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. - 3- . Basin Rotation Recommending entities currently propose streams for appropriation based on their own internal prioritization criteria, As a result, streams may be recommended in multiple water divisions in any given year, This approach can introduce some inefficiency into the instream flow appropriation process. Public involvement is critical to the appropriation process, but under the current process staff is required to address concerns across multiple water divisions, with multiple Board members, division engineers, water commissioners and other stakeholders. In addition, there is no guarantee that once issues are addressed in a given water division, that the recommending entities won't be back the following year recommending other streams in the same or adjacent basins, which could involve the same stakeholders, To increase efficiency for all involved parties, and provide some certainty to the stakeholders, the subcommittee requested that staff develop a rotating basin-oriented approach. . A rigid basin-by-basin rotation approach is not without problems, For example, recommending entities such as the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) may need to focus their appropriations in just a few water divisions simply because of the geographic location of BLM lands, By addressing only one or two division per year, the BLM could be foreclosed from participating in the ISF Program during those years that staff focuses on divisions where there are no BLM lands. In addition, this approach could interfere with an entity's ISF protection priorities. For example, the Division of Wildlife's (DOW) Species Conservation Plan may require that sensitive or endangered species be protected across multiple divisions in any given year. If DOW was prohibited from recommending a stream that was considered critical for species conservation, it may not be able to rely on the ISF Program to help meet its objectives. This would apply to all recommending entities and could hamper efforts that the state has been making to get Federal agencies such as the USFS, BLM and USFWS to rely on the ISF Program to accomplish water protection goals on federal lands. In an attempt to address all of the above concerns, a flexible, basin-oriented rotating schedule is proposed whereby staff will coordinate with the recommending agencies and identify a maximum of two water divisions a year in which recommendations will be considered. These two divisions would be identified at the February Workshop and approved by the Board at its March meeting. Recognizing that the appropriation process may take multiple years to address all of an entity's current needs in a giving water division, it is conceivable that staff may focus on those divisions for more than one year, Since the statutes provide that any entity may bring a recommendation to the Board for consideration at any time, there is a possibility that a request for an ISF recommendation may be received that does not fit within the established annual basin rotation schedule determined at the February Workshop, or that does not fit within the established timeline for processing recommendations, . In either case, the recommending entity will be required to provide staff with the justification for requesting an expedited process for that particular recommendation. Staff will evaluate the request based on criteria established by the ISF Subcommittee, and will recommend to the Board whether to exempt the recommendation from the normal basin rotation schedule or the normal processing time1ine. If the Board denies the request, the recommendation will be Flood Protection. Water Project Planning and Finance. Stream and Lake Protection Water Supply Protection. Conservation Planning