Hiring two additional staff members and an excess of "processes" were the main concerns the Santa Clara Valley Water District Board of Directors shared during a special meeting Wednesday morning with representatives from a committee that is in charge of administering a program to protect certain fish habitats.
Board President Rosemary Kamei said the committee seemed to be spending too much time on "processes" and not enough on action.
The board was getting an update on the progress of the committee in chare of monitoring and making decisions about the Fisheries and Aquatic Habitat Collaborative Effort, or FAHCE.
FAHCE Is designed to resolve a water rights complaint filed against the district in 1996. A settlement agreement was finalized in 2003 that would allow the complaint to be dropped and balances water supply and fisheries protection.
The centerpiece of FAHCE is a fisheries management plan that shares local water resources for steelhead trout and Chinook salmon that migrate from San Francisco Bay to spawn in Santa Clara County watersheds. The plan dedicates about 619 million gallons of local runoff water annually for fish habitat.
The settlement agreement includes projects to protect and in some cases restore those habitats. The projects are paid for in the water district budget. The additional requirements imposed on the district for conservation also affect the availability of the district's water supply, the topic of a recent board work-study session. However, district staff pointed out during that session that requirements such as these are challenges the district is facing, but the district is still not facing a serious water shortage.
On Wednesday, directors also asked when the committee would decide whether money already set aside for the project would be credited towards the cap put on project costs.
During the May 20 board meeting, directors voted to add $825,000 to the budget for fiscal year 2009 to be a set-aside for early implementation of the program. The process of conducting an environmental evaluation and preparing a habitat conservation plan by next spring is underway, according to a report prepared by the committee, but they have not yet decided whether the budget addition will be credited to the FAHCE cap of $42 million per decade of implementation.
"By the time (the committee) feel comfortable with it, we could already have something in place that could be a benefit to the species," Kamei said. "Set a deadline, make a decision ... I'm a little disappointed, what I see here is a lot of process."
Directors were divided on whether they supported the committee's contention that an associate engineer and biologist needed to be added to the staff to work specifically on FAHCE. Director Sig Sanchez said he thought the committee should consider using consultants instead of hiring two staff members, but he said he recognized there are pros and cons for using permanent staff or consultants.
Committee representatives and water district staffers Pat Showalter and Ann Draper told directors the program could last more than 40 years, so hiring staff as opposed to using consultants would be beneficial for the district.
Marilyn Dubil Marilyn Dubil is a freelance writer for The Times.
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