Flood Control and Water Conservation District - Regular Meeting

Welcome. Are we ready, mister Morgan?

Yes. We're live.

Alright. Thank you. Welcome, and good morning. This is the flood control and water conservation district meeting of 07/15/2025, Napa County. We will call the meeting to order and take the roll call.

Director Doering? Here. Director Alessio? Here. Director Washington?

Here.

Director Moeller?

Here.

Vice Chair Sedgley? Here. Director Cottrell? Here. Director Lopez Ortega?

Here.

Director De Natale? Here. Director Ramos?

Here.

Director Manfrey is en route. Chair Gallagher?

Here. Okay. Please stand if you're able and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance. All right. I do want to make a change to the agenda.

We are going to take item 9A, which is the approval of our budget, which we do have to do again. We were not in keeping with the rules last time, so we're going to take a vote again. We are going to do that after number four, presentations and commendations. So if everyone could just be aware that we'll be doing that. So we are now to number three, approval of minutes. And are there any comments on the minutes from 06/10/2025? All right. Seeing none, then I'll entertain a motion. Okay. Moved by Alessio, seconded by Washington.

All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstentions? All right. Thank you. We do not have any presentations accommodations. So we are going to move to item 9A, public hearing, the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District budgets. And we will hear from staff.

Morning. Rick Thomas here, district manager. And yes, thank you for introducing the item. We the district act does require the final adoption of the budget to be a four fifths vote. So we were there was some debate at the meeting about it, and we were short a few votes. So we're just going to ask you should probably reopen the public hearing.

Yes. The public hearing is open.

Okay. And, basically, I'll let Sarah just walk through the proposed appropriations, and we'll take any questions you might have on the budget.

Okay. Sarah Geis, Supervising Staff Services Analyst, Flood Control District. Today, we are going to be adopting the fiscal year twenty six budget. I'll go through subdivisions for the appropriations. Division 8 Thousand five, watershed projects, 4,570,454.

Division 8005, NPDES storm water, $593,470. Subdivision or I'm sorry. Division 8005 Rutherford maintenance, 185,300. Division eight thousand five, Oakville to Oak Knoll maintenance, 150,000. Total appropriations for 8,005, $5,499,224.

Division eight zero zero one zero, flood control project, $23,648,271. Division eight zero zero one 1, flood project measure a, $22,950,364. Division eight zero zero one two, flood maintenance measure a, $697,907. Division eight zero zero one five, water supply contracts, $12,823,100. And division eight zero one zero zero, Oakville to Oak Knoll CFD, a 158,000.

Total appropriations, $65,776,866. Do you have any questions?

Any questions from anyone on the dais before we ask for public comment? Do we have any public comment on this item here or on the phone? Okay. Back to board. Anyone? Okay. I will entertain a motion if no one has any questions or comments. And I'll close the public hearing.

I'll make a motion that we approve the budget.

All right. Moeller makes the motion. Seconded by Satchel. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstentions? Great. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Oh, you

have a question. All right, Margie. Go ahead. Microphone.

It's a governance question that goes to somebody on the staff. So we went through a lot of discussion last time. We thought we got it right, but we didn't get it right. So my question is, this four fifth vote, is this something that's dictated by state law or is this just the statute that we've opposed upon ourselves in our bylaws?

It it is it's the district, the flood Control district's a special district of the state. It's created in state law, and the district act specifically includes that provision. So it is written into legislation. So the only way to change it would be to actually do a legislative amendment with the state. So

Okay. So it it goes because it's a special district.

Right.

So the special districts govern

Govern. Yeah.

After fifth vote.

There was there was conflicting discussion about how budgets are adopted, how the county does the budget. We follow some of our purchasing policies, follow the county, things like that. But when it comes to the district specifically adopting its budget, we actually when we actually went back and researched, it's very specifically identified in the district act that the budget requires that forfeits vote.

So if it was just a county board, we could have that discussion.

Yeah. Possibly. I don't know if counsel

Technically, wants the district act requires 14 votes.

Yeah. So it makes

it even more complicated. No.

But if you were not a special district and just a county board, that would be entirely different.

It would operate

under a different set of rules.

Okay.

This is a state regulation.

Okay. I got it. Thank Thank

you. Thanks for that bit of education. That's helpful. Okay. We will go ahead then and move to our consent items A through E. Do we have any public comment on our consent items? None in the room? Anything on the phone? Okay, I'll bring it back. Would anyone like to make a motion?

So moved.

All right. We have a motion by Gottrell. Second by Moeller. Some people are really good at this. You know, they've been here a long time. All those in favor, say aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstentions? All right. Thank you. Okay. We are now at public comment. At this time, anyone may address the board regarding any subject not on today's agenda. Anyone on the phone? I don't see anyone in the room. Okay. We will move on then. We are now at eight a. Receive an update on the phase two stormwater national pollutant discharge elimination system permit renewal. Mouthful.

All right. Thank you. Come on up.

Good morning.

There we go. All right. Good morning, Chairperson Gallagher and members of the Board. My name is Jeff Skinner. I'm the Stormwater Program Manager for the Napa Countywide Stormwater Pollution Prevention Program. I've been there a little over three point five years now. Today, I kind of wanted to discuss a little bit about our stormwater program. I wanted to talk about what's in our current permit, what we're looking at for the future permit and also give you guys a heads up on three things that should be on your radar. Can we turn the slides on? All right.

Next slide, please. Alright. So about the stormwater program, Napa County wide stormwater pollution prevention program is a JPA that's through the six different agencies within the county. We were lucky that our predecessors realized how effective it would be to have one position oversee a lot of the outreach and information like that. The main purpose of the JPA is to prevent stormwater pollution, protect and enhance water quality in creeks and wetlands, preserve beneficial uses of local waterways and comply with state and federal regulations.

Next slide. This one? Nice. All right. A little bit about our budget. You heard Sarah talk a little bit before about our budget being about $596,000 for this upcoming year. So this is a little bit about where our budget money comes from. This isn't a slide you necessarily need to study. It's just more of an idea of kind of where everything is coming from. Currently, the watershed maintenance assessment district covers half the staff costs, which would be my time and the admin's time.

The budget has been pretty stable the past five or so years. But with the new permit, we're looking to probably need increases in the next coming years. Big reason before we get into the permit is why we need a permit. The big reason is stormwater flows untreated in our local waterways, and stormwater has been identified as significant source of pollutants in the waterways. These pictures here are all pictures within Napa County of discharges going up to the storm drain.

So a little bit about what our current permit is like. In the Water Quality Act of 1987 first required storm water discharge permits that were left out of the Clean Water Act. The first phase of permits, the phase one permits we issued in the 90s to the larger municipalities. Think, Conchacost County, Alameda County, it's basically South Bay and any of the larger agencies. The Phase two permit programs became effective March 2003.

And our last or current permit was adopted February 2013 and was supposed to expire in 2018, but we're still on that expired permit. So what's in our current permit? The permit is 300 plus pages, so it's really tough to summarize in a couple of slides. But these are the big items: education and outreach, storm drain outfall monitoring, catch basin cleaning, hotspot inspections, construction maintenance BMPs and inspecting post construction BMPs. So what new things might be in the permit?

This is all subject to change. We've been actively engaged with the state water board for the past two plus years on getting this new permit. And based on the local or the last revision, this is what we're seeing. One of the big ones is inventory all of our industrial commercial facilities that could discharge pollutants into the stormwater. What's tricky with the wording is that's basically any commercial business from your UPS store all the way up to restaurants, wineries.

And that's a huge undertaking to try to understand where all the businesses are, especially for unincorporated county, which doesn't issue business licenses because then there's not that easy tool that we can use to gather some data. Next one is stormwater asset management inventory. Depending on the specifics of what the requirement will be, it's going be a huge cost and take a lot of time to complete. For those of you who are familiar with sanitary sewer regs, it's very similar to CMOM and SSMP regulations. The difference is we have about half the time that the sewer agencies had to comply with it, and we don't have the ability to raise rates or increase rates to pay for it.

Next one up would be inspections of the inventoried sites. We'll cycle at least once every five years. While that sounds somewhat practical, it gets complicated when new businesses start, old businesses close, there's change out. You're always kind of chasing it. It's a huge workload.

Lastly, a pet waste hotspot. This really isn't a huge work task. It's just more of this is another example of the creep of these permits, how they keep adding more and more on that don't have direct water quality benefits. We go. So when will we see the new permit?

So originally due for renewal 07/01/2018. We've seen a limited release draft copy within the past year or so. We were supposed to see a copy of it this month, and now we're seeing based the State Water Board's calendar, we probably won't see it until February 2026 with possible hearing adoption date of October. One of the things that's kind of hanging us up is there's a recent Supreme Court decision on the case of San Francisco versus EPA. They're still trying to sort through the language on that and figure out how that's going to apply. Since the Phase II permits are one of the first permits out the gate after this decision, it's really taken them some time to try to figure out what's going on and how they need to do to comply with it.

So

the top three requirements that should be on your radar, and these are current requirements, trash capture, mercury and PCB, TMDLs and cost reporting. Next slide. First one, trash capture. So the regulation requires each municipality to install trash capture in priority areas under permits defined as priority land use areas and think of heavy use. So heavy duty industrial areas, commercial, heavy occupancy, residential, public transportation stations like bus stops, that sort of stuff.

The draft permit had language that we needed to get 30% of these done by December 2026, 65 by December 2028, and a 100% by December 2030. And that last date, that December 2030 is not gonna go away. That's the one that's set in the TMDL. But those other two are going to have to change because we probably won't even get a new permit by December 2026. Next one, please. So this is just an example of what the trash capture device looks like. The one on the left is a small unit. It serves like one single storm drain. And as you can see, it's a little tough on the pictures. That's actually a mesh that's got holes that are smaller than five millimeters.

And the reason it's five millimeters is that's just a little bit smaller than a cigarette. So when they came up with these regulations, that was what they used is a cigarette size to try to catch those particles. The one on the right is a high flow trash capacity device. This is one it would connect to, you know, usually a dozen or more, sometimes will serve several blocks. The benefit with these systems is it not only captures trash, it also removes oil and sediments and, you know, pollutants that are associated with sediment like the mercury and PCBs and that sort of stuff.

Next slide. So the challenges on this, those small devices installed cost about $1,000 each. Depending on the manufacturer, they you know, there's 20 different people making them and they all have their own bells and whistles. And the bigger ones cost several $100,000 and they involve a lot more engineering. And then you have to also worry about conflicts with utilities.

It just it takes a lot more work, but sometimes more economical. One of the other challenges is these storm drains with these filters require more maintenance. Instead of cleaning them once a year is where currently required, we would have to clean them twice a year. It also requires a vac truck or equivalent like a vacuum trailer or some other device to get them out. And because of that, you're also generating more trash and more leaves and more stuff. So you're also generating more waste, which can be a challenge as we're trying to limit how much waste we send off to landfills. So not all storm drains are compatible. Some are right in the tidal area. These devices aren't going to really work well. Some are just too shallow.

There's a whole bunch of reasons why they may not work. The big challenge, though, is securing funding for not only the installation but the increased maintenance cost. I know a lot of the roads crews are kind of tapped already, and this is just adding more work to them. Next one. Next one to keep tabs on is mercury and PCBs TMDLs.

Typically, this is from historic use. So what is this going to require? Green infrastructure plan and implementation. And green infrastructure, think like bioswales, stuff like that, for us to manage PCB containing materials and waste during demolition, source property identification, PCB control from bridges, PCB control from utilities, mercury collection recycling, sampling, monitoring and education outreach. There's a lot of stuff in there.

Then the challenges next slide, please. The challenges we run into is, like everything else, it's going to require new programs. New programs require new money to develop. It also is going to require creation of a complex green infrastructure plan or a series of plans. And while that sounds good on surface level, oftentimes, it's just another really expensive plan that sits on a shelf and doesn't actually help water quality.

Funding of green infrastructure is tricky right now, especially with the EPA grants kind of being squeezed. And we're also supposed to search for extremely low levels of pollutants, actually lower than the state screening level when they release commercial properties. For example, if you get a contaminated site and the state water board comes in and says, okay, you guys have done a great cleanup job, you're good to go, site is clean. We actually have to look for sites that are half of that level. So they're asking us to do significant more work than they're currently doing even on their cleanup sites.

One of the other issues we run into is we have a lack of typical source areas, especially for PCBs. A lot of the more industrialized counties, Alameda, Contra Costa, the ones with historic shipyards, they've got a lot of sources because you've got old PCB transformers and stuff that contains a PCB had PCBs in So while we're lucky that we don't have the typical source areas, we're still going to be required to do the same level of work looking for them. So it's kind of a mixed blessing there. The last challenge with it is monitoring current and its current writing is very extensive, and it's really confusing. So we're trying to get that defined because it's gonna require us to work with other North Bay agencies to make sure we have comparable sample results.

All right. So the last one is to standardize cost reporting. This is actually a policy that went into effect January. We're supposed to begin tracking costs in July with the first data due in October 2027. So this slide is a little overwhelming with the colors and stuff.

Sorry about that. But basically what we need to track the costs on is overall program management, capital cost, minimum control measures, water quality monitoring, miscellaneous cost. Next slide. This is where it gets tricky, is not only in that do we have to do those broad categories, they also want us to kind of dive down into this level of itemization, like a, cost related staff wages and benefits and overhead. They're really getting in the weeds with some of this stuff.

Next one. So the big challenge with this is it affects multiple departments and groups in each jurisdiction. I know for the county itself because I've got my most experience with the county, you've got so many people that have their hands in storm water, even if it's a little bit the sheriff's department. You know, four times a year I go out and inspect them, their staff has to do certain elements for the so how are we going to track their time to include it on this report out? It also only applies to work required under the permit.

For example, if we're told we only need to do one site inspection of a construction site every winter and we do two, somehow we're supposed to figure out to divvy that up. This also only applies to the Napa River watershed. So the whole Lake Berryessa area wouldn't count. So any stormwater work we do out there, we wouldn't be allowed to report, which makes it tricky because if we have a building inspector that's working in different areas, are we really going to require him to track or them to track what work they did in this watershed versus the other? The biggest difficulty I run into on this is how to track the time and cost around multiple groups.

We all have different account codes, different ways of doing things. So I'm not quite sure how we're going to be able to centralize and get that data. Last thing is it's also required to be done at the same time everything else. So we've had a state that's kicked the permit renewal down the road for five, six, seven years now. And instead of spacing out the new requirements, they're dropping a whole bunch of stuff on us in the next three to four years.

So the timing on it is pretty horrible, but that's kinda what we've got to deal with. Excellent. So lastly, I didn't wanna end with the kinda gloom and doom things. I wanna hit some of our program successes. So in 2023, we partnered with Marin Countywide program, mixed up, along with Sonoma Stormwater program for a grant to improve our outreach through the Streets to Creeks program.

In 2024 last year, we got we're involved in a bigger grant with the EPA and all the Bay Area stormwater agencies for some of those PCB monitoring cost. We're hopeful that this grant will allow us to do a lot of the work required under the TMDLs using the EPA's money. Also for fiscal year 2324, the RCD does a lot of outreach for us. They do a great job, and they did in person outreach for us. We've reached over 2,000 people and removed over 5,100 pounds of waste from our creeks.

And lastly, the Streets to the Creeks campaign, it's that logo you see on the page there. We started that in early twenty twenty four. And for less than four thousand dollars we had over 1,000,000 impressions and 21,000 clicks, which is a really good number compared to our traditional outreach. And that's what I have for you guys. If you have any questions, I'm more than happy to answer. And if I don't know, I'll look it up and get back to you.

Great. Thank you. Can you repeat again the time frame on this in terms of when we have to be compliant?

For the permit or the trash capture? There's a bunch of different deadlines.

Okay. I think I'm thinking some of the more trickier pieces like the reporting, etcetera.

Yeah. The cost reporting, we need to start tracking that cost 07/01/2026, and we'll report out on that when our annual report is due the next year, which is typically in October.

Okay. And do you have a plan to make a plan?

We've got a good consultant that's helping us set up some plans. We're trying to learn from other agencies. There were some agencies like City of Santa Rosa that did they were kinda guinea pigs to try to do some cost reporting. So we're trying to learn from what worked for them and what didn't work. It's it's one of those things where it's it's influx because everyone's different. Every city is a little bit different in how they handle stuff. You know, that if you look at the amount of staff of Yountville compared to the county overall, you know, their systems might be a little bit different than

ours. Okay.

Alright. Thank you. Director Alasio?

I didn't hear anything about the budget, like the funding. This seems like a very, very big lift. But therefore, financially, I assume it's going to be a very big lift. You mentioned the small devices are $1,000 per. You said the bigger devices could be a couple $100,000. So one question is what defines a bigger device? What qualifies where something needs to be a bigger device? You also mentioned that one of the devices, the trash capturing devices, one for every few blocks. So I'm trying to link which device and what this overall cost is going to be and how do we pay for it.

Right. It's very site specific because you have depending on the drainages, there's some that just do not work to have multiple drains connected into it, either because they're too far away or they may be too shallow. So there's a lot of different construction reasons we couldn't do a large device. They are typically more efficient because instead of having to go out and clean 20 individual drains, you're able to go to one location, clean that out. It's also got better removal for the other pollutants so we can get credit for some of the other requirements we're supposed to do. So it's very much a case by case basis. And each city has a plan in place or each agency has a plan in place on how they're going to tackle that.

Do we have an idea of what type of funding, what the budget is going to require and where the funding is coming from?

I don't know if we've gotten into those details much. I think a lot of the stuff has been kind of kicked down the road waiting on this new permit because some of the requirements have changed and we've all been kind of hesitant to go out and put a whole bunch of stuff in the ground and find out later that the requirement changed and we're going to have to redo it.

Again, where is the funding coming from? Is it funded at all by the state or federal funding? Or is this going to be local county funding?

Yeah, it's going to be local funding. We did get one thing I didn't go over is we did get a small grant to do a pilot project for unincorporated counties. So we're going to install 10 single trash capture devices down in the Devlin Tower area. So there is opportunities to get some grant funding. It's just really competitive, and we're all up against that same date. So as we get closer to the date, we're going to have more and more people going for the same thing. So it's going be a little trickier.

I want to thank you for this presentation. I appreciate it.

Director I'm going to go to Director Cottrell, then Moeller, then Menfree.

Yeah. I want to echo my thanks for the presentation. It's really helpful to get a picture of everything that is already on your plate and the things that are getting added. I'm on page six where, again, kind of following up on some of director Alessio's questions, learning about the trash capture devices. And this list of challenges sounds daunting.

I did just want to also point out there's a great pro here, right? There's a lot of stuff with that high flow capacity trash device that comes out of the waterway. So I think that's important to remember for public health and also watershed health and agricultural health. So there is a pro there as well as all of the cons. But related to Director Alessio's question, the other thing I wrote down is unfunded mandates, right?

This is something that is really hitting the county and I know all our cities too. So what there pieces in here that feel I guess we should stay in conversation about what pieces feel, you know, challenging but it makes sense and we can see where there will be funding streams available. And if there's a list of things that are so burdensome it's pushing you outside of where you can be operational because I think, you know, that's impacting not only our jurisdictions but jurisdictions around the state. So does that make sense? Definitely. Great.

Okay. Thank you. And Dirk and Moore?

So I guess today's my day for asking, like, how do these things work? So this is a JPA. Does this board govern that JPA? So, like, you know, we're going to have to probably increase some of the budgets. Who's in charge?

I blame this guy.

Okay. I was going to come to the rescue a little bit about the money kind of thing. So just going back to slide three, how so what Jeff is, Jeff is an employee of the county, but he's our storm water manager and he oversees what we call the county wide program. So it's sort of like a glue that holds us all together. Think of it.

We aren't the flood control district is not a permitted entity. So we actually don't, as the district, have any obligations under this program, the flood control district. But we're a very convenient house for supporting the cities who are cities and town who are a permitted entity. So each one of, you know, your cities and the county itself is also as a municipality is. But our requirements are very different.

So the county, to Director Alessio's comments, is a rural large area, but lacking we don't really have storm drain infrastructure. We don't have big pipes. But cities do. They have extensive storm drain networks. It's a very different setting.

So what works for trash capture in the county is very different than what a city would require. And obviously, we all understand cities more urban, more trash, more stress, you know, pressure. So just bear that in mind. But again, going back to that, how does this all work? So we were, as I said, Jeff sort of corrals the collective municipalities.

And there are some program requirements that it just makes sense that we work together. So he does all the things that we share in common, all the public outreach, things like that. But there is a requirement for each and every city and the county just by law and by permit, you're permitted and you're you each have staffs that will be telling you. So in terms of when are we gonna hear about the cost, you're gonna hear about it from your the other staff that are counterparts to Jeff. So in the cities, for example.

And so it'll come forward in the budgeting. Because, as Jeff mentioned, the permit hasn't actually hit the ground yet, there's nothing to budget. There are not requirements now. Obviously, we're not going to ask you to start, as Jeff kind of alluded to, it doesn't make a lot of sense to start getting out ahead of this because we don't they are expensive things, and we want to make sure we are doing what we have to do. But there are plans in place on for each of the city's high they've already chosen paths on just trash capture.

Right? Those were those were requirements that we've already checked the box on and how how each of us is going to do it. So we can delve if there is a kind of an angle that the board wants to understand it in more granular way, we can tailor a future conversation about things like how much of this will we have to fund, say, from our various, general funds or what are our funding sources. And we could go into that with each municipality if it's appropriate, and how much outside funding is there through grants. Because Jeff as Jeff said, we for example, as a pilot program, so we could test some of these devices, we partnered with Marin and Sonoma and got a grant to do just that so we could test and say, How is this going to work for us?

So I don't know if that's getting at your question, but it's like, Hang on, you know, we're not quite there yet, but this is a heads up. Things are coming down the path. And you might say, well, we don't like what's coming down the path, we actively participate in programs and, what's the right word, associations that we ally ourself with other counties and other entities to push back on the water board and say, hey, how are we going to afford this? Where is funding coming from? And we do participate in legislative platforms that, you know, look and try to, you know, go to our electeds at the state level and say, we need help figuring out how to do these are, Director Futrell's point, these are there are some very positive things that are coming from this to the environment, but they are very expensive things.

And so it's like a handoff or a tradeoff, I guess. But I can we can come back when it's closer to becoming reality and with more specific numbers, I would assume, you know, laying out, like, what each entity and it's going to vary. I mean, like, Yonville versus the city of Napa is going to be a big, big difference in cost. Right? So but each it's sort of proportionate to the population of the entity is the way to think about how the costs will be distributed.

But I see Mr. Letter up here. I'll let you just have the chair. But so my question still is, you're talking about a budget and then some numbers were approved. Where are those dollars and who approved that budget? Did we do that?

This budget you just approved, the 593,470, and that's our JPA funding. You just approved that for this

So that's within the flood control budget we just approved.

It is. This is.

Okay.

This is. Now, in addition to that, each of those entities, with the exception of the flood district so the flood district is funding with flood district funds 20% of that JPA funding. But the entities, you can see the percentages of what each entity contributes. That's to fund what we call the countywide program, that glue that holds us all together, checks a bunch of boxes on the current permit requirements. Each entity has a stormwater budget, and I can't speak. Jeff might be able to comment or a director essentially might be able to say, well, how much does the city of Napa pay for storm water? It's probably

Well, I could just pull that number out of the double.

Right. Right. Maybe not.

Probably not. But it's part of, you know, your public works funding or something like that. It's significant. It's probably well more than this. It's not this is actually a small part of it because and Jeff said it, water is a very it touches everything.

It touches everything from the sheriff's department to certainly public works, planning. There are requirements that go throughout many departments within each of the municipalities. So when you ask, well, how much is this all costing? It's difficult question to get at because Jeff was saying it, it's like, well, a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I don't know, Steve, if you had any good

Yeah, no, you're covering most of what I was going to say. I was just going to comment from the speaking from county staff perspective, if you will, and therefore, kind of city staff as well. You know, this is the overall program, but each individual jurisdiction has responsibilities to to enact. So this is a tiny number. Mhmm.

This is kind of paying for Jeff and the the but we all have responsibilities to install it. You know, this is not installing the capture devices. Each jurisdiction has to pay for their own capture devices and the public works time and whatnot. It's actually not that big a deal for the county just because we don't have that many industrial areas. Although we do have the the business park down near the airport, which is probably the biggest one.

For the cities, particularly the city of Napa, much bigger deal, obviously, because you have so many more points. And there really is, speaking of unfunded mandates, I mean, than tiny grants, there really is no other source of money for this. So this is basically drawing out of your your general funds or your, you know, maybe it's money that you thought you were giving to public works to do x, but maybe they're now doing a lot more of this because there's, some jurisdictions have thought about going to, the ballot for, voter approved measures to fund stormwater programs. They've not been terribly successful. It's not nearly as sexy as roads or capital projects or, you know, whatever.

So I don't know that anyone's been successful, although a couple of them have thought about it. It's just longer term, and again, particularly for the cities, but also for the county. It's a big it's potentially a very big number, and the money is essentially gonna take away from other things that you had planned to do. So

So just just real quick. That's very helpful. So because what I always heard from Yonville and we haven't seen the permit, so I might be jumping ahead. But just in terms of Yonville, because we do street sweeping, and actually we've increased that to twice a week to keep our streets clean, and therefore nothing goes down in the storm water, we don't have to do a lot of stuff. And that's really kind of paid for itself. That was always my understanding of how things worked, at least in Yonville. So am I should I anticipate that all that's going to change and we're going to have to buy these things and do a lot of stuff that we never did before?

We're still kind of waiting on that permit to

see if

there's going be some change. The tough part is there is two there's two different paths you can take for trash capture. One is path, you know, a, which you install full trash capture on every device that's in that priority land use area. The second option was that you're gonna install everyone you can, but the ones you can't, you have to do other stuff like increase street sweeping or perhaps install one somewhere else. The problem is the language is really loose on it, and there's no easy definition to show what compliance is. So that's our concern is with that second option. The state may come in and say, hey, sweeping twice a week isn't enough. You need to sweep every hour. And there's no Mhmm. There's really no, you know, definition on what

compliance Yeah, they'll be popular,

Yeah. Yeah.

Then the my last question. So the money that's coming from the flood agency, they were no longer capturing or the ratepayers are not paying into Measure A any longer, right? That will also dry up someday. Well,

good point. It does. We aren't using any Measure A funding for that we provide here. It's our watershed program, and that isn't isn't drying up. So Okay. That's good news. We'll continue to to support this. Now, you know, the Flight Control District only, that funding source is about $1,500,000 a year, and it does a lot of other things, right? So we put about almost $200,000 I think, towards the program. We will continue to support it, but it isn't the total funding picture, I guess, is the way to look at it.

But no Measure A involved.

Thank you. Director Manfrey?

Thank you. I appreciate the information and also the discussion on funding, so I'm not really going to ask more questions about funding. But I have a few other questions. One is I guess this is more of a comment than a question to start. But one is that as far as advocacy, the North Bay Watershed Association might be a place where presenting this kind of thing and banding together on advocacy might make sense.

So I'll just put that out there for everyone to think about, consider acting on. And as nonpoint source pollution goes, generally my understanding is that phase two of the Clean Water Act had a vision of doing some really cohesive I mean, way back when it was created in the '70s, it had a vision of doing some really cohesive management across agricultural landscapes and suburban landscapes and gray spaces just generally. And so I guess my question here is, it sounds like and you can tell me if I'm right or wrong like we haven't really rolled this out to agricultural landscapes yet. I know that the water board in the twenty aughts had worked on leaky septic systems and got a lot of public pushback and pretty much dropped the project. But that's something we certainly have here, especially in our rural areas and county jurisdiction areas, is aging septic.

And then the other nonpoint source that I have concerns about is summer irrigation. So when people overwater their lawns in the summer, you tend to get a lot of runoff that can have very high pollutant concentrations because it's not that much water relative to the amount of pollutants that get washed off. So do you have any thoughts or perspectives to share on other sources that we haven't quite got to yet? Or maybe I'm wrong and there are ways that we're dealing with some of these already.

I think you hit on a good point is, under the permit, we're responsible for the storm water within our jurisdiction that goes to the storm drains. We don't have a lot of jurisdiction over people that are direct dischargers, and one of those being agriculture. We really do not have the ability to regulate agriculture for stormwater. That is something that's under the state that they've made some attempts to do, but they haven't they haven't completed their circle. So for example, we may be required to sample for E.

Coli, bacteria, stuff like that in the local waterways. And we may identify that the source is agriculture, and then we're still kind of on the hook to keep sampling. So there's definitely a lot of that gray area that we hope will get tightened up. It just doesn't seem like it's a top priority to them right now.

Okay. And then any comments on septic or summer irrigation?

Yes, summer irrigation is definitely can be a source. We currently do an outfall monitoring program where we have the RCD go out and check the outfalls to see if they're flowing during dry weather. Then they sample it to see if it's something that looks like an illicit discharge or if it's perhaps just, you know, rainwater, you know, seepage, all sorts of different things like that. So that's something we're currently doing. And the other sources, you know, the tricky one with with the landscape is there is something in the new permit where they want us to notify property owners of, for example, landscape breaks.

But the timelines were kinda weird, so we're kinda trying to work with the state on that and what their expectations are. Because sometimes it may take us three, four, five days just to even figure out who's in charge of a parcel or who owns it. So it's it's impractical to think we can get everything fixed in twenty four hours.

Okay. Okay. Great. And then as far as trash capture goes, are wineries considered industrial according to the state?

They are. They're considered industrial, but most of the wineries do not have storm water infrastructure like the storm drains. It's more of when you're dealing with industrial areas, enterprise, Devlin, all those areas. Those are kind of more of what they're looking at.

Okay. That's helpful to know, to just visualize how this is going to play out across the landscape. And then something that I have observed just being out a lot is that trash doesn't just get into our waterways through storm drains. In fact, a lot of it is just getting into the waterways by blowing right in off a road or something. And this sounds like a lot of work and a lot of expense, and I'm wondering if we have any sense of what percent of in stream trash is actually coming in through a storm drain versus just kind of ambient trash that's getting in through other pathways.

Yeah. Has there been any quantification of that?

Yeah. We don't have numbers in this county. I know in the MRP, which is the phase one agencies, Conchcost and Alameda have been doing a lot of work on doing sampling where they are going downstream of where they have trash capture devices and sampling both the creeks and the outfalls to see, okay, is stuff getting through here or not. The tricky part is you've got a lot of different factors. You've got homeless encampments, which generate a lot of trash and often are located near waterways.

You know, if you drive down the highway, I don't I can't tell you how many times I see garbage trucks driving down the street and there's bags and all sorts of stuff And flying some of those will just get wind blown directly in the waterways. So a lot of that's gonna be area specific, you know, schoolyards. Schoolyards are notorious for being a lot of trash, and it's not always the drain. A lot of time, it's that wind blown. Mhmm. So I'm kinda keeping tabs on what they're doing in the larger agencies to see what their numbers are looking like, to see if maybe we can do a smaller scale study up here.

Okay. Do you think that switching to biodegradable food containers for takeout will help? Or is it just going to be the same and clogging up the catchment devices?

Yeah. I mean, anything will help a little bit. But the stuff I'm seeing out there, soda cans, plastic wrappers, cigarettes, that's all stuff that you know, isn't I I don't see much Styrofoam anymore. Mhmm. You know?

Plastic

bags. Yeah. Plastic bag.

Plastic bag.

Plastic Plastic bag. And I go down to I walk down to the river about once a week and pick up trash that's, you know, right down there on under the bridge and, you know, bottle cap. It's typical stuff you're seeing. Mhmm. But it's tough. Sometimes you find shoes. Sometimes you find other stuff that, you know, you know couldn't have made it down the storm drain, but somehow it's getting down there.

Okay. I've just got a couple more things here. This is a little bit more of a comment also. The staff at Save the Bay are doing a lot of advocacy around green infrastructure. And they have some good ideas about ways to quantify the long term benefits so that when you do the cost benefit analysis, those long term benefits can be incorporated to show that it really is cost effective.

And I guess it's just a hot tip that someone's doing that work out there and they're advocating for it, and they have some really good ideas. So if and when you have a moment, that's something to maybe contact Save the Bay about. Laura Walsh is my contact there. And they've been advocating at at MTC and at, think, at San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority possibly, but I know at MTC, about doing this region wide. And last thing is that you said that our permit will only apply to the Napa River watershed, and I'm wondering if there are other jurisdictions responsible for Pouda Creek and Green Valley Sassoon.

How does that work?

Yeah. Pouda Creek to my knowledge isn't doesn't go through a permitted area because Winters doesn't have a Okay. Doesn't have a stormwater permit. Okay. Maybe when it gets down in Davis, there might be some connections there. As far as Sassoon Creek and that area, it does go into Fairfield. And when it gets into the lower parts of Fairfield, they have a permit that covers part of

it. Okay.

But it's more down in the industrial Okay. You know,

Okay. All right. Yeah. I'm just thinking with the I think it was. Yeah, for mercury that there would be sources above Berryessa.

Yeah.

But I guess that's probably already under some other program because it's abandoned mines.

Yeah, there's abandoned mines. The big source of mercury in this county honestly is air deposition. Oh, interesting. Okay. So it's that's one of the tricky stuff we have is that's something we can't control. So it's something we're trying to keep tabs on. The good news is it looks like the numbers are starting to drop on the amount of mercury in the air. So I'm hopeful that as they do more studies, that they may kind of pull back a little bit on the requirements for us.

Okay. Thanks so much.

Yeah. Thank you. Anyone else? No? Okay. Thank you so much. Great presentation.

Thanks, Joe.

All right. Mr. Thomassar, we are on to district managers, engineers, reports and announcements. Okay.

Thank you. So just an update. So we're continuing to prepare our design for the flood walls north of the bypass. Reported where we've completed the design. It's at 100%.

It's been back checked by the core. It's been approved by a number of committees and organizations. We had a safety and reliability panel that you may have forgot. We hired outside five outside experts from around engineering and geotechnical and environmental who we had to certify the project that's been completed. We the design recommendations report is essentially completed.

It's just getting kind of cleaned up at the core level to move through their channels. It's hopefully going to be signed by the district commander and sent to headquarters and the Assistant Secretary of the Army fairly soon. We've completed just a lot of technical requirements going into the design and sign offs. This week, the Corps put the finishing touches on their NEPA document and the had the draft finding of no significant impact. It's called a FONSI.

It's a federal document sign off on the environmental side of things. So they have that document ready for the commander to also sign. So all of these things will be going up the chain to headquarters in the ASA, and that has to that just has to happen. The project partnership agreement that we call the PPA, we expect that in the next month or so, the final version of that, so a county or district council can review it with staff and make sure it's still the kind of the document we want to sign. And this that'll come before this board on September 16.

So not next meeting, but the the September regular board meeting. And the corps expressed interest in a joint signing ceremony for that. They could they like a good, you know, hullabaloo. It is quite monumentous. We've been working at this design now for well over two years.

A lot of money has been spent on it, and we're all ready to enter into an agreement that they are going to help fund the construction of the project and also reimburse us for a good chunk of that design cost too. So that's the document that authorizes all of that. And I don't have the details of it yet, but I'd like the board to, if you can, it would be wonderful to have the full board in attendance on September 16 to the extent we can. There's an interest in a field visit. So possibly, I think it might be nicer to instead of trying to coordinate a joint signing at the board meeting on September 16, And depending on the commander's schedule, they would, perhaps we would do it at you would you would sign it at the board meeting or or get the chairs the authorization for the chair to sign it as we normally do.

And the actual signature would occur maybe out in the field somewhere. And I I had some ideas on locations that are out, close to the start of the construction project, which could be a nice event, some maybe a press release associated with it. So just a heads up on that. But keep in mind, September 16, I'll have more update on that at our next Board meeting. And certainly, if anyone has any thoughts on that, they want to send me a separate email on that, feel free.

I'll take that into account. A lot of it, I think, has to the core has to bring people from Sacramento and how it's going to work for them. So that's that. Real estate, we're basically good on all of our acquisitions. They're all in some sense our target date is by the September, we have rights, real property rights in order to construct the project.

And that ties into our ability to go out to bid and advertise the project and then eventually award a construction contract towards the end of the year, the calendar year, with construction beginning again in early twenty twenty six. So we're still on schedule for the most part, plus or minus a few days, a few weeks here and there, but there's many moving parts. That is that.

Director Alessio had a question.

Yep.

Yes. Thank you for that update. Have we seen actual design of this project? Because I don't recall seeing a visual design of what this project is going look like. And I want to ensure it's going to be one that really fits what NAPA expectation is. We have high expectations because of the flood project in the Oxbow Commons. And you know how this is very different location. At the same time, I don't remember seeing any actual design. And I want to make sure it's just not all driven by engineers because I've seen engineer different projects. And it doesn't really work to the aesthetic and to the environment.

Right. So to that, well, yes, the Board has seen it. We've had a couple of presentations around 65%. We had Anders come in and went through the drawings. At 35%, we did as well. And we've had public meetings at 35%, 65%, 95%, so three pretty large public meetings on it, getting input from the public in general, businesses. We have in addition to engineers on the team, we have landscape architects and biologists looking at environmental issues. So it

happened when I wasn't sitting here.

Perhaps. Maybe you were at that particular meeting or whatever. But the answer is yes. We have had a number of presentations. If the Board is interested, it's kind of a done deal at this point.

Also, the City of Napa, which is the primary entity where this work is happening, has extensive involvement, their staff, their public works, their planning, the fire, the police, the parks. They we've had dozens of meetings with them, you know, to go over aesthetic on the wall. We've I I remember bringing the wall aesthetic back. It's been unfortunately, when it's over two years, I can understand you guys have a lot on your plate and you have other things to focus on. But we over the last two years, we've had opportunities to look at that, had input comment on it.

Generally speaking, we had environmental review

Oh, I that part. I've been back on this board just this year. Good. That wasn't on the last couple of years. So where can the public and a curious supervisor find this just Well,

a curious supervisor can always just call us and we'll be happy to sit. We can have an individual meeting and session with anybody and show you if you're interested. The public there's we have our website that has updates, we haven't had a public meeting in a while. We're kind of at this point, we did a 95% design meeting, which was essentially when the design is largely done. But we're waiting until the beginning of construction now to start that some new updates for public and also particularly the landowners that have the construction happening on their properties.

It's been generally pretty positive. We had you probably weren't on the Board when we had a lot of interaction with the Lake Park neighborhood and how the design is done there. A lot of they basically came to us and said they didn't like our I think it was our 35% design, and we completely redid it to their, you know, liking. So we I think that neighborhood is, for the most part, satisfied, you know. You know.

Okay. I'll I'll follow-up with you.

We'll move forward. Yeah.

Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Any directors' reports or announcements? Director Manfrey?

Yeah, I have a couple quick ones. One is that the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority put out RFPs recently for round nine of their funding. And they fund projects on any, to my knowledge, on any tidal area on the edges of San Francisco Bay. So for us, that would go all the way up to Trancas Street. So consider them a resource for funding of restoration and projects on the edges of waterways.

And then also, they recently awarded $1,200,000 to American Canyon for wetlands restoration and recreational access to raise 1.2 miles of the Bay Trail to be above sea level rise over the next few years. And so that's like the kind of big project that they may be able to fund. But they do smaller things too. And the North Bay Watershed Association similarly is opening up their small grant and scholarship program right now. So there's information in the July 11 meeting materials about that. So yeah, so both San Francisco Bay Restoration and North Bay Watershed Association have RFPs out. Good luck.

Thank you.

Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Any future agenda items? Alright. Miss Bagley, do you want to announce our closed session? Thank you. Our district court will now go into closed session and hold a conference on items 13A through F as listed in the agenda regarding conference with real property negotiator, various property owners, and conference with legal counsel regarding existing litigation as to assessor parcel numbers and case numbers listed in the agenda. All right. Thank you. We will adjourn closed session.

Okay. Chek Gallagher, we're live.

Thank you. Welcome back to our open session. And Ms. Bagley, can you report out, please? Thank you. Our District Board just met in closed session on agenda items 13A through F as to real property negotiations and existing litigation. There are no reportable actions. Thank you. We will now adjourn to the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District regular meeting of Tuesday, 08/12/2025 at 9AM. Thank you.