Chris Malan | Apr 13, 2015 on: Watershed Issues

Napa County Watershed Symposium 2015 features an all-star line-up. The goal of the event is to bring a diversity of stakeholders in the same room to spark creative plans and collaborative actions to improve our watersheds’ resiliency.

NAPA COUNTY WATERSHED SYMPOSIUM (see poster here)
Friday, May 15
9 am - 4pm, doors open at 8:30 am
City Winery, 1030 Main Street, Napa
$35 fee, refreshments and lunch included, register via brownpapertickets.com or fill out the attached form (available on napawatersheds.org)

Building Resiliency in our Watersheds
Keynote address by Lois Wolk, State Senator, 3rd District
Master of Ceremonies, David Graves

Featured sessions:
Large scale restoration in the Napa River and Lake Berryessa watersheds
Shaun Horne and Jeremy Sarrow, Napa Co Flood Control District
Chris Lee, Solano Co Water Agency

Tracking watershed health now and in the future
Paul Blank, Napa Co Resource Conservation District
Jonathon Koehler, Napa Co Resource Conservation District
Vicki Kretsinger, Luhdorff & Scalmanini
Dyan Whyte, SF Bay Water Quality Control Board

Rethinking water supply and demand to improve watershed resiliency
Keith Caldwell, Napa County Board of Supervisors, invited
Pat Costello, City of Napa Water Division
Jamison Crosby, Napa Co Flood Control District
Jim Verhey, Premiere Viticultura Services
Moving from watershed plans to watershed actions
Lisa Micheli, North Bay Climate Action Initiative
David Morrison, County of Napa

Exploring new ways to fund watershed projects
Mitch Avalon, Contra Costa County Public Works
Steve Moore, State Water Resource Control Board
Vern Goehring, California Urban Streams Council
Harry Seraydarian, North Bay Watershed Association
Rick Thomasser, Napa County Flood Control District

Sponsors: Luhdorff and Scalmanini, Napa Green, ESA, Horizon Water and Environment, The Watershed Nursery, Friends of the Napa River, WICC of Napa County, Napa RCD, City Winery


For additional information contact:
Frances Knapczyic
Stewardship Facilitator
Napa County Resource Conservation District
1303 Jefferson St Suite 500B
p 707-252-4188x116

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Chris Malan writes:

Here is a gathering of all the leading watershed (manipulators of funds for restoration) players regionally and locally- government folks. With Prop 1 and Prop 84 it is all about restoring the watersheds and monitoring groundwater at the tune of big bucks! However, there are NO funds for watershed enforcement protection and smart land use for finite resources because the bonds (written by government) are for restoration. The legislature doesn’t develop enforcement and forest protection bonds. We should be packing this symposium and let the public know our thoughts about the use of tax dollars for restoration project that do NOTHING for the causes of the degradation of our watersheds and ultimately our climate.

Problems with our watersheds are not addressed by government except to throw money at restoration. Not dealing with the causes means these restoration funds are a ‘feel good’ approach to watershed health and ultimately a waste of all these funds unless they are used to:
purchase water rights
purchase land-open space and riparian zones

Code enforcement is lacking severely and deforestation prevails. Water, the driver for all development is tightly controlled by the SWRCB who only steps in during severe drought, allows rampant over allocations of our water supplies, lacks enforcement, and squanders our resource to the water buffalos/big ag.

If you follow these restoration funds they go largely to large municipal and county projects or in Napa to the Sanitation Districts/recycle water projects and Rutherford Dust/Oakville Project (rich land owners loosing their vines to floods caused by their vines in the hillsides or increased rate of runoff)

Small restoration projects not government affiliated in Napa are next to impossible to get (spoken from experience).

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Christiana Aranguren adds:

I'm registered and will see you there.

Note: There a couple of good articles in yesterday's SF Chron on CA's antiquated water rights system and water use by agribusiness. See especially, "California Water Law Must Change -- Quickly" By Richard Frank of the UC Davis School of Law, page E6.

Also: I've been thinking that the Russian River film screenings in Napa could be the start of a series of public education talks featuring experts such as R. Frank or others from the UC Davis Center for Watershed Sciences. CSU, Chico has courted faculty especially focused on sustainability which could also be utilized, as it is attempting to become the "Green Campus of the CSUC system". I understand Felix E. Smith of Sacramento, an authority on the public trust doctrine, still lectures ~ and passionately ~ like most San Francisco-born Italian-Americans who have witnessed the demise of state fisheries in their lifetime. Patrick Porgens could speak on the State Water Project. Etc. etc. A weekly lecture series could assist in drowning out manipulation and amplifying logic and ethics.

We must Use The Drought to capture the public's interest ~ before they tune back into Dancing With The Stars.