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HomeMy WebLinkAboutMinutes Water Resources Advisory Committee - 05/12/2016 Minutes of Water Resources Advisory Committee held 11:30 a.m. Thursday, May 12, 2016 j Water Utilities Building Choke Canyon Conference Room 2726 Holly Road* Corpus Christi, Texas Attended by: Voting members: Sally Gill, Landscaping, Sam Sanders, Large Commercial Customer, Rocky Freund, Nueces River Representative; Brian Williams, Wholesale, Joe/le Francois, Residential Representative, Phil E. Hale, Apartment Representative; Roberto Reece, Military Representative. Ex-officio Members:None. Staff. Bill Green, Gabriela Morrow and Itzel Ojeda of City Environmental& Strategic Initiatives,minutes taken by Itzel Ojeda and compiled by Bill Green ITEM 1: Call the Meeting to Order Chairman Sam Sanders called the meeting to order at 11:30 a.m. with a quorum of seven members attending. ITEM 2: Review and Approval of Minutes The minutes from the December 3, 2015 meeting were unanimously approved. Ms. Rocky Freund requested some changes to the minutes. ITEM 3: Committee Re-appointments and Vacancies Mr. Green informed the group of the members that are seeking re-appointments and the current vacancy: Re-appointments Sally Gill —Landscaping Robert Kunkel—Port Industries Lucia Sosa —Citizen At-Large Vacancies School District Representative Mr. Green informed the group that the City Secretary's Office won't make any appointments until they have suggested names for all of the vacancies. Ms. Gill expressed it is very important that the new member from Corpus Christi Independent School District communicate out to all school districts and that the person should be involved in facilities management and football fields irrigation. Bill Green will assist the Committee in contacting the school district. ITEM 4: Review of Reservoir System Statistics &2016 Drought Projections Mr. Green informed the group that the City is doing more research on the Water Supply Index. The City is still seeking something that they feel confident is useful and accurate information. Bill Green began with the review of the combined Reservoir Capacity, which is 44%. Combined capacity went down about 4% from last meeting. Lake Texana is full. Choke Canyon dropped to 33% and Lake Corpus Christi is slightly below 74% of its full capacity. Mr. Hale expressed that right now the City website information says that we are not under a mandatory water restriction of watering once a week. The community doesn't know if it is temporary. Mr. Sanders agreed that it would be good to give out a clear message of where we are right now and what we are supposed to be doing. Page 1 of 4 Ms. Gill expressed that she has a strong message from the community that the City is not communicating with them. The City needs to find a way to communicate once a month about Water Conservation. It needs to go out in the website, newspaper, and public service announcements. The City really needs to work towards allowing people to pick their once a week watering day. The City is not prepared to manage people's water use, nor are they prepared to have staff documenting how often they water. We should be proud of the way we educate people that once a week is all they need to water. ®Mr. Green agreed that we need to educate and inform our community. Ms. Freund explained that if people water on their trash day in the same area, it could greatly affect the water pressure during that time in that area. She agreed that it would be better if the community is able to choose. Mr. Reece commented to the group that he lived in the desert for 16 years. He noticed that there are no incentive programs here to encourage people to save water. For example, rebates for replacing grass or Xeriscape gardening. This should be something we need to think about and consider it as a message. Ms. Gill talked about a recycling program where saving water you could earn points to redeem in some stores and restaurants. This could be a jump-start for water conservation. Mr. Hale talked about commercial incentives for places to switch to rocks and xeriscaping. It could be a good example for the community. Mr. Green reviewed the Drought Monitor for Texas showing as of last week state of Texas is doing pretty well. He commented about Dr. John W. Nielsen-Gammon Conference at Texas A&M: After el Nino, Now What? He remarked the following points: EI Nino still going strong Summer, as usual, is a tossup EI Nino may flip into La Nina. Enhanced chances of dryness next fall/winter. Drought cycle may be weakening ITEM 5: Update on Drought Contingency Planning and Water Supply Index Mr. Green went over Mr. Mark Van Vleck's presentation,Water Supply: Texas Water Planning, presented to City Council on May 10, 2016. Mr. Green presented the upcoming schedule for Water Supply: the discovery, discussion,and then decide actions, to the City Council for the next three months. The Water Management Plan will integrate water management strategies of surface water, reuse, conservation, aquifer storage, and desalination to sustain the economic prosperity of the Coastal Bend Region. The Water Management Plan will include strategic and future elements such as extended supply and reduced demand, evaluate the wastewater treatment consolidation plan, and plan for industrial desalination facility construction. The Water Management Plan will be developed and presented to City Council for review and adoption. Upon adoption of the plan, staff will implement the Water Supply Strategic Plan in a deliberate and phased manner to insure a reliable, diverse, and sustainable water supply for the Coastal Bend Region. Page 2 of 4 Mr. Green went over the State Water Plan. This plan shall prepare the community for and provides responses to drought conditions. He went over Basic Planning Parameters; the City needs to develop a plan, which meets a 50-year plan and a 5-year planning cycle for all the categories of water use. Mr. Green informed the group about the Region N Planning Group, which is The Coastal Bend Regional Water Planning Group (CBRWPG), which has 21 voting members. The members of this group are responsible for the development of the Coastal Bend Water Plan. Nueces River Authority is the administrative agency for the group. Regional water planning includes 6 categories of water use: municipal, manufacturing, irrigation, steam & electric, mining, and livestock. Municipal and industrial water use accounts for 83% of the total water use. The City of Corpus Christi either directly or indirectly provides about 75%of the water used in the region. There are a lot of good ideas that are analyzed closely. Region N Planning focuses on those strategies that make the biggest sense. ITEM 6: Updates on Water Supply Projects and Studies Update for Mary Rhodes Pipeline Phase 2. The 41-mile route of the Phase 2 pipeline starts just west of Bay City in Matagorda County and ends with the linking up with the Mary Rhodes Pipeline Phase 1 at the Lake Texana pump station. The City issued 4 contracts for the Mary Rhodes Pipeline Phase 2 construction: 1. Pump Stations and Sedimentation Basin, 2. Pipeline section A, 3. Pipeline section B, and 4. Pipeline section C and Mary Rhodes Pipeline Phase 1 tie-in. The Mary Rhodes Pipeline Phase 2 should be completed by the end of the summer. Mr. Green informed the group the success of Rain Barrel Sale on May 7th, 1,117 barrels were sold. We had a great response from the community. We are expecting to have one more sale on fall 2016. These were re-purposed barrels, cleaned out and ready to be reused. One of the questions was, do I have to be a Corpus Christi resident? No, this is for water conservation for the entire region. They were restricted to two per household to avoid resale. Mr. Green informed the committee about the Xeriscape Garden workday on Saturday May 14tH Ms. Gill suggested the Xeriscape Committee identify a place in the garden to recognize Doug Wade. Mr. Wade passed last year and was instrumental in stablishing the Xeriscape Garden. Ms. Gill asked the Committee to make a recommendation to the City Council to give the community the choice to water once a week and chose the day for Drought Stage 2. It was agreed to make a recommendation to the City Council. Motion made by Mr. Sam Sanders to recommend to the City Council Non-fixed Day Weekly Watering. Second: Ms. Rocky Freund Ayes: Committee members, S. Sanders, S. Gill, B. Williams, J. Francois, P. Hale, R. Reece, R. Freund Nays: None Page 3 of 4 ITEM 7: Set next meeting date The next meeting was scheduled for 11:30 AM Wednesday June 15, 2016. ITEM 8: Adiourn Mr. Sanders adjourned the meeting at 1:10 pm. Page 4 of 4