Flood Control and Water Conservation District - Regular Meeting

Alright. There it is. Well, we're a little light this morning, but it is Saint Patrick's Day, so maybe everybody took the day off. I'm not sure. Celebrate their Irish heritage.

So Excuse me, chair. Give us one second before we start. We don't have enough votes. We have enough people, but not enough votes. Well, technically, we can't have a meeting if we don't have quorum. We can't conduct business.

We

just need one more person.

So it's an information we will call this meeting of the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District to order. This is 03/17/2026. We have roll call, please.

Director Gallagher is excused. Director Alessio is excused. Director Cottrell is excused. Director Dinetale? Here. Director Doring? Here. Director Gift is excused. Director Manfrey?

Here.

Director Moeller?

Here.

Director Ramos is also excused. Director Washington is excused. Director Cruz? Here. Director Cuba? Here. And chair Sedgler?

Here. If you are able, would you please stand and join me in the pledge of allegiance? So we are going to hold off on the consent, one consent calendar item. So at this time, we'll go to public comment, general public comment. It is time allowed for the public to address the board on any item which is not on the agenda.

Do we have any public comment present or in any way? Thank you very much. And so our item today, item seven, is an update on the water supply outlook for Napa County and its communities.

So

good morning. Rick Thomas, your district manager, and I'm here with Chris Silk, our engineering manager for water resources. And this is, as we spoke of two meetings ago, we would provide a more complete summary or presentation on the water resources aspect of work that the district does. And Chris, I'll let you take it away.

Well, very good. Thanks, Rick. Top of the morning, directors, that I appreciate you being in attendance this morning. That will be my only attempt at Gaelic humor. But anyhow, welcome.

And I'm going to be giving you our annual water supply updates. I'm going to cover a bunch of topics here, introduce you to the terminology that is used when referencing facilities, regulations, our contract with DWR. And then I'm going to take you on a tour of the State Water Project facility and give you an operations overview for this year. Then proceed into a breakdown of the 26 water supply imports that are expected and scheduled with DWR through the North Bay Aqueduct. I will dive into the Bay Delta plan rulemaking, and I'd wanna just kinda take a moment to give thanks to mayor Sedgley and supervisor Manfrey for going to present before state water bores with the testimony that was given in late January.

And then also, want to touch upon what the implications are with the North Of Delta supply if the rulemaking has two pathways, and I'll go into some of the details later. And then lastly, wanna get the board updated with the status of our litigation, our ongoing litigation with the Department of Water Resources as we filed a complaint with Sacramento Superior Court a few years ago. And we are in negotiations. And I will shed some more light on that later. Let's see here, get the clicker moving, there we go.

So to get things started here, here's I've mentioned that I threw out a whole bunch of terms and acronyms in December and I could tell that it was a bit confusing to some of the board members. Wanted to provide you with a list of common terms that are used and you'll hear me use going forward. I'll just start at the top. It's listed alphabetically. Acre feet of water, that's obvious.

We use that commonly as a volumetric measurement. The area of origin is interesting because that is the basis of our claim with DWR in litigation right now because of what happened with the Owens Valley water grab in the Los Angeles Aqueduct diverting water, and that resulted in a series of acts that were established by the legislature in California in the late twenties through the thirties and even the fifties. That was the one that was established for the state water project. And again, just moving down through advanced table A, that's a dry year assurance that DWR provides to us in the event that we go through primarily consecutive dry climate years that we have a reservation in our 2013 settlement agreement. Article 56 carryover, that's a cumulative volume of water that remains from the table A allocation.

There is a specific formula in our contract, one of our amendment articles that states how much carryover can be stored in San Luis in a given year. And we can build that again cumulatively, but we are at risk of loss and I'll speak more on that in a little bit. The biological opinions, that is in reference to protecting endangered species. And these were written and established by the US Fish and Wildlife Service and NOAA, the National Marine Fisheries Division. BOR, we've heard that thrown out before, California Endangered Species Act, conference year, there's a new term for you, I hope that we don't see it anytime soon but that is commonly referenced during dry years when the South Of Delta SOD allocation is 20% or less.

The CVP, Central Valley Project, decision sixteen forty one that is commonly referred to. You'll hear me speak more on this when I get into the Bay Delta rule making. And then just moving down, Dry Ear Transfer Program, we are a participant and I'll show you more on that in a little bit. Healthy rivers and landscapes program. Now there's a term that we need to remember going forward because mayor Sedgley, supervisor Manfrey were there supporting our interests and speaking to water boards for including the HRL program to propose rulemaking going forward.

And ITP is the incidental take permit. If you hear me talk about Delta smelt, Longfin smelt, well that's where that comes into play and potential curtailments to the North Bay Aqueduct pumping. MBA is North Bay Aqueduct. The NOD, this is where I will be speaking to the NOD NOD three frequently during litigation. The NOD three is comprised of Napa County Flood Control, Water Conservation District, Solano County Water Agency, and the City Of Yuba.

We are the three diverters North Of Delta. OMRs, Old Emitter River Flow Regulations, is, that comes into play when, the San Joaquin flows are are dictated by how much water is unimpaired flow is originating from the San Joaquin Basin and that affects the amount of water that can be exported from the Delta. POD is point of diversion. Sites Reservoir is a proposed off stream 1,500,000 acre foot reservoir project. It's part of what is called the WSIP, the Water Storage Investment Program by DWR.

American Canyon has prescribed to that project. South Of Delta again is South Of Delta contractors SVI, that's the Sacramento Valley index. It's a year type classification and is based upon the unimpaired flow. And it's a weighted average. It's forty, thirty, 30 based on the months of the year in which snow melt or direct runoff would happen and it also factors in the prior year index.

And as classified, you'll hear me say critical, dry, below normal, above normal, wet. State Water Project SWP Table A, we've heard that term many times and then lastly Yuba Accord. We are a participant in the Yuba Accord dry year program. There are surface water components that are the result of releases from Bolivar Reservoir and there's also lastly a fall component of groundwater. And we'll call upon that supply typically during the dry and critically dry years.

Here's a I wanted to show you a statewide map of water conservation and transportation facilities, namely reservoirs, aqueducts, pipelines, pumping plants, okay, and to just show you the weave of how the state of California has the most complicated water delivery conveyance systems in the world. Everything is all balanced or, you know, there's cooperative operations agreements between the DWR and the bureau. But, yeah, it all starts at Shasta, Trinity, Whiskeytown, and then makes its way down to Lake Oroville that has releases. That's the 3,400,000 acre foot reservoir that stores state water project supplies. And then all the way down to our North Bay Aqueduct that I have a lot more to share with you and give you a tour of our facilities.

And then all the way down through the California Aqueduct and San Luis Reservoir that's down in Los Banos, Centinela and making its way down Central Coast which is the western branch of the aqueduct and then the eastern branch is all the way down to an agency San Gorgonio Pass which is the terminus of deliveries for State Water Project water. Getting into the Sierra snowpack because that is eventually going to determine the final allocation for this calendar year. We are below normal and with the heat wave that's underway at the moment is going to result in quick melt and and rapid runoff. And that is ultimately going to probably put a lid on the allocation. We might see a slight bump.

For the time being, it's it's an arid winter for the mountains, not only here, but Utah, Colorado, the CRB, they're all facing critically dry years for snowpack. So the two reservoirs that store Napa's water for the cities taking delivery, have Lake Oroville, that's presently above its historical average sitting at 130%, it's actually in flood management as a result of early snowpack melt. And also that we still are seeing some of the tributary natural flows that are coming into the reservoir. And our Article 56 carryover water is stored down in St. Louis, it's off stream and that is sitting, it's been hovering around 106% for about a month now, above its historical average.

This slide I wanted to show the board what happens when St. Louis fills. When I say fill, there it is a shared storage reservoir with the Bureau's Central Valley project. DWR has a maximum space allocation of 1,062,000 acre feet. In this dash line that was provided to contractors from DWR shows the projected storage path with low exports out of banks pumping plan in the Delta.

So last Monday, Saint Louis was on paper at least, quote, spilling. Even though it isn't a physical spill, we've exceeded the space DWR has in contractors that is allotted by agreement to DWR. So for the time being what's happened is DWR has entered into a temporary surcharge agreement with the Central Valley project with a reservation up to 60,000 acre feet. Now again, I say temporary because the feds could very well say, well, you know, our exports are ramping up. We need you to vacate that 60,000 acre feet.

Well, what does that mean to us as contractors? That means quote spill. Spill means that article 21 water is available to the South Of Delta contractors, Metropolitan, Kern County Water Agency, Coachella, San Georgino Pass and a number of other smaller players that are South Of Delta. So where do we sit with our San Luis carryover balance at least as of the January going into February 16515 acre feet and DWR provided all contractors with the allotted space based upon formulas that they have that's the methodology applied to the contract, and our allotted space for NAPA was sitting at 5,410 acre feet. And that means that we have over 11,000 acre feet stored in excess, which puts us in jeopardy of loss.

So, I caucused the cities, during our water tech meeting and also, you know, outside of our water tech meeting and said, what do you think about selling some water to offload, off ramp some water in lieu of loss for nothing? They were all supportive of it, so we moved forward with water transfer agreement with San Gorgino Pass Water Agency. They had zero water in storage as you can see at San Luis. They are near the bottom of the list so they could accommodate this transfer and quickly move water rather than Napa risking a complete loss of 3,000 acre feet. Yes, Director Antree.

I'm so sorry to interrupt, I just there was a point of logic there in the logical flow that might help people understand what's going on at San Luis, which is that we can't physically move water from San Luis to Napa.

Correct.

So maybe you could talk about that.

Yeah. Yeah. Let me let me elaborate on that. So the way that the facilities are sited for storage, San Luis Reservoir cannot physically deliver water to Lindsay Slough because Lindsay Slough is an off branch of the Deep Ship Channel, okay, and San Luis is to our South. So what DWR would do if Napa decides that the cities decide that they want to take delivery of Article 56 water, there is a paper transfer that happens to Lake Oroville.

So and then that paper transfer happens to Lake Oroville and then the releases are scheduled into the Delta to which we would take at our point of diversion at Barker Slough Pumping Plant and then export that water to our Napa cities. Now when we do a transfer of our carryover storage that water can flow physically from San Luis to a South Of Delta contractor. So they are able to take direct delivery. There is no paper transfer up to Oroville. Thank you for posing that question and give me an opportunity to expand upon that.

Here's a map that shows the infrastructure that was built out in the sixties for the North Bay Aqueduct. To the fur to the east, in the easternmost point, there's Barker Slough pumping Plant. That water originates from Lindsay Slough, Barker Slough, through multiple pumps that are dedicated to the, city subscribers, each of which is 500 horsepower. And then it it actually is conveyed through the the North Bay Aqueduct system, the pipeline to through a search tank at Travis and then eventually makes its way over to the Cordelia 4 Bay and then through the pumps there and then it's either transported to the city of Venetia Vallejo or to Napa American Canyon Treatment Plants. Here's a photo, I'm actually going to show a video of the Barker's Slough Pumping Plant.

There's the intake screen And why don't I just play the video for you here. And I'm going to touch upon the challenges that we have faced with diverting water out of Barker's Slough. Most notably, I think you can really see by this video that high murkiness turbidity to the water in the weeds that are present. And then moving west, there's the Cordelia Fourbay And Pumping Plant. Again, those pumps will move water to the cities of Vallejo, Benicia, the Solano County Water Agency side and then up and over the canyon, Jamison Canyon, to the water treatment plants serving the city of Napa and American Canyon.

One thing I wanted to mention is, and this has come up during drought times, is that there is the Pudde South Canal is in close proximity to the Solano project is to the Cordelia 4 Bay. So there have been discussions during multiple drought cycles twenty fourteen-fifteen then twenty twenty one-twenty twenty two attempting to secure an emergency supply agreement with Solano County Water Agency. Those discussions, we got a little bit of traction with it, Solano County Water Agency pointed out that we would need to at least purchase some dryer insurance entitlements from UC Davis or another agency that would allow us to export that water. So I think going forward, Solano County Water Agency is doing a preliminary engineering study right now, looking at the costs and the technical feasibility and the permitting. But I'd like for us to continue to explore that as a potential dry year supply, emergency dry air supply, and keep open communication with Solano in that regards.

Here are photos of the conveyance tanks in the NBA. There's the Travis surge tank, and then there's the Napa terminal tank at Jamison Canyon. Some of the challenges that have been observed and realized with the North Bay Aqueduct is, well, it's aging infrastructure. We have explored an alternative intake project. About twelve years ago, twelve, thirteen years ago, there was an EIR that made it to draft form that looked at the potential of diverting water from West Sacramento back through Barker Slough and then eventually to Gordelia Pumping Plant.

The project really never took off because of its cost and at the time it was estimated to be a $550,000,000 project. Moving that forward using the Engineering News record indices for construction, that project is going to run around $990,000,000 in 2026. It's something that we should be looking at as potentially a long term project because of the regulations and the restrictions that Barker Slough faces going forward. For example, the long fin Delta smelt curtailments that we have experienced in the past. And then there's this risk of golden mussel veliger spread.

Every single state water project meeting, it seems monthly, we're finding more golden mussel. So the the rate of spread is a bit alarming. And moving that intake further north would at least get that risk mitigated. And then the other thing is, and we haven't I haven't had a conversation with the board about this in a while, is the potential for dry year salinity barriers. There is the one that goes in during dry years that DWR constructs and then actually pulls all the revetment out of the system.

But there was discussion and preliminary permits sought for steamboat and minor sloughs, which would potentially run the risk of pushing a little bit more brackish water into Lindsay's Slough at least according to the models. So there's a degree of uncertainty there. And then the other thing is as you can see in the photo there's water quality impairment, high organic carbon loads that can run the risk of disinfection byproducts, and then sediments. So shifting topics onto our import classifications, here's a breakdown of the different classes of water that can be imported through the North Bay Aqueduct. There's Article 21, that occurs and we take advantage of that because there is a contract term that allows NAPA to take article 21 water deliveries primarily during the wet season.

It can happen as late or as early as November. Typically, see that December to March. Right now the delta is in excess and with restrictions so we are realizing that benefit of not cutting into our, you know, upon our Table A deliveries at this moment. And then Table A by contractor, that's the allocation that DWR signs according to their studies. Our maximum at 100% is 29,025 acre feet.

American Canyon has a contract with the City of Vallejo. They are able to take delivery of up to 500 acre feet per year. I mentioned earlier the Yuba River Accord, that's a dry year purchase program. That range of supply during dry years would be between 300 to as much as 700 acre feet. Now, that seems like a pretty nominal import but it really matters during those dry years when we're stressing our local resource too.

There's advanced table A that is an allowance up to 5,000 acre feet during those dry critically dry years. We don't like to call upon it that frequently because it is indebtedness to DWR and there's very specific criteria to which that debt is released and that's when Oroville goes into flood management. So we would have to wait and we have up to ten years when we do establish kind of a water loan from DWR. And then lastly, there is the classification of human health and safety. This came up back in 2022 and we don't really wanna have to be in that place of relying upon human health and safety primarily because there is no provision for industrial, commercial, and institutional customers.

So it's really paramount that our city water supply managers have been doing their supply planning and when we think that we're going to be slipping into a critically dry year and especially during consecutive dry years where there is this risk of human health and safety water that there be a reservation of supply elsewhere for the customer class. This table shows the breakdown by contractor of the maximum amount of table A that each can take delivery of this year. We're sitting at 40% north of Delta allocation, that equates to 11,610 acre feet and this was per the notice that was issued to contractors in January. This is a pie chart showing the planned water supply classifications for this year. Over 85% of the water we expect to classify as table A.

I would expect that article 21 with the delta being excess is likely going to expire here soon from what I can see of the net delta outflow index. And then there's American Canyon's 4.5% of permit water. This is a summary of the rule making that state water boards has proposed. This has been ongoing for a number of years and various revisions to it as a result of comments provided by water suppliers, NGOs, non government organizations, other special interest groups, the Delta Stewardship Council, all the entities that have an interest in preserving the health of the Delta ecosystem. And so there was the latest revisions that were released in December '25 and I took a deep dive into it to see what that really meant to us, NAPA.

If we were to have to go down the unimpaired flow regulatory pathway. Okay, and under the column that says WSA UIF, that is water supply adjustments unimpaired flow. And you can see by water year type, brown being dry or critically dry, yellow being caution, hey, it's below normal, and then blue being above normal or wet. And those are the water supply cuts under the proposed rule making for unimpaired flows that we would be facing. Now, shifting to the left of that column is the water supply adjustments under what's called the voluntary agreements or now the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program.

If adopted, the VA or the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program, we would not face supply But there is going to be a participation cost at $10 per acre foot of delivered water. So if I was to project a range of cost and impact to water supply here, we're looking at anywhere from $58,000 to $100,000 in additional cost to be a participant in the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program and not be in jeopardy of water supply cuts because there is that option, contractors will be given that option. You can either be a participant or non participant in the Healthy Rivers and Landscapes program. By being a participant what that means is there will be a contract with DWR and then the fee again will be $10 per acre foot. And then there's the area of origin litigation status.

The complaint for breach of contract was filed in the court in July 2022. We believe that there's a flawed interpretation by DWR staff of the 2,013 area of origin settlement terms, that primarily being on the manner by which Napa, Solano and City Of Yuba can take delivery of the North, what's called the North Of Delta increment. And the North Of Delta increment is that allocation that is above and beyond the South Of Delta. So this year it's 40% as I mentioned for North Of Delta, it's 30% for South

Of

Delta. So that quote Delta is 10%, which is over 2,900 acre feet of water. DWR contends that that water is a last of use and service area. We don't believe that the that the settlement terms state that. They don't state it explicitly nor do we interpret it that way.

And so here we are, you know, in disagreement with DWR. We had them produce a white paper. We've gone through negotiations. We are now in deliberating, in pretrial mediation attempting to resolve this. And really our mission here is even though DWR back in 2020 stripped NAPA of 1,200 acre feet of carryover entitlement, it really is that, you know, the the for us, what's important here and at stake and why we are, you know, litigating this is to get access to if you look at the column that says NOD increment loss, okay, there's nearly 33,000 acre feet of water that was allocated to NAPA and that DWR took back because we were unable to take delivery of it as they deem it to be last of use in service area.

There were only two years. If you move to the column to left, NOD increment delivery, I compiled these statistics, there are only two years that NAPA has been able to classify the NOD increment and take that water. So the twenty thirteen settlement agreements in my opinion wasn't a great deal. We need a better deal and we're working towards that. There has been a trial date continuance that's approved by the court to mid September.

We are currently in negotiations with the interveners. The interveners are the Delta contractors that signed into the settlement terms in 2013 and hope that we can at least provide them with compelling arguments that under the area of origin laws that we are entitled to access to that water as first of use and we want access to that water. We want to manage that supply, not DWR. Alright, so now I'm going to move us over to our regional hydrology and looking at the reservoirs. If you've driven around Napa County, you've seen that most all the reservoirs are spilling, they may be kind of starting to subside.

There's their spill, a little bit of recedence, but all the reservoirs are full for this year. And then lastly, the regional climate statistics, this is interesting, there's a bit of a dichotomy here that we have full reservoirs but yet we have total rainfall that is below normal sitting at in some areas almost half of normal. So I think where we benefited by this in my opinion is the early October November rains that brought on saturation followed by the December runoff. That's where we benefited the most because it got dry during January and then we had a couple of atmospheric river storms that moved through in February that topped everything off. There we sit and I will be happy to take questions as we watch the spillway.

Watch and listen. Thank you, Chris. Is there any public comment on this information? No public comment. I'll bring it back to the board for questions, curiosity, comments. Director Manfrey.

Thank you. Okay. I three questions. So with the kind of you were experiencing in the Sierras with a, say, low snowpack overall and also early melting snowpack, that's a situation that's predicted to become much more common going forward. And you talked about moving the intakes for the North Bay Aqueduct from Barker Slough to the Sacramento River Main Channel.

And that costs $1,000,000,000 right now, let alone by the time we could actually get something pushed through. So anything you can offer on what we can do to be better prepared for years like the one we're having, because we're expecting them to become much more common and the easiest alternative logistically is extremely expensive.

Right. You know, there there is the potential that we might be able to explore a groundwater banking agreement with contractors that are to our south. That would likely result in some conveyance or carriage losses as they're called, you know, from evaporation, evapotranspiration, just physically getting the water to store. But that's something that I think that we should look at in greater detail because there's a vast amount of acreage that recharge can occur down in the Southlands. And if we were able to store that water there and then call upon it when we need it, taking, I'll just throw a number out there, for example, a 25% loss and getting something back versus a complete loss of San Luis Reservoir spilling, that's a better alternative.

The other thing is, what I'd like us to do is if we are successful in our litigation in getting access to the NOD increment is to be better prepared for water transfers and sale and book that revenue because the intrinsic value of that water is 9,750,000.00 over the past twelve years.

Okay. That's very clear. Thank you. And, yeah, absolutely support. Relatedly, the Colorado River is experiencing dramatic shortages in snowpack inflow to the point where they may not be able to even release water pretty soon from some of the major reservoirs.

I feel like it's like the slowest rolling, unreported disaster in the West right now. And we are tangentially connected to the Colorado River deliveries in the sense that some of the water from the state water project and federal water projects is delivered very far south to areas that share as a destination Colorado River water and water in our delivery system. And so my question about that is there anything we should be concerned about given that Los Angeles and Point South may be really losing a lot of their water supply or fighting desperately to keep their water supply, that kind of thing? So do we think they'll looking be more toward the state and federal water project systems for water and maybe fighting harder for it?

Yeah. I mean, inevitably, is going to be there's going to be a bigger push by the larger water contractors to our south to preserve their state water project interests entitlements. And so that's why right now these negotiations that we have in our litigation where every acre foot of water matters, it's just so important that we accomplish that endpoint now before it's ultimately ruled how the lower CRB will be governed and regulated. The one thing that it would do is if we have surplus water, obviously it's going to open up the door for more relationships to sell water.

Very good. Okay, so thank you for just thoroughly answering these big questions. And the last one, this should be an easy one, who pays for dry year salinity barriers that go up to protect the North Bay Aqueduct?

For the North Bay Aqueduct, well that's interesting. You know, under the bulletin that DWR issues, think I'm going to have to look into that because technically, I I wish I had a direct answer but I don't want to misrepresent or mistake the answer because technically the South of Delta contractors should be responsible for that facility because it is part of their transportation system.

Yeah. I'm sorry. I thought that would be an easy one, but I guess I guess it is more complicated. Thank you.

Sure. Okay.

Oroville is what are we looking at?

Is it too late to make a public comment? If it's too late, I'll I'll catch Chris by himself later on.

Okay. Well

If it's if it's a if it's a simple one, sure. We can

It is a simple one. I was gonna ask about state bill senate bill 72

and how this might wanna come to the mic.

Sir. Could you please come to the podium? Thank you.

Good afternoon. Oh, good morning. Norm Woods, assistant public works director of City of American Canyon. I was gonna ask how does our water supply tie into senate bill 72 in terms of the management of it and our infrastructure. Are there any dollars potentially that would be coming from the state to assist with any of this knowing that we're looking at that as the overall umbrella for till 02/4250 instead of us just managing the water is are we going to, with our conveyance system build towards that, you know, so. Dr.

Yeah, the answer is yes.

Okay.

Dr. Hope is on

the way with that. Dr. Bill seventy two, thank you for that. Lake Oroville, it's relatively new. In the late sixties, I think you recall when Oroville was built and settled. So our connection at Napa County with of Napa County with with Lake Oroville and the the Yuba Accord, Was that when Napa County first became a contractor with State Water Project?

Right. With its founding contract with DWR, participation in the conservation facility of Lake Oroville, the storage reservoir, Yeah, we began paying capital conservation charges for that facility at our contract inception. Now the Uber Accord, participating in that, that's more recent. Okay, we I want to say that we originally opted into the Huber Accord dry year purchase program in the early twenty ten, twenty eleven time frame. It preceded me.

But, yeah, now we now we push this renewed agreement out to 2050. So we it will outlast most of us. But, yeah, we're we're gonna be we're gonna be a part of the Yuba River Accord for decades to come. But again, it's it's it's an emergency backstop supply. We're we don't wanna call upon it because it is expensive water, but when we need it, it's there.

And the Yuba that's Yuba County. Is is Lake Oroville in Yuba County? Or is it strictly the Yuba River?

It's the Yuba River.

Yeah.

Yeah. The the water originates from Bullock's Bar Reservoir.

Yeah. And that's the

surface component.

Yeah. Just always was curious about how we connected to Lake Oroville and the Yuba Accord.

Yeah. So

many contractors with the DWR, not all

27.

27 contractors. So those counties that contracted initially were very forward thinking. They were.

And they're planning and thinking.

Yeah. Really a good thing to do. 27 out of how many counties? 48 counties. Alaska? 58 counties. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? Director Anderson.

Just very quickly, just express support for your rigorous defense of our water rights and agreements and also continuing conversations with Solana County Water Agency. Thank you for updating us on that too.

Oh, thank you.

Chair, just a process question. Who is it when these decision making points are happening in the litigation and the negotiations, the mediation, etcetera, who is it from this board, if anyone, that is interacting with you? Who has the ultimate say in terms of the agreements to negotiate and settle on certain terms? I'm a little confused about that process.

Okay. So I believe in accordance with our bylaws, staff, Rick and myself, do have the authorization to negotiate on these terms. And then what our our plan is, we want to, you know, reach, have DWR make some concessions, try to strike some middle ground on the damages that are thought that are sought, and then because we do have a counter proposal that's under consideration right now. And if we can have an agreement in principle with DWR and the interveners, we're going to go into closed session with the board to discuss all of that in detail.

It would be great to get this maybe sent digitally. I can't really read a lot of the statistics here. If you can send that to the board members, that would be great. And I think maybe just me and my lack of comfort in this area. But first of all, excellent presentation, very great overview. It would be interesting just to get the financial overview about how the dollars flow, particularly from the, you know, perspective of small cities. We're trying to figure this out. It's it's so complicated to me, but maybe something in the future just here are the contract. I know it's mostly contract, but how that affects each of the the jurisdictions in Napa County, get a get a sense of where these you know, this is more of the logistical part of the actual on the ground. This is where the the water comes from.

These are the issues that we have. But you threw out a lot of, well, that's a $100,000 to be with the healthy rivers and landscape. Well, where does that water come I mean, that money come from? I I just maybe a general overview at some point, not now, but

Okay.

That would be helpful for me to link that to what you you've talked about here. Maybe that's just a short summary, very short summary, I don't know, but it would be interesting to me to get a bigger picture of money trail, money flow.

The money is way simpler than the Money water is actually very simple. It's your water. Sell the entities that get this water, sell the water. And the city of Napa, the city of American Canyon in Santa Elena. So you pay. If you buy your water essentially from NAPA, you

have a contract. That's what I said. But I didn't want to have any missing parts to that. I always assumed that was the case. I thought there was maybe more. We throw out dollar figures. Go, well, who's paying for that? We've already talked about that.

And all those details, who puts the rocks in there to get Yeah, this all

those kinds

of things.

All of those are built into basically operations costs that we're charged. So there's include operations of all those facilities. So it's

yeah. Alright.

Thank Pretty simple. Yeah. Yeah.

Very good. Any other comments, questions? You so much, Crystal. It's a

complex

world water out there. And we're fortunate, I think, of our forefathers that built the system we have around Napa County. I mean, always room to grow and improve and modernize, but feel very good. We just got to count on Mother Nature to kind of not change too much down the road to keep that water turning. And everybody's probably heard the old quote, I guess it was Mark Twain, that whiskey's for drinking. And that's St. Patrick's Day today. Whiskey's for drinking and water's for fighting for. So it's true in California. All right.

We'll move on if there's nothing else. And I'm going to back up a little bit on our consent calendar. There's no it's just the minutes, one consent item. So if I could entertain a motion to approve the consent calendar.

Second. Motion

by Director Muller, second by Director Lesey. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Thank you for that. That kind of winds up our agenda items eight, nine, and no general well, we do have is there any other thing, Rick, for general manager report?

Yeah, just real briefly. I just want to let you know on the flood project, we're full speed ahead. You'll start seeing some construction activities starting mid April. And you all received an email from us that we're going to have a brief groundbreaking celebration on April 1 at 10AM behind the River Terrace Inn. And I have confirmed Congressman Thompson will be there and Colonel McTeeke from the Army Corps will be there with and you're all welcome, of course.

And probably some we'll pass the word around to mostly the interested stakeholders like property owners that are involved with the project and Friends of the River and people like that, RiverLine people. City Council, I think, been told about it. And then, of course, now we have our media rep. We'll be sending up probably a media notice on it sometime in the next week or so. But it's just a brief marking of the start of construction, opportunity to thank the corps and our congressmen for their efforts to get us where we're at.

And Mayor Sedgley, I'll communicate with you maybe on some talking points for oh, and actually, any of our board members or a mayor, if you can make it about 09:30, I'm going to try to have a little meet and greet room set aside for our visiting VIPs so they can meet and greet before the actual event. Then we'll you know, head out to the river. So it'll be at the basically, the River Terresin, but stay tuned for that.

Updating 09:30.

09:30 ish. Yeah.

Thanks, Rick. City Council, Lap City, we had a special meeting last night on the state of the city, and we were asked by the moderators individually what was significant for you in 2025 as a council member. But what I landed on was my hat as serving on this board. Last year, because of staff and the hard work that we have done as a collective group, got that across the finish line. We got the money secured. We got the design all. And here we are, the first year, getting a break ground in April 1. That's a major, major accomplishment for the community. The whole 1998 Major A.

I

mean, here we are still moving forward. And there's more to do. So it's pretty exciting to be part of this. Thank you, Rick. Directors, any comments? Anything to report out on?

I have maybe a future agenda item or maybe a comment. I'm not really sure. Let me go with it first. Form 700s are coming up. This is my kind of mission for all county boards that I sit on.

We have to A lot of our Form 700s, we can just submit electronically, but with these some of these individual boards, we have to have wet signatures. And it's just a real clunky, cumbersome you can't really print out your Form 700 and submit it. You've to, like, do gyrations and get unsigned copies so you can do wet signatures. My understanding is that we have to do it this way because the individual bylaws dictate that. But the board could say electronic signatures are fine. So is that something we can look into and figure out how that works for this board?

Miss, if I may, we actually changed the bylaws last year so that you can electronically file your Form seven hundreds. Okay. Last year was the first year that we did it, and this year, you should be able to just go in and redo last year's.

Since these are deadlines are coming up, would you mind sending that out to the respective You

should have

city clerks?

Yeah. You should have gotten a direct correspondence from our coordinator. But I'll follow-up with your council member.

Yeah. I I didn't I didn't remember getting that. I would have probably passed that on.

So Sure, I'll follow-up with her.

Okay, that would be great. Great. Thank you very much. I can check off one more board.

Thanks, Marty. Paul?

Well, just want to take a moment to welcome Jay Koba to our board as a floating alternate. Jay is from my community. He has a long history in the, I believe, the chemical and biotechnology industries. He has served on the oversight committee for our Measure H. He's currently on the Water and Wastewater Board. He comes highly regarded from our community by the mayor of the city of St. Helena. Welcome to our little committee here. Thank you.

Thanks Paul. Anyone else? Well, we have no closed session this morning and so at this time we will adjourn. Thanks, Chris.