, mind you, but it's it's been recognized as a significant source of sediment entry into Scots Creek. So the BLM road has been tagged. Now I will tell you that the OV area, most of it actually drains into Mil Creek into Mendescino County, a major part of it. And then the tributaries that come off of Oak Flat Road um drain into a series of sediment basins that were constructed about 2005 or six in the mid as that trap a lot of sediment. So they're trying to address that but those areas are still seen as potential

uh sediment. So continuous. So there's more that needs to be done. Yeah. And so the 319 that the county got actually identifies some of that, but I'm not clear exactly. They're going to study it.

Basically, this grant is a is a grant to look at these issues and determine where, you know, actually quantify where it's coming from, how much. Sort sort of like what we did with eight Mile Valley. You find a spot, you see it's a problem, you study that spot, you see what needs to happen, then you design something to to implement it to take care of the problem hoping that it's going to be successful. We were in that case. So I would hope you know and there was also another study called u let me see if I can remember. So USGS did a study what the heck did they call it? It was a sediment signature study that USGS did and that report is slated to come out this year. So what they did is they went throughout the entire watershed, Scots Creek wershed, all private property, public property, right to that point again where South Fork and Main stem uh come together right at the gate there at BLM land and they deter they basically looked at sediment in that area and then differentiated what the different sediment types were and different soil types that were associated with those in the different areas on the tributaries and determined exactly how much sediment's coming from which tributary. So it's a sediment signature meaning they can actually determine where it came from.

So the upper wershed is all sampled. All those are tagged and and identified so that when they did the sampling at the bottom they could actually look at the volume of sediment and where it came from. So that study took probably eight years and I think this year they're supposed to release that that study. So I could see if I could get that study to you all so you could see it. That would be great.

The author is told me it's going to come out. So hopefully we'll get that by summertime. Is 319 addressing that stretch uh just upstream from the confluence of the South Fork and the main branch where the old Walchards are? Is that going to be a study?

Actually, no. That was the subject of another 319 that would that I helped to write with uh the uh Lake County RCD. I have no idea if it'll be successful, but we wrote a grant to get uh funding to do a plan. So, if my computer worked, I could show you the pictures of the recent study I did on that area. So, is it Taylor Ranch? Is that or what's the name of that? I'm blanking out.

Does everybody know where he's talking about? So right there at the confluence of South Fork and Main stem of Scots Creek, there was a ranch there years ago, there's a remnant walnut orchard and some olive trees and I believe it was a Taft ranch. Taft. Okay. Taft ranch. I can never remember. Anyway, that area has been uh eroding and falling apart and trees have big significant oak trees have been falling into the creek and it's really a bad spot. Wow. Um do you know where that is?

It's probably a quarter mile wide right there and it's mostly just cobble and stone and no plants at all. There's no trees, no nothing because it's just a mess, right? I guess there was some quarrying that was done there in the past. We did do a little bit of historical uh work, but not enough, which of course didn't help the situation any. Um, but yeah, that there's a 319 to actually attempt to figure out what's going on there and what to do about it.

And that may or may not be a significant sediment load. It's hard to say. Um I would assume there was some coming from there because it is falling apart, but to what degree it's adding sediment, I don't know. Sure. Are you describing a spot on the south or where the two confluence where the confluence of the two creeks come together? I certainly stood up there. Yeah, it's up on a bluff up up up on the creek bank on the south side of the creek.

It's upstream just a hair from the confluence actually and not real obvious. Not not obvious from that spot. Correct. Yeah. If you're facing upstream and the south force coming in to your left, it's it's just up above there. It's not obvious. remembering the south.

Yes. Yes.

Very true. Yeah. South Fork doesn't have a whole lot of sediment load coming down there. Um it's a much clearer stream in a storm than the main stem. Now, one of the other issues that I saw when I was looking at this area was that although that's a bad spot, just up above there, uh, because of past disturbance and various things that we could talk a lot about, that whole stretch of creek from there through there is scoured down to bedrock. Like, it's just down to bedrock. there's there's it's just because uh of various things that have happened in the past, uh it looks like that's gotten scoured out pretty badly. So, I was hoping that if we got a grant that we could actually look at coming in there to do something about catching the sediment that's coming from above and actually getting it to start staying there to allow plants to grow so that we can get native rushes and sedges and willows back in there to actually start holding that together and catching sediment as it comes down. That would also reduce the load downstream and the velocity so that when it's when the water's flowing out of that watershed, you don't get quite the fast flow. It slows it down a little bit, keeps a little bit more of it upstream to allow it to come down a little slower pace uh so that when it hits there, it doesn't scour and do as much damage and maybe prevent some of the flooding. So, one of the other things that this 319 the county has is an analysis of flooding. So, they want to try and figure out why it's flooding and what can be done about it. It's basically a a flow analysis that will be done.

So, that's going to tell us an awful lot about what can be done to try and prevent flooding. So, we don't know yet until there's a study done to actually look at some of these parameters and figure out what's going on so that maybe some solutions can be formulated out of that. But that is one of the major things that this 319 is attempting to do. So the county is looking for consultants to do the work. So, anyway, I'm sorry that

the computer didn't work and you couldn't see all these beautiful pictures of all this nasty damage and and the beautiful plants that we grew to keep sediment there because it really looks pretty beautiful. When you compare the two, it's pretty amazing. I have no idea. You can invite me back. Sure. I could even maybe next time I could even go so far as to make a a presentation for you. Or you could email it and we could put it online,

I suppose. Now, I'll also mention a few other little tidbits of information that you may all be interested in. The uh California Department of Fish and Wildlife is actually doing Can I Did she leave or All you have to do is go into here when you're all done and just go show only one. It'll be in your display. Oh, okay. Yeah. I don't know what happened.

Well, you just got to hit that duplicate. Yeah, I can open that up. Yeah, just turn click that and do that. Oh, okay. So, what I was going to mention to everybody is that uh California Department of Fish and Wildlife is actually doing a study. Yeah, this is all our big yellow equipment doing the rocks. Oops. I don't know how I managed to do that. I'm fumble fingers here.

Uh they're doing a study in the midsection of the of the main stem of of Scots Creek uh in the BLM land from the South Fork up to Willow Creek to analyze the population of fish. So they're actually going to quantify the fish in that whole stretch of of the watershed, what species, the abundance, pretty much do a whole fish survey. So they put reaches in this last summer. Uh they did initial survey in the spring and then another one in the fall. and they're going to be continuing that for a couple of years so that they can actually determine what fish are in there. Now, something that's exciting to me is is that it's never been done before. No one's ever looked at the fish population in this creek. So, I'm really curious and and I've talked to Jared actually because he's been fishing that stretch of creek his whole life. What did he see in there in the past and maybe compare that kind of institutional knowledge to what survey shows, but I will tell you that a lot of the bigger, deeper pools in that stretch of creek have rainbow trout in them. And the upper reaches of the watershed, all the bigger pools have significant populations of rainbow trout. Considering those pools are only about as big as these tables and uh there's not a lot of habitat, but they're hanging on up in there. And the tributaries, you know, what do we got? Three tributaries up there that are that are have rainbow in them.

Yeah. Lion Creek, Willow Creek, Black Oak Springs Creek, maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Used to. So, they all have rainbow trout. I've observed them up there for quite a while. So, there's one of the beautiful gullies that we filled in. That's what they that's what that metal looked like. And that's that's no exaggeration that it's probably 30 40 feet wide and maybe 15 feet deep. In 8 mile valley up in BLM in South K.

This is a before picture. There's another one. There's another one. You can see also the sediment falling in. It's kind of shaded, but here you can see fresh stuff. This whole bank has fell off right there. There was active erosion going on through the couple of years that we studied this before we did the project. Oh, that's jumping the gun there. So, one of the things that we're doing now, the BLM is doing now up in 8 mile valley to try and improve even beyond what we've done is to build what we call beaver damayas or BDAS. Beaver damarayas are basically because beavers have been extrapated, they're just not around. We come and kind of human make something kind of like a beaver dam. Now, in this case, the BLM was using willows that were taken from some other project and weaving them in and using uh Tposts, but this area up here on this side of the 8 mile valley had a fuel break cut in there this year. So now they're taking all of the material from the fuel brake and they're actually putting it in these gullies to catch sediment. So these are what's known as uh processbased restoration techniques. So a huge problem with fuel break projects is what do you do with the wood? And there's a lot of talk about that. Do you make chips out of it? Do you burn it? Do you make burn piles? Do you make biochar? And there's people trying to extract all these basically trying to make products get money because it costs money. But what about in a place where it's kind of inaccessible and it's way up in the

mountains. What do you do with that? A lot of times it's just burn piles. And I do a lot of prescribed firework and burn piles are what people love to do. But I've been advocating and a lot of other people colleagues of mine are advocating for using it in the stream using it to make build these structures and to put into the gullies above the structures to catch sediment and it's working. I was just at Mclofflin Preserve UC Davis Mclofflin Preserve last Friday and we were looking at a project they were doing and a similar thing. There was a fire. We took wood. We put it into the gully and it caught sediment and it prevented erosion.

Now it rots over time, but once that sediment's there, plants can grow. And there were plants colonizing all those little sediment spots and predominantly natives as well. So, anybody have any questions? There's a better beaver damaray picture and you can see the gully still there. Now that's being p filled with wood debris. And because this is basically a a catcher's mitt, all that stuff comes to here, it catches it and it spreads it out really wide. You can see how wide this thing is. I think it's 60 feet. I think that's what we measured. Um, so as it catches sediment, then this fills in and then plants can grow. And we're seeing riparian plants and wetland plant starting to colonize. So as the water table comes up and the sediment gets caught, it becomes wetter. It retains more water. It grabs more sediment. It's kind of heals itself over time.

Are you calling that a beaver? mimics whatever a mimic. Yeah, that's right. You you got it. He was asking if we're calling it a beaver dam array because it's mimicking what a beaver would do if they were there. And that's absolutely correct. Yes. You mentioned earlier Yeah. Well, in this particular picture, you can see one of them just below it right here, but it's not very it's not very apparent. I've got some other pictures of that.

You kind of filled up the 10 foot, right, in sections. So, yeah, let me let me back up.

Yeah, check dams and grade we call them grade control structures. Basically, where there's a a steep grade, we want to try and control it. There's a picture of what we did. So, basically, this structure here is designed to catch sediment, slow water down, and because of the change in elevation from the backside to the front side, we want to prevent scour. Now, this used to be one of those deep gullies, and we took the heavy equipment and we basically just caved in each side and then regraded and then put the rock here at strategic locations that we knew would be subject to erosion. So there's one above there at the top. Here's another one farther down. And you can see how relatively flat that is. So instead of being steep side canyon with this big scoured dish underneath that's 15 feet deep, we've now brought that elevation back up to the grade that you see on the other sides. So the sides used to be up there and now it's pretty much flat. Not entirely flat, but closer than it was before. And there's another one there. He's placing rock on top because we've regraded this. You can See, it's got a gentle slope. It's not a gully anymore. It's now been graded into a gentle slope. There he's placing rock as a rock dam. There's more of a dug a ditch and and keyed them in as they say in the industry. I'm going the wrong direction here. So, you kind of get the idea, right?

That we took the gully, filled it in. There's the gully. There it is falling apart. There's the beaver damarray. Now, you can see the bank is now a gentle slope. And guess what? It's got grass all over it. Now,

that's green. And there's the wetland plants that we planted plugs. These plugs were planted every 18 inches. That's a little closer than 18 inches because guess what? They started to grow and fill in and the roots spread. And these are creeping plants that the roots spread and then they grab sediment. Well, here's a good picture in the meadow of the loopins. No, they may not look like loopins in the picture, but all these plants you see here that have this kind of texture are all loopins. And you can see they're over there. And

it's just everywhere. So that's habitat for the bumblebees. Now you see those two willow trees right in the middle of the picture. Those were there originally. And this is interesting. If I make a presentation, I could do a better job of this. But if you look at this picture back here, you can see those two willow trees in the background. right there. This gully goes here and then it goes to the left and it winds around. But that's the gully where we were pulling the goat R. And those are the two willow trees over there that you see in that other picture that are now not down in a gully anymore. There they are. You can see they're we brought the level back up. They used to be the belly, the bottom of the belly, and now they're kind of right at regular grade. Let me see if I can I got some more pictures here. Here we go. These You're going to love these. These are really great. Come on. We got bunch grasses. That was one of the slopes that had no vegetation and now it's covered with these big beautiful bunch grasses. These things are probably two or three feet tall. This big significant plant with probably 10 foot deep roots. There's one of the rock structures that you saw in the raw. This is now a couple of years later. Look at all the sediment in the middle of the rock.

And look at how It is all around it. And there's no gully. One of those big gullies you saw, that's the spot.

That is the very spot. You should see a shadow of my hands with my camera. Look at the bunch grasses there. No more weeds. This used to be star thistle. This is now purple needle grass. And that root system there was completely exposed. We put rocks in front of it. And look at all those sedges. and willows. Look at that. Oh yeah. Darn it. So, there was a picture I blazed by of this bear. It was barren and now it's covered with grasses. Oh, this is something you might be interested in. This used to be one of the BMS that held one of the ponds that that failed. So, we recontoured this and put bunch grass on it. You can See the creek is over to the right.

So, this was a pond that broke open and failed. There's another bank with bunch grass all over it. And look at that. In the middle of the meadow, there's wetland plants. They came in by themselves right here. And if you recognized in the previous uh picture where I said those are loopins look everywhere you look you see those gray colored patches of plants that used to be star thistle and hardening grass. So this is pretty significant restoration project that very successful. Now, I also belong to another group that is trying to identify meadows that have been degraded and meadows that need restoration and we're mapping them all out. Um, so we're actually looking for more meadows. So, something that you need to understand is that a lot of times wershed issues start at the headwaters. If the headwaters are degraded and you get significant erosion and coupled with heavier flows, then you tend to get damage downstream. So if you repair these things at the top of the watershed, it tends to reduce those issues as you go down the watershed. So that's why we like to start at the top. It's like the obvious place to start there. Look at all those loopins. They're everywhere. There's another rock structure. You can see all the sedges around it. You can even see water seeping out of it. This used to be one of those gullies. So, you see how it's relatively flat comparatively speaking. They had those big gullies before. These were all And then you see water seeping out of it because this is actually retaining water well into the

summer. used to dry in like May or June. I think this was in July.

How do you move it there? Well, our contractor did that and I don't know, but I think they came from the I think they came from the Granite Rock Corey over off of 175. All in from over here. Yeah. So there, that used to be, they used this used to be one of those gullies that you're looking at there. And there's even water in there. You can see it's wet. That used to be Well, I had another picture of basically this big straight long gully. And that's the same spot. No gully there anymore. That's great.

We're running a little short of time. Is there some other focuses you wanted to touch on or anything particular things that anybody wants to you have another question? Yeah, I did have one question. I don't want to get you off track, but Sure. Joel and I use what we call that bridge a particular bridge that has is it is it the DWR uh gauge that you're talking about or

I'm not sure that but the Trump administration cut the funding off for that we could not look at that gauge to access flood potential. So now we only have bridge bridge right. So having lost insight, you know, why is it we have to lose that? Is there a way to get it? Could we fund it outside?

Oh, that's I'm not the guy to ask that question to. I really don't know a whole lot about you know, right? whatever they call it. It's called turbidity. The term is turbidity. Turbidity is what you're talking about. No, that's just a flow gauge. That's only flow. It's only volume of water. Yeah.

So, yeah, I don't know what to tell you about that except to say that I am advocating for there to be more water monitoring. was water monitoring say 15 years ago. It was a big thing and there was a lot more of that going on. Several of the tribes were doing it. Big Valley is doing it in the lake now, but I don't know that they're doing it in streams. I think there's some other work going on that might include some of that kind of monitoring, water quality monitoring, but I think we need to be monitoring it more often. Here's the basic issue with grant funding. It lasts for a very short period of time. Monitoring is probably well, it's one of my pet peeves because monitoring is something we need to do all the time. It's done for water uh systems that people drink, but when we're talking about the environment, it's very different. It's not really looked at as something that needs to be ongoing and continuing. And I believe it does should be done all the time. Anyway, that's just my plug for so just to ask about these water gauges. There were I believe United States Geological Service had water gauges on the South Fork of Scots Creek and on and right near near there uh on the main stem. Um and did which are now as Sky points out no longer in operation because of lack of funding. Did did you get useful information from those two gauges?

Extremely useful information. Extremely useful. Thank you. I was I was curious about that. I to me that's I can I it helps me to keep track of flooding at my place because they have volume of and and level height. Yeah, it has both both flood gauge height and volume and cubic feet per second. And you can change which one you want to look at online. Yeah. And sediment, right? Tur tidity or turbidity. That word that the USGS does not have the turbidity index on there. Okay.

No, but as I said, this is something that everybody needs to be asking to have done as far as I'm concerned. If you want to basically say, you know, try and look at something that's worthwhile for you to advocate for, I would say water quality monitoring would be something that you should be advocating for because until we have a better handle on what's going on and until we know, you know, what's being done about these things, we we need to have some kind of way to measure how effective these things are being. And if you don't do it, you're not going to know. And we did it in for a short piece of creek and you know, but water entering and water leaving so that we could actually quantify what's coming out of that site. But if you want to know what's going on with the whole wershed, monitoring it in various places on the way down, as you're mentioning, you know, flow is one thing, but turbidity is pretty important. It's just a little more expensive. takes a little bit more equipment and they're a little bit they require a little bit more maintenance. I So I know people are concerned about sediment in clear lake. So because maybe it affects the bacterial growth and algae growth and things that maybe show bad health of clear lake sometimes. Uh, so wouldn't it be helpful to preserve the health of Clear Lake to have water monitoring up Scots Creek?

Absolutely. That's exactly what I'm advocating for. Okay. Thanks. I that seemed right to me, but I wasn't sure. Yes.

Yeah. So, I don't know to what degree the county may be incorporating that into some of their proposals for work to be done in Scots Creek. I haven't read their 319 thoroughly enough to be able to answer that question. It could very well be addressed in there. Um, I read it pretty quick. I just scanned it over, so I I have to spend more time with it. But if you go on to the county's website and look at the water department, they have the 319 grant. Let's see what the title of the thing is that you can look at and read if you want to. It's b it's basic it's just called Lake County 319 watershed plan final draft version and it's on their website on the county's website

so you can get a copy of it you can read it and look at it and they're basically looking at what they determined to be the most significant sources of uh sediment um in the county which of course includes Pa Creek watershed as well. There it is right now. Lake County 319 watershed plan March 11, 2025. So they want to do a flow study. They want to try and understand in Scots Creek wershed how um let's see where are the different projects.

We'll look at it. They have a list of them here. Anybody else have any other questions? I've got another one just out of left field.

Instead of having uh man-made beaver dams, could you have actual natural beavers introduced into that area that make their own dams? Uh well, the answer is yes and no. So when I say yes, it's thing that people are looking at doing and there have been numerous reintroductions of beavers in certain watersheds and there are numerous organizations that are working on that issue. But in the meantime, since we know how well beaver dams do function, of course, you don't have those little engineers in there to alter them and rebuild them and, you know, monitor them because they do a pretty good job of that. But if we build something similar, it'll provide the same function. And if we're diligent and maintain them, then we can actually kind of do the same thing. But there's one problem that doesn't retain water. So, a beaver would make a pond to have habitat in order for there to be fish and and and cottonwood trees, and that's not going to maintain that because that does not have sufficient water to form a a pond. So, in a lot of spots, we want the function of the beaver dam, but the beavers aren't going to be there because there isn't enough water. Now maybe in the future if we do a good enough job of getting plants to grow and retaining water and keeping more water in the upper whed and maybe then there'll be more some surface water and maybe a beaver could come in there. But until there's adequate habitat, we really can't put beavers there because they're not going to they're going to move on. They're going to say, "Hey, I'm there's no we tried, but there's no pond." And they also have to have enough willow and cottonwood and they're not there. So, the more work we do, the more

likelihood there's going to be willows and cottonwoods growing because we're going to need to build more groundwater and more sediment and more sufficient proper habitat for those plants to grow before we're going to get those plants. So, that's kind of the goal. You want to bring these issu these these processes back to the ecosystem and bring back the conditions that are conducive to these species of trees to grow there and then eventually it'll support them and then the ecosystem will start to function again. Does that make sense? That was great. Thank you so much.

You're welcome. Fascinating. Okay. Larry, thank you for your presentation and all your knowledge. We certainly want to have you back someday to sh We're going to find certain things that you brought up that we're going to ponder and I think you're the answer man to a lot of this. So appreciate your commitment to scratch the surface. There's a lot more to it. more detail questions.

Thank you so much. We appreciate you.

Okay, we're going to move on to we're going to we're going to move on to uh council business now and we're going to talk about the general plan. ad hoc committee report and also thought about the approval to submit it to the board of supervisors. Marggo, thank you, Mr. Chair. Um, who needs a copy, a hard copy of the draft that was uh sent out with the agenda? I have I have hard copies with me. If you need a copy, please raise your hand.

Thank you.

Thank you. So to maximize our uh efficiency here at Chair Scott's suggestion, I colorcoded the text. Everything in black we've already covered and uh your board had no problem with it. Now, the color-coded text is new material, and I suggest that we go through this page by page. If you have any questions or comments, I also have another suggestion. So, originally it was um this uh the recommendations were going to be addressed to Director Turner. I suggest that we address it to the uh board of supervisors. Copy Director Turner and copy the general plan advisory committee. Oh, I see I see nodding. So, thank you. Thank you for that.

Yeah, we agree the council agrees with you. Very good. So, I do see a question on the first page. I would like uh to affirm the council's uh decision whether you agree that Scots Valley recommends a closer look at the natural hazard mitigation plan and the development of a community wildfire protection plan for Scots Valley. I believe we agree on that. Anybody that doesn't, but I think that's something that's high priority.

Excellent. Very good. Do we have any other comments on the first page or questions? I see none.

Going to page two. It's all text that we've already uh seen before and agreed on. We're going on page three. We have some new comments in the middle of the page. We are covering. And so for those who are following along at home, um this was this draft is uh one of the attachments to the agenda that was posted Are they still on page two?

No, we're on page three. Do you have something on page two? No. I just want to make sure. Yeah. Yeah, we're on page three.

And that's more of a protective thing as well as a plan, you know. I think we, you know, when people move out here, they ought to be very transparent about our conditions out here, what's what's going on.

When people move out here, they should should be very transparent what their condition of the property is, what the history of any disasters and so forth are out here. And I think that's that's the only fair way to to be that. So when we look at what they are talking about here and we talk about the levies and that a critical infrastructure as far as some type of control for for flooding and so forth. These are points that we believe that the county should take a look at and if not be aware of it but have a plan or an idea of a plan of what we can do to support the citizens here. Clearly in my mind the section levy maintenance responsibility and liability is of prime importance. Just a just a subset of this. You know my whole plan is to leave Scotts Valley because of this. It's impossible. So,

and Sky, that's just what I said. Basically, we are concerned about that levy. That is a huge idea. If it's in place, we stand a better chance against a natural disaster such as flooding. And I think we need a lot more guidance from government of what's available, what we can look at, and where does that fit in the priority. not only is a plan for disaster mitigation as well as a response.

Anything else on page three? Oh, I think people need to carefully look at the four points, the four bullet points there and understand the significance of them. This is not just a little whip it on through there thing. This is really important. Each one of those is super important. So, do you want the bullets changed? Is it good as written? No, I think I like them. A lot of people put had an input into this and we want to move forward. This is what we want to go with. Very good. Thank you.

Yeah, I'd like to add my two bits to the the levy maintenance. I mean, so I'm a I'm I'm an I'm a part owner of the levy. Uh, I pretty much leave it alone, hoping that it's since it's been okay, it it'll stay okay. But I don't have control over the flood water from upstream from the BLM land. I don't know if that gets worse, if it's going to erode the levy at my place or not. So, there's something I'm responsible for and yet I can't control the water coming down that's going to cause the trouble. Likewise, uh, when the levy breaches at some place not on my property and the water comes back and and floods my place, which does happen or at least happened severely in 2019, that's due to water coming over the top of the levy uh downstream from me and then coming back through the gated culvert and flooding my place. So those are problems I I I feel like I'm responsible for and yet I can't do anything about it. I can't solve the problem. That's why to me the county needs to kind of get involved a little bit more and figure out some maintenance. And the problem with maintenance is probably if I'm typical of the land owners along Scotch Creek where there's levies, that's a maintenance item that is easy to put off. Uh, I need to get my house jacked up so it doesn't get flooded. That's sort of a little bit more urgent to me, but fixing the levy up is something we all put off and another reason why the county should be more involved.

Yeah, we need to hire more beavers to take care of this. Well, well, I I have a question then. So Joel, is it just for the sake of going through the the plan, are you suggesting additional language, different language, or you okay with the language as written? Well, you want to go back to it?

I it might just be a little stronger. levy maintenance falling to the property to property owners needs to be addressed by the county and its various plans. I'd say that's an recipe for failure to have levy maintenance falling to property owners. So I yes I think it needs to be stronger.

What do you suggest? The past history of levy maintenance by the property owners has been a failure. The county should become involved in maintenance, but that's going to take some legal research to see who's who and what on this level levy responsibility. We have a a history of levies out there that either the land owner or the government, either one or the other is responsible for or they both work together how to do that. And so I think we're going to have to figure out what is fact as far as who is responsible for what. We don't know that until we have some insight from uh legal research or opinion that is guiding us. I mean, I agree with you. We'd like to see that, but but who you know what is who is responsible? It's hard to know nail that down.

Well, I think this gets the question on the table clearly. What was the question? I think this and these four bullet points here, I think that gets the question on the I think this needs to be sorted out.

I agree. I think Joel, I think those four give us a a bite. It gives us a a a bite into the situation saying, "Hey, this is something that we feel that is that needs to be attended to. It is a priority and it's a start." And then added input is if they if they do buy into this and start to to look at this, then we need to provide more input from the local folks that know uh what's going on, their the needs and what they ideas might be. I think this lays a good groundwork for making future demands as it is.

Are you ready to continue or do you have a change? We don't have much time. We were supposed to read this at home.

So here council see if this will hit the mark. In levy maintenance, responsibility, liability, the second sentence, replace that with the following. Levy maintenance by land owners has failed. Lake County must be involved in levy maintenance. Is that stronger? And yet it doesn't say exactly what the county has to do. Not saying that the county is going to pay for it, but will be involved. That sounds better. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, I like that. Council, is that satisfactory? That sounds good. Thank you for your patience.

No worries. No worries. Okay. Are we good with page three? Yes. Okay. Page four. There's a lot of green text. Top, middle, and bottom of the page. I have one question. I think it's actually in the black part but sure I think it talks about uh let's see about that is moving high K soil that would be potassium soil I think that's right wasn't the concern here about high P soil higher soil that's an error thank you sky thanks good I she comes from a family of chemists too so

transcription error Just raise your hand if you're done with page four.

I think that's what we agreed upon is what you put in there. It's pretty close to it. Are we good to go to page five? Yes.

Very good. I had a I'm sorry. Go on. Okay. You said at the bottom insert sky's comment. Did you do that somewhere else? This is on page four. Oh, page four. Sorry. Under agricultural values. Oh, Sky, I need to get that from you. You had a comment about traditional crops and intensive agriculture. I think that went back to our first meeting. I something I wrote. I I'm I'm not really clear on what that is.

Rats. I have a question for council and uh assembly page five towards the bottom. Want to confirm the wording. Scots Valley residents support agric the agricultural sector and value the preservation of agricultural lands. Introducing a retail agriculture zone may have a positive effect on Lake County agriculture. Are you okay with that wording? Does everybody know what that means? Retail agriculture.

Well, that's a good question. I mean, I wouldn't know if I wasn't part of that conversation earlier. Yeah. All right. It's it's an option for people out here to You know what? If someone reads it, they don't know what what is meant by retail agriculture. That's just my only thought I could. Well, and that's a that's a valid point. Okay. So, it just rephrase it so that it's so nobody has to go, oh,

what does that mean? The store on on the or farm stand or does it what does it mean? value added products or you know zoning to make it legal to make your own jams or I mean really could mean so many things and agricultural zone I have a question is there actually a definition for that that can be inserted I have no answer to that

it could be put in a it could be put in a footnote at the end of the thing of a description because now you're getting into a long description of a list of different type of businesses that real that rings on and on and on. So, it's either a yes it is or no, it's not. So, right. You could put a footnote like you did down there. Yeah, the general plan is supposed to have a glossery, but I don't think it was fully populated when the draft was released. I'll look I'll look Yeah. for a definition. A footnote is fine.

Okay. Thank you. Anything else for page five? Okay. to page six. If you wanted to shorten it, I don't think we need many details need to be considered. It just would read uh right through there skipping that part and going right amongst the possibilities are

where where that's that's the top of page six the red leave out the I'm saying if you want to shorten it leave out many details need to be considered just retailed and specialy livestock operations require more consideration among the possibilities are dairy goats population the middle part is just repeating kind of what the first part said. Okay. Many details need to be considered. I think that's just somewhat repetitive from the first sentence and this doesn't be needed. But if you want to leave it in there, it's fine. The second sentence is not necessary is what he's saying. I I think it's important to leave it in there.

That's fine. I mean, I'm sure they're going to shorten it anyway. So the more words, the more um clarity, right?

I'm good with page six. Any other comments on page six? Going. Going. uh sky people carefully considered the part of about balancing hitch conservation with water demand for frost protection. That's a really important and where where is that on page six? The last Oh, I see. Very good. I see.

Make everything black. Oh, we will the final. This was for those who only wanted to read what changed. I just would like to add that I I think the the sense I don't know where this one the need for frost protection solutions that use litter little or no water remains significant. Um as far as I know the only things that really qualify in that are really structural. So, I don't know. Maybe that sentence should come out. So, okay. I'm just I'm a little not sure what goal we're trying to get to there. Okay.

Oops. What were you supposed to ask me about the labor web? What What are your big thoughts on the labor web? I don't know what is important to convey the labor web. What's the word usually labor? What web web?

What do you mean by web? I don't know. I thought I got that from you. Oh, so in this context we're it was it is um immigration policies add pressure to the county's agricultural workforce which is primarily Latino. So what thoughts what important things should we keep in mind Cornelia? to educate them not to throw trash from McDonald's down to their camp on the way back. Every day I see those people throwing eating the

Hamburger Hill stuff right by my house. Out goes the bag or the straws or the cups or whatever. It it's not I'm just I'm saying there's nothing we can do about it. It just happens. I think that was a comment early on before I was no longer part of the ad hoc. Uhhuh. It it was

Yeah. And I think it had to do with um how interconnected everything is. It's like if the labor force especially the the migrant labor force um is not considered then the whole web it's a web like a spider web or like a spoken wheel. That's what I meant by web because they, you know, it's just all related. I mean, I remember was that in Is there isn't isn't there a better description or Yeah, it is.

Um, but in 2008, um, I think I can't even remember how many tons of pairs had to be composted because of lack of labor. And it wasn't just a shortage, it was a lack back then. It was a there's an ice raid at the at the you know at the what's that place called the fairgrounds oh during an event celebrating agriculture and it had ripple effects and I think my comment came from the web effect of of stupid decisions or shortsighted decisions on on people's you know so would that be a ripple effect is that what

yeah something like that But it was I mean that's where my comment came from. And so I don't know um I just I guess I feel like a sentence in there about uh the importance of not operating in silos, which this county really does. It's much better now, but it it really used to be like you know the administration, the tax people, the police force, the sheriff, um the the brokers that bring labor here. it's a business, you know, um, all that. They're just interconnected. But I I wasn't part of this process. I don't want to hold up the whole thing, but that's what, you know, I think that that's what I wanted to get at because it affects everything. You know, less than 1% of the food produced consumed in this county is produced here. It's just one disaster after another waiting to happen. I I' I'd like to add something to that. Uh I think which is I find the federal policy on immigration. Of course, the federal government is in charge of immigration generally in a general sort of way.

However, uh deporting migrant laborers is not very It's not a good idea in my opinion. I'm opposed to the federal policy. I I don't So then that brings up the question, can the county do anything at all to limit the effects of the federal policy in this county on people who are here working? Can that can the county do anything at all to help? I have a question. So what would you like to be phrased in the general plan? Good question.

I mean, it's it's a fair question, but for the sake of this exercise, is there anything you want to put in there? Um, current immigration policies are adverse to Lake County's agricultural economy. That sounds good. You can just take my thing out and it's also covered in the next paragraph that's already black. Okay. So, Joel Joel, would you please repeat your comment?

Current federal immigration policies are adverse to Lake County's agricultural economy. There's one more one more sentence in there, Tom, which I I could get to maybe, which is, does it have to do with McDonald's rappers? is what does that have to do with McDonald's rappers?

Yeah, it's don't don't help the feds is what I mean I'm sort of I'm gonna get a little bit into my personal views too much, but the the county probably has some authority and independence to not assist the federal government. You can't disobey the federal government, but there are limits to how much assistance needs to be provided. I believe now so I I would suggest okay if you wanted one more sentence it would be the county should assist or cooperate with the federal government only as required by law and no more. Okay. Anything else on page seven? We're on page eight. Margaret, you mentioned this was colorcoded. What do the different colors signify?

I'm sorry, what? You had mentioned that this document was colorcoded. Yes. Yes. What do the various colors signify?

It um represents various stages of the draft and who contributed comments. So, uh it's the color code is at the front. So, Skye's March 13th comments are in red font and some of the changes made after March 13th are also in red font. Um green font. Hang on. Oh, here we go. Um, text after the March meeting is in green font. Oh, and Jared's uh March 13th revisions are in violet. Some violet is at the top of page three.

I see. Purple. Purple. Yeah. And there's some purple on page five, too. Horizon. One. One word. Yeah. And so now we're on eight. That's all green. Yes.

Yes. So, all green text since the March council meeting is in green font. I agree. So I I am confused about the revised policy 3.3.1B replacement of remove vegetation. I don't really know what that pertains to. Be the second paragraph on page eight.

Uhhuh. That uh policy has to do with removed vegetation for development. So the recommendation is that um the general plan should follow guidance in the county's tree protection and pro tree tree preservation and protection ordinance when that particular ordinance is passed. Does that make sense? So right now there is no tree ordinance and so whatever guidance on removed vegetation and replacement of said vegetation is only in the general plan or in existing ordinances.

You know I guess coming from the nursery industry I have a those kind of blanket statements kind of bristle me. Just one example here. If you look in Lakeport and you see the non-native cedrris diodora, they have some of the most majestic trees, evergreen trees in the city of Lakeport that compete wholeheartedly with the native coastal redwood primarily because they tolerate drought and lack of irrigation. So, I mean, I kind of get what you want to include native plants, but I I don't know. I'm just not sure where that's going and all that. What What do you suggest?

I I don't know. It's a complicated issue to me. I just It's a preference st. It's a prep station and if something should go through, it would be considered to support it or go along with it, but it does give us an opening to disc continue to discuss that so we're not tied in. So it's what it's saying is as the new regulation should be adopted, we always have that input at that board meeting to provide our input should we disagree with it or update it. So we're just trying to follow along with where the county's headed in advance here.

There's um enough latitude in there with the word should in uh government ease. You have to watch out for the must. That mean there's no wiggle room with must. You could also just say appropriate instead of, you know, eliminating it because sometimes a native is not always appropriate. How about should include? Okay. Very good.

Anything else for page eight? Yes. Good job. Let's go to page nine. Okay. To page nine. And Jody Addict is the vice chair. Jody is vice chair. Yeah. Vice chair. and and Joel is a member at large. At large.

Okay. And then I just have a few notes to share with you. Okay. Um important dates coming up related to the general plan. Uh, April 24th is the last day for public comment on the environmental impact report for the general plan. April 30th is the closing date for public comment on the general plan and local area plans. Um, there is one action that may u be of great interest to your council and that is in the draft of the Lakeport area plan. It's on page L133 and it's action L-SSA-5C and that item is develop groundwater recharge conservation combining district regulations for Scots Valley. So, so we want to keep an eye on that one.

Would you um email it and they'll put it in that next agenda? Very good. But the timing is what? Because the 24th is this week and the 30th is next week. Oh, it's before our next meeting. Yeah, it's before the next meeting. So, but I um we'll put it in the minutes the dates and hopefully we'll get the minutes out before then.

Yeah. And here's another date. The next local area plan for this area is on Friday, April 24th at 1 PM. It's a virtual only meeting unless you want to request that it be an in-person meeting. And if you wanted to have that rescheduled, um please direct your request to uh the director of community development. And so I think that covers general plan for now. Um general plan advisory committee had its last meeting last Friday. Um we may meet in August uh when the the final versions come out. We'll see. And then um the drafts well the finals will be distributed or actually presented to the planning commission and to the board of supervisors for approval.

Thank you everybody for your great work. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah, Margot, we want to recognize you for your commitment and certainly uh you are very committed to doing this

and so patient. We got, like I said, we were at the last meeting just you and and and um the director. I don't know where the rest of these interested people were, but we were there trying to do that. So, she gave us some dates, folks. If you're concerned about it, show up at these meetings. This is the last chance for input. She just gave you the dates. And so that's where the rubber meets the road is the last chance on both these days, the 28th and the 30th. If you feel there's a concern, you need to show up and voice your opinion, not wait for us to get here for the next meeting, but to be there. So I highly suggest participation. We're too complacent. We need to be there and be committed to this. So I encourage you to attend these meetings and provide that input to make sure things. Go ahead, Cornelia. Thank you for the reminder. Um I think we should table the next item.

Yes, I was going to bring that up. I appreciate it. So, we're going to table the um the bylaws and come back to that on the next agenda. We'll put that down as a May 18th agenda item. And so, we're going to go into quickly into updates, calendars, and other reports. Supervisor Rasmmanson. Yeah. So, we were talking about the uh sediment in the lake earlier. You know, Scots Creek is one of the biggest is the biggest producer of sediment into Clear Lake. Um based on everything I've learned, I believe that's the situation. But I just wanted to mention the blue ribbon committee has some projects that are starting up. Um, one of them that's just going to be finishing up this week. It's been going on for two weeks is the phosphorus binding treatment that was happening in the upper arm of the lake. I'm not sure if anybody saw anything about that,

but basically what that that project is is they're doing a pilot project in a 400 acres area of the upper arm and putting this uh substance, this nonharmful substance in to the lake that sinks down to the bottom and is supposed to bind the phosphorus and and ultimately definely reduce these algae blooms by not having the phosphorus available. So that that'll finish up and then it'll be tested. They'll be monitoring it for the next year or so to see how it works. There's also several other projects that are also targeted at dealing with the harmful algo blooms that are blue ribbon projects that have been approved and funded. Another one being the hypolyinetic oxygenation system that they're going to install down in Clear Lake Oaks that will use technology to inject oxygen into the bottom of the lake. Then the next one that's getting ready to start is the LG sonic buoys that use a sonic technology that prevents the algae from from growing. That's going to be 14 buoys down in the in the Clear Lake area. And so there's another one that just got a recommended by Blue Ribbon last month and that's the nanobubble technology and that one doesn't have funding yet, but the Blue Ribbon did recommend it. Hopefully it'll get funding over the next six months or so. And then if that one ultimately gets funded, that would be in the Soda Bay area. So I think the

idea is over the next year or so These are all monitored and then we see what the science says about what works, what has the best effect and then maybe we can uh you know increase what's being done with whatever technology works the best to ultimately treat the lake uh going into the future. So I just wanted to mention that those the two more will be starting soon and then the fourth one will will come a little later. So, another thing that's going to be in front of the board of supervisors tomorrow, there's a a state conservancy that's a Sacramento Sanwaqin Delta conservancy. There's legislation being brought forward to expand that consery up through the the Sacramento Valley. And it was basically thrown out to us if Lake County wanted to be in that consery because Clear Lake does drain to the Sacramento Valley and ultimately the Sacramento River and the Delta. So, we have an item tomorrow that we're taking to the board to see if uh our board as a whole is in favor of asking to be included in that legislation. And uh if so, if Lake County does get included, the whole county would be part of a conservancy which could benefit us in the future for funding for projects. Not just the county, but other organizations and tribes could benefit from it as well. Right now, there's there's no no money that would come to us based on entering that. It's just that we would be in

there and when there's funding available down the road and grants available, we could potentially benefit from that. Um the only there is a companion bill to that for for an increase in some funding, but that is focused just on doing repair work to the the levies down in the Delta, not anything else. So, just wanted to mention those items that are that are out there going on if anybody has any questions. Yeah, Brad, try to answer them.

First of all, thank you for your Hoffland Road on the on the trash up there. I think that is a real shame that people dump their trash all up and down there. Lake County is beautiful before the trash was here and I I appreciate that. I hope that doing well. I think we I'd like to see something here in Scots Valley. I don't know how our council could get involved, but I always like to see a program out here where we could uh work with a group to to keep the trash out of here because every day people are just dumping everywhere. Yeah. I think last time I looked, I know the Hendricks Road has a family that cleans that. I want to say there's a section of Scots Valley Road that was still available for somebody to adopt. I'd have to go verify it, but I think there is one two-mile section that's available. And uh yeah, I appreciate you bringing that up. Uh we do have a lot of different folks that have adopted sections of road, but definitely could use more uh to be out there and maybe get Kelseyville just got certified by CALR as a clean community because of all the road cleanups and other projects they're doing. Maybe we could get one over in the Lakeport as well if we can get more participation in that. But yeah, the Hopland grade has an enormous amount of garbage and my section is three miles. I'm only allowed to clean the turnouts where it's big enough to park a car. I'm not allowed to clean the other areas because it's it's pretty dangerous to be on some of that shoulder. So, I just do the turnouts. But I've got one turnout there that I can't or one area there's over 500 tires in the headarters of uh Manning Creek

plus thousands of pounds of appliances and furniture and thousands of pounds of household garbage. I bet you there's better than 50,000 pounds of garbage down off this almost vertical incline that goes into the headarters of Manning Creek. and I've been working with the county on trying to get a plan. That's going to be a big job. We've got to hire a contractor. We've got to have excavators, rope, safety harnesses. It's a it's a massive job that

is going to cost a ton of money. So, um well, I mean, I say probably $30,000, which I think is a big amount of money that we have to take out of somewhere else. So, anyway, that concludes my report. Unless there's a question. Uh, chair asked me some question on on the conservancy. Yeah.

You said it might in the future bring money available to the county and other organizations. Would some of those organizations be private organizations? they would be uh more I I don't know the answer to a private, but something like the resource conservation district, the land trust, the tribes, a nonprofit potentially or the county itself could benefit from available grants that are that are likely to be available in the future. And the reason I'm in favor of it is because it could complement what we're doing with Blue Ribbon and other things to just bring more money in. I don't see any downsides. It's not they're not a regulatory agency. Conservancy is not regulatory. There's not going to be any regulations put on us or anybody for being in the conservy. It's just could bring potential benefits in the future. So that's the way I understand it.

Thank you. Thank you, Supervisor. Thank you. And we're running well deep over the time limit here. So, we're going to go through this quick next meeting. We're certainly going to bring back the bylaws of the uh council to look at that and review. So, members, please read that, come back with your opinions. Again, I want to uh thank Larry for being here today with your wonderful presentation of what we had. There's a lot of uh things we learned and certainly we we need to ponder what you said. I appreciate that.

We can still ask for any input from C to G. I mean upcoming dates. Yeah, we're gonna I didn't hear you. Yeah, I know. I saw that. We're just, you know, we're just the groundwater, fire mitigation, Scots Valley infrastructure. Like I said, we're running late on this meeting, so we're going to kind of I think Well, unless somebody has a quick comment. Yeah, unless there's a quick comment on that. We're need to We're trying to move along here. Okay, I'm going to move on to the council member updates. Any updates from anybody? Joel? No, nothing.

Jody, Cornelia, any updates? I have none. Unless you do, Cornelia. No, I'll deal with it under F. Okay. And then the next meeting is 18th. F is German. So, what's that going to happen? Um F I have um potential dates for the neighbor Fest. Um June 28th or September 20th. Just put that in your hopper and see what happens. September 20th. Okay. So, it's before the heat and after the heat. Good. All right. Sounds good.

And um our supervisor is offered to make your grill master again. Yes. And I'll donate my normal little monetary amount to your to your towards your stuff. With that in mind, thank you everybody for being here. Dodge the raindrops on the way home. Drive careful. Yes. Besides the bylaws that we table, are there any other agenda items that you want to put on the agenda for next month? Margot, are you going to want to come back with anything? Leave your standing item.

Okay. Okay. Very good. Okay. Great. Thank you. All right. Meeting adjourned. Thank you everybody. Be careful in the rain. Thank you. The time of the meeting. The time of the meeting adjournment is what? 7:20. 7:21.