ADMINISTRATIVE COMMITTEE
4.	Consider Expenditure of Budgeted Funds to Conduct a Test Installation of a Sonic Fish Counting Device in the Lower Carmel River to Enumerate the Steelhead Run
Meeting Date:		March 9, 2010	Budgeted:	Yes
From:		Darby Fuerst,	Program	Project Expenditures
		General Manager	Line Item No.:	2-3-1
Prepared By:		Kevan Urquhart	Cost Estimate:	$14,900
General Counsel Review: N/A
Committee Recommendation: The Administrative Committee considered this item on March 9, 2010 and recommended ____________________.
CEQA Compliance: N/A

SUMMARY: The Board will consider authorizing expenditure of budgeted funds and directing the General Manager to enter into a contract with Peter Johnson, Senior Research Scientist of the firm LGL Northwest for an initial amount of $8,318, with the option of short-term extensions up to a not-to-exceed a total of $14,900, to: (a) reconnoiter the lower 8 miles of the main-stem Carmel River to identify one or more installation sites for a Dual Frequency Identification Sonar [DIDSON] device, (b) provide and temporarily install a DIDSON device at one site for four to as many as ten consecutive days, if needed, and (c) provide a brief memo report assessing the effectiveness of this short-term installation of the device in enumerating immigrating adult steelhead, and if possible also larger emigrating juvenile steelhead. District staff selected Mr. Johnson for this work because of the consultant’s familiarity with, and demonstrated success in installing and operating DIDSONs at multiple locations in California for other government agencies, including the California Department of Fish and Game (CDFG). This vendor is also the primary vendor recommended by the hardware manufacturer as being one of the most experienced individuals utilizing their hardware on the West Coast, including the Columbia River. Based on this experience and expertise, District staff believes that Mr. Johnson will provide the most cost-effective and timely assistance in responding to these issues.

RECOMMENDATION: Staff recommends that the Board approve expenditure of the funds in the not-to-exceed amount of $14,900 to contract with Mr. Peter Johnson of the firm LGL Northwest to: (a) identify one or more installation sites for a DIDSON camera device in the lower 8 miles of the main-stem Carmel River, (b) provide and temporarily install a DIDSON device at one site for four to as many as ten consecutive days, and (c) provide a short memo report assessing the effectiveness of this short term installation of the device in enumerating immigrating adult steelhead. The contract will be issued for a not to exceed amount of $14,900. The Administrative Committee considered this matter at its March 9, 2010 meeting and recommended ___________ .

BACKGROUND:  The District operates and maintains the fish counting weir on the San Clemente Dam (SCD) fish ladder as an integral component of our overall environmental monitoring program, following its mission statement and legislative directive to manage, augment and protect water resources for the benefit of the community and environment. Though the Mitigation Program for the MPWMD Water Allocation Program does not specifically require this monitoring element, it is clear that data on the status of the steelhead run in the Carmel River is essential to documenting the ongoing impacts to, and recovery from CAW and others water diversions, which the District is responsible for overseeing. This record of fish counts has been maintained by District staff since 1988, and was collected prior to that since 1954 by CAW. The District recently participated in signing a Memorandum of Understanding among key parties participating in the effort to remove SCD. If certain outstanding issues are resolved, it will take only three years to remove the dam, during the second year of which the fish counting station will be removed. Thus it is possible that we will no longer have a count of fish passing SCD in as little as three years from now.

In 1997, steelhead in south-central California were listed as threatened under the Federal Endangered Species Act (ESA). In 2000, the NMFS promulgated Section 4d rules for protecting steelhead. The District’s management of the water resources of the Carmel River and Seaside Groundwater basin is significantly affected by restrictions intended to sustain and prevent the extinction of steelhead. Thus it is of the utmost importance to be able to continue to document the trend in steelhead abundance. Installing a DIDSON to count fish in concert with the remaining years that the fish counter at SCD may be in operation, may enable us to index the two counts to each other, and thus provide a quantitative link to the trends in the historical data set.

A serious flaw with the existing fish counting device is that it is 18.6 miles upstream of the mouth of the river. It is roughly estimated that 40% or more of the total run never reaches San Clemente Dam. These 18.6 miles contain significant spawning habitat for adult steelhead in the main-stem of the river, as well as in five major tributaries. The quality and quantity of spawning habitat is likely increasing in the main-stem of the lower river each year, due to the ongoing habitat restoration efforts of the District and other non-profit community partners. There is some evidence from redd surveys conducted annually by the District, that the number and proportion of adults spawning in the lower river may be increasing in recent years. Thus, moving the fish counting site as far downstream as possible, could demonstrate an as yet un-enumerated increase in the size of the total steelhead run, and would allow us to report an annual number that more accurately represents the total run size. Since the NOAA recovery goal under the ESA is based on the total run size of fish, without a counting location that enumerates the vast majority of adult immigrant steelhead, it will be uncertain whether the recovery goal has been met.

In a prior staff report to the Board on June 16, 2008 (Technical Memorandum 2008-01), staff identified the problems with attempting to install a replacement mechanical fish counting device in the lower river, and identified that acoustic sonar technologies were likely the most feasible alternative to enumerate fish passage in the lower river. DIDSON is the latest generation of such technology (http://www.soundmetrics.com/). Other than boat-towed side-scan sonar, this the only sonar technology that actually generates low resolution images of the actual objects being observed by the acoustic beam (see Exhibit 4-A). Older technologies provide only numeric output that must be mathematically interpreted by an algorithm to make a probability based decision as to whether the object observed is actually a fish versus debris or some other fluid density anomaly.

A DIDSON device (Exhibit 4-B) is currently being successfully operated on an ongoing basis by the National Marine Fisheries Service on Scott Creek in Santa Cruz County. Both the Carmel River Steelhead Association and the Carmel River Watershed Council are on record at the February 25, 2010 Board Meeting in support of the District acquiring and evaluating a DIDSON.

Changes to the rules for the CDFG’s, Fisheries Restoration Grants Program (FRGP) have now allowed applications to support the costs for long term monitoring of key anadromous fisheries populations. Since the Carmel River Run of steelhead is the only long term database of steelhead abundance available south of the Russian River, and also the only one within the South Central Coast Distinct Population Segment listed under the Federal Endangered Species Act, the FRGP is likely to place a significant priority on supporting the District to continue the monitoring of this population. If the site evaluation and pilot project are successful, it will enhance our justifications for a pending grant application of $90,000 - $180,000 for the purchase of one or more DIDSON devices to install in the lower Carmel River by 2012. The cost of evaluating, installing and maintaining the device, as well as reporting its data on the District’s web pages and Annual Mitigation and Monitoring Report will be cited as matching funds for the grant application. Last year, the FRGP funded the Humboldt State University to install one DIDSON on Redwood Creek in Northern California. Those applicants had already identified a river site for the device’s installation. The District’s grant application will be much more robust, if we are able to do the same, but this will require hiring an experienced and qualified consultant as soon as feasible to make the site selection for the District.

The consultant believes it is likely that he can prove the efficacy of the DIDSON on the Carmel River is as little as four field days. However, in case there is a slump in the daily number of steelhead immigrating into the river in the last two weeks of March or first two weeks of April, we are including funds to keep the consultant in the field up to ten days. The last two weeks of February and the first two weeks of March usually comprise the peak of the annual run. The Senior Fisheries Biologist will consult with the General Manager after four field days, on the daily results of the test program to date, in order to decide whether the consultant’s contract should be extended past the initial four days. If the consultant cannot effectively complete a full field test, before the steelhead run tapers off, he will at least select a preferred installation site, provide a site design and layout, and decide whether one or two DIDSON devices will be needed to fully scan the channel width of the Lower Carmel River. In no case will any extension of the base contract exceed the total budgeted amount.

IMPACT ON FISCAL AND STAFF RESOURCES: A similar amount of funds to the cost estimate proposed in Exhibit 4-C were initially requested by staff for inclusion in the original Fiscal Year 2009-2010 budget, but eliminated due to the District’s concerns about the risk of the potential loss of property tax revenues, if they were reallocated by the State to cover its ongoing budget crises. The funds to cover this expense are being reallocated from Line Item No. 2-3-2 B., Water Resource Assistants and Line Item No. 2-3-2 C., Seasonal Fish Rescue Workers. This is made possible by the unusually early closure of the Sleepy Hollow Steelhead Rearing Facility this year, which reduced the need for temporary staff. This reallocation still leaves a full month of staff time for June for two future Fish Rescue Workers, and two existing Water Resources Assistants, as well as some part time hours for one of the Water Resources Assistants through May of this Fiscal Year. It is anticipated that the work under this contract will be completed in March 2010.

EXHIBITS

4-A Sample screen output from a DIDSON scanning for salmonids

4-B Photographs of an existing DIDSON set up on Scott Creek, Santa Cruz Co., CA

4-C Sample Fee Schedule provided by Mr. Johnson

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