Russian River Watershed Protection Committee (RRWPC)
P.O. Box 501
Guerneville, CA 95446
rrwpc@comcast.com
March 30, 2011
STATE WATER RESOURCES CONTROL BOARD
DIVISION OF WATER RIGHTS
P.O. BOX 2000
SACRAMENTO, CA 95812-2000
Attention: Beth Glidewell
PROTEST REGARDING: PETITION REQUESTING MODIFICATION TO WATER RIGHTS PERMITS FOR SONOMA COUNTY WATER AGENCY BY MODIFYING INSTREAM FLOW REQUIREMENTS: PERMITS 12947A, 12949, 12950, AND 16596 (APPLICATIONS 12919A, 15736, 15737, AND 19351)
Dear Ms. Glidewell:
On behalf of RRWPC, I wish to respond to your Agency’s certified letter of March 10, 2011.
Introduction….
The purpose of this letter is to clarify some concerns I have resulting from the Certified letter that I received the afternoon of March 18th. I am also hereby requesting an extension of time to complete RRWPC’s protest submission for the following reasons:
• So we might better determine whether the status of RRWPC comments is fully complete, including the determination of whether all 32 attachments we submitted as part of the record is actually in the record.
• So we can add documents into the record that are relevant to our comments already in the record, that were submitted for the DEIR Scoping on this same topic as recently collected by the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA). We may also add documents submitted on the DEIR for the Estuary Project (issue raised in our submitted comments).
(I have just obtained electronic copies of SCWA’s Scoping file of Fish Flow Project. I hope to transmit them either with this email or separately before today’s deadline of 4:30 PM.)
• We are also asking for an extension of time on behalf of all the responders (those appearing on list of respondents) who live and/or work, recreate, own property, businesses, etc. in the lower river and who received the Certified Letter and wish to clarify their response. (Many have already submitted a second letter, but some letters may come in a little late and we would like to make a case for including those that are tardy.)
• Also, we wonder if there was any formal notice of the time extension for response to the certified letter?
Lower River Citizens Respond to State’s Certified letter…
In regard to the last point, RRWPC used the list that you graciously provided us to circulate a new form letter to clarify in layperson’s terms the first protest letter submitted. We sent the letter by first class on March 24th mail to 271 names of the approximately 370 names on the list you provided. We asked protesters to respond by the March 30th deadline (as per email from you was extended from March 25th). We did not send it to all 370 names, since RRWPC comments covered the lower river only and did not address the part of the project dealing with the upper and middle river segments, including Dry Creek. We estimated that there were about 100 comments concerning these other issues and did not include them on our list.
Unfortunately, many of the addresses to which these letters were sent are second homes where the owner does not normally receive their mail. They had listed their river address, but not their winter mailing address on the original protest letter. Because of this, they may not have picked up the Certified letter from your Agency. In some cases, RRWPC had the mailing address and we made the change for our letter. We tried to re-address all returned mail, but some may get their letters back a little late. We request that you accept them.
Similarly, many people live in their residences full time, but do not receive mail at their home. They originally put their home address on the form because they thought that was required. We have about 12 of those that came back to us, most of them were in today’s mail. We would like time to try and locate these people to have them send in the form letter. We believe that in some cases we can locate their post office boxes and forward them. We assume that you have many similar returns of the certified letter and we would like the opportunity to rectify the problem in order to preserve their protestor status.
RRWPC WOULD LIKE TO BE INFORMED OF ANY NAMES/ADDRESSES THAT GET DELETED FROM THE PROTEST LIST.
As we noted in earlier emails to you, the Certified letter was dated March 10th, but the envelope was postmarked March 15th. In Guerneville, the Post Office didn’t put notices in boxes to pick up the Certified Letter until March 17th. I picked the notice up that day after 6 pm, so I couldn’t actually sign for the letter until March 18th, which was a Friday, and not a good time to contact your Agency to make inquiries as to its meaning.
We requested an extension of time because of the late delivery of the notice (seven days after date on letter). Your Agency granted a five days extension, although we didn’t see any formal notification of this extension, which made for a lot of confusion on the part of the protesters. We are concerned that more time is needed and ask for another eight days, until Friday, April 1st at 4:30 PM (or Monday, April 4th by 12 noon).
Also, less than two hours before comments are due, we just learned that you (Beth) are out of the office for two weeks. One person was trying to send in comments and it got kicked back. I was getting ready to send mine in and will send to several different email addresses to make sure this gets in. But what about anyone else trying to get comments in by this supposed, unnoticed deadline? This is one more reason to allow an extension.
We note that many protesters contacted us with questions about how to respond. We did the best we could to advice, but had many questions ourselves, which we felt weren’t clearly explained in our emails back and forth. It has been difficult for us to evaluate all of the legal implications contained in the letter.
Specifically I am wondering how you interpret a “statement of facts supporting the allegation”? As a layperson, I may be concerned about observed conditions, such as extensive algal blooms. Or I may be concerned about how lowered flow conditions in summer might exacerbate those blooms, but I may not have the scientific expertise to document specific kinds of algae and its causes. Would the expression of such concerns, which may not be actual “facts”, allow disqualification of the individual protest? We could ask many questions along similar lines and none of this is clear to us. We are concerned that this lack of specificity might prohibit ordinary citizens from protesting the proposed policy, which many feel would be detrimental to their use of the river.
I asked about this in a phone conversation and I believe that you expressed the view that the form letters would probably quality as protests. I hope that indeed turns out to be the case. Please respond as soon as possible.
Are RRWPC’s 32 attachments included in the record?
When RRWPC submitted it’s protest on May 13, 2010, we made a mistake in thinking that the attorney listed (Alan B. Lilly in Sacramento) was accepting protests for the SWRCB. (The Notice was very confusing in this regard.) We had sent the full packet of our comments and 32 attachments to SCWA and Alan B. Lilly.
We also sent our comments, the list of attachments, and eight of the attached documents to the State Water Board before the deadline, but did not discover our mistake about the attachments until an hour after comments were due. We had received an acknowledgement from Aaron Miller of the State Board that he had received our comments and attachments in a timely manner. Neither of us realized when he wrote that email that he was missing 24 attachments. As soon as I discovered that they were missing, I immediately prepared a new set of the 24 attachments and sent them off to Aaron Miller.
I also contacted him personally about the problem at my first opportunity. He spoke with Steve Herrera who said that your Agency could not accept late attachments, but May 18th Aaron Miller acknowledged that hard copies of all 32 attachments were received the day before. All 32 attachments were subsequently entered into the record for the Temporary Urgency Change Petition and are on file in your office.
Since this current letter implies that this is an opportunity to add information directly pertinent to the issues discussed in our original comments, and since all attachments are an integral part of our comments, we request that you formally accept all 32 attachments as they appear on the List of Attachments which is included with this letter. We had been told by Mr. Miller that once hard copies are on file in your office, we do not need to provide you with hard copies of the document again, but can merely refer to them by name. (They are all on list, so we won’t attach them to the email. Please let us know if you want us to resend them electronically.)
We formally request that all 32 documents on the List of Attachments and which were received by your Agency on May 17, 2010, be entered into the record. These attachments provide the factual basis for allegations made in the protest.
We are also attaching a photo project report of pollution in the lower river during 2009 low flows that was assembled soon after protest comments were submitted.
Important documents submitted to SCWA in response to DEIR Scoping on Fish Flow Project (i.e., alterations to D1610).
We are attaching comments and attachments submitted to SCWA in response to their Fish Flow Project Scoping Notice. As noted earlier, RRWPC just obtained an electronic copy of the record including all comments on the Fish Flow Project Scoping Notice, which includes changes to D1610. There are several documents contained in that record which are very pertinent to our comments and which we want to include here.
They include:
• RRWPC Fish Flow Project NOP Comments
• RRWPC Photo Project 2009
• NCRWQCB Comments on D1610 EIR Scoping
• Sweetwater Springs NOP Comments
• Rich Holmer for Friends of Ville Grande
RRWPC Comments on SCWA Water Project
We are also including our comments to the State on the proposed 2012 303d listing process where we advocated listing the Laguna de Santa Rosa for Ludwigia and the lower river for nutrients. Information and pictures on the latter topic is directly pertinent to our comments on D1610. We are including numerous pictures of lower river nutrient pollution attached to those comments and taken in 2010.
Finally, we are also attaching our comments on the Estuary Project where we talk at length about the bifurcation of the Estuary and Fish Flow Projects, which we discussed in our original comments. We include our comments on that project, along with comments from the Sonoma County Water Coalition, Attorney Michael Lozeau, Richard Charter for Defenders of Wildlife, Norma Jellison, and geologist Jane Nielson.
There is a lot of information here. We have found some confusion in the State’s process on this. We wonder why you requested comments on SCWA’s petition to change D1610 when it had so few details in it? In any case, it makes sense for you to consider comments submitted on the Fish Flow EIR Scoping for D1610 and the Estuary Project.
We appreciate your consideration of our comments and attachments. We hope someone will acknowledge their receipt soon. We need to send attachments in about five emails.
Sincerely,
Brenda Adelman