Technical Work Group Meetings 2009

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Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 11 DRAFT Minutes of March 16 -17, 2009, Meeting appropriate for the AMWG. Dennis said the BAHG did a lot of work and went through a lot of discussions and they don't know if this is the list the TWG thinks is the list. He said he could start by asking if there are additions. Shane said there are two additional pieces of information: 1) more CRAHG report information, and 2) more information on trout numbers that Bill has when the non - native fish control is discussed. Shane said he wanted to ask for additional items from the TWG members before they get started with the review. Cliff disagreed and said the TWG should go with the BAHG's list. Norm said the list didn't capture everything that was discussed. Shane said there were two new issues posed for consideration but they didn't having the funding identified and weren't in the format required, so they were dropped. He asked Norm to propose his two concerns. Norm Henderson concerns: 1. Inclusion in the budget for an "off the shelf" science plan for HFE. Not to have an HFE necessarily but to have a science plan ready for an HFE as specified by Asst. Secretary Mark Limbaugh. 2. The SCORE report and Knowledge Assessment report to include in the budget as required as specified in the SSP or MRP. Norm said they were done in 2005 and should be done every 5 years. Other New Issues for Consideration: 1. GCMRC should develop a research plan to determine effects of varying ramping rates on foodbase and drift, and include this within the foodbase program. John said there was nothing in the EA or the BO that the USFWS issued that said they should look at alternate ramping rates as part of the 5 -year experiment that they laid out so that was one of the reasons why they didn't explicitly address it as an element of the 5 -year plan. Bill Davis said his concern was that they have never looked at drift hour -by -hour. Shane said they have been sampling and the project that Western asked for last year was to sample across that on an hourly basis to get those ramping rates. Shane said this was part of Western's request and they should get a pretty good idea of what's happening around the ramping rates based on those samples, but he said the part that was dropped was the experimentation component that they had asked for to look at the different ramping rates and the effects other than just what was given. Bill said he hasn't seen any information or study plans and that's why he continues to ask the question and this is one of the five operating parameters that continue to not be looked at in terms of experimentation or research. He felt the information being collected could be easily modified and it's not necessarily within the Lees Ferry area, maybe the effect dissipates going further downstream. Shane said this could be put in the list for GCMRC to get back to the TWG with what is currently being done and how it would relate to answering this question and get a better idea of what could be added. With the program ramping down in the next two years, Shane said there will be reports coming out. He has already seen some earlier reports of the relationship of the foodbase items to ramping rates. Bill said he still wants this added to the list. Matthew said GCMRC would make a response. 2. Helen said she responded to one of the concerns about the vegetation. GCMRC is actually going to be doing that in conjunction with the campsite analysis for it and the remote sensing overflight analysis. Steve Mietz said this was taken care of so this is no longer an issue of concern. 3. Tribal Monitoring Workshop. Amy said this was something discussed for the future but there was no indication of who was going to fund. It's still a year out. Mike Berry said this was discussed recently at a meeting in Flagstaff. The tribes have money to come to that particular workshop and present the results of this year's tribal protocol monitoring. Mike said they would like to have a discussant for that depending on how much money he is able to squirrel away for the Programmatic Agreement funds, otherwise they won't have a discussant. He highly encouraged as many stakeholders to attend those meetings to find out what the tribes are doing and get their perspectives. He said a discussant would be an anthropologist, ethnographer, enthnoscientist, whomever they can get. Mike said this would probably be in early FY2010. 1 4. Mary had three issues: (1) One thing that came up this morning was if the MRP runs out in 2011, would that mean another one wouldn't be amended until 2011 which result in one year without an MRP. John said