MEETING NOTES: Water districts look at kill rates, ponder golden mussel emergency declaration

Wheeler Ridge-Maricopa Water Storage District: CLICK HERE
Cawelo Water District: CLICK HERE
North Kern Water Storage District: CLICK HERE
Districts wonder what Kern County emergency declaration means

Golden mussels again dominated board discussions at several water district meetings.

In particular, board members wanted to know how Kern County’s emergency declaration regarding the mussels will affect funding.

Eric McDaris, water resources manager for Wheeler Ridge-Maricopa Water Storage District told his board  that the first step is for costs to hit $5 million. At that point the county would send a letter to the state Office of Emergency Services that would potentially result in some reimbursements to districts. The county had gathered information indicating districs had spent $4.6 million at the time of its meeting on June 8.

McDaris noted that there would not be reimbursements for private costs taken on by growers themselves. 

Sheridan Nicholas, general manager for Wheeler Ridge, asked the district’s legal counsel, Steve Torigiani, if the district should also declare its own emergency?

Torigiani said maybe if the district did more contracting.

At the North Kern Water Storage District meeting, board vice president, Joel Ackerknecht asked if there was any progress toward a state emergency declaration. He noted that prospective funding would be greater if the state also made an emergency declaration. 

General Manager Dave Hampton said that there was no current indication about the governor doing an emergency declaration, but that the county’s emergency declaration could help push the state.

Also at North Kern’s meeting Grace Martin, with GEI Consultants, informed the board of a new invasive species grant.

The Invasive Species Council is launching a grant application potentially in the fall. Martin said golden mussels could be an eligible project.

Grant funding could be anywhere between $250,000 thousand to $1 million. The grant has a total of $16.4 million available to be awarded. 

However, Martin noted, costs being incurred now by the district would not be covered by the grant. The grant would only cover future costs for mussel treatment. She said money would likely come through for awardees six months after the application is opened.

Treatment updates

McDaris, with Wheeler Ridge, reported to the board that mussel treatment with GreenLeaf Ag would continue through October. He said they were finding 100% mortality in mussel testing bags, as well as no mussel growth on settling plates.

North Kern began its golden mussel treatments with Blue Tech. Ram Venkatesan, deputy general manager for the district reported they had 90% mortality in the district’s testing bags, the remaining 10% were starting to open up and would be dying off as well. 

Board member Ackerknecht asked what would happen to the shell debris left over from the dead mussels. 

Venkatesan noted that in the golden mussel testing bags they found that the treatment was disintegrating the shells to a sand-like consistency. 

The North Kern board approved extending its treatment contract with Blue Tech until October.

Cawelo Water District has not found any golden mussels in their system, however it is also doing preemptive treatment with GreenLeaf Ag. 

Cawelo and North Kern are working closely together, including helping pay for North Kern to treat the Lerdo Canal, according to General Manager David Ansolabehere.

”The deal we have with North Kern is if we see a benefit from their treatment, then we’ll give money to them to offset what we reduced in our treatment,” Ansolabehere told his board.

Ansolabehere said they are running testing of the residual water throughout the system to see what impact both districts’ treatments are having, noting that Cawelo’s  goal was to keep the mussels out of their system.