Salton Sea Ecosystem Restoration Plan

Meeting Minutes 4/6/05

Why are we here? Rob & Ali (CH2M Hill), Lauren (SAIC)

Consulting Team to the California Dept of Water Res, Colo River & Salton Sea Office. Rob is an aquatic ecologist.

How to deal with quantification cond & terms of Quantification Settlement Agreement?

State CA charged them with coordinating efforts w/Upper Basin salinity & seleneium control efforts.

Salton Sea Background & Ecosytem Restoration Plan (Ali)

Imperial Dam & Coachella Canal sources to Salton Sea

Imperial Valley & Coachella Valley are agric areas surrounding Salton Sea

Hypersaline,Terminal Water Body. Source water is agricricultural drainage.

Sea Level consistent, but evap & inflow about equal. Max production area is right now w/ production slowing/ending in June/July/Aug.

Volume 7.5 M Acre/Ft, Max Depth 60 feet (Big but shallow)

Diversity of habitat along pacific flyway, variety of ending species. Env problems include nutrients, salt, selenium (fish kills), low DO, Highly eutrophic, anoxia.

Big Dust storms also affect air quality (ex. Bombay Beach, NE side of Salton Sea)

Why is state involved? Ca using more water than allowed Colo River. Quantification agreement allowed irrigation transfers from watershed which will result in imbalance between evap & inflow to the sea which will affect water quality. Looking at 20 foot drop is sea (modeling shows). Exposing 60-80,000 acres of sea bed. Salinity will got from 44 to 60 thousand ppm (year 2020 – during this time there is mitigation water being put into the sea. Colo River Water w/no prev agric use in valley) and 44 to 144 thousand ppm in 65 years(after 2020). This will result in lack of biological support for birds, fish, etc. State of Ca has taken on responsibility for liability of Salton Sea Restoration for the permanent protection for fish and wildlife.

Goals & Obj: long term stable aquatic and shoreline habitat, air quality, water quality

Stakeholder: 30+ members federal, state, tribal, regional, local. Meet 6 or more times per year, provides tech support and input to the process, per legislation, ranks alternatives and selects preferred alternatives. (Tribal land under the Sea). USGS and BOR are big partners. Advisory committee and NEPA committees are charged with different tasks.

Biological Opinion for federal action of transfer of the water (BO on QSA). Consultation for the water transfer. CA also has endangered species laws which in many ways are more strict than federal. The Restoration will also have consultation (Water transfer and restoration action are having two separate consultation).

CH2M Hill Charged with developing:

Ecosystem Restoration Plan (feasibility, alt conf & layouts, eng & design)

Program Env Impact

Financing Plan

Alternatives:

Air Quality Mgt

Water Infra Mgt

Habitat Restoration

Water Quality Mgt – treating of inflow water for habitat (This is where we, source control, fit in).

Long term – improve maintain water quality, stablelize shore, restore diversity of habit, mitigate air quality, benefits won’t be realized for a long time. (Side note: there is a great potential for urbanization around the Salton Sea.)

Sources of Se in the Salton Sea – primary source thought to be the Co River (direct drains, agric drainage). A lot of Se qetting sequestered in Salton Sea. Se may mobilize with improved wq in Salton Sea so studies being done. Co river at Imperial Dam is 2-3 ug/l, inflow to salton sea from 5-10 ug/l, salton sea is 1 ug/l which means a lot being sequestered. 30-100 ppm in salton sea sediments.

Why is Se impo to the Salton Sea?

Curent fish and wildlife concerns

Human Health

WQ Studies

Shallow sed – historic, current for se(seems to be correlated with org matter) and arsenic

Fish tissue sampling – Salton Sea and L Colorado River, se & arsenic focus, pile worms looked at because they are having a hard time finding fish. Pile worms are low cause having blue tides. Blue tides are happing much later into the year than they normally did.

Lab testing for remobilization of se from sediments.

Schedule

Alt dev & analysis right now

EIR this summer (equiv to EIS)

Draft EIR and Restoration Plan early 2006

Final doc fall 2006

Sec for res submits plan to legislatiure by Dec 31, 2006

Decision by State Leg by 2007

Project level EIR 2007-2009

Conceptual Alternatives:

- North Lake Alternative (SRC – ask for copy of ppt) – dike, rerouting river, brine pond, moving water to brine pond to balance salt in Sea, natural treatment with river water to wetlands. Concerns over loss of land and effect on land values.

- Concentric Circles Conceptual Alt (donut) – brine ponds, air quality, wetlands, habitat. SSA Group Plan. Salton Sea Agr Producers concern that with loss of sea it will affect temperatures in the valley and thus their crops.

- Evolving Sea Alternative (least cost alternative). Let Sea Sink, let fish die. Treated no action alternative. Marshes, wetlands, water body goes hyper saline.

Task (Report due April 30th)

Identify loading up here

ID control measures – structural, non structural, admin

Etc- SRC – get rest

SSAC struggling with treating inflow water. So, looking at source control w/treatment. Upper Basin Sites.

Control Measures Currently Being Implemented

Structural – lateral piping, PAM, pond lining, phyto remediation

Non Structural Measures-land retirement, water use practices, BMPs (They were corrected that some of this NOT being implemented, but rather these things have been looked at).

Administrative –

Report will ID load reduction options

Options that apply to all sources, local option, regional options

Cost estimates – capital costs, operations, and maintenance.

Why are we here? Flooding/creation of salton sea occurred in 1905.

Blue pamphlets for more information.

Mike Baker – Salinity Control Forum Presentation (same as what we saw at Joint Mtg, same presentation given at Congressional Briefing).

Jerry Miller – BOR

Se moves fairly conservatively to Salton Sea at 2.4 ppm. Sulfate, salt, se transport – where different, where same.

Sulfur to Se ratios in gypsum is 1 ppm dry weight. So it is proportional. Also slightly reducing conditions in field which is where there is a divergence. Designed study to look at lining raw mancos systems to see if we get a reduction of selenium. Concluded that 0.05 to .1 lbs per ton soil with salinity control program. Could get down to 1.75 ppm with continuing efforts. Colorado River Basin is a less sensitive environment. Although documentation of reproductive problems, deformed embryos, etc. When you look in drains and back waters you see that larval fish die when given interaction with se and cations of iron/iron pyrite, but couldn’t represent in the lab with just selenium. Tiny larval fish probably cannot withstand although adult fish can withstand pretty high toxicity level.

Closing Discussion

CH2M Hill

They felt they had most of the printed resources out their.

They have way more information based upon packets of information we’ve put together.

List of priorities are great and similar to what they have put together.

PAM is being used a lot. Results are a little unclear, but we think that they are saving approximately 30% water that was being lost due to seepage.

Amount of effort and what CA wants to get out of this – can they reduce the amount of mechanical treatment or natural treatment that they have to do and help the Salton Sea by looking up basin. Dave felt that there are other areas where we don’t have data where we can also get a lot of source control. Rob, some big programmatic decisions will be made with Ali’s report and an establishment of the plan will come out of the study (between now and Dec 06). Solutions they come up with need to be pretty flexible. Eileen echoed that from the perspective of the City, we have to look at source control and conservation vs chasing treatment. Ali, they are struggling with how to capture the need to “raise awareness” so that we aren’t continuously chasing the Devil’s Thumb Golf Course. Rob echoed the importance by saying that like Devil’s Thumb is 1% of the load to the Salton Sea. Eileen, point source dischargers are concerned about impact and they are interested in water quality trading aspect.

**** Get Ali a copy of the Task Force Action Plan

Rob some chatter that there may be less Salinity Control and meeting obligations to Mexico up here because we are ahead of the game. Mike, yet we are able to decrease 1 ton of salinity for $50. Ali, for the Metro area they are interested in how many times they may be able to reuse water. Overall, there’s lots of moving parts that we have to figure out how to use so that we can meet our future obligations and goals.

Discussion on when/what form Mike might be able to give information on “cost” – Mike indicates that he could have info by the end of summer. Rob will have to talk to staff about how to represent priorities based on cost and needs to talk to client about what they would like and when (will they be able to put off cost estimates for a later document).

Rob, if CA is going to have something to do with this, the smart thing might be to write a check to have things done in upper basin. The check would be for reducing selenium not for water conservation. That’s why this group has been talking in loads not in concentration.

Rob will let our group review the draft report to make sure that information is technically correct.