Friends of the Eel River Complaint to to State Water Resources Control Board
FOER SWRCB Water Rights Petition & Complaint PGE-PVP 3-1-10
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Decision 1610
Decision 1610 (D1610), is State water law passed in the mid-eighties governing Russian River flows. The Biological Opinion (BO), published in September, 2008, required the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) to petition the State Board for changes to the law. Requested decreases of summer flows from Dry Creek confluence to Jenner would go from 125 cubic feet per second (cfs) to 70 cfs, a 44% decrease. The EIR will be released around August, 2012 and adoption of new flows are expected to be adopted about a year after that (2013).
Permanent Change to D1610 and Fish Flow Project
- Water Project DEIR: submitted March 10, 2009 Comments submitted March 10, 2009 This was extensive, multi-volume EIR released in December, 2008, that assumed an increase of water rights to 101,000 AFY. The document had been in the making for about 20 years.
In August, 2009, SCWA decided to shelve the complicated document and comments submitted were never responded to. Subsequently SCWA also dropped pursuit of the increased water rights, primarily because of needing to focus their attention on implementation of the Biological Opinion (BO). They have since focused a great deal more on conservation and other means to stretch the water supply. Read More >>
Sonoma County Gazette, June 2011
SCWA Urban Water Management Plan
By Brenda Adelman
The hot topic among Sonoma County water wonks is the Urban Water Management Plan (UWMP). This is the water use plan required of all California utilities that provide water to over 3000 people or utilize over 3000 acre feet of water each year (one acre foot is about 325,000 gallons). It’s like the General Plan for water availability and projected need within the districts of each water utility.
RRWPC Comments on SCWA’s UWMP
Russian River Watershed Protection Committee P.O. Box 50 Guerneville, CA 95446 rrwpc@comcast.com by Brenda Adelman June 7, 2011 Purpose of UWMP not clearly described…. The leading sentence of Sonoma County Water Agency’s(SCWA) draft ...
Sonoma County Gazette, October 2006
RRWPC Hires Attorney to Fight Actions by Sonoma County Water Agency
By Brenda Adelman
Sonoma County Water Agency, operators and managers of the Russian River County Sanitation District, are seen as committing such egregious violations of California environmental law, that Russian River Watershed Protection Committee has hired the environmental law firm of Shute, Mihaly, & Weinberger to assist in challenging their actions.
The Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA), as operators and managers of the Russian River County Sanitation District (RRCSD) have been attempting to regionalize the RRCSD Treatment Plant since they took over 11 years ago, without serious regard for extensive environmental impacts of such a project. In 1996, 400 people crowded into the Forestville School in a unique meeting with the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors, almost unanimously opposing a similar plan. Soon to be Supervisor Mike Reilly was one of many speakers strongly opposing the project, while he clearly supports it now.
Sonoma County Gazette, May 2007
Basin Plan Amendment Changes Proposed: Low Threat Discharges and Incidental Runoff
By Brenda Adelman
Are you prepared to recreate in wastewater? You say “no”? Well it won’t officially happen this summer, but the North Coast Regional Board has begun to consider an amendment to the North Coast Basin Plan that would eliminate the prohibition against summer wastewater discharges. Their purpose would be to allow “incidental” runoff of wastewater resulting from summer irrigation.
Many locals realize that fish are as important as people in terms of exposure to toxins in water because when we eat fish, we are eating what they ate. Furthermore, fish are like canaries in the mine; if they can’t survive, then ultimately, neither can we. (Canaries used to be sent down into mine shafts to see if there was enough oxygen for miners. The miners didn’t go down if the birds died.)