May 8 Watershed Council Meeting Materials
We have several action items on this Thursday’s Watershed Council meeting. Below are some materials related to two of those items.
Proposition 84 Drought Emergency Grant – Proposed Project Evaluations
Five project proposals have been submitted so far for consideration as part of Ventura River watershed’s portion of the Watershed Coalition of Ventura County’s (WCVC) 2014 Drought Solicitation grant application. In addition, one regional (countywide) project proposal has been submitted. The Council will need to indicate which of these six projects they support, and rank them in order of priority for the next round of consideration by the WCVC Steering Committee.
Detailed information of these projects was distributed in my April 30, 2014, and here is a one-page summary of the projects for use at the meeting. The incomplete fields on this page are items for discussion at the meeting. Information on the proposed projects from Calleguas Creek and Santa Clara River watersheds, the other two watersheds in the county that will be part of the overall grant proposal, is summarized on this Calleguas watershed blog. These watershed groups have already met and ranked their projects.
Ventura River Watershed Section of the Ventura County IRWMP Update
The update to the countywide Integrated Regional Water Management Plan (IRWMP) will include a separate section of watershed-specific information, which I was asked to develop. I didn’t have time to write a new concise document specifically for that purpose, so I excerpted information from the draft Ventura River Watershed Management Plan, as developed to date. Here is the draft Ventura River Watershed section.
The section includes things requested by Lynn Rodriquez, the author of the IRWMP update, including our goals and objectives, list of accomplishments, project/program list, and descriptions of the Leadership Committee members, and it includes excerpts from the watershed characterization sections drafted thus far. The section is long, over 200 pages, but most of it is material that has already been circulated for review. The new content that has not yet been circulated for review includes: 2.4 Water Supply and Demand, 2.6 Ecosystems & Access to Nature, and 2.7 Socioeconomics. The content here is bare bones, in some cases just a sentence or two explaining a map. I’ve also added a few new projects to our project list (Table 3.3.2.1), which are indicated by orange font color. These include the projects I know of that may be proposed for funding under the Drought Emergency Prop 84 funding, plus a few others that came up during brainstorming about the drought.
At the meeting, we’ll be discussing and hopefully approving this information for inclusion in the IRWMP update. If Council members feel that any of this content still needs work, we can probably simply delete it. We still have time to consider this content in more detail as part of the development and review of our watershed management plan. Lynn Rodriguez may also choose to edit or delete some of the content as needed to balance her overall plan.
Agenda
Here is the agenda for the May 8, 2014 meeting of the Ventura River Watershed Council. The meeting will be from 9:00 am to 12:00 pm, in the Topping Room of the Foster Library, 651 E. Main Street.