Scott Valley Groundwater Advisory
Committee
Groundwater:
Recently, the Board of Supervisors passed an ordinance
allowing for the creation of various advisory groups to the
Board for each groundwater hydrological area of the county.
The Board also passed a Resolution establishing a
groundwater advisory committee specifically for Scott Valley. There are 13 slots for committee
members. The County Clerk is now taking letters of interest for
appointment of seven agriculture operators who use
groundwater in Scott Valley; two domestic or other groundwater
users; two representatives nominated amongst agricultural
organizations; and two representatives of the City of Fort
Jones.
An advisory group has no regulatory power.
The Scott
Valley committee is charged
with reviewing available information and making a
recommendation to the Board of Supervisors regarding the
current state of groundwater, including groundwater/surface
water connections. The committee is to review, evaluate and
make recommendations regarding data collection, studies and
professional analysis to determine the response of
groundwater supply to natural process, human uses and other
beneficial uses. It is also supposed to recommend management
goals and objectives and any voluntary management strategies
to achieve those objectives. Based on the Scott Valley
Groundwater Study Plan approved as part of the Scott River
Total Maximum Daily Load of temperatures for fish, the
committee is also to make recommendations about the possible
development and content of a voluntary groundwater
protection and management plan.
For the past several years, a voluntary
static well study of more than 30 wells has recorded monthly
water levels throughout the lowlands of Scott Valley. This has been added to annual long
term well level monitoring results from the Department of
Water Resources and historic hydro-geologic studies by
Seymour Mack. Dr. Thomas Harter and his graduate students
from U.C. Davis have digitized the plotted the data to
create a very rough dynamic model of how groundwater moves
in most of the Scott Valley. Recently, as part of the
implementation plan of the Scott River TMDL, Dr. Harter and
his students have been funded to do further work on the
study and modeling. It is anticipated that they will work
closely with the Scott Valley Advisory Committee. Dr. Harter
is acknowledged as a nationally recognized expert on
groundwater.
At the same time, under the Klamath Basin
Restoration Agreement’s (KBRA,) the “Fish Managers” have
identified “anticipated restoration actions in the Scott and
Shasta that include: “Conduct surface water and ground water
studies to identify relationship between groundwater
dynamics and surface flow and describe instream flow
conditions needed to protect and expand juvenile salmonid
summer rearing habitat.”
http://klamathrestoration.gov/
Coincidentally,
the Karuk tribe has just published a Request for Proposals (RPF)
for a scope of work to develop linked surface and
groundwater models for the Scott River sub-basin. The RPF indicates that
the intent of the model is to “enable the exploration of
creative water management and other strategies to improve
flow and water quality conditions for fisheries resources.”
It further states that the model (including “out of the box”
models should “predictive capabilities that will enable us
to evaluate how changes in groundwater pumping, surface
diversions, and various conservation measures would affect
river flows under various hydrological and management
conditions. The model must be capable of distinguishing
effects to surface water flows at a reach-level scale, and
be able to discern differences to flows resulting from
management actions at an individual landowner scale.” The
RPF states that the model will be used to predict
site-specific daily flows under various management scenarios
and under various hydrologic conditions.
It is unknown why such
duplication of effort is needed and why the “Fish Managers”
or the tribe need to game individual management strategies
with an “out of the box’ model if they have no jurisdiction
over groundwater management and the existing model has been
created by an expert in the field.
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