Platte River Endangered Species Program EAC

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Furthermore, the minimum flow levels and duration in the critical habitat need to be defined for the various purposes, as well as the minimum volume to be released from the EA during any particular run. In short a need for considerable more detail in the EA- AOP was identified. See our attached comments for further detail. The following are additional observations from the EAC meeting. 1. Nebraska Department of Water Resources questioned the Nebraska Game, Fish and Parks Department about giving up a 3,000 AF water right with the Chimney Rock Irrigation District. Apparently this right is somehow associated with a park located west of Bridgeport, NE (I believe the park is called Chet and Jane Flieshbach at Facus Springs). We wonder why water should be taken from upstream states if Nebraska is giving up water for environmental purposes? We need to look into this issue further. 2. Nebraska Game, Fish and Parks asked about the possibility of delivering EA water to Rainwater Basin, a popular stopover for the Whooping Crane. Need to investigate this issue further, particularly the water rights issue. 3. The issue of accounting was raised, specifically who does it? There was not clear resolution of this issue at the EAC. Accounting and tracking will need to take place for the overall program water and for the EA account. More details and procedures will need to be worked out on how the EA account and program water will be linked/interrelated. Our recommendation is that the accounting be done by each state or managing entity and reported to the Platte River Endangered Species Program Committees as appropriate and needed for various reports. Either the "Water Committee" or the "Technical Committee" should approve the accounting procedures and the procedures should be fully documented so that they are understandable to all. For the EA account, the EA manager will request the release and NPPD and CNPPID will make the release from the EA. NDWR needs to track and protect the release to critical habitat. This is especially important because NPPD and CNPPID can put this water to beneficial use and that may effect timing and quantity of water delivered. The EA manager and monitoring subcommittee need to verify the amount of water arriving at critical habitat and document the benefits of the EA release. There is a need to integrate various accounting procedures both for water management and the benefits they provide to the endangered species and critical habitat into a comprehensive annual report. 4.. The EAC will need to meet 2 or 3 times a year for coordination purposes and report development. It is envisioned that conference calls can be utilized to discuss EA releases in most cases. 5. We would like to invite Sharon to tour the South Platte Basin and perhaps try her hand at Denver Waters Dillon Operations Model as she is quite new to the reservoir operations process. 6. There are some interesting nuances regarding how the storable natural inflow accrues in relation to the storage capacity of Lake McConaughy. In general, the EA account can be adjusted up or down to 100,000 AF when McConaughy is at capacity (remember the EA operates up to 200,000 AF). There is some room for "mischief' here (i.e., EA is 195,000 AF and McConaughy is 10 AF from capacity; once you add the 10 AF the EA goes to 100,000 AF) but practically speaking this shouldn't be a problem.