Bear River Commission Meeting
Tues., Nov. 18th, 2002
The following are notes from the Water Quality Meeting,
the Records & Public Involvement meeting, the Operations Meeting
and the General Meeting of the Bear River Commission.
The new Federal chairman, Dee Hansen was introduced. He has a long history
of involvement with water rights, water use and the Bear River Compact.
Reports:
PacifiCorp - FERC relicensing
Pacificorp expects the final EIS as soon as Feb. '03 with the licenses
as soon as the Summer of 2003. They hope to have the TMDLs for the Bear
River within 60 days. There will be a period for public comment by this
Spring. If Bear Lake is to be considered part of the relicensing, there
will be a seperate EIS. Comments on the draft EIS are due by Dec. 31st,
2002.
Cirrus Ecological Solutions
Cirrus is completeing a study of the efforts to complete TMDLs on the
entire Bear River. Their final report is due by March 2003. So far,
no TMDLs have been approved by Idaho, but they are expected by mid December.
Bear Lake is not included because the lake water is not impaired. Most
of the rest of the Bear River is on the 303 list of "impaired"
waters.
Bear River Water Quality Task Force - Mitch Poulsen
The next meeting of the Task Force will be in Evanston on Jan, 23rd,
2003. there will probably be a symposium on the Bear River with Cirrus
being a major presentor.
PacifiCorp - Bear Lake plans and Dredging
Last year was the driest year in 75 years and the first time there has
been back to back negative runoff years. The irrigation allocation for
2002 was 215,000 Ac. Ft., but only 204,000 Ac. Ft. were released. In
2003, if the runoff was the same as 2002, there will only be 177,000
Ac. Ft. available for downstream irrigation. If it is a"normal"
runoff year, there will be 210,000. The normal
allocation is 230,000 Ac. Ft.
If there is less than 5 ft. of inflow to Bear Lake, dredging will start
in March. That decision will probably be made in January. Right now,
with the lake at 5908 ft., there is about 2.5 ft. of clearance at the
inlet to the Lifton Pumping Station. In a "normal" year, the
lake rises 3.5 ft. and drops 3.5 to 4 ft. for irrigation demands.
Work on the mitigations required of PacifiCorp when the dredging permit
was issued are well under way. The North Point Boat ramp has been improved.
The marina channel at Garden City has been dredged deeper. Work is underway
on improving St. Charles Creek habitat as it flows across the sand to
improve spawning for the Bear Lake Cutthroat.There will be a program
to erradicate the tamarisk this summer.
Bear River Commission - Engineer Manager
Upstream water storage will be regulated by the original Bear River
Compact, not the Amended Compact. There was considerable discussion
about carryover storage and unused storage allocated to a different
location. these items were deferred to the TAC Committee.
The Bear River Ground Water Management Plan was submitted to Idaho and
should be approved, with or without conditions by the end of 2002.
Rocky Point Dam- Eulalie Langford
The proposed 90 ft. dam at Rocky Point would store about 300,000 Ac.Ft.
of water. (The top 4 ft. of Bear Lake 5922' to 5918' is approximately
270,000 Ac. Ft.) The Corp of Engineers will build the dam and pay 65%
of the cost. Money from hydroelectric generation would pay for the remaining
35%. Love Bear Lake has filed with FERC for the hydroelectric rights
at Rocky Point.
Bear River Commission - Engineer Manager
The next meeting will be April 15th, 2003
