Flood Control and Water Conservation District - Regular Meeting

Tara, whenever you're ready.

Thank you. Thank you, and welcome everyone to the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District meeting of 12/16/2025. May I have the roll call, please?

Director Alessio?

Present.

Director Cottrell? Director Denit Ali?

Here.

Director Doran? Here. Director Lopez Ortega is excused. Director Manfrey? Director Moeller?

Here.

Director Ramos? Director, Washington?

Here.

Vice chair Segley?

Here.

Chair Gallagher?

Here. Thank you. Alright. Thank you. Miss Bagley, can you lead us in the pledge?

Thank you. We have no presentations and commendations. We have consent items four a through d. Is there any public comment on the consent items? Okay. Anything that anyone on the dais would like to pull or comment upon? Alright. I will entertain a motion. Okay. Moved by Cottrell. Seconded by Alessio. All those in favor, please signify by saying aye. Aye. Alright. Thank you very much.

We do not have, item five. Item six, is there any public comment in the room, addressing anything that is, in our peer purview, but not on the agenda today? Alright. Great. Then we're gonna move to our administrative items. Administrative item seven a. And who's gonna be presenting this? Hello. Yeah. You'll just sneeze it. Thank you so much.

Good afternoon, members of the board. Jeremy Saro, watershed flood control and operations manager. I think we have, two or three slides, if they're available. But if not, no worries. Just kinda jump into it.

With winter upon us, we just wanted to take a brief moment to remind the board members of, the district owned and operated network of stream and rain gauges known as NAPA OneRain. There's the slide. This network consists of 39 stream and rain gauges located throughout the Napa County. It can be accessed from your desktop or your mobile advice device at napaonerain.com. And through this website, users can view gauge sites individually or through a map interface to access rainfall and runoff data, local reservoir levels, national weather service forecasts for the area, predicted river flows, live Doppler imagery, and other weather related information.

Next slide. In this example shown here, this is a graph combining data from stream gauge on Napa Creek as well as a rain gauge on Mount Veeder Mhmm. Used to illustrate the relationship between rainfall and resulting stream flow. This is the kind of information the district uses and other uses and us in particular to inform our operations of the bypass culverts on Napa Creek. Next slide.

Future plans for Napa one raid include migrating from the existing Contrail software platform over to a new improvement platform called elements three sixty, in July 2026, to improve performance, functionality, and security, upgrading the remaining sites from the alert one to the alert two protocol, and, working with the GSA to upgrade, about five of the, flow sensors to measure low flow in support of a stream gauge improvement program grant they recently received from the California Department of Water Resources, and possibly looking into integration of fire weather monitoring stations, that would be accessible on this new green platform. With that, the requested action is to approve and authorize an agreement for $30,000 with OneRing to continue operation of the network, upgrade it to elements three sixty, and ongoing technical support. Do you have any questions?

Great. Thank you so much. I'm gonna check first to see if there's any public comment on the item. And seeing none, does anyone have any questions or comments? Yes. And, Tucker Maffrey.

Thank you. Yeah. I was wondering in conjunction with the groundwater plan if there's any effort underway, and I realize it's probably a funding constraint to update the system so that it better reflects dry weather flow. I mean, it was designed to monitor flood flows, and it does what really well with that. We have another emerging problem with our water management, which is groundwater management now.

And these are sites where there's already infrastructure, where there's already established access and that kind of thing. And I I do realize the challenges of monitoring low levels of flow are are they they they just are challenges to that logistically, but I'm wondering yeah. Just the basic question is, is there any effort to rolling groundwater monitoring here?

Yes. Actually, the the five sites that I mentioned that are gonna be upgraded specifically to monitor low flow better via this the acronym is CalSIP grant from DWR. Are they're also in proximity to to groundwater monitoring wells so that they can better kinda track that relationship and look at areas that are these ecosystems that are groundwater dependent and see how that interplay between surface flow and groundwater affects them. So we are coordinating on that. Sure.

Chair, have a quick question. Yes. Director Alessio. Thank you. Can we go back to the graph that the slide that has the graph and it shows Oh, sure. It shows it has Mount Veeder with I think it was with maybe the other

Napa Creek. Happened between nine.

And as you as we see here, you know, the Napa River gets up there and then it continues, right, on this graph anyways for this time period. Does that help direct action or or some kind of follow-up? Because we know that Mount Veeder is a problem area with slides and build up water would be it just makes it that much more challenging.

Yeah. Well, you know, the the data can be used in a myriad of different ways, whether it's, you know, by roads crews to look at, like, okay. We're at a certain level at this point in the year where we now really foresee that the hillsides are saturated, and there's gonna be slides that might affect road operations. But in this instance, what we're illustrating is that giving given a given storm event that say drops maybe three to four inches of rain, we see how it translates into flow into Napa Creek. And does it is it rise to that threshold of significance where we then need to, say, mobilize an excavator to keep the debris racks clean

Exactly.

To so, yeah, we're we're definitely utilizing it to inform our operations. Also and this is just on Napa Creek. We also use it for informing operations of closing the floodgates on McKinstry Street Mhmm. For high flows on the Napa River. And I think the roads department actually uses some of the other gauges up Valley too on when to close some of the the roads that cross the whole like, sorry, Oakville Crossroad or some of the other ones to inform, basically, closing the roads off

to the public. That that's great. And, again, I'm kind of looking at Mount Theater because we had three significant slides areas where they had to get closed on Mount Theatre. It cost a lot of money to rebuild. We're almost done with that third slide. It's the road's open. That third retaining wall is is almost complete. But, again, I assume with public works director here that this is information that's provided to public works. And if I can if I can ask maybe some historical data with this same kind of graph, but look at it more annually over the last few years, I'd love to see the ebbs and flows of this.

Oh, for sure. Yeah.

You can

we can definitely do that.

Thank you. Anyone else?

Just a brief one. Public safety too depends on that information too a lot. You know, we look at the, you know, when the I think it was in the old the old standard was an hour later after a big downpour on Mount Veeder would get to downtown Napa. And so preparing for those kind of events too has been very helpful. It's interesting interesting stuff to watch. Thank you.

Sure.

Thank you. Anyone like to make a motion?

I'll make a motion to approve and authorize agreement number 260237B with OneRain Incorporated for $30,000 for services related to operation and technical support associated with the countywide network of stream and rainfall gauges, the alert system using Contrail and Elements three sixty software. Okay. We have a motion by Manfrey, a second by Alessio. All those in favor, please say aye. Aye. Any opposed or abstentions? Alright. That passes unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Saro.

Thank you.

Alright. We will now have an update on the progress of the Napa River, Knapp Creek Blood Protection Project. Sir Thomassar.

Okay. Rick Thomassar, district manager, and I'm here with Andrew Butler, district engineer. So we didn't meet in November, so it's been almost two months since we last updated the board. But it's good news. We have good news to report.

In October, we had reported that we were in the midst of a federal government shutdown, was delaying the approval for final authorization of our project partnership agreement with the Army Corps of Engineers. And we had a brand new assistant secretary of the Army who was had a pile of work on his desk and senate hearings and things like that to attend to. So we were anxiously awaiting his approval. But just last week, we were informed that he had indeed approved our project partner partnership agreement and our implementation plan. And this morning, he transmitted an authorization for the local commander in Sacramento to sign the agreement once our chair signs it.

So the documents that were approved for signature have been transmitted to California somehow, and we're awaiting them. And then as soon as I get them in my hands, we'll get with the chair. And we've already approved the chair to sign the agreement. So we'll work directly with the chair to get that signed and get no yeah, you're not holidays are canceled. So very good news.

We we're back in business, and it's all the timing couldn't be better because we are still out to bid. We have what appears to be a really good solicitation ongoing. We've increased the time of it. So we're currently standing at mid January to open bids. But district or district engineer Butler could maybe comment more about that if you want to. Just any details. And

Yeah. As Rick said, we are looking to open bids in mid January now, planning to award at the February 17 board meeting. Still shooting to start physical construction in the spring. We'll be doing our notifications and meetings with the local residents to prepare for the construction contract around then. I also do wanna mention that, after the the government shutdown, we did have, kind of a work stoppage with the army corps, but they have reengaged with us recently. So we're able to continue our design efforts on the rest of the project, specifically the Imola to have flood walls. So that was really encouraging, and we're progressing that design.

And then, yeah, as soon as we get a contractor on board, we'll, have a better sense of their construction schedule. We have a a general construction schedule that requires the contractor to work South Of Lincoln first and get that work mostly done. And that should be done in basically the 2026 construction season, And then they can transition to North Of Lincoln and focus on that for the 2027 construction season. But we'll have we'll plan a public meeting or at least a meeting with affected landowners as soon as we get a a good construction schedule together, and that'll probably happen sometime in the early spring. And then in addition to what Andrew said about increment three design, we'll also probably start public outreach in the spring sometime on that to start getting some feedback.

We've had some meetings with the city and gotten their understand you know, their basic buy in on the general alignment of the project, things like road road impacts and and the like. And I think I think that's it for project update.

K. Great. Thank you. Is there any public comment? Is there any comment from anyone on the board? Alright. Well, we don't need to take any action, but oh, yeah. Comment? Director Cotralin, director. No. Go ahead.

No. It's been an interesting couple of weeks in communication with chair Gallagher and, you know, manager. We've kind of been a roller coaster ride. It was good news, bad news, good news, bad news, and then we got the good news. And so it's time to celebrate. You know, we we were even discussing you know, a contingent to Washington DC, and I I suggested that we ought to invite them to Napa Valley, and we can host them and maybe, you know, make some friends. But but it all worked out. And thank you, Rick. Thank you, everybody, the team, to to keep on this and to get us to this point because it's very exciting. We lost we lost Bernhard Kredit a while back.

They had a little memorial for him last weekend, and and he would be so excited. And he would be here every step of the way to see this increment move forward. That's what he was all about. And so he'll be watching from from a different perspective, but I know he's there with us. So thanks, Rick.

Great. Director Cottrell? You're done? Okay. Alright. Great. We will go ahead and move on. We do not have any public hearings. Do we have, district manager's report or announcements?

We yeah. I'm gonna have ask Chris to give us a water supply update, some comments and notes on that.

Good afternoon. Chris Silk, engineering manager, speaking to you on behalf of our state water project updates. I appreciate the district manager yielding the remainder of his time. Anthony, if you could start the three minute clock. No kidding.

Is that engineering humor?

Is it right? It's something between that and that dad joke, but you know?

Go on. So anyhow, getting back to serious business here. So I wanted to speak with you about a contract initiative that will be renewing this month. It is it happens every five years. It's called the Yuba Water Court Initiative. I'll be signing into it as your authorized agent under a resolution that was adopted previously by the board. Historically, what is Yuba Water? Well, it's basically a backstop for dry and critically dry year types. Okay? The three cities have called upon deliveries of Yuba water during the twenty one, twenty two drought crisis.

It's nonproject water that comes as storage components through the summer and then a net accrued groundwater substitution class in the fall. We're going into amendment number seven with this contract, update. Each time that we've called upon deliveries of Yuba water, it equates to usually around 500 acre feet, okay, which is, as you might recall back in March, our estimated use our deliveries rather from the North Bay Aqueduct this year, it's around 11,000 acre feet. I think we're gonna fall short of that because there's been a little bit more reliance upon Lake Hennessy. The pricing structure, this is expensive water, obviously, because the market demands it.

It's a dry year, critically dry year, so prices can range 300 to $525 per acre foot. Whereas under our current pricing structure with the agreement, with DWR, we're paying under a $100, okay, for deliveries through the North Bay Aqueduct. The second item that I wanted to speak with you about is our area of origin litigation that is ongoing with DWR. That is the flood district versus DWR, Sacramento County Superior Court. The n o d three contractors received a counterproposal since the last time I updated you from DWR on term revisions related to the 2013 settlement agreement dispute.

Now the give by DWR is under evaluation by water contractor staff and plaintiff's counsel. I would say that we have until the January to strike an agreement of principle with DOJ and DWR, or this is likely to go to trial in March 2026. So I'll be speaking more on that. I'll bring an item to the board in the early part of next year, and we can talk further about it, and I'll present updates. I'd say right now, if you wanted to, you know, say, hey, Chris.

You know, what's the probability of settlement versus trial? I'd give it equal chances at this juncture. So, hopefully, we can strike an agreement and settle this and move into the future, you know, with some terms that we think are more amenable to our water supply here in Napa County. And then lastly, wanted to mention that the initial allocation notice to contractors has gone out. Some of your respective utility may have reported on it.

We've received a 20% allocation for the North Of Delta, 10% for South Of Delta. Well, in numbers, what does that equate to? 5,805 acre feet, okay, at a 20% table a allocation, which is about half of average annual use here. And then the other thing that I wanted to report on is and you've heard me speak about this in the past, is San Luis Reservoir. It is encroaching upon what our shared apportionment is with the Central Valley project, is 1,062,000 acre feet.

We're at over 900,000 acre feet in carryover storage. So, basically, what's going on is I said to other contractors on Friday on a tour, I said, y'all are water hoarding. Stop it down there. Okay? Because what that does is it pushes storage levels to the point we're at risk of spilling. Well, when San Luis spills, that results in a loss of carryover for all contractors. So there is that potential risk right now, and it's more than potential based upon the position analysis that I've seen from DWR. There's a 95% likelihood that San Luis will spill in the coming months. Okay? So it's gonna be weather dependent.

You know, looking ahead at the weather guidance now, we're looking at potentially eight to ten days of rainfall. If the old Middle River management of the the system goes into minus 5,000, that equates to more exports from banks down to San Luis, which again puts us in greater jeopardy of spilling. So you put it all together. Yeah. I would say that we're facing the likelihood of potentially losing either a portion or all the carryover, that we've stored in similar reservoir.

And it's been it's been a strategy that all contractors have been executing as a result of fallout from the twenty one, twenty two drought crisis. So, I'll give you an update, I would say, in the February 26 board meeting so that way we can get you, you know, further guidance as far as how we wanna manage this situation. But in the meantime, it's one of those circumstances where we went from severely dry, conservation facilities at San Luis to now it's full.

Okay. Thank you. Does anybody have any questions or comments? Just

yeah. Sarah, I just had a quick question. Thank you for the report on all three items. Quick question on the the carryover issue. What how much carryover do we have?

The we're positioned to carry over cumulatively 16,500 acre feet going into 2026.

Okay. And you're saying you see a significant risk of losing a portion?

A portion or all. Historically, it's been all except for one occurrence.

Okay.

Alright. Thank you.

Sure.

Anyone

else? Quick one. Yeah. Go ahead.

The the area of origin, litigation. Now that's a class action. Right? There's other agencies involved with that?

That's correct. So we are the lead plaintiff in this complaint versus DWR. We also have on board with us Solano County Water Agency in the city of Yuba.

Thank you.

Alright.

I just say thank you. That was super helpful. Yeah. Very. Thank you.

Not all great news, but very informative. Important stuff. Thank you, mister Salk. Good jokes too. Okay. Does anyone on the diets have any, future agenda items or anything they'd like to oh, sorry. Reports and announcements, future agenda items. Just gonna combine that into one. Yes. Mister Doran? I don't know what

the tradition is. I'm kinda gathering what the tradition is in terms of giving the district, reports, engineer reports. Most of the time, they're oral. There's not a whole lot, if anything, in the written reports. And, honestly, I I sometimes have a a little difficulty with some of the jargon being relatively new, although I'm catching up to speed. Mhmm. I think maybe it's something to consider. Some of us receive information, and I I am one who likes to see it in writing. And I don't know if that is just a tradition of of that's not the way we operate, or is it possible to have a couple paragraphs on some of these subject matters so that when we're looking at it and listening to it, it it it's easier for us to absorb. And we,

yeah, we can absolutely agendize anything you'd wanna have an update on. Or if there's something significant, we kind of make a judgment call if it's just, you know, brief updates on on items. We usually do it under the, you know, director's report or the district manager's reports and announcements. But yeah.

Yeah. I'm not willing to make ways, but the other purpose for me, honestly, is I'll take the written information, and I'll send it to my counsel. Mhmm. And sometimes I can't decipher everything, but I get the gist of it. I'll forward it on to others to keep them informed. And so there's a there's a actual purpose behind the written format for me, but it's easier for me to understand it, and it's also easier for me to convey it to to folks that I talk to in my same way to sphere. I don't know how y'all think about that. But

yeah. I think that agendizing things like some of the things we heard today from mister Silk, especially number two and three, would be great just to because there's there's some risk to us, that it's worth having a discussion. Okay. Or and maybe getting a little bit more information. And certainly that would include then probably a letter to the board. Yeah.

Or maybe even follow-up, something written to us, sent to us after the fact, kind of a summary.

Well, yeah. Anything we put on the agenda, we'll have a staff report with it. So we can do that. We can just filter those in. It's been a balancing act of trying to keep the meetings to the right time, not being too short but not being too long as well. So it's always just a question of how much put on any given meeting. But we'll be more mindful of that.

Okay. And, you know, we can always, as chair and vice chair, we can have a pre discussion when you're putting the agenda together if you have you know, wanna bounce ideas off of us, and we can help you with that. Director Mueller? Yeah. And then

Just a quick question. If Saint Louis, really spills over and we lose everything we've stored, what does that mean? Where where do we lose it to? Does it go into some river someplace?

Well, what it translates to is article 21 deliveries to the South Of Delta water contractors because there is water spilling out of Saint Louis Reservoir. So, they welcome that opportunity. And this is one of those rare recurrences where we went from a, again, a severely depleted reservoir to at least our apportionment. Now the other thing too that I do wanna mention is that there is the opportunity, and I I don't wanna dig too far into the jargon here, but under the cooperative operations agreement with the CVP, there is the opportunity that DWR can execute a surcharge agreement to where we occupy we being State Water Project occupy a portion of the Central Valleys, Central Valley project storage. So that work actually happened this past year because we had an above normal, water year type, and it it could happen again.

I I'd be speculating to say whether or not a surcharge agreement is gonna be reached at this point, but there will be every there will be a presentation by DWR to encourage CVP to enter into that again this year. Could be a 100,000 acre feet, might be a couple 100,000 acre feet, of temporary occupancy of our storage for the state water project.

Thanks. And All on paper. Manfred?

All on paper. Right.

I'm gonna change the subject, so I wanna make sure we're done.

Okay.

Does anyone have any comments on this particular item? I I Director Patrak.

I just wanna support mayor point director Dorring's point. I think on not necessarily on a specific item, but I I think the idea of early in a new year, it's really helpful to have you know, here you know, just some background context about this is what the projects are that are out there. Here is some of the terminology with that we have too. So not even necessarily associated with an item, but I think having that background information would be great for us all as new folks come onto this board, right, or or alternates come in. And then to his point too, then it's easier to to share that information out.

Okay.

So thank you.

Maybe we'll even agendize something early and have a, yeah, a staff report that covers all of that to give you your, yeah, written report.

Alright. Thank you. Director Maffrey? Yeah.

Maybe a way to think about that is, like, water portfolio work. Kind of like, what does it look like right now? What's how has it changed in recent years, and where could we maybe take it? Okay. So the thing I wanted I wanted to do an update because I remembered that at the last North Bay Watershed Association, we had a guest presentation from UC Davis researchers about connections between the San Francisco Bay and Delta and our North Bay water systems, which I think it you know, for anyone who has a little time to spare looking at that, it should be interesting.

The presentations are posted on their website in the calendar section. That's a little bit confusing when you're looking for a presentation and it's under the calendar section, but it's because it's under past meetings. So you can find those presentations there. In November, we had a presentation called River Otters as Ambassadors for Watershed Conservation. So if the other one sounds wonky, this one sounds really heavily and fun. Right? So check that one out too. And in October, we had a presentation on industrial beekeeping and its impacts on wild honey bees and native pollinator communities. So all things that relate to watersheds and to some of our work, I know in our city councils and everything everybody up here does through this community. So some really good topics there all available to the public anytime online.

Great. Thank you for the resource.

And

yeah.

Thank you. Thank you, chair. I just wanted to mention, flood related is, the Watershed Information and Conservation Council. We, as the Board of Supervisors, had an item about it last week, and are trying to figure out the best way to revision that group. And I think there is significant overlap with the work that this body does.

And so especially because there's representatives here who are leading our communities, to make sure that you're part of the discussion about what would be helpful. My view is that we need some kind of gathering place for conservation issues. And it's wonderful to have a scientist on the board with us. But to have those conversations in a public and ongoing way. So more to come. If you have thoughts on that, please share them with us. Thanks.

All right. Thank you. I'm going to ask, counsel if we have need for closed session. We do not. All right. Then we will not be having closed session. So we will move to adjournment to our next meeting on Tuesday, 01/20/2026 at 9AM. Happy and safe holidays, everyone.