Technical Work Group Meetings 2009

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' Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 16 DRAFT Minutes of March 16 -17, 2009, Meeting Shane said he would like to Bill Persons to present some current trout data before they continue their deliberations on the budget. Sport Fish Stocking Consultation for State of Arizona. Bill Persons distributed copies of "Preliminary data update on AGFD Mainstem Colorado River fish monitoring" (Attachment 9b). He said they had a monitoring trip in the canyon about two weeks ago. Andy Makinster hiked out the data and they worked it up really quickly. He said the last catch per unit on the right represents a pretty good estimate of trout density above the LCR. He said there is a caveat is that the data refers to samples from the Clearwater reach. When they get below the LCR, when its running turbid, the catches go down. Even if the number went from 80 down to 40, they're still way above if they're trying to achieve that 10% of 2003, they're way above the number they're targeting which may be left at the 2006 level. Budget Discussion (cont). Shane said they pretty much know that GCMRC doesn't want this back in the GCMRC budget so this is one they won't get agreement from them to implement. He said this would have to stay on the list that goes up to AMWG and the TWG decides how to deal with it. He asked what the group wanted to fund, one trip or two trips. He said GCMRC set aside a contingency fund, 30K, and another $103K from carryover, so it's likely a second trip could be funded in FY2010. John said his intent was to fund a second trip for this year. Bill said he wasn't sure a second trip could be done just based on logistics. Dennis said that when they get to the AMWG, one of their arguments will be that this is part of a research design that is intended to stabilize non - native fish at a low level so that they're not confounding the result of the improvement or degradation of the humpback chub numbers. He reiterated this is not just a compliance issue if you can hold the non - native trout to a low level, you remove one of the confounding factors in the design. They're pushing this is still research. As such, recommendation #1 goes away and #2 is accepted. Bill Persons expressed concern about the funding issue in recommendation #2. Shane said that's why he highlighted it because he wasn't sure how to deal with funding with taking bits and pieces. If they come out with a budget that has a different CPI, the budget is going to change. Shane said he thought it should be ' taken out and tell AMWG they don't know where the money is going to come from but they think the TWG thinks it's a high priority. Shane wanted to know if the group had agreement on two trips. It was decided that this issue needs to go up to the AMWG. 5. Line 74. Shane said this was the larger mainstem discussion. He kept it as a placeholder and thinks it can now go away but will make AMWG aware of the TWG's discussion. Shane also said the BAHG held a Ilarger discussion on this item. Status 4 This item goes away. 6. Line 31. Canyon Treatment Plan and Implementation. Shane said the question is whether the $500K should be increased by CPI. He said it was his understanding it was never agreed to that that number would increase with CPI. He said they're already asking that CPI reflect zero or something based on current outlooks. He said it may be more of a policy issue and he'd like this answered so it doesn't come up every 1 year. Status 4 The group decided to postpone discussion on this and combine with the cultural section. 7. Lines 55, 62, 64, 82. Shane said there were a number of projects that were bundled based on GCMRC's projection that these will be core monitoring projects and they should be bundled. Shane asked if the group ' will endorse the bundling of those projects at this point or whether they want to hold off to consider them as core monitoring and then decide how to bundle them in the budget process. GCMRC feels they should be bundled because they're going to be core monitoring projects. Matthew said this is specifically in Goal 2 in ' which there are two areas where the projects are together. There are three Little Colorado River projects that were for the purposes of 2010 -11 budget and grouped as a single LCR monitoring project, anticipating GCMRC is going to have to revisit that during the summer of 2009 and coming a few months following the ' PEP. Similarly for work in the mainstem, the mainstem fish community monitoring together with monitoring for non - natives, they bundled together as a single project expecting they would get recommendations from