Water Resources Agency updates board on Salinas River operations HCP; short‑term low‑effect HCP now in implementation

The Water Resources Agency reported progress on a Salinas River Operations Habitat Conservation Plan (SROHCP) intended to support an application for an incidental take permit under the Endangered Species Act covering agency operations and maintenance.

"HCPs are planning documents that are required as part of an application for an incidental take permit under the Endangered Species Act," said Jason Demers, operations manager. He told the board the SROHCP will describe anticipated effects, proposed minimization and mitigation, and funding for those measures.

Demers summarized work completed under multiple grants, including two Section 6 grants (2019 and 2021) and a Proposition 1 IRWM grant that support biological surveys, lagoon delineation, fish and habitat sampling, steelhead habitat and passage analyses, and development of model inputs for reservoir reoperation scenarios. He said the agency is using the USGS Salinas operational model and other habitat modeling tools to evaluate future reoperation scenarios.

The agency has convened a stakeholder planning group and a smaller technical advisory committee (TAC) to vet technical assumptions. The TAC has met multiple times to review modeling tools, critical riffle and passage flows for steelhead, and preliminary reoperation scenarios; the next TAC meeting was scheduled for March 2025.

Demers also reviewed a short‑term, low‑effect HCP for Salinas River lagoon and sandbar management that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service approved in March 2024 to provide interim coverage for emergency sandbar management (lagoon breaching) while the operations HCP is developed. "We completed the low‑effect HCP in roughly 16 months because of its limited scope," he said.

Implementation steps under the low‑effect HCP include a Tidewater goby eDNA study (sampling July–September, analysis pending), a contribution to the State Parks snowy plover recovery (installation of wildlife‑resistant trash cans), and an acre of ice‑plant removal near Salinas River State Beach with follow‑up treatment planned. The agency submitted the first annual report in November 2024 summarizing mitigation and monitoring work.

Board members asked how the operations HCP would accommodate future infrastructure projects (for example, diversion points, inflatable dams or interlake tunnel concepts). Demers said the HCP primarily covers activities already under the agency's control and that other legal pathways (such as ESA section 7 consultation) and an adaptive management component of the HCP could be used for future projects; in extreme cases the HCP would need to be reopened.

Provenance: Topic introduced 01:50:42 (Jason Demers presentation) and discussed through 02:14:42 (public comment/transition).