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1 APPEARANCES
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3 For Southern MR. JOHN KENNEDY
California 15171 Sierra Way
4 Edison Hydro: Kernville, California 93238
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5 MR. DARYL FRYER
300 North Lone Hill Avenue
6 San Dimas, California 91773
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7 MS. CANDACE IRELAN
300 North Lone Hill Avenue
8 San Dimas, California 91773
9 For Resource MS. SANDRA PERRY
Insights: 555 University Avenue
10 Suite 275
Sacramento, California 95825
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WOOD & RANDALL
Bakersfield, California
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1 I N D E X
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3 STATEMENT BY PAGE
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5 CANDACE IRELAN 4
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7 JOHN KENNEDY 8
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9 SANDRA PERRY 34
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11 DARYL FRYER 60
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WOOD & RANDALL
Bakersfield, California
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1 Lake Isabella, California
2 Friday, July 14, 2000; 2:10 p.m.
3 Woodrow Wallace School Auditorium
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5 CANDACE IRELAN: Hi, everyone. On behalf of
6 Southern California Edison, I'd like to welcome you to
7 this afternoon's meeting about relicensing the Borel
8 project.
9 I know many of you were on this morning's site
10 visit, and I appreciate your presence here today taking
11 time out of your schedules to help us talk about
12 initiating the relicense of this project.
13 What I'd like to do first of all for this
14 meeting is to introduce myself and the rest of our
15 relicensing team, and then I will briefly go over the
16 objectives of today's meeting.
17 My name is Candace Irelan. Before working for
18 Edison -- starting with Edison five years ago, I was a
19 fish biologist and wildlife biologist. Now I work in
20 project hydro relicensing, and that's kind of my
21 background. I wanted to let you know, and now let's hear
22 from the rest of our team. John.
23 JOHN KENNEDY: Okay. My name is John Kennedy.
24 I'm the operations and maintenance supervisor for
25 Southern California Edison. I manage the three hydro
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1 plants up here in the Kern River Valley.
2 PAT MARFISI: My name is Pat Marfisi, and I
3 work as a consultant on Southern Cal Edison on the Borel
4 relicensing project.
5 SANDRA PERRY: My name is Sandra Perry, and I'm
6 with Resource Insights, and we are an environmental
7 company helping Edison with the relicensing work.
8 BRIAN McGURTY: I'm Brian McGurty. I'm in the
9 hydro division of Edison responsible for water rights and
10 various aspects of water management including the new
11 cloud seeding.
12 CANDACE IRELAN: You'll notice that we have a
13 stenographer here with us today making an official
14 transcript of today's meeting that will be part of the
15 public record.
16 I would like to encourage you all to feel free
17 to bring up any questions and contribute any information
18 that you'd like during today's meeting because that's a
19 very good way of making sure that your ideas and thoughts
20 are made part of the public record.
21 When you do have something to say, if you would
22 try to speak loudly enough for our reporter to hear you,
23 and also before you make your comments, I'll ask you to
24 give your name and affiliation. Okay?
25 So with that, I'd just like to tell you what
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1 our objectives are primarily for today's meeting. We'll
2 be talking until possibly about 4 o'clock. First, to
3 give you a brief description of the project and the
4 facilities and how it operates and then to explain how
5 the relicensing process works and to give you some sense
6 of the time frame of that process.
7 More importantly, I think, we are here today to
8 hear what your concerns and thoughts are about
9 relicensing this project. That is incredibly important
10 to us. So I hope that we will be able to have a good
11 dialogue.
12 And, finally, possibly the most important thing
13 is that we're looking for opportunities to work together
14 cooperatively to solve problems as a group. So that is
15 what I'm really hoping for.
16 That's why we have gone to a special effort in
17 the last several weeks to contact you to do initial
18 interviews to try to get communications started very
19 early in the process rather than as we have more
20 traditionally done, waited until later in the process to
21 try to solve problems as they have become kind of -- I
22 don't want to say ugly, but more difficult to address as
23 it gets later and later in the process. So I think that
24 that's -- those are my beginning words.
25 Are there any questions up until this point?
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1 Okay. So, John, you --
2 JOHN KENNEDY: Did you want to go over the
3 total agenda or --
4 CANDACE IRELAN: Oh, okay. Sure. The agenda
5 as we see it at the moment -- first, I need the right
6 page. We've already covered introductions and meeting
7 objectives. John is going to go over a description of
8 the Borel project. Sandy is going to talk about an
9 overview of the relicensing process and schedule. She'll
10 then follow that with talking about the first-stage
11 consultation package which many of you should already
12 have received.
13 I should add at this point that we do have a
14 sign-up sheet and various other ways that you can get
15 information. If there's -- if that doesn't meet your
16 particular need to talk to me, we will find out what it
17 is that you need, what kind of information or
18 communication structure that you need.
19 And then Sandy will talk about finalizing the
20 study plan as part of the first-stage consultation. Pat
21 will then cover a summary of issues partly as we -- as we
22 laid them out initially before this meeting and also
23 hopefully including some of the issues that you brought
24 up today at the site visit.
25 So we're hoping to incorporate those things and
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1 get further input from you during this meeting, and then
2 Pat will also talk about working together locally to
3 resolve issues, and then we'll wrap up by discussing what
4 are the next steps that we will take in this process, and
5 then we'll close the meeting. So I will turn the meeting
6 over to John now.
7 JOHN KENNEDY: Okay. As soon as I figure out
8 how to use the computer here.
9 CANDACE IRELAN: Yeah. We're learning
10 technology as we go along.
11 JOHN KENNEDY: If you ask me about a generator,
12 I can answer questions. About a computer -- okay. For
13 the people that were here this morning, this will be kind
14 of just an overview for you, and for those that didn't
15 get involved with the site visit, this is intended to
16 just kind of give you a slide show of the project from
17 the -- where the water comes in to where the plant --
18 where it enters the plant and exits to the river. Just
19 kind of give you a feel for the project and what it looks
20 like and -- so you can have a reference point.
21 So the first thing I'm going to do is pretty
22 hard to read. So I've got this big map here. Hopefully,
23 most of you can see it. This is the Borel project. This
24 is the lake right here, and this is Wofford Heights, and
25 this is the auxiliary dam and the main dam.
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1 Down at Lake Isabella here -- actually,
2 Lake Isabella is down in here, and then you have the
3 Borel powerhouse down here, and this right here is the
4 Borel canal.
5 Now, normally, at this time of year, most of
6 the time, the lake elevation is high enough to where the
7 gravity feeds from the auxiliary dam here -- we went out
8 to look at that this morning, and water enters the Borel
9 canal right here.
10 The Borel canal has a capacity of we figure
11 about 625, somewhere right in there. We have a water
12 level of 605. So, normally, that's what we have in
13 there.
14 Anyway, the canal runs through the town of
15 Lake Isabella and right down through here, and then about
16 five miles of it is right in town, and then it comes down
17 to just outside Bodfish there is the direct powerhouse
18 where it goes to the generators and goes back to the
19 river.
20 So go ahead and hit enter up there. Go ahead
21 and just hit it. Yeah. Just hit it. Just click on it.
22 Okay.
23 Oh, I should mention -- I forgot to mention,
24 when the lake elevation drops below 130,000 acre feet
25 thereabouts, this canal inside the lake bed comes out of
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1 inundation.
2 Before the lake was here, the intake for the
3 powerhouse was up here, and the intake is just a place
4 where you take water from the river and introduce it into
5 the flowline which in this case is the canal, and the
6 intake has some gates and some grids to keep the logs and
7 things out of the flowline. So you can envision this is
8 about above Wofford Heights.
9 Before the lake was there, there's a conversion
10 dam across the river up here, and the conversion dam is
11 different than a dam like Hoover dam in that it's
12 designed to have the water go over the top of it.
13 They're not very tall. Maybe 20, 30 feet tall, 60 feet
14 tall type of dams. They have a small pond behind them,
15 and it's designed to have a little head pressure,
16 pressure on the water, so it can get in through the
17 flowline.
18 So, anyway, when the lake drops to 130 acre
19 thousand feet, then we have to activate this canal
20 because it can no longer feed from the auxiliary dam.
21 Does that make sense to everybody? So this is a very
22 expensive process for us to have to do and also ends up
23 costing the Corps of Engineers a lot of money.
24 At the same time, they have to contract to keep
25 the channels from the rivers to keep it clear. To give
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Bakersfield, California
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1 you an approximate idea, that diversion was over 120 feet
2 of sand the last time we had to activate it. So it's
3 quite a project.
4 At the top of that map is the intake, and this
5 is a picture I took last week, and the intake structure
6 is right down in here. Okay. The diversion dam is up
7 here, and this is a little house we use to house our
8 controls and what have you for our gates.
9 This is in Wofford Heights. There's three
10 crosses over here. Some of the locals may know where
11 that's at, but, essentially, it's right there, and it's
12 kind of towards the end of Wofford Heights.
13 This is a picture back in '91, I think it was,
14 when the lake elevation was way low. It was below that
15 130 acre thousand feet. You can see the same house here,
16 and exposed now is what we call our intake structure
17 right here. This is the canal right here. These are two
18 gates. We can shut these gates and shut the water off to
19 the canal. The water comes down through this settling
20 pond, we call it, and through these grids.
21 And this is another view of this looking back
22 up the river. The river is coming in here, and you can
23 see part of the water is going out here to the lake,
24 bypass part of the water of the lake. The rest comes
25 down here for generation.
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Bakersfield, California
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1 The Edison Company, we're responsible for
2 activating all this stuff in the canal all the way down
3 to the auxiliary dam, and the Corps of Engineers has
4 responsibility of digging all this out all the way back
5 up to the diversion dam, and this is an overflow area
6 here. If we get a flood or high water for some reason,
7 the water just comes down here and goes over there. It
8 doesn't cause us harm at our intake structure, and that's
9 just another picture of that.
10 Okay. This is standing at the intake up here.
11 You only have to hit it once. It takes a little while.
12 The intake is back here. We were just looking at it, and
13 this is what the Borel canal looks like heading out
14 towards the lake. This is looking towards the auxiliary
15 dam this way. So you can see kind of where the water is
16 right in here.
17 Okay. This is a picture of the auxiliary dam
18 standing up on top of the dam. This is a tower for the
19 Corps of Engineers. Down at the base of this dam is a
20 couple of gates, and that tower provides access for the
21 operator to go down and operate those gates to admit
22 water into the Borel canal. These buoys out here would
23 be the actual intake. The water comes in right here.
24 You can kind of envision this canal coming out
25 like this, and it really kind of comes over here and goes
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Bakersfield, California
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1 up there and goes across the main channel. There's a
2 couple of pipes and goes back in here where -- actually,
3 they're back in there. That's where the intake is. So,
4 you see, it's quite a stretch of canal there.
5 Okay. This is standing in the same spot
6 instead of looking towards the lake. Of course, we're
7 now looking at the canal as it goes down through town,
8 Lake Isabella. All of this right here belongs to the
9 Corps of Engineers. Okay. And they also have the first
10 300 feet inside the lake.
11 Okay. But this is all part of the project
12 boundaries. The water comes out of here. It's all going
13 this direction, and at this point, there's a measurement
14 where Edison monitors the amount of flow into the canal,
15 and the flow direction is this way. The Corps of
16 Engineers has a building right here, and they monitor the
17 water level and flow there as well.
18 So we have several points along the canal where
19 we monitor that water level to make sure that we don't
20 have a problem as far as elevation. When the canal's
21 full, that's something that we have to keep an eye on.
22 Obviously, at lower flows, then it's less of an issue.
23 And this is just another shot. This is
24 standing down below. This is at the top of the dam, that
25 access structure right here, and this is where the water
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Bakersfield, California
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1 comes through right here, and there's a couple of gates
2 down in there. The Corps of Engineers controls the water
3 out of the lake and admits it to the Edison Company.
4 This picture was taken to show the Erskin Creek
5 bridge. This bridge has been an issue for a long time
6 because it's an old bridge, and it's narrow, and it's
7 basically a hazard for pedestrians. The bridge is so
8 narrow that two school busses cannot go across it at the
9 same time. Cars usually come screaming down this road
10 around the corner across that bridge, and you can imagine
11 the kids.
12 This is the access to get to the school, the
13 ones that walk. So it's a real hazard there, and you can
14 see the water elevation coming here through the canal.
15 So that's one of the issues that we're looking at right
16 now.
17 And this is a picture of the actual bridge here
18 standing down here looking up, and you can actually see
19 the bridge, and Judy McQuiston and John McQuiston's
20 office, they've been working for a long time to get this
21 issue resolved, and there's some good news. It looks
22 like that's going to happen now.
23 This is standing up there at that same bridge
24 looking towards Lake Isabella down this way. I just took
25 this picture to show the canal, kind of what it looks
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1 like going through town. The Borel canal essentially
2 cuts off this side of Lake Isabella from that side over
3 there, and the bridge, Lake Isabella bridge, is basically
4 the only way to get across there besides a little foot
5 bridge that's further upstream.
6 This is a foot bridge that was put in -- I
7 don't know -- I'm going to say six years ago or seven
8 years ago, something like that. Just hit it once. My
9 computer's only 166 megahertz. So it doesn't work very
10 fast. This guy's got a Ph.D., and don't let him operate
11 your computers or touch your vehicles.
12 Anyway, there was an issue a few years back
13 where when the canal level is low, we have hand lines
14 that go across the canal at regular intervals. So if
15 somebody fell in here, they would be able to use those
16 hand lines to get out, and when the water level is low,
17 the kids in this area would take those hand lines that
18 hang down and tie them together and make a jungle gym
19 kind of across it, and the kids just loved it.
20 However, it was a concern to the parents and
21 the community. So, anyway, Edison worked with the
22 community to get a bridge put in here, this foot bridge,
23 so that the school kids can cross this bridge and get to
24 school.
25 This is an alternative route to the Erskin
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1 bridge which is about, oh, maybe a mile on upstream
2 there. This is at the end of Webb Street in
3 Lake Isabella. This could be a possible site also for a
4 future permanent second access to the school and also
5 this community that lives on that side of Lake Isabella.
6 This is a flume. A flume is essentially a
7 canal that's elevated. Erskin Creek comes through about
8 right there, and so this flume was put in -- this is all
9 floodplain right in here -- was put in to transport the
10 water from this end to that end, and so it's elevated.
11 As you can see, it's a metal flume, a sheet
12 metal type of flume. This road right here that goes at
13 the end of Commercial Street, Commercial Street down here
14 comes in like this, and there's a lot of houses up on
15 this side of the valley, and that's an access for those
16 folks to get to their homes. It's also another possible
17 access to the community.
18 Most of the time, you can drive through here
19 and get all the way up to Erskin Creek Road again by the
20 school. So it does provide another access. However, the
21 school bus couldn't use it, and in its present form, it's
22 not really usable, but it could be possibly an option to
23 look at as far as emergency access out of that site.
24 This is Bodfish siphon formerly known as
25 Bodfish flume, and before the flume here, it crossed --
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1 this is Isabella Boulevard. The flume crossed
2 Isabella Boulevard, and it was a landmark in town.
3 We were required for seismic reasons to upgrade
4 both this flume and Erskin flume, and Erskin flume we
5 ended up putting a lot more steel in and support. Here,
6 we decided to go with what is called a siphon, and a
7 siphon is nothing more than a piece of pipe. This thing
8 starts up here. This is upstream. The water's coming
9 this way and comes down through here and continues this
10 direction.
11 This is Erskin Creek -- or not Erskin Creek,
12 but there's a little creek that comes down through. I'm
13 not sure. Does anybody know what that creek is called?
14 Bodfish Creek comes down here. This pipe goes under.
15 It's 26 feet under the creek bed, and there's a little
16 hatch right here where we can access it. So it comes
17 down through here and continues down this direction.
18 One of the benefits of this pipe here is
19 there's a fire hydrant down here because we've got pretty
20 good pressure. So the fire department could access that
21 and put water and stuff. So that was a good benefit of
22 this siphon here.
23 Plus, in the local community, there was a lot
24 of people that hated to see the flume go because it's
25 always been there. It's like everybody grew up around
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1 this thing, but once it was gone, then people started
2 going, well, you can see the mountains over there and the
3 trees, and I think everybody has pretty much warmed up to
4 the idea now. So I think it's been a pretty good thing.
5 This is another siphon. It's called Pioneer
6 siphon. It's just outside of Bodfish, and again it's
7 just a -- there's a seasonal creek that comes down
8 through right here, and this conveys the water from --
9 the water is going this direction, and the canal is here,
10 and the canal is over there.
11 We also right here have a monitoring station.
12 It's called an AVM, an automatic -- what is that, Brian?
13 What's an AVM mean?
14 BRIAN McGURTY: The what?
15 JOHN KENNEDY: What's AVM mean?
16 BRIAN McGURTY: Acoustic velocity meter.
17 JOHN KENNEDY: And we have this hooked to the
18 power lines at our houses so we can tell what the flow
19 is. This is Profanity flume. It's another flume. It's
20 just upstream from Borel forebay, and I just took this
21 picture to show you what the top of the flume looks
22 like. There's a walkway here that goes along here, and
23 our maintenance people and operations can walk along that
24 and inspect it.
25 This is Borel forebay. A forebay for a
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1 project, hydroelectric project, is just the structure at
2 the top of the hill where the water connects to the pipes
3 going to the powerhouse, and the pipes coming down the
4 hill to the powerhouse to feed the water to the generator
5 are called penstocks.
6 So at the forebay generally you have grids, and
7 these grids are put in to keep the wood and tires and
8 other things that come down through here out of the
9 turbines. Turbines don't like big, old four-by-fours
10 going through them. It's not a pretty sight.
11 And these are automatic grid rakes. In the
12 past, operators had to come up here and manually rake
13 these things. It's a very tedious task, and it's also
14 hard on the back. So we put in these automatic rakes
15 that automatically sense there's stuff on the grid here,
16 and there's also gates up here so we close off water to
17 the penstocks that I was talking about.
18 This is an overflow wall right here and right
19 here. If we turned off a generator, let's say, or a
20 generator tripped off and the water could not go down the
21 hill from the generator to the river, the water in here
22 would come up and go over the rear wall -- when I get to
23 this point, I always forget what that is. That's a
24 spillway, yeah. Anyway, there's a spillway that goes
25 back to the river. Every hydroelectric plant will have a
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1 spillway of some sort because the water doesn't stop.
2 Over here, the next frame shows you the
3 penstocks or the pipes that are connecting to the
4 forebay. Okay. And that's this picture here. There's
5 four penstocks. There's three units. So this one here
6 takes care of Generator Number 1, Generator Number 2.
7 These two are taking water, and they're connected down at
8 the powerhouse for Generator Number 3. So each of the
9 smaller units take 150 cubic feet per second, and then
10 the large unit takes about 300 cubic feet per second.
11 And this is the Borel powerhouse when it went
12 in service in 1904. At that time, it was opened by the
13 Pacific Light and Power Company who had a lot of
14 powerhouses scattered around as a predecessor of the
15 Southern California Edison Company. So Edison acquired
16 this in 1917, I think.
17 Anyway, for those of you that were here today,
18 this is the front of the powerhouse here. You can see
19 the penstocks coming down. The water comes down here and
20 makes a 90-degree turn and goes through this generator
21 and goes down and exits out this way, and this is a
22 switch yard.
23 We generate 2.4 KV, and we transmit at 66 KV.
24 So we stepped it up to 66 to transmit out, and there's
25 one line that goes over to Monolith via Havilah and
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1 Lorraine. It goes over to the Tehachapi area, and then
2 the other one comes back this way, Borel, Isabella,
3 Weldon, and it ends up at the Kern 3 plant.
4 This is the powerhouse in 1919. We dug this
5 picture up in our files up there. In those days, there
6 was five generators all identical, and there was five
7 penstocks here, and there's no switch line up here,
8 you'll notice. The line comes up here, and all the
9 switch lines were in the powerhouse. So they moved that
10 out to make room in here.
11 So this is a pretty cool picture of the
12 powerhouse. It just kind of shows the historic value of
13 it. As you can see, the ivy was just getting going in
14 those days. Instead of a Hollywood sign, we had a Borel
15 powerhouse sign on top of the hill. I'm just kidding.
16 That was written on there.
17 This is called a tail race. Forebays is where
18 the water comes into the pipes and tail race is where it
19 exits. The Kern River is coming down this way, and the
20 water is coming out of here and joining it going out that
21 direction.
22 And this is an overall view of the powerhouse.
23 You've got the forebay up here. The spillway comes down
24 over here and exits back to the river. You've got the
25 penstocks here, the powerhouse, switch yard, and this is
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1 the access road to the powerhouse here. Kern River's
2 right over here, right in that area.
3 This is a picture of the inside of the
4 powerhouse. There are three generators. Unit 1, Unit 2,
5 and then Unit 3 we'll see in a second. Unit 1 is rated
6 around two megawatts, two megawatts here.
7 And this is another picture of Unit 2 here, and
8 this is Unit 3. Unit 3 is 6.5 megawatts. So don't be
9 fooled by its size. All you're seeing here is what's
10 called an excitor. All of the generator is below the low
11 grade here. So when we went on the tower, we didn't go
12 down into there because of the large amount of people.
13 Anyway, this was put in about the 1950's, '54
14 probably. These are the original generators from 1904.
15 There used to be five of them identical in the
16 powerhouse. In those days, the electric system was not
17 standardized, and so there was 50 cycles out there, and
18 then they started using 60 cycles.
19 As a matter of fact, at the turn of the
20 century, there was a big debate over whether AC or DC was
21 going to be used. Thomas Edison who did a lot of
22 inventions was an advocate of DC. The problem with DC
23 was it's harder to transfer into higher voltages and
24 lower voltages to be used. So AC won out to the dismay
25 of Mr. Edison.
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1 Anyway, the total plant capacity is about ten
2 and a half to eleven megawatts for a full canal, and
3 that's about enough for 11,000 homes.
4 This right here is the governor. I didn't
5 mention this the last time. This is like the throttle
6 for the turbine. The turbine is this. That's the water
7 engine, if you will.
8 This is the generator that makes electricity.
9 It's got bearings on both in the middle. This senses the
10 speed of the generator and controls speed and also
11 controls how much output, how many megawatts the unit
12 puts out based on the water.
13 Now we're going over to the main dam and the
14 Kern River where it comes up the main dam of the lower
15 Kern River. This is a sign for Isabella main dam. It
16 shows some of the specs for the reservoir and for the
17 dam.
18 You can see here it's 20 feet at the top, 185
19 feet high, 1725 feet long -- short. Maximum length of
20 the lake is nine miles, shore line 38 miles. That would
21 be around the whole lake, and the surface area is 11,400
22 acres, and it says here, "Purpose, flood control and
23 irrigation."
24 This is standing up at the top of the main
25 dam. Highway 155 is coming down through here and heading
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1 around the lake. We're looking -- let's see. I guess
2 this would be what? South? I never can figure it out
3 down there.
4 Anyway, this right here is where the water's
5 coming out of the main dam. The spillway is up over here
6 for the dam. For years, there was no hydroelectric
7 project here, and then a few years ago, they built a
8 hydroelectric project called Lake Gen here, and part of
9 that project was to put in gates and valves here to add
10 water to the powerhouse there. This powerhouse develops
11 about 13 megawatts. It needs about 1300 cubic feet per
12 second to generate that. So it's a low-head,
13 higher-volume powerhouse.
14 This is a slide of a raft-put-in site just
15 below the main dam that's just on the other side of
16 Highway 155. It's called Slippery Rock. The BLM put
17 in -- or developed this area here and made a real nice
18 parking lot and a way to get rafts down to the beach.
19 They put the rafts in right here and put in the rafters
20 and off they go down the river. So it's a real nice site
21 down there that they put together.
22 The next slide will show a view of the top of
23 the hill here. There's a parking lot for people to park
24 and a toilet over here. So it's a real nice facility
25 there for launching rafts.
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1 And, finally, we found this file, too. This is
2 called passing of the sheep. It doesn't have a date on
3 it. I would think it's somewhere around the early
4 1900's. This is Lake Isabella Boulevard here, and this
5 is all sheep coming down through Lake Isabella Boulevard,
6 and you can see the houses and stuff.
7 The lake wasn't there, obviously, but you can
8 see the terrain looks pretty much as it did now. There's
9 a lot of history in the valley here, and the Borel
10 project and the other hydroelectric projects fit right
11 into that.
12 So any questions?
13 RON HYATT: Ron Hyatt, Sierra Sailing. I don't
14 know if this was this one, John, or an earlier one. You
15 showed the project, but it had a green hash mark through
16 it, and it was a greater area than the canal area.
17 Is that like the parameters or area of
18 influence of the --
19 JOHN KENNEDY: Project boundaries?
20 RON HYATT: Yeah.
21 JOHN KENNEDY: Yeah. We identified -- the
22 project boundaries are identified, and that map over
23 there pretty much shows the boundaries the way they are.
24 RON HYATT: Doesn't it extend beyond the
25 canal?
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1 JOHN KENNEDY: Well, you have the canal, and
2 then you have like a road on both sides and a fence.
3 RON HYATT: And that's the only area of
4 influence or responsibility?
5 JOHN KENNEDY: That's the area. Before the
6 barbwire fence on both sides, that's the project
7 boundaries for the canal.
8 SANDRA PERRY: But he's talking about the ends.
9 JOHN KENNEDY: Oh, the ends?
10 RON HYATT: No. Not the ends. The width.
11 JOHN KENNEDY: The width. So when you go down
12 there and you see the fence, everything down there is
13 private property or Forest Service property.
14 RON HYATT: As of your responsibility?
15 JOHN KENNEDY: Right.
16 SANDRA PERRY: John, I think the map that he's
17 referring to is the vegetation map that you were using
18 earlier that had some vegetation mapping on it. So it
19 looks like the boundaries are a lot bigger than they are.
20 JOHN KENNEDY: Oh, we apologize. We're trying
21 to find the map that showed the project. That's a
22 vegetation map, and it's not a project boundary map.
23 That would be the project boundary map.
24 RON HYATT: Okay. And does that not include
25 Keysville over there?
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1 JOHN KENNEDY: No.
2 RON HYATT: Your responsibility ends at the
3 tail race? Is that what you called it?
4 JOHN KENNEDY: Yeah. Actually, I was looking
5 at that map earlier, and it looks like it also includes
6 an area called Black Gulch, I think it is.
7 RON HYATT: Yeah.
8 JOHN KENNEDY: Is that the name of it? It's
9 black. What is it? Black Gulch South? It looks like it
10 includes that. I'm not sure why. The reason these maps
11 were put out is to try to identify what the project
12 boundaries are.
13 We need to do research there, but it looks like
14 it includes that, and also at the powerhouse, it looks
15 like it goes out where the tail race is and out into the
16 river there. Why, I don't know. I don't know that
17 that's 100 percent accurate. We have to verify what's
18 going on there. Normally, we wouldn't go out into the
19 river as far as the project is.
20 RON HYATT: So area responsibility or authority
21 is within those boundary lines just outside the canal?
22 JOHN KENNEDY: Exactly. Our responsibility is
23 to keep that barbwire fence up on both sides and keep the
24 signs up and in good repair. That's it.
25 RON HYATT: Okay. Thank you.
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1 JOHN KENNEDY: Any other questions?
2 LOREEN LOMAX: Loreen Lomax, Forest Service. I
3 have a question. Is Borel on the National Register of
4 Historic Places for Power Plants? Has it been nominated,
5 do you know, or on the register?
6 JOHN KENNEDY: Yeah. That's a good question.
7 Brian, do you want to speak to that?
8 BRIAN McGURTY: I don't think so right now that
9 I know of.
10 JOHN KENNEDY: My answer would be no because
11 usually if you make significant changes to the plant and
12 the inside has been changed quite a bit, then it isn't.
13 I know Kern 1 is because when we were going to make
14 changes down there, we ended up looking into that as part
15 of the registry.
16 I don't believe Borel is because of the
17 changes. You can see that picture of Borel before and
18 after, and it's a significant change there. That's a
19 good question.
20 LOREEN LOMAX: Well, it looks like it still has
21 a lot of the historical quality that maybe we should --
22 but if it's already been evaluated under the criteria and
23 it didn't make it --
24 JOHN KENNEDY: That's a good question. We'll
25 look into that. It's come up a couple times, and it's
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1 one of those things where you, you know, think about it
2 at the time, and then later you kind of drop it. That's
3 a good question.
4 Anybody else? Okay.
5 DARYL FRYER: So the next issue is the
6 license?
7 JOHN KENNEDY: Right. Yeah. Okay. Let me get
8 a drink of water here.
9 DARYL FRYER: Oh, wait a minute. He's going to
10 talk about the hydro license.
11 JOHN KENNEDY: This is Sandy.
12 SANDRA PERRY: Hi. I'm Sandy. I'm going to
13 talk to you about the process after.
14 JOHN KENNEDY: Okay. Okay. One of the things
15 that we went out and talked to a lot of people before
16 this meeting, a lot of the agencies and stakeholders.
17 One of the things that came out was, you know, have you
18 thought about why you want to relicense Borel. I mean,
19 you should know that before, you know, you go into this
20 thing and be able to articulate that, you know, to
21 people.
22 So, anyway, we thought that's a good question.
23 I mean, we just kind of take it for granted we're going
24 to relicense the project, but it caused us to stop and
25 take an inventory of some of the benefits of Borel, and
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1 so, anyway, the first one up there is we did an economic
2 evaluation of the project, and it's economically viable.
3 I mean, a businessman isn't going to go forward
4 with a project unless, you know, the thing is going to
5 make money. So that's -- we did look at that, though,
6 and it was evaluated, and it is economically viable. So
7 we're going forward with it.
8 The Borel project and hydroelectric in general
9 is a low-cost energy source. So in this country you only
10 have so much energy, and hydroelectric is very cost
11 effective. So it makes sense to where you can keep your
12 low-cost energy sources intact.
13 So Edison Company with deregulation coming
14 along, one of the things that we never had to really
15 worry about in the past because we had a monopoly was
16 customers.
17 Customers were guaranteed, and now we're
18 looking at selling our power into the power exchange, and
19 customers will have a choice, and they can pick Southern
20 California Edison or they can pick somebody else, and so
21 for the first time going forward it could be that we
22 actually need to look at our rates and be competitive to
23 somebody else that's providing the same service.
24 So, obviously, from a business perspective, you
25 want to keep your costs as low as possible. So your
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1 energy mix, you're going to start with hydro and then
2 move on up the energy chain, you know, your fossil plants
3 and nuclear and that sort of thing.
4 The efficient way to generate electricity, just
5 to give you an example, hydro, typically, the generators
6 out there in hydro convert 85 to 95 percent of the
7 available energy into electricity, and a steam plant,
8 some of the best steam plants are only about 50 percent
9 efficient. So hydro electricity is an efficient way to
10 generate electricity.
11 Systems stability, we talked about that a
12 little bit this morning. Having a hydroelectric plant in
13 the valley here stabilizes the voltage and the frequency
14 here in the valley and minimizes your blips and some of
15 those things that you would see if you were at the end of
16 a long line. So it provides stability.
17 It provides other benefits like vars and things
18 that you don't think about, but on a wind farm, they
19 require a thing called vars in order to operate, and the
20 Borel project supplies those vars. So I don't want to
21 get too technical, but that gives you kind of an idea,
22 but, anyway, having it right here in your backyard
23 provides stability.
24 Emergency power source. All we need is water,
25 and we can generate electricity. A steam plant, a
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1 nuclear plant requires a power source for pumps and fans
2 and this kind of thing in order to start up. So in a
3 blackout kind of a situation, they need a power source.
4 So they either have to have something auxiliary on site
5 or normally what happens is hydro is called upon to send
6 a hot line, we call it, to San Onofre, let's say, so that
7 they can start up.
8 So if the whole system died, if the whole
9 system went down, hydro is one of the systems that you
10 can use to start up. Also, for the valley, we can use it
11 as a source for here in the valley. For the Y2K event
12 that we had this year, we had a contingency plan. If the
13 rest of the world went dark, we could actually power up
14 the valley here and keep everybody in lights. Of course,
15 we'd have to close the canyon down here because everybody
16 would want to come up and plug in. Let's see.
17 It's non-polluting, and just to give you an
18 idea, in the U.S. annually hydro prevents the burning of
19 500 billion barrels of oil or 120 tons of coal. This is
20 hydro for the U.S. The total hydro mix, which I think we
21 said this morning, was 20 percent of the total. So you
22 look at 500 billion barrels of oil or 120 million tons of
23 coal. That's a lot of fuel.
24 As far as greenhouse gases, in the U.S.
25 annually, it offsets 30 million automobiles on the road
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1 for one year. Okay. That's in the United States. And
2 that's just to give you an idea. That's nearly twice the
3 CO2 that can be absorbed by all the U.S. forests
4 combined. Okay. So it's saving that in the
5 environment. Let's see.
6 It provides jobs. The Edison Company has
7 good-paying jobs. So the guys have money to go out and
8 spend in the community and, you know, at the local
9 businesses and what have you. So it doesn't hurt to
10 have -- there's not a lot of businesses of that type here
11 in the valley, and so, you know, everything helps. Let's
12 see.
13 It supports the local economy and
14 infrastructure. What we're talking about there is when I
15 get paid, I go out and spend some of it out here in the
16 local shops and businesses and what have you. The
17 company, we buy a lot of stuff for the powerhouses and
18 what have you locally here in the valley.
19 As far as the infrastructure of the valley, the
20 employees are all part of the community. We go to the
21 churches. We are involved with the charities, the little
22 leagues, and the -- you know, all of the Boy Scouts and
23 those kinds of things. So, you know, having the
24 employees here and, you know, willing to get out and work
25 in the community supports the community here.
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1 And then provides tax revenue. You know, the
2 plants are not free as the misconception is out there.
3 We pay head water benefit for the water, property taxes,
4 payroll taxes, and all those kind of things, and some of
5 that ends up coming back to the valley here.
6 And then history. You know, the Edison Company
7 was up here when basically there was nothing here except
8 for, you know, a few ranchers, you know, and if you think
9 about it, all of the roads, a lot of the campgrounds were
10 built by the Southern California Edison Company.
11 They've been up here. They pretty much
12 developed the valley here and enabled this valley to grow
13 to be what it is today. So they've been here for
14 basically as long as anybody else can remember and are a
15 vital part of the history of the valley. That's it.
16 Any questions?
17 SANDRA PERRY: Okay. You know, you should
18 probably put that on slide mode. Okay. Edison has asked
19 me to tell you a little bit about the relicensing process
20 as a schedule. Looking around the room here, I see that
21 there's a lot of people here that probably know a lot
22 about the process, but there are others here who probably
23 don't. So I'm just going to run through the basics of
24 the process.
25 I guess one of the main things I want to
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1 accomplish is to help you understand, one, you can get
2 involved or how you can get involved. We really want to
3 make sure that people here can get involved in this
4 process, especially early. The earlier, the better.
5 So, basically, the Borel project operates under
6 a license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
7 otherwise known as the FERC. That license expires on
8 February 28th, 2005. Because it expires, Edison has to
9 apply for a new license or go through a relicensing
10 process, and that process takes at least five years to
11 get through. So five years ahead of time, we got to get
12 the ball rolling, and that's where we are now.
13 The first step in the process is preparing the
14 first-stage consultation package, and, hopefully, by now
15 most of you have received that, and that package
16 essentially initiates the process. It contains some
17 basic information about the project and a work plan that
18 I'll discuss in a little bit, a couple slides later.
19 The first-stage consultation package goes out,
20 and soon afterwards we have to have the agency public
21 scoping meeting, and that's what we're here today to do.
22 Earlier today, we went on a site visit. Most
23 of you were able to go on that. That's also a required
24 part of the process, but it's a good chance to see the
25 project and how it operates.
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1 The next step after this that's real important
2 for everybody here is we need to receive written comments
3 from you. Basically, within 60 days of this meeting, we
4 would like to get written comments that tell us about
5 your concerns, your issues, any thoughts you have about
6 our first-stage consultation work.
7 We'll then take that information along with a
8 lot of other information that we collect from people, and
9 we'll start conducting studies, and, basically, for the
10 next two years, we will be compiling information and
11 conducting studies trying to determine whether the
12 project if it continues to operate the way it has been,
13 if it would have an effect on the environment.
14 As we go through that, we'll compile that
15 information into what will eventually become a draft
16 application for license, and that draft will contain a
17 number of exhibits in it. It's like Exhibit A through H
18 is what they're usually called.
19 Exhibit E is the environmental document, and
20 that will contain a number of reports that describe the
21 resources and the results of our studies and any
22 conclusions that we have about the potential impacts of
23 the project. We'll circulate that draft about June 1st,
24 2002.
25 So it's a ways off, but, you know, you'll get
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1 this -- in the year 2002, you'll get this draft
2 application that all of you should review and comment
3 on. There will be another comment period at that point.
4 So you would comment on it, and we would take all those
5 comments and do our best in addressing those in the final
6 application. The comments on that would be due
7 September 1st, 2002, but you'll probably get another
8 reminder besides today.
9 Eventually, we'll put all that information
10 together in the final application for license, and that
11 final application has to be filed with the FERC by
12 February 27th, 2003. There's a requirement that that
13 gets filed no later than two years before the license
14 expires, and that's mainly so that the FERC and the other
15 agencies have time to do their thing in the relicensing
16 process before the license actually expires. So those
17 are the basic steps.
18 JOHN KENNEDY: Can I say something?
19 SANDRA PERRY: Yeah.
20 JOHN KENNEDY: I know Dan over here is thinking
21 let's go back to the other slide. He's thinking so what
22 does all that mean, and, basically, what you need to be
23 thinking about, namely, I'm sure you're thinking the same
24 thing, some dates here we need to be thinking about.
25 This is today. This is a chance if you've got
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1 something on your mind to say it. If you'd rather not
2 state your position, then you've got until
3 September 12th, and you can write in your position then.
4 If you have concerns or opinions or whatever, this is
5 your chance right here to be heard in this process, all
6 of you. So if you are unsure about how to go about doing
7 that, John Kennedy, 376-2837. Give me a call. Okay.
8 Now, during this period here, all of this stuff
9 is going to be digested and figured out, you know, some
10 things that are doable or whatever for the draft
11 application. Normally, you send in a letter or
12 something, and it's like this black hole out there;
13 right? It goes somewhere, and you never see was I
14 listened to or whatever.
15 This right here is the feedback. Okay. Were
16 you listened to or not? So today before you get out of
17 here or if you don't get it today, call me, and we'll get
18 you on the mailing list, okay, and you can let us know
19 how detailed you want to get as far as information.
20 You can get the big document or what I prefer
21 as giving the Reader's Digest version. You know, I don't
22 have time to read the whole darned thing, but look in
23 there and see what are some of my concerns and what have
24 you. Were they listened to or not; right?
25 So you've got -- that will come out June 1st,
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1 2000, this draft application. Okay. And then what
2 happens right here is that you have another chance. So
3 if you weren't heard or you feel strongly about
4 something, you have a chance now to come back and say,
5 look, you know, I've got this concern or whatever.
6 Again, you can talk to me about it or anybody
7 on the team here and see what's going on with that.
8 Okay? So there's several places here where you have an
9 opportunity to get involved with this process.
10 Standing around the water cooler and talking
11 about it, how bad things are and this and that and the
12 other thing, does not cut the mustard. FERC does not
13 basically listen to anything unless they see it on paper
14 and you have intervenor status, they tell me. So if you
15 feel strongly, here's your chance. Okay?
16 Now, I know sometimes you feel frustrated and
17 what have you, but if you don't do anything, nothing's
18 going to change. Okay? So does that make sense to
19 everybody what these deadlines are?
20 So this is today. You've got 60 days here, and
21 I'll be glad to help you before you leave here. You can
22 get your information on what you need to put in there so
23 you can get your two cents in, and then you'll get a
24 feedback on that and have another chance.
25 Any questions?
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1 SANDRA PERRY: I want to mention, actually, we
2 do have some forms in the back that you should grab and
3 fill out, and, basically, we want some information about
4 how we can contact you and how involved you want to be in
5 the process, and it asks you things like do you want a
6 copy of the first day's consultation package, a copy of
7 future documents, and so forth. So make sure and fill
8 that out, and we'll take that and get you on the mailing
9 list to make sure that you're kept informed about the
10 project and the process.
11 The next slide. This slide essentially says
12 the same thing I just walked through. I guess the thing
13 to point out is, I mean, it just kind of visually shows
14 the steps we just went through. This is all of the --
15 everything from, you know, the first-stage consultation
16 package through the date we file our application for
17 license.
18 Now, that time line is based on the traditional
19 process, and what this also shows is there's two years
20 out there during which the FERC will take all of the
21 information we provide in the application along with all
22 of the letters that it receives from the public and from
23 the agencies, and they'll prepare an environmental
24 assessment. The idea is they would use the environmental
25 assessment to prepare to issue a license and to support
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1 the conditions and so forth that are contained in that
2 license.
3 So the ideal situation is that takes two years,
4 and in my experience it's usually taken longer, but the
5 more we can, you know, collaborate up front and solve
6 issues, the faster this process can happen.
7 One thing I wanted to point out about this time
8 line here is, like I said, it's based on the traditional
9 process. There's actually a new process that's available
10 to us. It's called an alternative licensing process, and
11 alls it does essentially is it moves this -- the FERC's
12 EA part into this part of the time line, and so the
13 advantage of that -- the advantages of doing that
14 basically are trying to accelerate the process. One
15 other advantage is it helps kind of keep like some local
16 control over the issues and so forth.
17 I guess the reason I'm bringing this up is we
18 would really like to get some feedback from all of you on
19 whether there's any desire or thoughts about using this
20 alternative licensing process.
21 DARYL FRYER: So let me first ask the
22 question. Does everybody understand the alternative that
23 she mentioned here? Do you understand that there is an
24 alternative process that says instead of FERC -- this is
25 a process -- the way this formal process is set up, it's
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1 a process that surfaces the issues first, and then FERC
2 does its own studies and resolves issues that don't get
3 resolved locally. Okay?
4 Now, there's an alternative that says if we can
5 all agree locally, we can pull that FERC piece up front
6 and do that ourselves, and that makes sense when there's
7 a lot of agreement and further when you want the benefits
8 of that agreement to occur earlier rather than later.
9 Okay? And what we're trying to understand now, we aren't
10 committed one way or the other. Edison is not committed
11 one way or the other.
12 Is there anybody here that has strong feelings
13 one way or the other? That's what we're trying to
14 understand, what people feel on that. So Question 2, do
15 you kind of get that? There's two possibilities here and
16 what the differences are.
17 Question 2, do you have any feelings one way or
18 the other on some of the proceeds?
19 PHIL STRAND: Phil Strand, Sequoia National
20 Forest. I don't necessarily have feelings, but I know
21 you have to formally request permission from FERC to go
22 into the process, and I'm wondering what that might do to
23 your time line.
24 SANDRA PERRY: I can answer that. When we've
25 tried this before, the best thing to do is if you go to
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1 the FERC with concurrence from all of the other parties,
2 it happens a lot easier and a lot more quickly.
3 So if we could get, you know, concurrence and
4 support from the Forest Service and all the other
5 agencies, we would go right away to the FERC and request
6 that to utilize the alternative licensing process, and we
7 don't at this point -- provided we can start pretty soon,
8 we don't really think that it would substantially affect
9 the time line.
10 It means a few other steps like scoping
11 meetings and so forth, but we feel like we could still
12 get it done, but we would have to come to that agreement
13 pretty quickly to make it happen.
14 DARYL FRYER: Roughly, Phil, I think it's
15 something like this in terms of what realization of the
16 benefits that have been agreed upon instead of beginning
17 out here might begin earlier. That's one big change in
18 the time line, but I think the relicensing date would
19 stay the same. It would just be based on agreements.
20 We could start doing it earlier. It's that
21 simple, and it makes a lot of sense when there is a lot
22 of agreement, and then FERC doesn't have a desire to
23 intervene and upset local agreements. They just
24 intervene when there is local disagreement.
25 SANDRA PERRY: Erik, you mentioned earlier that
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1 the Forest Service had been talking about the project and
2 issues.
3 Have you tossed around this alternative
4 licensing at all? You don't really have any thoughts
5 about it?
6 DARYL FRYER: Anybody else that have a tendency
7 or a feeling?
8 STEVE SPRADLIN: Steve Spradlin, Lake Isabella
9 Chamber, and I think what you offer as far as more local
10 intervention prior to getting somebody that's not close
11 to the issues involved, you know, certainly makes more
12 sense.
13 It didn't work very well on the KR3
14 relicensing, and I don't think anybody wants to go back
15 through that. So if this one could be done in a
16 different way, I'm sure it would be advantageous to
17 everyone.
18 The thing that I'm not so sure about is someone
19 like the local business people are going to have the
20 impact and the big guns behind us as eventually developed
21 on the upper river if we sit down across the table with
22 the Edison Company at this point and say, well, sure,
23 we'd like to see these different things done for one
24 reason or another, but as it developed on the upper
25 river, it took the big guns to come in and say, hey, you
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1 know, we think that this isn't going to be the correct
2 way to do this.
3 So if we can get the same attention, I think is
4 what I'm saying, and influence in this early process,
5 then that would be fine, but if you give up -- you know,
6 you assume that you have the influence at this lower
7 level and you find out later that, well, you know, you
8 didn't carry the weight --
9 DARYL FRYER: You gave up some power.
10 STEVE SPRADLIN: Right. You didn't carry the
11 weight that maybe Friends of the River or whoever might
12 have carried, that might be dangerous to get into that
13 situation, if that makes sense.
14 SANDRA PERRY: It makes sense.
15 DARYL FRYER: I can only say just one comment
16 that I have, and I'm not an expert in this area, but I
17 have been told that FERC is very responsive to local
18 agreements, that that means a lot to FERC, but we'll not
19 hesitate to cut the baby in half if there's no local
20 agreement.
21 Some of the other folks that are participants,
22 what's your view? He's afraid of losing power by taking
23 a modified approach. Anybody comment?
24 RON HYATT: Ron Hyatt. My experience in this
25 valley is it's going to be really hard to get concurrence
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1 on anything, and if you were to go through the modified,
2 I'm afraid your February 2004, somebody will say, hey,
3 wait a minute, somebody slammed the door on me and didn't
4 give me a chance. Even though you do have them, right at
5 the last minute, I think you'll probably get that.
6 That's my comment.
7 SANDRA PERRY: Well, another approach here
8 instead of choosing one or the other is to sort of modify
9 the traditional approach and just, you know, try to
10 continue to do what we're doing here, and that's working
11 with people early and, you know, trying to get feedback
12 on issues and so forth and just kind of work that into
13 the traditional process.
14 So, anyways, I guess, if nobody has any
15 comments on that, maybe as you're writing your letters if
16 you could think about that a little bit, and if you have
17 any thoughts one way or the other about, you know, these
18 two different processes, you know, let us know what
19 you're thinking about that.
20 That was all I was really going to go through
21 on process. I have some other things that I'd like to
22 talk about, but at this point, does anybody have any
23 questions about process or schedule or writing letters,
24 anything like that?
25 Okay. Okay. You can go to the next slide. I
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1 wanted to jump back to this first-stage consultation
2 package, the first step in the process. Again, that's
3 where we are now.
4 By now, all of you should have received a
5 first-stage consultation package. If you haven't, please
6 let us know that you need a copy. This, as I started
7 saying earlier, is the package that contains basic
8 information about the project, hydrology, maps, drawings,
9 and so forth. It also summarizes the environmental
10 resources in the project area.
11 I guess probably one of the most important
12 things it has is a study plan that basically says how
13 Edison proposes to study the resources, the potential
14 effects of the project on the resources, and it covers a
15 number of topic areas.
16 As outlined here, there's water usage quality;
17 fish, wildlife, botanic resources; historic and
18 archeological resources; recreation resources; land
19 management and esthetics, and comprehensive plans and
20 cumulative impacts.
21 Now, I wasn't really planning on going through
22 everything we proposed to do in a study plan, but I'm
23 happy to answer questions if anybody has any if you've
24 had a chance to review the first-stage consultation
25 package. If you have any questions or comments at this
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1 point, I'll be happy to go over it.
2 Sue, it kind of looks like you have a
3 question. Do you have a question?
4 SUE PORTER: I'm Sue Porter, and I'm with the
5 Sequoia National Forest. I know that we've all gotten
6 the copies of our initial consultation intake package,
7 and I've been looking at them, and, obviously, we'll be
8 making our formal reply.
9 Just in general, and you and I have talked
10 before about the recreation monitoring and new studies, I
11 think maybe we're looking at some type of white water
12 boating, specifically, access-type questions, and I know
13 there's some other studies that Erik was mentioning
14 earlier, some of the watershed-, water-flow-type studies
15 for fisheries and channel maintenance and things like
16 that.
17 So we've been thinking about it, but as far as
18 specific comments at this point, I don't really want to
19 get into too much detail. We'd really like to hear what
20 the rest of the group is thinking.
21 SANDRA PERRY: Ron.
22 RON HYATT: Is this the time to express myself
23 or my concerns about what I'd like to see in there?
24 SANDRA PERRY: Sure.
25 RON HYATT: Ron Hyatt. We talked this morning
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1 about water quality, and water quality is my primary
2 concern in this whole process. There's lots of things to
3 be considered, but that's my primary thought, and the EPA
4 has developed a protocol for water monitoring, and they
5 have -- I can't recall right now -- I think seven or nine
6 parameters in their protocol, and I would hope that the
7 FERC would reject any Exhibit E that did not include that
8 protocol for water monitoring.
9 And I'd also like to see it include more
10 sampling stations. I'd like to see it done from one end
11 to the other, and I know those protocols are probably in
12 excess of the influence of what SCE does with the water,
13 but nobody else is doing that monitoring right now, and
14 this is just an opportunity to maybe hang the
15 responsibility on somebody.
16 SANDRA PERRY: Uh-huh.
17 RON HYATT: Those are my thoughts.
18 SANDRA PERRY: Good.
19 DARYL FRYER: Ron, what was that protocol?
20 SANDRA PERRY: He said EPA protocol.
21 RON HYATT: EPA's protocol.
22 DARYL FRYER: On what?
23 RON HYATT: Water monitoring.
24 DARYL FRYER: Did I hear right? Salmon
25 stations?
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1 SANDRA PERRY: Sampling stations.
2 DARYL FRYER: Sampling. Let me tell you, the
3 sound is terrible in this room. It diffuses. So speak
4 loudly and make sure -- we're going to continue listing
5 issues, and so make sure I get it right.
6 AIMEE OLSON: My name's Aimee Olson for
7 Kern River Tours, and something -- an issue that I'd like
8 to address is something that I think that all of the
9 rafters would like to see is one of the runs that we do,
10 we start at the bridge where the Bodfish exit off of 178
11 is, and if there's any less than 400 cubic feet per
12 second in there, we can't run through because the
13 rocks -- there's too many rocks. We cannot get through.
14 So what they do is they combine the water that
15 they're letting out of the dam and the water that they're
16 diverting through the Borel power plant. So if that adds
17 up to only 600, then there's only 200 in that stretch
18 that we're trying to run.
19 So what we were thinking is maybe trying to get
20 at least 400 cubic feet per second through there between
21 like May 15th and September 15th when we -- it doesn't
22 have to be all day, either. It may be from like 10:30 in
23 the morning to 2 o'clock in the afternoon just to give us
24 time to get past the power plant there.
25 SANDRA PERRY: So that point you're talking
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1 about is the rock that you can't get around is right at
2 the Bodfish --
3 AIMEE OLSON: Actually, that's above, but we
4 can put in just below that and still do the trip, but
5 anywhere below 400, we can't make it through. It's too
6 tight.
7 SANDRA PERRY: And is that flow for rafts?
8 AIMEE OLSON: For rafts. And that's the
9 smallest rafts that we can use, too, with that flow.
10 SANDRA PERRY: Okay. Good. Thanks.
11 JOHN KENNEDY: What's the smallest raft?
12 AIMEE OLSON: It's 12 feet. Four people would
13 fit.
14 JOHN KENNEDY: Four people.
15 SANDRA PERRY: Okay. Thanks. Anybody else?
16 STEVE SPRADLIN: Steve Spradlin, Lake Isabella
17 Chamber. I don't want to be repetitious in what I might
18 have commented on earlier today, but I guess this is more
19 of a formal hearing so I will, and that was that I don't
20 think that there's any -- probably any issue from anyone
21 about the relicensing.
22 It's just what kind of mitigation at some point
23 that Edison Company might be expected to do to
24 accommodate present-day conditions over the conditions
25 that they were licensed for in the first place, and
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1 that's obvious that the Number 1 difference between then
2 and now is the difference in the recreational use on the
3 body of water itself.
4 And the reference now to what Aimee was talking
5 about, and that's some kind of minimum flows, and there's
6 that one section of river there between the dam and where
7 the water's put back in that's affected. So the Chamber
8 of Commerce is only interested or only concerned or I
9 should say most concerned about one thing, the impact of
10 the recreational use on that particular part of the
11 river.
12 And one thing that we had asked about on the
13 relicensing for KR3 originally, the one and only
14 statement that the chamber had made, is that an economic
15 study be done on the impact of recreational use with a
16 different water flow, and that was never done on the
17 upper river, and we think that is a very critical impact,
18 but we can't make a wise decision on how to approach the
19 difference in this relicensing without more information
20 about what that impact is according to the different
21 water flows.
22 But, obviously, as Aimee said, for rafting,
23 those lower water flows are detrimental. They're
24 probably detrimental to some of the other uses on that
25 part of the river, too.
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1 So it boils down to relicensing. It's not
2 going to be a problem with relicensing, but the
3 mitigation is, you know, what can we do to negate the
4 negative impact on recreational use on that part of the
5 river due to the water flow.
6 SANDRA PERRY: Thanks.
7 HARRY WILLIAMSON: Harry Williamson, National
8 Park Service. I had, I guess, a question because our
9 primary interest is recreation, and because in going
10 through this, it was pretty obvious that white water
11 activities was one of the primary emphasis of both the
12 Forest Service and BLM.
13 At what point would you make a determination on
14 whether the existing user data was sufficient in that it
15 sort of occurs to me looking through here that it may not
16 be right now, that you're going to have to have
17 additional studies particularly for dispersed activity
18 where you don't have the advantage of going to outfitters
19 that are tracking that or some permitting system that
20 you'll make a request for additional studies for use,
21 projected use, and that type of things that would have to
22 be made, and that would also be the associated question.
23 One of the work groups might be able to assist in that.
24 SANDRA PERRY: Well, to answer your second
25 question first about the work groups, that was something
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1 that we sort of wanted to float that idea later today to
2 see if people were interested in groups that focus on
3 particular issues. So Pat's going to talk a little bit
4 more about that later.
5 The first question about that you stated,
6 you're correct. We don't really have a lot of use data
7 at this point. I've actually worked with Sue a little
8 bit to try to collect whatever there is available at this
9 point, and I think there's -- it looks like there's
10 probably pretty decent data on commercial use mainly
11 because the commercial users do have permits and
12 everything down there.
13 Correct me if I'm wrong, Sue, but I don't think
14 we have very good information on private use, private
15 boating. As you said, we don't have very good
16 information on dispersed uses. We could probably pull
17 some pretty good data together on the developed
18 campground and picnic areas and so forth, you know,
19 working with the Forest Service on that.
20 So our plan at this point after we sort of get
21 through this first part and hear a little bit about what
22 people are concerned about was to start diving into
23 compiling and tabulating the data that is out there and
24 start looking for where the data gaps are.
25 Our second step would be to figure out how
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1 we're going to fill those data gaps, whether we may end
2 up doing some visitor counts or maybe come up with
3 some -- you know, we'll have to talk about what
4 mechanisms are.
5 We were talking a little earlier. We do have a
6 survey effort going on down on the lower Kern River on
7 the Kern 1 stretch, and we've talked about kind of just
8 attaching some of the Borel studies to that, sort of
9 leapfrogging off of what we've already done.
10 I don't see us really starting any actual
11 visitor counts or surveys this year. I see us probably
12 trying to define what it is we're trying to collect,
13 trying to define study goals and objectives this year so
14 that, you know, the beginning of next recreation season
15 we're ready to jump on it.
16 It may be that we can hammer that out pretty
17 quickly and try to get some data at the end of this year
18 and maybe, you know, late-season data and so forth that
19 will continue on to next year. So that's where our
20 thinking is right now.
21 SUE PORTER: Sue Porter, Sequoia National
22 Forest. Before we jump off of recreation, we've focused
23 a lot today on the main dam down to the power plant, and
24 I don't want us to forget that the project goes up to
25 Free Air Point.
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1 The project area for the Borel power plant goes
2 all the way up to Free Air Point, the Wofford Heights
3 area, and although it doesn't happen very often like John
4 was talking about earlier, when the lake level gets low
5 enough, the canal comes out, and that's one of our points
6 is going to be access across that canal because we've got
7 campgrounds on one side of it, and when the lake gets
8 low, we've got people that cannot get to the lake, and
9 they cannot recreate on the other side. So before we
10 forget about that, I want people to remember that the
11 canal does run through the lake.
12 STEVE SPRADLIN: Steven Spradlin, Chamber
13 again. You know, you were talking about surveys and
14 different counts and things, and I think it goes without
15 saying that this is a 30-year licensing, and so to make
16 those studies without projections out 30 years to see
17 what the situation is going to be then because obviously
18 30 years ago, if that's when the last relicensing was,
19 the conditions and the uses, well, especially for the
20 recreation, is absolutely nothing to what it is today.
21 So on those studies, why, it certainly needs to have
22 projections in there for the whole relicensing period.
23 SANDRA PERRY: Thanks. Any other questions or
24 comments about the first-stage consultation plan?
25 JULIE MEANS: Julie Means, Fish and Game. I
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1 thought I'd repeat what I said this morning. We're
2 reviewing some of the existing fishery studies, and we
3 will be providing comments as to whether we feel those
4 are adequate or additional studies are needed, and we
5 would definitely, I think, as Christy McGuire mentioned
6 this morning, need some sort of a letter survey.
7 DARYL FRYER: We have a lot of those. We're
8 going to review everything we heard this morning with
9 you.
10 SANDRA PERRY: Yeah. That was interesting to
11 hear people mention a letter survey. We had not
12 mentioned that, but that would be something that we want
13 to consider.
14 JULIE MEANS: I think there would be some sort
15 of difference between a letter survey and a creel
16 survey. There would be some sort of difference between
17 them.
18 SANDRA PERRY: Okay. Thanks. Any other
19 comments at this point? We are hoping to get into these
20 issues a lot more as we go on. So this isn't your last
21 chance. I guess I just real quickly wanted to get back
22 to this first-stage consultation package and the study
23 plan.
24 Basically, where we're at now is we need to
25 finalize our study plan so we can get out there and start
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1 doing what we need to do to pull this application
2 together.
3 In the past, a lot of these things have been
4 sort of done in a vacuum where we just -- you know, we
5 know what the FERC is looking for. So we pull all that
6 together in the application and submit it. You know, we
7 try to work with people, but sometimes it just doesn't
8 work out that well.
9 What we want to do this time is we want to get
10 a lot of input on the study plans, on the study goals,
11 the study objectives. We want that early, and we want to
12 try to get people as engaged in the process as we can so
13 that we -- you know, two years from now, we know that we
14 did the right studies and we got the right information
15 and our application contains information people wanted it
16 to contain and the information they need to make these
17 decisions.
18 So I guess there's -- I guess my point is that
19 there's a lot of different ways to help us pull the study
20 plan together, but some of the -- just to sort of
21 highlight some of the things that we've done -- actually,
22 you need to -- can you go to the next slide? -- and that
23 we want to continue doing is before we even got to today,
24 John and Pat and some of us have been just talking to
25 people individually trying to kind of -- informally
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1 trying to get a handle on what people think the issues
2 are and so forth.
3 We want to continue doing that and hearing from
4 you, and as John was pointing out, if you have any
5 questions or comments or you just don't know where we're
6 at, give John a call or Candace and let us hear what
7 you're thinking about.
8 We also heard a lot of comments and issues
9 today at the site visit, and Pat was trying to capture
10 all those, and after I get out of here, Pat was wanting
11 to kind of hash those out a little bit and see where
12 people are.
13 We've got, of course, again your written
14 comments. Give us those by September 12th, and we'll
15 utilize those in finalizing our work plan, and then what
16 we also hope to do is hold some follow-up meetings.
17 Those we haven't defined exactly what that would look
18 like. We're thinking maybe we can do some outreach
19 meetings to try to keep people informed about what's
20 going on.
21 We've also been tossing around the idea of
22 little study groups to try to focus on some issues, and
23 again that form I handled you earlier asks you some
24 questions about how involved you might want to be in
25 those types of forums.
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1 So I guess in terms of -- I don't know how many
2 other ways to say that, but just get us information, what
3 you're thinking on these studies, and then we hope to
4 also -- while these things are being done, continue to
5 work with people and report to you what our findings are
6 and whether we need to make some changes or things like
7 that. So I think that's all I wanted to --
8 DARYL FRYER: Good. Let's talk about review,
9 what we heard from you this morning very quickly. We're
10 not going to take a formal break, but let me tell you
11 there's some coffee back there. I'm having a little bit
12 myself. If you want to go ahead and grab a cup, do so.
13 I'll try to make this so you can see what we're
14 talking about. This is what we heard this morning. If
15 this discussion isn't in your mind, tell me, and I'll
16 rehash it, and that's what we'll try to do.
17 Getting to your point, the first thing, fish
18 and management, and again we're just trying to understand
19 and make sure that we're hearing what your issues,
20 concerns, and questions were.
21 A letter survey -- that's the word that you
22 used -- a concern about access surveys, access surveys,
23 non-fish and game management, small-mouth bass
24 management. These are the concerns we heard this
25 morning. Campground utilization is a concern.
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1 Steve, economic impacts, the water-flow impacts
2 on the economy, the possible pathways, landscaping, and
3 adventure -- some new out-of-the-box thinking in terms of
4 how to leverage the resource from an economic point of
5 view.
6 If you want to stop me, stop me, and correct
7 me. Tell me this is not quite what I meant or --
8 protecting the petroglyphs, water quality, and we heard a
9 number of different flavors of that.
10 There was the sediment concern. There was
11 water-quality issues. Somebody mentioned the oil --
12 possible oil and things like that at the reservoir
13 level. Also, water quality issues at the canal level.
14 A couple of females actually came up and
15 mentioned to me personally that two-cycle motors as being
16 a possible issue and something that needs to be looked
17 at.
18 One thing we talked a lot about as a group is
19 the mortality of juvenile fish. That was an issue -- I
20 remember that was an issue. Oh, yes. That was your
21 issue.
22 TINA THARALSON: Tina Tharalson, Forest
23 Service. It was associated with the mortality of
24 juvenile fish as they're entrained into the Borel canal.
25 DARYL FRYER: Again, if this triggers other
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1 thoughts --
2 JULIE MEANS: Julie Means, Fish and Game. It
3 seems like there was quite an extensive discussion about
4 the application of algaecide in the canal and whether or
5 not that's an issue --
6 DARYL FRYER: Yeah. We're going to get to
7 that, right. Thank you. That's the very next thing.
8 And then there were a bunch of questions that I
9 characterized I just put it in a bucket about how the
10 plant was run.
11 The first one was the use of algaecide to
12 remove moss. A lot of people wanted to know what are you
13 using, how much are you using, how often, how do you
14 monitor the impacts.
15 And then also closely related was a question
16 here sort of following up on the sentiment, I think, how
17 often do you have to remove sediment, where is it, how do
18 you do the removal, sort of kind of like operating
19 questions.
20 A couple of people came up with an issue about
21 web sites, and let's just stop here for a second. What
22 are we doing on web sites? Let's let people know.
23 SANDRA PERRY: Okay. We have a web site. It's
24 called Resource Insights Dot Com, and our hope was to
25 post everything pertinent to this proceeding on that web
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1 site to make it accessible to everybody.
2 I think, but I can't -- I haven't actually
3 validated this. I'm pretty sure the first-stage
4 consultation package is up on that site. Hopefully, it's
5 there. If it's not right now, it will be very soon.
6 Hopefully, just go to Resource Insights Dot
7 Com, and there will be a box, a little sub menu, that
8 says Borel Relicensing, things like that. Click on that,
9 and there should be things like information on meetings,
10 agendas, meeting minutes, if we have those, any reports
11 that were produced, and so forth.
12 HARRY WILLIAMSON: Harry Williamson with the
13 Park Service. Will that have the ability if we get into
14 draft or work studies or will it be interactive, sort of
15 a single text where we can go in on any given time period
16 and see since we'll be needing infrequently what other
17 agencies have commented so we always have sort of a
18 contemporary idea of where those studies are both
19 physically and how they're progressing?
20 SANDRA PERRY: I think it's not like that right
21 now, but I think that we can make it that way if there
22 was an interest in doing that.
23 You're not meaning that you could go into the
24 documents and edit them or anything?
25 HARRY WILLIAMSON: No. I'm saying that you
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1 would control that, but, basically, if someone comes in
2 with comments, you can go in, and you can -- because this
3 thing is basically a living document, you can go in, and
4 people can see what agencies made what comments, maybe
5 how that manifests and changes, you know, and accrues and
6 changes to the draft and that sort of thing. If this
7 were reduced, just to be passing around a hard-copy
8 version which will always be out of date.
9 DARYL FRYER: You know, a number of people --
10 you weren't the only one expressing an interest in what
11 the web site is. I think if that takes shape, we should
12 get information as to what's available on the web site
13 and what they're saying, let's make it a useful tool for
14 the information.
15 HARRY WILLIAMSON: And the other point is for
16 sure the resource agencies have computer capability,
17 E-mail. I think generally most people have that, even
18 NGO's and other individuals that are interested. If you
19 also had and what you're probably going to do is a full
20 set of everybody's name and E-mail addresses as contact.
21 DARYL FRYER: Oh, that would be very valuable,
22 too, particularly cross contact, and thank you for that
23 advice and guidance on how to make this web site valuable
24 to these proceedings.
25 This is a question that has come up in many of
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1 our interviews, and it came up today. Several times to
2 me personally people came over and asked can we use this
3 proceeding to get more water at KR3 and kind of simplify
4 the thing, but people expressed the idea that KR3 and the
5 Kern up there is the classic American rafting place and
6 is there some way that we can make that better. That's
7 heard an awful lot, and folks are going to give us some
8 words on that.
9 JOHN KENNEDY: I think Daryl --
10 DARYL FRYER: I'm Daryl Fryer. The purpose of
11 the meeting is to Kern issues, if that's an issue. It's
12 on the board. We're not going to get more issues. It is
13 a separate license. Kern 3 has its separate license.
14 There are some issues still pending on that license.
15 Borel is a license, but if it's an issue and it's on the
16 board, they're not going to walk away from it at this
17 time.
18 I think there's one angle on this for sure
19 that's unquestioned to me, again, an outsider and not an
20 expert, but Kern River to me is an example of what can
21 happen if at the local level there's no agreement and
22 we're reliant on the National Forest Service to make the
23 decisions, and they really will come in and cut the baby
24 in half.
25 You know, one of the most interesting things I
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1 had a white water rafting business person here in town
2 explain to me, just common sense, you don't have to know
3 anything about my business, just take common sense,
4 what's the smallest amount of water that's of any use to
5 anybody? It's the amount of water you need, an
6 individual needs, to kayak, and what we got was less than
7 that.
8 So you got Edison pampered operating procedures
9 to do releases and things like that. I mean, everybody
10 walks into that. So I think that there's a real lesson
11 to be learned there. It seems to me as an outside
12 observer in the process local agreement is where the
13 action's at. Where the sides harden and entrench and get
14 stiff and harder, how the process proceeds, it will get
15 fixed.
16 DARYL FRYER: Daryl Fryer again. We're talking
17 about Borel here. Number 3 is a separate project,
18 separate issues. Well, again, it's on the board here.
19 Okay.
20 TERRY HENRY: Terry Henry, U.S. Forest
21 Service. I think that it may be on the board, the issue,
22 but I think it's very important to realize it is a
23 completely separate issue, and there's no way that this
24 project is going to be able to perfect a decision that's
25 been made on KR3 and just lay that out flat. So people
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1 really understand, it's a done deal.
2 I know it's still got things pending on it, but
3 it's separate from this, and this is the basis for your
4 comment, that we have a number of hydroelectric sites
5 that we're dealing with right now that need to be
6 relicensed in the next few years, and even though it's
7 probably much too late, it would have been nice if they
8 could have been looked at all at once together in some
9 type of plan that deals with KR3 to Isabella to Borel to
10 Democrat and 178 so we could talk about the flows that
11 are needed along the entire system.
12 Trying to cut the river into sections and
13 planning this one and that one and that one again out of
14 order without a continuous situation -- water flows
15 downhill -- seems like an unreasonable way to go about
16 doing any type of environmental assessment. That's the
17 opportunity to make that statement. So --
18 DARYL FRYER: It does seem like the times are
19 changing, the attitudes are changing. There's more
20 arguments to agreements and certainly more realization
21 that we have to look at this on a much grander scale and
22 not chop things up.
23 TERRY HENRY: I do understand it's beyond the
24 scope of this meeting.
25 DARYL FRYER: Okay. Thank you very much for
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1 that comment. Did this discussion trigger an elaboration
2 or a new set of thoughts about issues?
3 LOREEN LOMAX: Yes. Loreen Lomax, Forest
4 Service. One thing that I would like to see is maybe
5 this is part of the process -- maybe I should have said
6 this in the process is that the Native American community
7 in this area be brought in.
8 Even though this is a public meeting, perhaps
9 there can be a meeting with the Native American community
10 with regards to concerns. There have been concerns in
11 the past with water levels going up and down and erosion
12 of sites within the Borel canal, particularly the intake
13 area.
14 And also with the higher use of recreation in
15 some of these areas, if we're looking at that, there are
16 going to be impacts to some of the sites, and I know
17 within our study plans we are looking at that and ways to
18 assess whether these effects are -- or whether operations
19 are causing effects to these sites.
20 And not to put the finger on him, but Ray Vega
21 is here from the Native American community, and he's also
22 chairperson for the interpreter center, and he has a
23 connection with the community.
24 So if in the planning process and in the
25 process phase if there's some way you want to work with
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1 me and him as well to set up a meeting with the Native
2 American community, we can set that up possibly at the
3 interpreter center or somewhere else where we would have
4 facilities for that, but I think it's really important at
5 this point to get those concerns because there's -- what
6 was it? '92? It was in '91, '92, there was some
7 concerns.
8 DARYL FRYER: I saw them. I must say that I
9 heard that thought expressed. Do you want to elaborate?
10 RAY VEGA: Ray Vega, Kern River Counsel. I
11 think I said my peace up there this morning, and I'd
12 rather not comment any more on it.
13 DARYL FRYER: Thank you. Again, did this
14 trigger any more comments or thought about issues,
15 anything that the folks would be comfortable raising at
16 this point?
17 We're going to move on in our agenda, then, and
18 I'm conscious that we want to get out of here now as soon
19 as possible. Let me just see a show of hands. We
20 probably have 15 more minutes of going on.
21 Is that okay with people or do you want us to
22 cut it at 4:00? Is it okay to go 15 more minutes? It
23 looks like people can live with that. Let's see.
24 Now, where are we on the agenda? Okay. We're
25 going to have a brief discussion here about -- now, John,
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1 how do I get this thing to escape?
2 This is really intended to be a highly informal
3 discussion, but I guarantee that the people sitting
4 farther back are going to have a hard time seeing this.
5 Struggle with me. If you want to move forward, do so.
6 But what this says is working together locally
7 to resolve issues, you want to try something new, and,
8 again, this is intended to be just an informal discussion
9 about some possibilities. We're going to throw out some
10 ideas, and in the spirit of this whole workshop what
11 we're trying to get a sense of is just your reaction and
12 what ideas this triggers in your mind and what level of
13 interest there would be in trying to address some of
14 these things locally.
15 Now, I think that we are pretty much in
16 agreement that what the process for resolving issues is
17 usually like. Well, for those of you that can't see this
18 very well, how things work, how things usually work.
19 Well, Number 1, local parties disagree, and we
20 start off with a bit of conflict here, you know, I want
21 more of this, and, no, I want more of that. That's the
22 way things start off, and then through the process local
23 parties become entrenched in their position, you know, I
24 said I want more of this, I said I want more of that. It
25 becomes entrenched, rigid, stuck.
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1 The relicensing date comes near. These dates
2 that Sandy was talking about earlier start getting closer
3 at hand, and then the issue of resolution is taken from
4 local hands. Someone else outside says this is how it's
5 going to be, and no one really wins, and there's lots of
6 delay relative to the possibility of reaching agreements
7 earlier.
8 It's not only that the process needs to be
9 different, that we need some more dialogue at the local
10 level. It's also that the intent has to be there to
11 reach an agreement. There has to be an intent. You
12 know, there's not a silver bullet here like this process
13 will fix this solution. It's the process combined with
14 the intent to reach agreement that will generate some
15 goal.
16 And so the idea is, you know, for those folks
17 that have been in this business a while, there just has
18 to be a better way of doing this, and the idea is what if
19 we work together in local teams, you know, to resolve
20 issues right here. You know, so a vision of improvement,
21 what could we do in small local teams, and, you know,
22 again, don't lose sight of the fact that this requires
23 the intent as well as this process of small teams. There
24 has to be the intent to reach agreement but a vision for
25 improvement.
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1 If we had local teams, we could move from the
2 old approach where we have lack of communication and
3 understanding, really negative perceptions. I mean,
4 everybody thinks everybody else is doing -- you know, the
5 deals are made behind closed doors, the decisions are not
6 made locally, the people that have to live with it don't
7 have any input into it, and poor results that no one
8 really gains.
9 I mean, that story about the minimum amount of
10 water you need for anybody to get any use out of it is
11 really compelling to me. It blew me away. The
12 litigation, that minimum amount of water, won't resolve
13 for years. I mean, it's a huge delay. I mean, with that
14 lesson in hand, maybe we can create a new intent to work
15 together to seek solutions that work, end up with
16 positive perceptions.
17 Everything is in the open. Decisions are
18 really made by people that have to live with them. If
19 not great results, at least good results. Everyone is a
20 little better off and a much earlier benefit. You can
21 start getting on some of the key weekends where you need
22 the water possibly in the next 18 months, not six years
23 from now. That's the kind of thing we're trying to talk
24 about, but everybody understanding everybody else's
25 situation and has the intent to reach agreement.
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1 So, again, I'm very conscious of the fact that
2 we're taking up your time, and so we were thinking, you
3 know, if we had -- again to get you thinking about this
4 specifically, we put up some ideas here based on the
5 issues that we heard and the discussions that we've had
6 and sort of what would a team deliver, and you ask
7 yourself if you got together in some small teams what
8 would a team deliver, what would it look like.
9 Well, if we had somebody looking at the minimum
10 pool, the key to the process would be what's needed to
11 achieve the minimum pool and getting started with that
12 process, you see, on the one hand, but there's a lot of
13 possibility for a deal to be possible here on minimum
14 pools because, you know, folks own businesses that have
15 to spend millions of dollars periodically to clean out
16 those canals when they merge out of the water, and that
17 creates an opportunity to perhaps buy some storage rights
18 during -- you know, there's a whole situation here that
19 can create an opportunity for a deal.
20 Canal crossings. You know, there's still a
21 second bridge that hasn't been done. You guys have made
22 wonderful progress on the first one, but maybe get some
23 community involvement and get that bridge funded.
24 Recreational facilities. There would be an
25 agreement on recreational improvements. White water
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1 boating, the key deliverable would be an early agreement
2 about the access, the flows, and the time of those flows,
3 and let's get started. Let's start realizing the
4 benefits of that community economic partnership.
5 You know, we'd have to have help from you,
6 Steve, but I think the deliverable would be a plan on how
7 to leverage the resource for local greater economic
8 benefit and probably also with a lot of planning about
9 where funding sources could come through and so forth,
10 but really get people involved in thinking that through.
11 It's a huge idea to get more leverage out of
12 the environment up here. There's just got to be a right
13 position for the future with the way the demand for this
14 kind of recreation is going to be in the next 20 years.
15 That's got to be the right approach.
16 So we're trying to give you a sense of what
17 kinds of teams would be possible, what would the team
18 deliver, what would they create, how the ones that have a
19 star by them are inherently part of the relicensing.
20 The other ones, though, are agreements and
21 working relationships among a lot of the same parties
22 that would be involved in the relicensing. The other
23 ones aren't hard-core relicensing issues, but they
24 involve all of the same parties, much of the same
25 dialogue, and it just seems to us to be something that
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1 would make a lot of sense to try to move forward with.
2 So the next question might be what would a team
3 do, and that's sort of a rough picture of a local action
4 team. What would they do? Well, what we're thinking
5 here is that the team itself gets involved in problem
6 solving and thinking through what the issues are.
7 Take the bridge example. The team itself
8 starts working to try to understand what are possible
9 funding sources, what agencies do we have to coordinate
10 with, creatively secure funding where needed, you know,
11 take action, make recommendations to the key decision
12 makers, minimum pool, you know, working with the Army
13 Corps of Engineers and people that really are the water
14 owners, the folks that really are the key decision
15 makers.
16 Water owners are critical decision makers of
17 the minute pump pool. That's a lot of local reasons for
18 that, the aesthetic implications. That one just looks
19 like a win-win-win from all over the place, the minimum
20 pool idea.
21 When you get into it, just look at all the
22 stakeholders, but they would agree on the meeting
23 schedules and the deliverable, but they would agree on
24 the meeting schedules, the activities, the deliverables
25 be open minded and understand each other. Let's see.
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1 I've had a number of these fall on the floor
2 and get mixed up. So the other thought is if there were
3 any local participation or interest here in local
4 participation, here are the kinds of things that, you
5 know, Edison would be willing to do to provide this type
6 of support, and this is local support, the things that
7 John and his people would be wanting to provide, assist
8 with plan meeting sites, help recruit key parties,
9 arrange to transcribe meetings, provide meeting
10 facilitation, and I think most importantly coach the team
11 on how to be effective, take effective action in this
12 kind of arcane Byzantine regulatory processes.
13 For example, if you want to really pull some
14 levers here, you have to become, quote, intervenors.
15 Well, that would help you figure out exactly what you
16 have to do to become an intervenor.
17 Now, I'm not talking about the proceedings. A
18 lot of you folks have been involved many times, and the
19 bottom line would be to make it easier for you to be
20 heard and reach agreement and get some of these things
21 done.
22 And here's another question. What are the pros
23 and cons of the idea? Does the idea make more sense on
24 some issues than others? Is there an issue or two where
25 it is a slam dunk, we should start this immediately? And
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1 what role would you want to see Edison play, you know,
2 how could they help really make something like this
3 happen?
4 So let me just ask quickly your thoughts -- we
5 can turn the lights back on -- your thoughts on pros and
6 cons of trying to formalize something like that. Any
7 thoughts?
8 STEVE SPRADLIN: Steve Spradlin, Chamber.
9 There was a lot of good comments made today, the Forest
10 Service saying things like, you know, why is this process
11 being done three different times when we're talking about
12 one resource and things like that where you cannot divide
13 it because it is one whole thing.
14 I mean, that's so basic that it's a wondrous
15 thing that they do something about it sooner than this,
16 but, obviously, it's too late, and the other thing is
17 when you talk about the give and take, and really even
18 though it was stated that KR3 is a done deal, it was done
19 and the parameters and the highs and the lows, but that
20 still doesn't mean that on certain times of the days
21 Edison still has the flexibility of being within those
22 maximums or minimums.
23 So if the minimum water flow is five or fifty
24 or a number that doesn't mean that, the maximum can be
25 something different, that you can accommodate different
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1 situations. Really we've got a two-week schedule, and
2 we're talking about three hours a day or something. You
3 say that's great because the rest of the time we get full
4 use of the water like that.
5 It's just like when Chuck Williams is going to
6 release more water for the national championships, those
7 are all things you can do if you work together and
8 communicate, whereas if you said once it's done and it's
9 done for a 30-year period where they say we're not going
10 to give you an ounce more water than we have to because
11 we won.
12 So this is the thing that we work together, and
13 we realize that August is the highest priced kilowatt in
14 the year. So every bit of water that you guys give up
15 during the month of August when it's critical means a
16 lot, and so you say, well, okay, take the water 22 hours
17 a day and have our blessings, but a couple hours, you
18 know, give us that extra amount that a kayak can go down.
19 DARYL FRYER: You know, my instincts are in
20 this situation because I've known the local people here
21 at Edison for quite a few years, Steve, is that there is
22 the intent to find win-win here, and I don't know about
23 the rest of the system, but right here, right now, there
24 is the intent to find win-win, and I don't think you have
25 the mentality here that we're not going to do that at the
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1 KR3 because we won in a legal proceeding.
2 These are local people that say win-win. I
3 mean, let's do this early, and let's have it behind us.
4 I mean, it just seems like the amounts of water and the
5 needs and so forth are real possible, but those are real
6 possible at one level, but the level you're talking about
7 is a much grander level that it excites everybody.
8 What's your perception of that? I mean, see,
9 it's hard to differentiate Kern from right here. Right
10 here and now is what we're talking about in the sense of
11 attitude and intent to find agreement and win-win.
12 STEVE SPRADLIN: What was the question?
13 DARYL FRYER: What's your assessment of the
14 situation here?
15 STEVE SPRADLIN: On this particular relicensing
16 issue or --
17 DARYL FRYER: On this particular relicensing
18 Borel intent agreement.
19 STEVE SPRADLIN: I think it's a piece of cake
20 compared to the KR3 because the issues aren't nearly as
21 great as they were on the other one, and yet if this is
22 all the options and all the questions this early on, then
23 there's nothing that's not doable.
24 And Sue brought up a good point, and that's we
25 keep seeing to focus on the water flows on that lower
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1 part, but certainly the impact of the Borel canal through
2 the lake when that becomes an issue is a big issue, and a
3 minimum pool, like you said, which saves ultimately the
4 Corps and Edison Company millions of dollars by not
5 having to reactivate that, it is a big issue.
6 When you're talking about a minimum pool and
7 you're talking about the money to buy a minimum pool, you
8 know, that's not necessarily true that you have to buy
9 the water from minimum pool.
10 The amount of water that in a flood year that
11 goes unused down the river because it cannot be captured
12 because of not having the capacity would fill that
13 minimum pool in that one year that you have that excess
14 capacity and really was like free to the water users that
15 own it because they didn't expect it.
16 It goes unused and unclaimed in that excess
17 year. If you have the capacity to hold that minimum year
18 prior to that 100-year flood, you could hold that water,
19 and nobody would have to pay for it.
20 DARYL FRYER: We would have to have a lot of
21 people to have to agree to that because that has flood
22 control issues and so on, but that's what this is about.
23 Let's get together, and let's do that, you know, if it
24 makes sense.
25 Other thoughts on the pros and cons of the
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1 idea?
2 JUDY HYATT: Judy Hyatt, Kern County Board of
3 Supervisors. I think you're going to find the atmosphere
4 a little bit different than it was when KR3 got started.
5 Since that time, there have been a number of
6 moves in the valley to be collaborative in their
7 thinking. The valley-wide chamber is coming together.
8 People are looking at issues a little bit differently
9 than they did before as opposed to mine and yours, and
10 I'm hoping that through this process that that thinking
11 will continue.
12 It's worked in some areas of our valley very
13 well already, and Steve and his group from the
14 Lake Isabella Chamber are working very hard to get the
15 valley-wide group together to address all the issues that
16 face all of us at one point in time. So I think the
17 atmosphere is going to be different.
18 DARYL FRYER: Yes.
19 JUDY HYATT: And I think you're going to find
20 perhaps a little bit more willfulness on behalf of the
21 people where you don't come into this in an adversarial
22 relationship.
23 There's still going to be those that want to
24 sit back and wait and see, but I think you're going to
25 find more willingness on the part of the people who want
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1 to be a participant in what's going to be said because
2 you're talking about 30 years, you know.
3 DARYL FRYER: What kind of thoughts do you
4 have? Any other pros and cons? Sue, you looked like you
5 might have something that you wanted to say. On Edison's
6 role, we posted a role up there that we thought would be
7 helpful to any team, to any group of people that were
8 thinking about doing this, getting involved.
9 Any reaction to that role?
10 JUDY HYATT: Are you talking about being the
11 facilitator kind of thing? Judy Hyatt.
12 DARYL FRYER: Uh-huh.
13 JUDY HYATT: I think it's a wonderful thing.
14 DARYL FRYER: Does this actually help? That's
15 what we're trying to understand.
16 JUDY HYATT: Yes. Oh, yes. At least I believe
17 so. If you get all the people in one room and get it on
18 the table and get it discussed and have someone there to
19 keep the discussion on track, I can't see how it would
20 not work.
21 DARYL FRYER: Are there any parties that feel
22 that it just doesn't make sense to do this? And we
23 really want to participate in trying to reach early
24 agreements in relicensing areas like water and
25 recreation. Just no desire? Tell me, is that because
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1 you feel there isn't any or is that because you just want
2 to think about it some?
3 JUDY HYATT: Well, I, for one, think it's
4 important because the sooner you can get some of these
5 things out of the way I think the easier it will be to
6 deal with those issues. It will perhaps take a little
7 bit more study, a little bit more in-depth research.
8 JOHN KENNEDY: One of the problems --
9 DARYL FRYER: That would be much less likely to
10 have them cut in half.
11 JUDY HYATT: Exactly.
12 JOHN KENNEDY: One of the problems I see is
13 people have a tendency, it's just a natural tendency, to
14 maybe sign up for a team or whatever to do something, and
15 interest wanes, and pretty soon you've only got one or
16 two people, and nothing ever comes out of it, and you do
17 this a couple, two or three, times, and you just feel
18 like, you know, nothing's going to happen.
19 So it would have to -- like Pat was saying,
20 there would have to be an intent that -- you know, which
21 can actually -- we're empowered to actually do something
22 here. We've got the right people on the team that can
23 make those decisions. There's no reason to have a team
24 with people that are not -- can't make the decision;
25 right?
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1 In other words, if I got to go to my boss and
2 get a decision on something, he's the one that should be
3 on the team, you know. So those kinds of things. And
4 also if, let's say, there's five agencies that would need
5 to collaborate in order for this thing to happen if
6 you've only got two of them.
7 So there's a commitment that has to be made.
8 So, you know, from a downside, that's what I would see.
9 I mean, you know, if we decided to go this route and we
10 felt that it was really doable, having a commitment from
11 people.
12 You know, look at the amount of people that we
13 have here in the room now. We've got, you know, mostly
14 the agencies and stuff, but, you know, people, they just
15 don't have this feeling that they can actually make a
16 difference, you know.
17 DARYL FRYER: If you take something like the
18 minimum pool, look at all the players, and this is just a
19 quick brain storm. This is probably not complete by any
20 means, but on a quick brain storm, it looks like any one
21 of these players could be a deal buster.
22 You have to have coordinated agreement among
23 all these players and probably more that we didn't think
24 about before you could even, you know, start moving the
25 process forward, and so we were trying to think --
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1 ERIK OSTLY: Erik Ostly with the Forest
2 Service. One of the important things I've seen in
3 meetings is people coming in, they have to have an open
4 mind to give and take, and it takes more than just a
5 facilitator, a significant more.
6 It needs somebody who is skilled in conflict
7 resolution, in getting people to come to agreements they
8 don't want to make in order to make a consensus. The
9 facilitator keeps things going, but it takes a lot more
10 personnel skills and meeting skills to take people with
11 different views to break down their barriers and move
12 into getting a consensus on this if this is how we want
13 to manage this.
14 DARYL FRYER: We did about 25 or 30 interviews,
15 and I think five or six of those people made that same
16 point. This is a key point that keeps getting back to
17 us. If you want to try to do this on tough issues,
18 you've got to have conflict resolution capability on the
19 spot. It's not just writing down what people say.
20 That's not going to cut it.
21 ERIK OSTLY: That person has to guide the group
22 as far as keeping it going to a resolution.
23 DARYL FRYER: Okay. So, look, the way to bring
24 this idea to closure so we can get this meeting closed --
25 boy, I really apologize for this. We've got the sign-up
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1 sheet back here. Please take the time to indicate any
2 possible interest that you have in this.
3 We will follow up and contact people and see if
4 there's a coalition of the core players around any of
5 these issues and try to get something on this. This is
6 what we think is a really agreeable part of the solution
7 here of making this a benefit to all the local parties
8 here.
9 JUDY HYATT: One last comment. Judy Hyatt. If
10 they could see results before the end of a five-year
11 period on little items, I think you would maintain the
12 interest, and the committee wouldn't go from twenty
13 people to ten people.
14 JOHN KENNEDY: I agree. That's going to be
15 short term types of things because two or three years
16 doesn't cut it.
17 DARYL FRYER: There's a couple of these where
18 you can see agreement here real fast.
19 JUDY HYATT: Right. And if that could be, you
20 know, brought to the public's attention, this is what
21 we've accomplished so far, I think the --
22 DARYL FRYER: That's right. That's a very good
23 point. So it's two key points. It's sort of like
24 critical success factors is facilitation and early wins.
25 Okay.
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1 Let's move on with our agenda. Thank you very
2 much for giving us your reaction to this idea, and if you
3 give us any indication of interest on your part, we will
4 follow up on that.
5 DARYL FRYER: Go ahead, Jack.
6 JOHN KENNEDY: Do you want me to go ahead?
7 DARYL FRYER: Yeah.
8 JOHN KENNEDY: The next steps, written
9 comments, as we mentioned before, are due September 12th
10 of this year. You can put those or mail those to
11 Candace Irelan at this address.
12 We've got some handouts on this information for
13 you. Again, you can call myself or Candace for this
14 information. We've also got some guidance here for
15 submitting the written comments, what should you say in
16 there, you know, how should it be structured.
17 You should include a background on the issue to
18 identify the issue and include a background, any
19 information that's needed for that or in need for a
20 study, you know, that sort of thing, kinds of methods
21 that might be most appropriate in your mind, how
22 information will be useful in making decisions. That's
23 very important that you state, you know, why would you
24 want to do this, you know, what's the purpose of this.
25 And then from there we'll evaluate input from
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1 stakeholders and chart a course of action as far as this
2 relicensing process. So there you have it. September
3 12th is the date.
4 DARYL FRYER: That information is on a
5 handout. Where's the handout?
6 SANDRA PERRY: Where is that? John, do you
7 have that handout with that information on it?
8 JOHN KENNEDY: No, I don't. I dropped the ball
9 on that.
10 BRIAN McGURTY: I don't think it got printed.
11 So if anybody needs it, now it's time to write it down.
12 It's in the package on Page 2.
13 JOHN KENNEDY: And, again, you can call either
14 myself or Candace. My number's 376-2837, and I'll go
15 ahead and make copies of this,