Technical Work Group Meetings 2009

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Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 19 DRAFT Minutes of March 16 -17, 2009, Meeting ' catch -as- catch -can with what the Park Service's overlap is with CRMP and what his consultants can actually do as far as monitoring goes between data recovery trips on the way down the river. It's not the intensity of monitoring those sites that was anticipated in the work plan. It was felt that since the tribes were going up and down the river that they could actually make 106 observations while doing those trips which would give them the cover they need and the feedback for monitoring that is required. They met with the tribes in Flagstaff and after some difficulty in estimating how much this would cost, they came up with essentially extending their current trips for tribal protocol monitoring by three days. They felt that would allow them to do monitoring and filling out CRMP forms from between eight and ten sites each. That would put them back in compliance with the original plan. The SHPO is aware of this and complaining about the fact that they don't have a monitoring plan. He feels the additional stipend to the tribes will not only fulfill Reclamation's 106 responsibility for monitoring, it will also do a lot as far as getting the tribes into the program for getting recognition for what they're doing. It's a win -win situation. ' Mary said the CRAHG talked about the CPI and Mike's work and why they're not incrementing the $95K to the tribes every year, but they didn't come out with a recommendation on either of those. Shane said he envisioned the bulleted items would be relayed to AMWG and get their feedback because this is an expansion of the cultural program of about $166K from where the budget is today. The proposal was to go to AMWG and explain the situation, to do some more work this summer, and to come back to the TWG in June with a little more explanation of why the cultural program can't be fully implemented with the money currently funded. He is hopeful they will have some direction from AMWG in the April meeting or the money be used differently. He feels there are some big policy issues that the TWG needs help from the ' AMWG to resolve. Shane said there has been some disagreement among the DOI agencies whether the $70K should be funded by the Park Service. He said an alternate approach is that the TWG put the $70K back into the budget for the Park Service. He says the $70K has traditionally been in the budget but was taken out this year. He feels it's an Interior issue and needs to be resolved and then let the TWG know how the issue should be handled. The other items are new projects that require additional funding. Steve Mietz said he would like the following statement added in: TWG recommends that AMWG direct TWG to develop a final budget recommendation that reinstates the $70K for the NPS under line 114. The members voted:: Yes = 7 No = 9 Abstention = 1 Jay asked why it was taken out in the first place. Helen said it was taken out for a couple of reasons, one was they were looking for how they could save some money for the program and because the Park Service t last year had brought forth a proposal on how to save the AMP funding by taking on some of these responsibilities internally, they thought this was a good opportunity to see if that was going to take place because of the constraints they were dealing with. The other issue is that it's unclear to GCMRC what the role of the Park Service is in this project at this point and the reason is because the original intent of how they designed the program was they were going to be collaborating with the Park Service on developing protocols to meet a diverse assortment of needs, both within the immediate AMP concept as well as the broader compliance issues that the Park Service and Reclamation deals with. In last year they provided funding to the Park but then the work they were proposing to do for the project never took place and yet the funding was used basically for supporting the CRMP program development and at this point they haven't ' had discussions with the Park on how the CRMP monitoring efforts and the AMP efforts need to be done in a well coordinated manner. If the Park is going to pursue the development of CRMP monitoring protocols separately, that's great and it's their prerogative to do it but she doesn't think the AMP was signing up to support to a CRMP monitoring separately. They're trying to get clarity on what the Park's role is in this program. Steve said he had many issues with what Helen said. He said the issue on the table right now is that until some of the issues are clarified, does the AMP continue to fund ongoing programs until then. He thinks the prudent thing to do is to fund this and continue to look at the issue.