Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Meeting 

June 25-26, 2007 

Conducting: Kurt Dongoske, Chairperson Convened: 9:30 a.m. 

Committee Members Present: 

Mary Barger, WAPA 

Cliff Barrett, UAMPS 

Steven Begay, Navajo Nation 

Charley Bulletts, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians 

Kerry Christensen, Hualapai Tribe 

Jonathan Damp, Pueblo of Zuni 

Jay Groseclose, NM Interstate Stream Comm. 

Norm Henderson, NPS 

Amy Heuslein, BIA 

Rick Johnson, Grand Canyon Trust 

Glen Knowles, USFWS 

Dennis Kubly, USBR 

Phillip S. Lehr, Colo. River Comm./NV 

Ken McMullen, NPS/GCNP 

Don Ostler, UCRC 

Mark Steffen, Federation of Fly Fishers 

Larry Stevens, Grand Canyon Wildlands Council 

Bill Werner, ADWR 

Michael Yeatts, The Hopi Tribe 

Committee Members Absent: 

William Davis, CREDA 

Christopher Harris, Colo. River Board of Calif. 

Robert King, UDSR 

John O’Brien, GCRG 

Bill Persons, AGFD 

D. Randolph Seaholm, CWCB 

John Shields, WY State Engineers Office 

Alternates Present: For: 

Don Ostler John Shields, State Engineers Ofc./WY 

Matt Kaplinski John O’Brien, Grand Canyon River Guides 

Interested Persons: 

Matthew Andersen, GCRMC/USGS 

Glen Bennett, GCMRC/USGS 

Mike Berry, USBR 

Michael Breedlove, Utah State Unviversity 

Shane Capron, WAPA 

Marcus Chang, Bob Lynch & Associates 

Helen Fairley, GCRMC/USGS 

Joe Feller, ASU/College of Law 

John Hamill, GCRMC/USGS 

David R. Haverbeke, USFWS 

Leslie James, CREDA 

J.D. Kite, GCMRC/USGS 

Ted Melis, GCMRC/USGS 

Anthony Miller, Colo. River Comm./NV 

Clayton Palmer, WAPA 

Randy Peterson, USBR 

Mark Schmekly, Arizona State University 

David Siebert, University of Arizona 

David Topping, GCMRC/USGS 

Rich Valdez, SWCA 

David R. Van Haverbeke 

David Weedman, AGFD 

Scott Wright, GCMRC/USGS

Meeting Recorder: Linda Whetton, USBR 

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Welcome and Administrative. The Chairman welcomed the TWG members, alternates, and interested 

persons. Attendance sheets were distributed. Kurt announced that public comments would be taken in 

conjunction with individual presentations rather than at the end of each meeting day. 

Review of Draft Minutes from April 2-3, 2007, Meeting. Kurt said that since the minutes were e-mailed 

over the weekend and the members probably haven’t had time to review them, he suggested they approve 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

at tomorrow’s meeting. However, Linda (meeting recorder) said she would like to revise/shorten them and 

requested the TWG give interim approval and then obtain full approval at the next meeting in October. 

Action Items: Kurt reviewed the action items (Attachment 1a). 

Action Item 2007.04-2-3(1). Dennis Kubly distributed copies of a document he prepared, “Improving the 

Development and Transmission of Minority Reports” (Attachment 1b). Dennis said this subject came up at 

the last TWG meeting and since it hasn’t been decided when the AMP Effectiveness Workshop is going to 

be held and subsequent changes to the TWG Operating Procedures made, he felt something needed to be 

done in order to help the members prepare minority reports. He felt the MRP didn’t really work the way it 

was intended, that all minority group members weren’t equally involved, there was no chair, there was no 

communication of information through the TWG Chair, and currently there is no provision for the majority to 

produce its own report. To improve the development and transmission of minority reports, Dennis 

suggested the TWG might want to consider the following in clarifying or modifying its operating procedures: 

(1) All dissenting members to a vote of the TWG that passes by a required majority should be offered the opportunity 

to be included in the development of a minority report. 

(2) The minority report group should elect a chair who will be responsible for communication with other minority group 

members and with the TWG Chair. 

(3) Minority group members who participate in the development of the minority report and who agree with its 

provisions should be clearly identified in the report. 

(4) The minority report should be transmitted to the AMWG through the TWG Chair or Co-Chair in the timeframe and 

manner identified in AMWG operating procedures. 

(5) When action is required of GCMRC or any other GCDAMP group to satisfy the provisions of a minority report 

included in a motion by AMWG, that group should ensure that it communicates with the minority group as a whole 

and not individually. 

(6) Majority group members should be given an equal opportunity to draft a report and submit it through the TWG 

Chair to identify what they consider to be the strengths of the proposal sanctioned by the majority. 

Dennis said the reciprocal part for GCMRC was identified but not the responsibility of the minority report 

chair, for example, to communicate in a timely manner with GCMRC. He would be willing to make 

modifications to this document but suggested the members provide their comments to Randy Peterson for 

the Roles Ad Hoc Group’s consideration. 

ACTION ITEM. TWG comments on the handout “Improving the Development and Transmission of Minority 

Reports modifying the one-page Action Item document” are due to Randy Peterson by June 29, 2007. 

Action Item 2007.04.2-3(2). Kurt said he reviewed the motion passed at the TWG meeting held on June 21-

22, 2005, which states “Convene a meeting among GCMRC, the tribes, Reclamation, and other 

stakeholders to identify a scope of work (which will be inserted into the FY06 budget and workplan) for tribal 

monitoring into the overall program and add $50K (if necessary) from the Experimental Flow Fund to the 

project.” The voting results were 12 in favor and 4 were against. Apparently a group of the TWG members, 

Reclamation, and GCMRC staff met in accordance with the TWG motion. The group agreed to recommend 

to the AMWG that a new Scope of Work be added to the existing SOW for project C2, a synthesis of past 

tribal monitoring for the FY06 proposed budget and workplan with the funding amount of $125K with the 

proviso that Reclamation would administer the contracts to save overhead costs. It also said that for future 

years the tribes agreed to integrate their tribal monitoring efforts into the regular core monitoring and 

research funding process by participating in plans to develop a process as soon as they received their FY05 

participation funding. The TWG recommendations were forwarded to the AMWG. Kurt said he didn’t think 

there was any kind of direct response by AMWG to the tribal monitoring motion other than they just 

approved it. In his review of the meeting minutes, he didn’t find anything that had to do with the TWG 

evaluating or developing criteria to evaluate tribal monitoring protocols. 

Action Item Update on Genetics Management Plan. Glen Knowles said a draft of the plan should be 

available by September with the final due in December 2007. 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

OLD BUSINESS: None 

FIST Modeling Report on Sediment Monitoring and Recommendations on Long-Term Sediment 

Monitoring. Ted Melis said Dr. Dave Topping would present the next two agenda items with one combined 

PPT entitled, “Recommended Protocols for Core Monitoring of Sediment within the Colorado River 

Ecosystem Below Glen Canyon Dam Part IV.” Ted said that in the MRP there is a 4-step process for 

identification of long-term monitoring protocols and Dave’s presentation would summarize some of the 

research and development results that came out of the FIST Project. Dave passed out copies of the Report 

(Attachment 2a) and the PPT handout (Attachment 2b). He concluded with the following risks to 

knowledge and resource if the project were not implemented: 

• Mass-Balance Project. No information pm stage, flow, sediment flux in CRE; No information on <2-year sediment 

budgets; No information for BHBF triggers 

• Sed Trend Task 3: Fine Sediment Bank Account. No ability to predict future condition of fine-sediment resource; 

No information on locations and geometries (areas plus depths) of backwaters. $200,000 is minimum required to 

survey sufficiently long reaches, shorter reaches are not worth surveying. 

• Sed Trend Task 1: NAU Sandbar Time Series. No information on effectiveness of past dam operations on 

maintaining high-elevation fine sediment; No information on annual status of campsites. 

• Sed Trend Task 2: CRE-wide Remote Sensing Data. No information on CRE-wide distribution of high-elevation 

fine sediment; No ability to interface with other GCDAMP goals, especially goals 1, 6, and 11. 

Q: How does what you have here compare to what’s happening in other river systems, like on the Green or any other 

systems? Is this way beyond what everybody else is doing? (Johnson) 

A: In terms of the mass balance part, this is state of the art. You’re actually trying to manage only 6% of the pre-dam 

sand supplies and that’s tricky to do. One of the things we’ve learned is extrapolating from smaller typographic maps to 

larger sediment budgets is a dangerous business. In fact, you can’t do that in this river and have certainty that you 

actually know what’s happening to the overall sediment resource. (Topping) 

Q: Will the mass balance project help Ted Kennedy understand how frequently the river runs turbid? Will he have the 

numbers of days each year that the river was turbid? (Steffen) 

A: Hour or less. (Topping) 

Q: And when the river is running turbid, can he compare this data from year to year. If he goes on a river trip in 

September, would he know ahead of time how many days that summer the river was turbid? (Steffen) 

A: Yes. Most of the sites have satellite telemetry so we can log in at will and download the data. We do measure 

turbidity. We’re also developing relations between turbidity and sediment concentration and grain size as well as 

acoustic attenuation. We have information back to at least 2002-2003 for the program as it exists now but possibly 

back as far as 1921 with USGS daily data. Under the proposed sediment trend core monitoring project, we would 

monitor changes in gravel inputs throughout the system. We can detect changes in gravel distribution. (Topping) 

Q: How do we get to a recommendation to the AMWG on the subject of this monitoring and what’s the role of the 

Sediment AHG that was formed a few months ago? (Kubly) 

A: We’re hoping the AMWG will engage with the scientists and the TWG as an intermediate body to look at this 

material and come back to the TWG with specific recommendations on how to proceed. There are elements proposed 

in the Draft FY08 budget and workplan so there may be implications to the budget. (Melis) 

Q: When I recently spoke with John O’Brien, he seemed unclear on outstanding Sediment AHG issues. In terms of 

tomorrow’s discussion on desired future conditions, what is the goal of the sediment program? I’d like AMWG to tell us 

what they want out of the sediment program. We don’t understand what the goal is. (Barger) 

R: The program we designed is independent of what your actual goal is. As long as there is a goal for sediment, we’ve 

designed a program which is robust enough that it can address what’s happening. (Topping) 

C: One of the pieces of the core monitoring process was to decide which CMINs were truly necessary or quality core 

and build the program around the most essential. (Henderson) 

R: We have the ranked ones that are in there as well as some additional ones with respect to Goal 8. (Topping) 

Q: What about the precision of the estimates and the agreement on when you have or not have not reached or 

attained those goals? That’s a cost in the sampling frequency and a precision question, right? (Kubly) 

A: Not necessarily. For example, if you look at the mass balance project as the case for the mapping component, you 

begin to find a sediment bank account where actually less information costs you more than more information in some 

ways. When you have less information say on the sediment flux, then you can be fully wrong by not having enough 

points to know what’s actually happening. There is more interpretive time spent so that actually ends up costing you 

more. For the sediment trend project we learned measuring 9% or 10% of a 30-mile reach, you can’t extrapolate that 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

whole reach by spending resources on doing that. You’re not really gaining much because you need to do the rest of it. 

If you do the rest of it over a lower frequency, that’s the way you get around it costing more. If you were to do 30 miles 

spread throughout the system each year, it will end up costing you more in terms of years to what’s actually 

happening. (Topping) 

C: This is something I assume the Sediment AHG will spend more time on because it is complicated and those 

tradeoffs in budget and precision are going to be carried throughout the entire realm of core monitoring. (Kubly) 

R: But regardless of what you’re doing, I think it’s important you measure the signal instead. When you’re looking at 

high elevation deposits, you’re basically looking at how effective you’ve been. That’s not telling you what’s happening 

to the sediment budget. If you want to be able to have data points that allow you to say we have two or three, that’s 

great, but it could also be negative because you’re slowly losing sediment over time even though over that window the 

sandbars look okay to you as a manager. A hundred years from now they may not and you won’t know that unless you 

measure the signal which is a depth below 8,000 cfs. It is complicated. (Topping) 

John Hamill said there is some urgency that the TWG address the findings because GCMRC will be 

involved in several PEPs (vegetation, trout, and humpback chub) within the next eight months which will 

result in proposals coming to the TWG. He asked the TWG for direction on whether the process presented 

is acceptable to them. Ted added that the Science Advisors performed an independent review and passed 

out copies of their report entitled, “GCD AMP Science Advisors Rapid Response Review: A Draft Report to 

the Technical Work Group of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program: Recommended 

Protocols for Core Monitoring of Sediment” (Attachment 2b). 

C: Need a timeline for sending to an ad hoc group for further review and incorporating into a long-term monitoring 

program. (Kaplinski) 

C: Ask the Sediment AHG to review the plan and make a recommendation to the TWG. (Barger) 

C: Concern about what other core monitoring elements are before endorsing on a long-term basis, 2) need for 

incorporating managers’ needs to get the key CMINs addressed as the primary piece of the core monitoring, and 3) 

adjustments required due to lack of money. (Henderson) 

C: Would like GCMRC to provide a general idea of what they think the totality of core monitoring might be. (Kubly) 

ACTION ITEM: John Hamill will prepare a handout on what GCMRC believes will be the totality of core 

monitoring by looking at future budget needs and being able to see the bigger picture. 

ACTION ITEM: The Sediment Ad Hoc Group is tasked with reviewing the “Draft Report to the Technical 

Work Group of the Glen Canyon Dam Adaptive Management Program: Recommended Protocols for Core 

Monitoring of Sediment within the Colorado River Ecosystem Below Glen Canyon Dam, Part IV - 

Developing a Scientifically Based Long-Term Monitoring Plan for the GCDAMP” and provide their 

comments at the next TWG meeting (October 2-3, 2007). 

Note: The Sediment AHG was reorganized on May 24, 2006: with the following members: Mary Barger, 

Rick Johnson, Glen Knowles, Ted Melis, John O’Brien (Chair), and Mike Yeatts. 

Final Modeling Review and Proposed Next Steps. Ted said Scott Wright organized a specific modeling 

review workshop that was held in February which was a direct recommendation from the third and final 

Sediment PEP panel report that Dr. Ellen Wohl reported on last November. Scott said a frequent comment 

made was that the modeling wasn’t very well integrated with the monitoring program and that’s one of the 

things he would address today. He distributed copies of his report, “Sediment Transport Modeling Review 

Workshop, Review Panel Report” (Attachment 3a) along with his PPT Presentation, “Goal 7 Modeling 

Review and Recommendations” (Attachment 3b). He concluded with the following Sediment Review Panel 

recommendations: 

• The modeling program needs better integration with the monitoring program - formulate an integrated research 

plan 

• It is time to update the Wiele 2D model as major advances have been made in multi-dimensional modeling over 

the past 10 years and lots of new data are available; evaluate readily available modeling packages (such as 

Delft3D) and available data 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

• Wiele 1D model is a step forward but more work is necessary to evaluate is predictive capabilities - continue to 

improve upon this model based on updated MD model 

• Continue efforts by Arizona State University (Mark Schmeeckle’s group) to model sandbar stability (i.e., mass 

failures due to bank collapse), including laboratory experiments 

The proposed FY08 activities include: 

• Develop multi-dimensional models (Delft3D) of flow, temperature, and sediment transport for reaches with 

available topography/bathymetry (FIST reaches). 

• Continue efforts to model sandbar mass failure/stability, including laboratory experiments at ASU 

• Continue efforts to understand the relationships between flow, bed sediment grain-size, and suspended-sediment 

grain-size. Continue to pursue the potential for a model that relies on “shifting rating curves.” 

Kurt asked if Ted was looking for possible action or a recommendation from the TWG. Ted said in the FY07 

plan there was a modeling support component beyond the downstream water quality and it was specifically 

related to trying to evaluate the Wiele work for sediment transport. In FY08 there is another line item for 

modeling support activities. As such, they’re trying to get some sense from the TWG what they would like to 

see happen and how to plan their science to meet the needs of the TWG. 

Q: Would these models be able to give us that kind of predictive capability? (Henderson) 

A: If you’re talking about sediment coming into the system, that’s more difficult than modeling once it’s in there. We do 

have Topping’s model of Paria inputs so if you can project the flow record out over 10 years for the Paria, then you can 

do that. You’re going to have to make some assumptions about what the hydrology is going to be over whatever time 

interval you want to look at and then once you do that, then what’s actually happening to the model in the canyon. The 

projections of inputs and hydrology are probably harder than actually doing the models of the river once you know 

what’s coming in. You have to look at different scenarios about what could happen because you don’t know what’s 

going to happen with the basin hydrology. There is no model that’s going to tell you that. 

C: With the multi-dimensional eddy dynamics model, having sandbar evolution go on and features form such as return 

current channels and then being able to predict the fate of that feature as well as the thermal regime within that 

feature, obviously seems like a short-term need. You’d like to know if we do a BHBF and we have a certain operation 

afterwards, will we form the habitat and what will be the fate of the water temperature in that habitat over some agreed 

time period relative to HBC recruitment and juvenile rearing. So that’s kind of tractable and then you get to the other 

end of the scale and maybe we can do that and then the question is can you replicate that habitat maintenance 

building ad nauseum and that’s the other end of the spectrum and that’s really the end of the spectrum on being able 

to say we can model anything like that. So the near term shorter term questions Scott’s saying are basically ready for 

prime time in the sense with some more work focused by your needs but that long-term question that relates back to 

the correlary that Dave Topping showed you in the SSQ that’s still beyond our grasp right now. (Melis) 

Q: Could you tell us a little more about the near term utility of this DelftD3 model for both temperature and let’s just 

say backwater or eddy dynamics over time, that would be the sediment infilling, so calibration, validation, where are 

you in being able - we’ve got an EIS that we’re working on right now. (Kubly) 

A: I think that temperature modeling for a FIST condition is trackable in the short term when you’re talking about six 

months or less. I think we could move fairly quickly on developing temperature models for the reaches where we have 

bathymetry and calibrating that to where we have data in backwaters and we could do that over the next several 

months. I don’t think the sediment and the dynamics of eddies in backwaters is trackable. I think we need all of 08 

basically to figure out how difficult it is. That’s the thing with this modeling, you don’t know for certain how hard it’s 

going to be until you really get in there and start doing it. I know it will work with the temperature. Sediment is a lot 

harder so there’s going to be a little bit more work involved in that so I don’t see that happening on the EIS time scale 

of sediment modeling but I do see the temperature modeling as potentially happening on that time scale. (Wright) 

C: One of the things Scott told me earlier is that using the Delft3D model you can do the sediment and the 

temperature in the same package. The integrated three dimensional component is very appealing and it’s fully 

documented. We already have a license for the software. (Melis) 

ACTION ITEM: The Sediment Ad Hoc Group will review the “Sediment Transport Modeling Review 

Workshop Review Panel Report” and provide a recommendation to the TWG at their October 2-3, 2007 

meeting on what further modeling should be done. 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

HBC Genetics Investigation. With the meeting already behind schedule, Kurt said the presentation by 

Mike or Marlis Douglas will be scheduled for the next TWG meeting. 

ACTION ITEM. The HBC AHG will review the “Genetic Structure of Humpback Chub Gila cypha and 

Roundtail Chub G. robusta in the Colorado River Ecosystem” Report (Attachment 4). 

Warm Water Non-Native Fish Risk Assessment. Dr. Rich Valdez said that over the past two years he has 

been working with Reclamation on answering several questions, two of which were: 1) What happens if the 

temperature of the Colorado River is changed downstream of Glen Canyon Dam, and 2) What kind of 

response might be expected from the fish community? Initially this was going to be done as an 

environmental assessment for a temperature control device. However, he developed a risk assessment 

model which is basically a tool that may be useful in terms of evaluating response by not just fish but by 

different elements of the aquatic resource community. He prepared a report which was distributed at the 

scientists’ workshop and is currently being peer reviewed. He gave a PPT on “Fish Community Response to 

Temperature Changes in Grand Canyon” (Attachment 5) and concluded with the following thoughts: 

 1. A critical component of looking at what a temperature control device can do in the system is to set 

up a monitoring program that enables one to be able to letect responses by the different fish. It would look 

at the life history of the fish, understanding where they reproduce and rear their young, and then catch them 

early before their populations explode. 

 2. Develop a good comprehensive and effective non-native fish control program or strategy that 

enables one to be able to knock these populations back out if they do take off or even stop before it 

happens. 

 3. If certain species become abundant or are abundant already, figure a long-term strategy for what’s 

going to take to keep these populations under control. It is possible to control the populations if one knows 

how best to do it. 

Q: Was the modeling you did for the TCD based on high reservoir levels? (Johnson) 

A: Historic levels. I basically took the 1990-2005 data. (Dr. Valdez) 

Q: So maybe with lower reservoir levels, it may actually be warmer? (Johnson) 

A: Well, that’s the uncertainty. We’ve already seen warming in the system even without modifying the penstocks. (Dr. 

Valdez) 

Q: Just in general as you go from 2-4-6-8 units, what will you find in terms of the percent of benefit to natives in risk of 

non-natives? (Johnson) 

A: It does increase pretty substantially from 2 to 4. It does not above 4 units. (Dr. Valdez) 

Q: Were there differences in the segments as far as the benefit to non-native species? (Christensen) 

A: Yes. If you were to implement two units for releasing warmer water, you would see the biggest benefit to native 

species in that Paria River to LCR Reach. (Dr. Valdez) 

Q: What about non-natives? (Christensen) 

A: It would be the same for non-natives. You would have more suitable conditions or be more beneficial to them in the 

tailwater all the way to about the LCR and actually even below the LCR. You don’t get to where you reach some kind 

of ambient temperatures in that system until you’re around Diamond Creek. (Dr. Valdez) 

Q: Instead of using units as your measure, just do it over a range of temperatures would be a pretty useful thing rather 

than looking at units of TCD. You ran the model with all of those different species including the producers, did you see 

any trends of note in things other than fish? (Kaplinski) 

A: Yes. There is considerable benefit to some of those primary producing species with two penstocks modified. If you 

were to warm the water with two units, you get right on the margin of suitable temperatures from whirling disease in 

that tailwater reach but that’s only under maximum temperatures than would occur with median temperatures. There 

would be some years and some times when the temperature would get high enough to be suitable for whirling disease 

to be able to reproduce itself. Whirling disease can be in a system but not have active tems unless the temperature 

reaches 18-20°C range. (Dr. Valdez) 

Q: Regarding parasites, as you move downstream, does that increase the likelihood of lernia 

and Asian tapeworm? Are they persistent in chubs? (Stevens) 

A: It does down to below the LCR. From about the LCR downstream or so, you would increase the possibility or the 

risk that lernia and Asian tapeworm both could reproduce in the mainstem. Right now they’re primarily functioning in 

either backwaters or in tributaries. Asian tapeworm needs about 20°C or so to be able to produce and shed its eggs 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 7 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

and then for the young to be ingested by a cocopod and then return to cycle. So there would be a greater likelihood of 

those life cycles being included in the mainstem down around the LCR and below that. (Dr. Valdez) 

Q: Would we be getting more than temperature from Lake Powell in that you’d be pulling off near surface water with 

lots more plankton coming in than previous years so have you thought about what happens if you saturate the river 

with food given the uncertainties that you’ve looked at there? (Stevens) 

A: No we did not. We did take a look at the planktonic species that are in the forebay and what effect the drawdown in 

that forebay area of the warm water would have. Obviously you try to cool the forebay. There is not much of a 

difference really to planktonic species in the forebay. (Dr. Valdez) 

Q: You said there’s a report available? (Barger) 

A: The report is being reviewed by some scientists at this time. It’s a Reclamation report so it will be up to them on how 

and when it is distributed. (Dr. Valdez) 

Q: For your dirty dozen, are we monitoring for all of those in Grand Canyon or is that an incidental monitoring by doing 

other work? (Barger) 

A: I think some of those species are being monitored at this time. I’m just doing is offering ideas to make sure that all 

the bases are covered. There are some real critical life histories and life stages where we can effectively detect if a fish 

is really starting to respond and detect it early in order to be able to do something about it. I think the real place to do it

is probably primarily backwaters and shorelines. (Dr. Valdez) 

Q: It sounds like over the last few years we hear about these fish only as an incidental thing that fishermen might be 

catching them or they show up in some of the electroshock or hoopnetting but I’m not sure we’re targeting any of these 

species. Are we, Matthew? (Barger) 

Management Updates. 

Status of Revision of Recovery Goals for Four Endangered Fishes of the Colorado River. Glen Knowles 

combined his updates into one PPT presentation (Attachment 6a). He said the Fish and Wildlife Service is 

engaged revising the recovery goals for HBC and are also in the midst of a 5-year review. Their recovery 

goals for the four big river fish were published in 2002 including HBC and Glen said they’re going to see if 

any new information can be added. He said Region 2 (Albuquerque) sent a letter in March (Attachment 6b) 

asking for information on that process. The initial comment period closed on May 31 and they received 

some comments from the TWG. GCMRC also sent a number of papers for them to consider. Most of the 

early comments were just requests that stakeholders be allowed to review a draft of the recovery goals 

when they become available. They expect to have draft goals to the stakeholders for their review in July or 

August. Once they go through the initial review, the revised draft of the recovery goals should be published 

in the Federal Register by January 2008. 

Status for a Lower Colorado RIP. Glen referenced a memo from Deputy Lynn Scarlett directing the FWS to 

begin the process of developing a RIP for HBC in the Grand Canyon. The FWS are to provide feedback to 

the AMWG by September 2007 as to timeline, scope, and development of an outreach program to 

potentially involved stakeholders and report to the DOI Policy Group. 

Creating a HBC Refuge at the Hualapai Tribe Fish Rearing Facility. Glen said they are working with the 

Hualapai Tribe to hold a refuge population of HBC. They’ve been working with Hualapai for two years and 

have been rearing since 1998. The FWS want to see if they can do it for HBC and are looking at ways to 

upgrade it. This is happening through an MOA with FWS, the Hualapai Tribe, and AGFD. They hope to 

bring 300-500 young of year on station by 2008. 

Whirling Disease Discovered in Trout at Lee Ferry. This document (Attachment 6c) was provided by Bill 

Persons with AGFD and is self-explanatory. 

Selenium.Concerns in the Grand Canyon. Rick Johnson asked if the TWG would consider looking at the 

recent selenium issue (Attachment 6d) and developing an opinion as to whether the AMP needs to move 

forward on this. He said there were eleven sites along the Colorado and Green Rivers. Amy asked how 

much time and money it would cost for the Center to do an analysis. John Hamill said they would need to do 

more research before they could render a response. 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 8 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

ACTION ITEM: John Hamill will review the selenium handout with his staff and determine what it will take 

for GCMRC to do a risk assessment on the effects of selenium in Grand Canyon and report back to the 

TWG at its next meeting. 

Zuni Monitoring Protocols Proposal. Jonathan Damp gave a PPT entitled, “Monitoring Protocols for 

Culturally Significant Resources within the Grand Canyon” (Attachment 7). He described how consultation 

with the tribes is typically handled and presented several slides depicting the Zuni’s origin, belief system, 

and TCPs identified in the Grand Canyon. The primary purpose of a Zuni monitoring program is the 

collection of data to be used to identify adverse impacts due to dam operations on Zuni TCPs situated along 

the Colorado River corridor. Zuni monitoring data will be used to guide measures taken to preserve Zuni 

TCPs in place for their continued use by ancestral and contemporary Zunis, and for their use by future 

generations. 

Q: The issue of controls in this whole realm of Grand Canyon is pretty critical and not very well attended to in most 

cases, so a statistical test you could do to see whether or not you’ve got regular spacing of your sites that would be 

quite interesting to do and might inform your search there and also to know whether or not if they are uniform through 

the river corridor. Are they also uniform throughout the rest of the landscape because they had to be able to reach 

those sites before they become significant properties and, therefore, do you have a uniform grid of the whole canyon? 

(Stevens) 

A: We can and have done through an extension of GIS geospatial analysis. (Damp) 

Q: You were talking about doing a radius evaluation around those sites to see if there are conditional signs or other 

features of importance of plant congregations that would become the basis for future monitoring. It’s not likely you’d do 

that every time, right? (Fairley) 

A: That’s right but in going back on repeat visits, they might see things that they hadn’t seen before. (Damp) 

Q: So they would be re-inventorying the same areas every time? (Fairley) 

A: Yes. But these would be done in conjunction with the river trips that we supposedly take every year. (Damp) 

Q: It sounds like you’re monitoring it potentially for rates of erosion? (Fairley) 

A: Yes. Zuni’s concern is mainly with the archeological sites and if the sites are eroding away, then it’s health is being 

impacted. I think the scope of our monitoring is going to be different than the other tribes.. (Damp) 

C: We understand the lack of communication between the two realms of beliefs, western science and tribal issues, but 

we never seem to go beyond that. We get up to the point where we agree to disagree about it but I think what would 

be very fruitful is to actually try to understand a little more in a collaborative way how to use these differences in beliefs 

in ecosystem management. I think that would be a multi-tribal symposium. (Stevens) 

C: Since those contracts are administered by Reclamation, I suggest Reclamation work with the tribes and the Center 

in putting together a cultural symposium that would bring the viewpoints and tribal specialists together in providing an 

alternative view to western science and improve dialogue with the tribes. (Heuslein) 

C: Maybe this is one of those uncovered problems in the Roles AHG. It doesn’t have to do with the TWG per se or the 

AMWG, but it has to do with a problem within the program. 

R: Yes, we could do it separately then there’s the problem of how are you going to integrate into the program? I think 

it would be more effective if it was acknowledged and identified as something expecting the effectiveness of so it 

should be dealt with here. We’re talking about an AMP Effectiveness Workshop. I’m not sure when it’s going to occur 

but there may be time to make it part of that. (Kubly) 

ACTION ITEM: Reclamation (Mike Berry) will consider putting together a Cultural Symposium or a one-day 

workshop with the AMP tribal stakeholders and tribal scientists. It would focus on improving dialogue, 

creating learning opportunities, helping to recognize differences, and ways to bridge understanding among 

all the AMP stakeholders, GCMRC, and the Science Advisors. In addition, the Roles AHG should also 

participate in the symposium/workshop. 

Hopi Monitoring Protcols Proposal. Michael Yeatts the Hopi proposal is based on the integration work 

the Hopi Tribe has done for the terrestrial ecosystem monitoring. They used that as the basis for their 

contract and expanded on it. He distributed copies of his PPT presentation entitled, “Hopi Long-term 

Monitoring Program for Öngtupqa“ (Attachment 8). 

Q: How do we use this information to help us make decisions on how to change dam operations or do something 

different to manage the place based on what the tribes are doing? (Kaplinski) 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

A: I think the feedback ends up coming to the management end, identifying where resources are being impacted or 

things aren’t going in the right direction, so it would be fed back to the TWG. Whether it’s a Hopi perspective or 

western science or recreation perspective, it’s on the resources we want and so I see it coming back more at that level. 

For our actual proposal, we put together pie charts of the responses that we had for the first few years that we the pilot 

in the program so you can see 33% of the riparian vegetation is healthy, 25 don’t have an opinion, 15 have these 

different responses so we are tracking that in that way. In the future maybe that will be useful and be more a science 

program. (Yeatts) 

R: I discovered while trying to put some of this together we take it for granted that we’re doing interpretation of data 

without being explicit as to where its coming from. We send a science report for independent review to people who 

have the training and education in the field that are reviewing it, but when it comes to a tribal program, only a tribal 

religious leader/elder or someone who understands the cultural side from the inside is qualified to do the traditional 

cultural review. (Yeatts) 

C: Are you looking at different age groups as far as getting input from them versus just the elders? (Heuslein) 

A: Yes, we’re looking at that as being one of the things that came out of our work in the canyon and the Center has 

helped to support it by helping to prepare a resource guide that deals with all the resources in the canyon that can be 

used for education. The “Hopi Footprints Project” has been using data collected for this program for developing for K12, math, and science curriculums. One group that’s largely been missing from the work is women because they’re not 

allowed in the canyon so we’re looking at ways of bringing them into loop because they probably have a very different 

perspective on resources.(Yeatts) 

Long-Term Experimental Plan Update. Randy Peterson provided an update on what has been 

accomplished and what remains to be done: 

• Public scoping was completed last winter and a scoping report was published in March 2007. 

• They received a number of draft alternatives which the cooperating agencies are currently reviewing and providing 

comments. 

• By mid-July those alternatives should be solidified. Reclamation will post them to their website and advertise them 

to the public when they’re available. 

• The modeling should be completed in final form in the shortage EIS shortly. A preferred alternative was published 

to the web site last week and they’ll be using that model run for the preferred alternative and shortage is their “no 

action” alternative for this effort. It requires some more modeling than just the annual and monthly volumes that 

was done for shortage. 

• That information will be turned into hourly hydrographs that will allow fluctuating flow analysis and hydropower 

impacts and the full suite of resource impacts for the LTEP EIS. They’ll do the same this summer for all the action 

alternatives as well. They expect that will be done by August/September time frame. They’ll do some water quality 

and temperature modeling after that occurs so the steps are: annual monthly, then down to hourly, then 

temperature quality modeling. They’ll then do the impact analysis for the EIS and the target for that exercise will 

October through December. 

• An internal administrative draft should be ready in December. It will go through the review process and be ready 

for public review by the end of February 2008. 

• After the draft is released, Reclamation will seek comments from the public on the analysis and the alternatives 

outlined in the draft. Their intent is to take public comments on the draft before identifying a preferred alternative 

but that decision hasn’t been made. 

• A final draft will be ready for in the spring/summer of 2008 and a final report released in fall of 2008. 

Q: Do you feel you’ve got an alternative that has strong and unbiased science going into it? It’s a long-term scientific 

plan so having alternatives that have strong science means having a good understanding of controls over time rather 

than a Christmas tree approach, having a hypothesis driven, credible scientific approach. (Stevens) 

A: Our sense is that we’re going to have a variety of experimental designed approaches to it. Some will have 

comparative and contrasting treatments, others might have a single treatment for the duration of the experiment, and 

to draw conclusions you’d have to compare to previous conditions for example or trend analysis or something like that. 

We’ve talked about triggering mechanisms for example. We’ve talked about alternative decision paths within the 

experiment. We’ve talked about various durations as well. We had talked about 7-10 years before but that’s not locked 

in either. It may be something shorter. (Peterson) 

Q: Shorter than 7-10 years? The long-term experimental flow plan is shorter? (Kaplinski) 

A: Just as a possibility. We are very flexible right now. We’re trying to be responsive so when the public raises 

comments and questions, and is concerned about getting locked into a long period of treatment without some type of 

off-ramps or triggers, we need to respond to that. One way of doing that is to have a complex EIS that would launch 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

you off into different directions depending on how things turn out and the other way is to shorten up the time frame, do 

something for a short period of time and then re-evaluate and go from there. (Peterson) 

Q: When you come out with another preferred alternative, will there be another comment period? (Kaplinski) 

A: Probably not. The way we’re doing it in shortage is to issue a draft, take public comment, make a decision on the 

preferred alternative, publish that, and then move forward with correcting the impact analysis, adding any sensitivity 

analyses, and publishing a final. And we’ll probably make it pretty clear that the preferred might be a combination of 

several elements. If we find that a certain scientific experimental design works better than others in producing the 

answers to questions that we have, then even though the other parts of that experiment might not be what is wanted, 

that aspect might be carried forward. We expect to have a broad range of high flow testing, ranging from maybe no 

tests to one test during the period to one test per year, to one test every time it’s triggered. Those will have scientific or 

resource outcomes that can be projected, especially in terms of sediment transport and accumulation. (Peterson)

TWG Review of the Roles AHG Report. Kurt asked for comments on the Roles AHG Report. 

Jay Groseclose: Citing the BHBF as an example of a breakdown in the roles was absolutely wrong. I saw that as a 

primary example of the function of the two groups and their distinct roles. I think what came out of the AMWG was a 

response to the management issues because the technical issue alone wasn’t enough to carry the date of the 

proposed BHBF. It looked like we had the hydrology where we could do it so on a technical basis it made sense to 

forward that to the AMWG. But when it came to the AMWG meeting, we had been told that it would take $1.5 million to 

do monitoring. Then we were told we could do monitoring adequately with $900,000. From a management perspective, 

it broke down right there. It also broke down when we couldn’t find out answers on results of the 2004 test. I think it’s 

very important we preserve the roles. 

Larry Stevens: We’re also engaged to see whether or not we can do our jobs better at all these different levels given 

the mission that we all have. I would hope the report would actually reflect that level of experimentation here as well 

rather than calling events failures or successes. 

Norm Henderson: I would’ve liked the committee to have looked at the concept of rather than limiting the TWG’s role to 

what the AMWG had prescribed by giving it more flexibility to respond to issues on its own. I also wish they would’ve 

addressed the 2/3 majority vote from the AMWG necessary for a recommendation to go forward. Just given the 

stakeholder group here and the wide diversity of interests, I certainly think consensus is the way we should go. 

Mark Steffen: I thought it was a very interesting and well done report. I think the issue of people making compromises 

needs to be considered more seriously and that we need to recognize the compromises some stakeholders have 

made. 

Bill Werner: One thing that struck me about some of the process discussion within the report was the size of some 

entities and particular the small ones not having a lot of people to represent their interests on various committees. 

Some entities simply don’t have other people to look to unless they start looking at contractors. That sometimes 

hinders our ability to keep up with some processes. I think that’s something we have to deal with ourselves but at the 

same time we get in situations where with all the things that are hopping at the same time, there just isn’t anybody 

else. 

Dennis Kubly: One thing that really struck me about this report was that it included a fairly lengthy discussion of the 

importance of collaboration which was not in the first version. 

Kurt said that in terms of the discussion of collaboration in the document, it was in reaction to a lot of what 

they interpreted as an inability of the group to come to compromised situations. They thought that perhaps it 

was because there was a philosophical mindset of many of the stakeholders not to come to the table to 

work towards compromise on an issue and collaboration would be a more effective way of trying to reach 

consensus on an issue rather than going to votes on motions because motions can create an atmosphere 

of opposition between people. trying to push their particular viewpoint on other folks. 

Kurt asked if the members wanted to provide comments as individual stakeholders or have him prepare a 

consolidated response from them that would go to the AMWG. Dennis said he wondered if the TWG would 

like to ask for more time to develop its comments and provide those to the Roles AHG so an extension is 

possible given that the AMP Effectiveness Workshop has not been scheduled. Cliff suggested gathering 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

comments from the various stakeholders rather than collecting them individually from the AMWG and TWG. 

Bill Werner said that by using the comment form, it would be easier to identify those areas in which there is 

agreement on certain issues. He also suggested that people identify their top three or five concerns as 

opposed to commenting about something in the report. 

Kurt asked Randy for a month’s extension in order to provide him with a collective response from the TWG 

regarding the Roles report. Randy said he would grant the extension until July 31. 

ACTION ITEM: The TWG has until July 31, 2007, to provide comments on the Roles Ad Hoc Group Report 

to Randy Peterson. 

Adjourned: 5 p.m. 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Meeting 

June 25-26, 2007 

Conducting: Kurt Dongoske, Chairperson Convened: 8:03 a.m. 

Committee Members Present: 

Mary Barger, WAPA 

Charley Bulletts, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians 

Kerry Christensen, Hualapai Tribe 

Jonathan Damp, Pueblo of Zuni 

Jay Groseclose, NM Interstate Stream Comm. 

Norm Henderson, NPS 

Amy Heuslein, BIA 

Glen Knowles, USFWS 

Dennis Kubly, USBR 

Phillip S. Lehr, Colo. River Comm./NV 

Ken McMullen, NPS/GCNP 

Don Ostler, UCRC 

Mark Steffen, Federation of Fly Fishers 

Larry Stevens, Grand Canyon Wildlands Council 

Bill Werner, ADWR 

Michael Yeatts, The Hopi Tribe 

Committee Members Absent: 

Steven Begay, Navajo Nation 

William Davis, CREDA 

Rick Johnson, Grand Canyon Trust 

Christopher Harris, Colo. River Board of 

CaliforniaBill Persons, AGFD 

D. Randolph Seaholm, CWCB 

Robert King, UDWR 

John O’Brien, Grand Canyon River Guides 

John Shields, WY State Engr. Office 

Alternates Present: For: 

Don Ostler John Shields, State Engineers Ofc./WY 

Matt Kaplinski John O’Brien, Grand Canyon River Guides 

Interested Persons: 

Matthew Andersen, GCRMC/USGS 

Mike Berry, USBR 

Marcus Chang, Bob Lynch & Associates 

Helen Fairley, GCRMC/USGS 

Joe Feller, ASU/College of Law 

John Hamill, GCRMC/USGS 

Leslie James, CREDA 

J.D. Kite, GCMRC/USGS 

Ted Melis, GCMRC/USGS 

Randy Peterson, USBR 

David Topping, GCMRC/USGS 

Rich Valdez, SWCA 

Scott Wright, GCMRC/USGS 

Meeting Recorder: Linda Whetton, USBR 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Welcome and Administrative. The Chairman welcomed the TWG members, alternates, and interested 

persons. A quorum (16 members) was established and attendance sheets distributed. He also reviewed the 

ground rules for the meeting. 

Update on Kanab ambersnail. Glen reminded the members that the USGS funded a study to re-examine 

the taxonomy of oxyloma to look at how distinct the snails at Vasey’s Paradise really are in relation to the 

genous and it turns out that they might actually be much more widely distributed than had been thought. 

This new taxonomy information seems to indicate that the Niobrara ambersnails that are at Nine-mile might 

actually be the same snail that’s at Vasey’s Paradise. They were thought to be a different subspecies but 

now, in fact, they might all be (Oxyloma haydeni) Kanab ambersnail The oxyloma is widely distributed 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

throughout North America from Canada to Mexico. It probably warrants a lot more work but just this limited 

amount of work that USGS has funded may result in a change in taxonomy in this species. If that happens 

and it gets published, FWS will have to re-evaluate its listing status. FWS is currently in the midst of a fiveyear review for the Kanab ambersnail and Glen thinks in that 5-year review they’ll recommend it remain 

listed until they finalize the ongoing taxonomy . 

Development of Desired Future Conditions. Randy Peterson said when they commenced the 

preparation of alternatives for the LTEP EIS, they reflected back when the TWG was involved in the 

preparation of a strategic plan which had twelve specific goals with a number of cascading management 

objectives. Within those management objectives, there were target levels that were part of each objective 

as well as some narrative to help explain what the objective was about. For nearly all the management 

objectives those target levels have never been defined. It became clear that the design of the alternatives 

and the measures to be taken regarding experimentation were closely tied to whether or not a particular 

resource was at an acceptable level. So for example, if one wanted to experiment with trout but found out 

that all the trout objectives had been met, then that might be a lesser important aspect of a particular 

alternative. Working with the cooperators, they ranked the core questions of importance and the limiting 

factors on HBC and their improvement and the improvement of sediment conservation were clearly the two 

highest objectives of the LTEP EIS and those are two resources where the target levels have not been 

identified. The Secretary’s Designee requested the TWG develop those target levels also known as desired 

future conditions. The thought was that the TWG should set up an ad hoc group to take on the task and that 

the TWG would develop options for consideration by the AMWG. So for example, number of trout, the TWG 

could say where there are several different philosophies or perspectives on that and A, B, and C are three 

different options for the number of trout and take that another step. The TWG would also then develop 

implications, if you will, for each of those options, how that might affect the other resources, how the quality 

of the fishery or the condition of the trout might vary with the number of trout, and the TWG would also 

provide as much scientific evidence for historic conditions, things like that. It would form a technical 

package, a scientific package, for the AMWG to consider. The AMWG would then consider all those and 

make a formal recommendation to the Secretary. 

Randy said it’s important the AMP complete that process by the end of the calendar year so the information 

could be used as part of the EIS evaluation process. The USFWS has embarked on revisiting their four big 

river fish recovery goals as part of their 5-year review and that by the end of the calendar year could result 

in some potentially modified recovery goals for the HBC. The FWS draft is due out at the end of December. 

There could be some links between what this group does and what is coming out of the Service. He 

suggested the new ad hoc group start with those two resources, the chub and sediment, because they are 

going to be the primary focus of the EIS. At the December 2006 meeting he would expect the AMWG to 

make some type of recommendation to the Secretary on this issue so backing up from that point in time, he 

thought that by the next TWG meeting (Oct. 2-3), the TWG would receive something from the newly formed 

ad hoc group and be able to provide an evaluation of such to the AMWG. 

Dennis mentioned that the Secretary’s Designee already asked for comments on the AMP Strategic Plan 

which were due on March 1. With 52 management objectives, he asked if the group should start with the 

presumption that all 52 of those management objectives persist in the revised strategic plan or if Randy 

recommends that part of their charge might be to evaluate whether or not all those management objectives 

really are desirable, necessary, attainable, measurable, etc.. Randy said it’s important to focus on the chub 

specifically for numbers and spatial distribution and then for sediment the focus would be on spatial 

distribution, volumes, areas, and maybe total sediment. Dennis said he thought the August AMWG meeting 

would be the place to make sure everyone is on the same track with has to be done before the TWG ends 

up spending a lot of time working on something without clear guidelines on what they’re suppose to 

achieve. 

Norm said that NPS had prepared a draft (Attachment 9a) of what they saw as desired future conditions as 

a starting point for the ones they thought should be addressed. He distributed copies of the document but 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

cautioned they aren’t to be treated as hard and fast sideboards. His only thought was to limit it to the goals 

that can be accomplished over the next 10 years. 

John Hamill requested that Reclamation prepare a written statement on the assignment along with any 

sideboards so the group would have a clear understanding of what’s expected. 

ACTION ITEM: Randy Peterson will provide a clear, written charge (along with sideboards) for the purpose 

of the Desired Future Conditions Ad Hoc Group (DFCAHG) by July 5. Update: See e-mail message sent 

from Randy Peterson to the TWG on July 20, 2007 (Attachment 9b). 

The following members volunteered to serve on the DFCAHG: Mary Barger (co-chair), Cliff Barrett, Steven 

Begay, Shane Capron, Kerry Christensen, Norm Henderson, Glen Knowles, Dennis Kubly, Ken McMullen, 

Mark Steffen, Larry Stevens (co-chair), Bill Werner, and Mike Yeatts. Ken McMullen volunteered to serve as 

the interim chair and convene the first meeting and then a permanent chair would be selected. Ted Melis 

and Matt Kaplinski will serve as technical advisors to the group. 

ACTION ITEM: The DFCAHG will present a preliminary report to the AMWG at their August 29-30, 2007, 

meeting. 

Public Comment: Clayton Palmer stated there should be facilitation services provided for the DFCAHG and 

even though desired future conditions are of general concern to the AMWG, it is partly driven by a schedule 

related to the LTEP EIS so Reclamation would be best at chairing the ad hoc group. 

Dennis concurred that the LTEP EIS is of immediate concern but also said the broader revision of the 

strategic plan may encompass more resources. Helen asked that the latest version of the AMP Strategic 

Plan be sent out because there are a couple of versions floating around with different goals and numbering 

systems. Dennis said he would provide that URL to the TWG. 

ACTION ITEM: Dennis Kubly will e-mail the URL for the latest version of the AMP Strategic Plan. 

MRP Revisions and Crosswalk Table. John Hamill distributed copies of the “MRP Revisions to address 

the TWG Minority Report GCMRC” (Attachment 10) dated June 12, 2007, which summarizes where he 

thinks the TWG is at on this particular issue. The NPS and GCMRC met on 1/11/2007 regarding NPS 

concerns over the draft MRP that had been specified in the minority report presented to the AMWG on 

12/6/06. The discussion boiled down to a concern that the draft MRP (11/14) lacked a comprehensive list of 

critical science questions that would be addressed over the next five years. To address this NPS concern, 

GCMRC and NPS agreed that GCMRC would develop a crosswalk table showing how the 250 +/- Research 

Information Needs in the AMP Strategic Plan relate to the Strategic Science Questions in the draft MRP. 

Through a review of this table, GCMRC and NPS would identify new science questions to be included in the 

MRP. GCMRC would bring the revised list to the TWG for review. The crosswalk table and additional 

science questions would be included in the revised draft MRP and brought to the AMWG for approval at its 

summer meeting. 

John met with Rod Kuharich and Randy Seaholm from the State of Colorado along with Mary Barger and 

Clayton Palmer (WAPA) on December 6, 2006, in Las Vegas, NV, to discuss issues identified in the TWG 

minority report on the MRP. Three major issues were identified: 

1. Humpback Chub monitoring: There is a concern that FWS has not accepted the protocols/models used by 

GCMRC to determine the humpback chub population status in the Grand Canyon. GCMRC has been working with 

FWS to ensure that the monitoring protocols and models for humpback chub in the Grand Canyon are consistent 

with the requirements of the Humpback Chub Recovery Plan. Language will be included in the MRP that clarifies 

that the humpback chub monitoring being conducted under the auspices of the AMP will be designed to meet the 

standards or requirements specified in the Humpback Chub Recovery Plan. 
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2. Sediment: The primary sediment issues were that 

• Policy guidance needs to be provided on the geographic scope of sediment work in the Grand Canyon, i.e., is 

the focus on the entire Colorado River from Glen Canyon Dam to Lake Mead or just to the Marble Canyon 

reach? USGS supports the definition of this and other Desired Future Resource Conditions and will update 

the MRP when they are developed and agreed to by the managers. 

• WAPA and Colorado would like the MRP to reflect that other options for sediment conservation will be 

addressed. USGS is unaware of any other feasible options for sediment conservation over the next five years. 

• Colorado expressed concern that use of sand bars by recreational users significantly threatens the persistence 

of sand bars. This issue has not been identified by the AMP as a high priority research issue for the next 5 

years 

Both WAPA/Colorado were invited to draft proposed revisions to the MRP to reflect the points above; however 

none were provided. 

3. Food Base

• The MRP currently specifies that effects of stable vs. fluctuating flows on food base would be addressed 

through the Long Term Experimental Plan which is still a work in progress. There is currently a place holder in 

the MRP to address the effects of alternative flow regimes on food base. The intent is to update the MRP to 

be consistent with the LTEP once it is finalized. Accordingly, USGS does not believe that the MRP should be 

modified to address this need at this time. 

• Palmer supports implementation of Argonne National Lab’s proposal for doing short term experiments to 

evaluate the effects of fluctuating flows on drift and food base in FY 2008. If WAPA believes that the Argonne 

proposal needs to be considered before the Long Term Experimental Plan is completed, USGS recommends 

that this proposal be brought to the TWG for consideration during the preparation of the FY 2008 work plan. 

Clayton added that WAPA and Colorado were concerned because it wasn’t clear what BHBFs were 

intended to accomplish and Rod in particular was interested in identifying that. Rod was also interested in 

having a sediment goal tied to what GCMRC is trying to accomplish for HBC, other high flows (MHFFs, 

HMFFs), and load following as aspects of high flow tests or experimentation. Clayton said that in order to 

assist both WAPA and the State of Colorado, WAPA said they would send some draft language for the 

MRP. However, they have not done that but did forward as a policy issue in their comments on the science 

plan for BHBFs and agreed with GCMRC that the MRP would be modified once a sediment goal was either 

changed or clearly identified. 

John reviewed the crosswalk table and said they looked at 200+ different RINs and how they related to the 

SSQs or CMINs that were identified in the MRP. They came up with five additional questions they felt 

should be added to the strategic science plan or to the MRP which are listed on the first page of the 

handout. He also reviewed the criteria they used for determining whether or not to add a new science 

question. 

John said the next steps to be taken are: 

1. GCMRC will revise the MRP based on consideration of comments/recommendations from the primary 

authors of the Minority Report (Colorado, NPS and WAPA) 

2. GCMRC will send out proposed MRP revisions for review and concurrence by the TWG 

3. GCMRC will send out proposed MRP revisions for review and approval by the AMWG (August 1, 2007) 

Matt Kaplinski proposed the following motion: 

MOTION: TWG moves to accept the revisions to the MRP and forward the revised MRP to the 

AMWG for approval. Kerry Christensen seconded the motion. 

Q: Why are you focusing on those two small locations rather than the rest of the Grand Canyon or the rest of Marble 

Canyon? (Steffen) 

A: I think the focus on looking at trout in the LCR was once again the focus on HBC and to see what the effects are 

there as opposed to canyonwide. It’s clear that trout are distributed throughout the canyon but we’re interested in 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

abundance of trout and trout predation relative to HBC and that’s where the greatest concentrations of HBC are found. 

(Hamill) 

A: Goal 2 and Goal 4 are not easy to rectify. There’s a desire to have native fishes. There’s a desire to have rainbow 

trout. This is following the review of the existing information needs that this committee has worked on quite extensively. 

I certainly built on existing information needs that were already promulgated by this group. This was an effort to try to 

focus efforts rather than look at everywhere all the time for all species especially for a 5-year plan. To focus efforts on 

places where we: a) want to have a recreational fishery, and b) maintain the native fishery. (Andersen) 

C: Mark raises a good question because it looks like there are only two locations in the system that are considered 

here in this question. Clearly there is reproduction in major tributaries including Tapeats, Shinimo, and Bright Angel 

that would be vested within this question. (Kubly) 

R: Our proposal isn’t to study trout throughout the system, it’s to study trout and address these specific questions 

about whether these fish are being produced locally or they’re coming in from the Lees Ferry Reach. (Hamill) 

Q: So it brings up the question of the LTEP relationship because the question of tributary versus mainstem, is it in at 

least one of the draft alternatives now being developed? Would you see this as being adjusted? (Kubly) 

A: I think we’re talking about a plan here that’s going to get finalized to help guide us until the LTEP gets done and 

then we’re going to take the LTEP and update the MRP. (Hamill) 

Q: With the proposed changes, do we have an MRP that shows these amendments? (Barger) 

A: No. I have not taken it to that stage at this point. (Hamill) 

Q: So we don’t have anything in writing? (Barger) 

A: No, we don’t have anything in writing. With TWG’s approval today, I’ll go back and make those revisions and share 

that with you to make sure I didn’t misrepresent anything. (Hamill) 

C: The new SSQs focus HBC on the mainstem and we’re looking at some translocation and at issues on some of the 

tributaries. We would prefer that it didn’t say mainstem, or that it said CRE but not mainstem for the HBC issues. 

(Barger) 

C: The purpose here was to figure out when these fish come out into the mainstem from the Little Colorado River and 

what kind of habitats they’re using. It wasn’t to go into tributaries and see what kind of habitats they were using there 

but specifically what can we do to promote habitats in the mainstem that are going to promote survival of those large 

numbers of fish that come out of the LCR and to answer the question about trying variance of the question are you 

using talous lobes, are these in backwaters, what’s the relative importance of those in terms of providing conditions 

that will benefit them. Our intent was clearly to look at mainstem habitats. (Hamill) 

C: And we would encourage saying CRE so that we have a little bit more flexibility to look at other things. (Barger) 

The State of Colorado had some real concerns on focusing on BHBFs as the only method of sediment conservation 

and the MRP still reflects that. We had some similar concerns that BHBFs were worth the focus in the MRP and we 

feel there should be some other methods for sediment conservation. (Barger) 

Q: Just to clarify you had indicated there was only one NPS issue in your of write-up of our meeting in the beginning of 

January and I’d just like to point out that there were probably three issues that were contained within the minority 

report that we specifically discussed. The one you’re pointing to was the agreement on what to have move forward but 

there were two other issues related to the process for prioritization which I think was brought up here before which was 

there was no consolidated prioritization process so everybody felt like that all the SSQs, once those were developed, 

were important were in the mix and then a prioritization process to establish which ones of those were the most 

important to address in the next five years. And then the other point that we had made was there didn’t seem to be a 

clear relationship in many cases between the projects that were proposed in the MRP and the specific science 

questions asked so it didn’t appear like there was any intention there to specifically design the project to answer a 

specific question. The projects were designed to address, as you’d called it throughout the document, those science 

questions which didn’t give me much of a comfort level that we could expect to answer within the next 5 years. With 

regard to the crosswalk table, in many cases I didn’t see the SSQs that were proposed or the SSQs that were listed. 

Some of these didn’t seem to have a direct relationship or a direct crosswalk with the actual RINs that you had put in 

there. I can go through the specifics but I think a general comment is there were several there I just didn’t see the SSQ 

as directly related to the RIN you showed. (Henderson) 

C: John, when said “none proposed” in here that that meant you weren’t proposing an RIN because it was of a lesser 

priority and you weren’t going to put it in the 5-year plan anyway so there was no sense in building an SSQ for it. 

(Henderson) 

R: I think that was one of the criteria. It had to be something we felt was a priority that related back to one of the 

AMWG’s priority questions and it also had to be something scientific in nature. If you look at comment #5, there are 

none proposed. What are the measurable criteria that need to be met in order to remove jeopardy for HBC? That’s a 

desired future condition, a recovery goal kind of thing, and so we didn’t propose a SSQ to address that. We felt that 

was outside of our purview so those were the basic criteria we used in determining whether we should propose a new 

SSQ. (Hamill) 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

C: On page 11, #29, you say there is no SSQ proposed but then in the comments section you basically say that you’re 

already doing research so it doesn’t seem to follow. It seems like there is a need for an SSQ for something that 

obviously is a high priority because we’re already working on it. I saw a disconnect there. As far as some of the ones 

that didn’t seem to match, I call your attention to page 7, #12, it says what is a viable population. That’s the RIN and 

then the SSQ is what are the important half-ways that link lower trophic levels with the fish and how will they link to 

dam operations. (Henderson) 

R: I think it relates back to carrying capacity and if we can get a better handle on what’s the capacity of the system, we 

can get a better handle on population viability I think. Is that the general thought there? That there’s information that’s 

going to come out of the foodbase study that will help inform that question to some extent. I agree that it’s not a 

specifically crafted question to address that concern but to us it’s not a stretch to say that the foodbase study would 

help inform that kind of a RIN. (Hamill) 

Q: The point is there are probably differences of opinion about what is intended by what is a viable population, the 

RIN, possibly and that needs to be teased out to get to an SSQ. We need a process to get there. (Henderson) 

Q: One of the premises of your whole group base work and the advice that you receive from peer reviewers and the 

science advisors was don’t make an assumption about whether this is a top-down, predator-limited, or bottom-up 

foodbase system and it seems that what you’re presuming here is for these pieces that you already know that it’s food 

limited. Where’s the other side of it? Where’s the other SSQ that deals with the question of whether or not this might a 

predator limited situation? If it’s not a foodbase issue? (Kubly) 

A: I think we’re on a semantic difference. The foodbase research is energetic phased. It’s looking at energy transfer 

through the system. So if there is a predator component, maybe non-natives, that’s certainly a proponent of this study, 

to see how carbon and energy are being transferred up and down through the system. (Andersen) 

C: Those are two different types of controls of productivity in the system and it seems that your emphasis is on the 

bottom up energy exchange, not the -- (Kubly) 

R: I agree that that’s the name of the project, foodbase, that does give the impression you described but certainly it’s 

about trans energy transfer through the system up and down. (Andersen) 

C: One of the things we talked about was the idea that we wanted to make sure this document was a document in 

progress. I don’t see that reflected in here. It sounds like if we vote today for a recommendation to move this forward, 

it stops the review and the inputs stop. I just want to make sure that we still have the option to tweak this document as 

we go forward in initiating some of these studies. (McMullen) 

R: The last time the TWG approved this document, it approved it with the understanding that it would be updated upon 

completion of the LTEP. I agree a major revision of the document is needed and I’m not asking for carte blanche 

approval of it and walk away from it for five years. The MRP calls for this document to be updated on a 5-year basis 

and I would suspect that it will probably be updated prior to that as the LTEP EIS unfolds. (Hamill) 

C: My understanding from reading your next steps, is that you’re asking us today to give tentative approval and then 

you will revise it and send it out for concurrence later so people today will get to see your rewrite based on all this 

discussion before they approve it and it goes to the AMWG. (Barrett) 

R: Assuming you agree with the proposed revisions, I would go back and make language changes to the MRP, 

highlight those, send them out to you, and then check in with the TWG once again to see if there are any other issues 

before sending to the AMWG. I would like to send a revised document to the AMWG for them to look at. (Hamill) 

Kurt said there was a motion on the floor asking the TWG to move to accept the revisions to the MRP and 

forward the revised MRP to AMWG for approval. Amy asked whether Matt would be willing to look at 

revising his motion to reflect some of the discussion recognizing that the Center needs a little more time to 

do make the changes in the document. Matt didn’t understand why the TWG couldn’t approve a document 

knowing that GCMRC would make the changes. Kurt said it wasn’t a matter of the TWG not trusting 

GCMRC to make the changes but rather the TWG would know exactly what they were forwarding to the 

AMWG. Kurt closed the discussion and the members voted on the following motion: 

Motion: TWG moves to accept the revisions to the MRP and forward the revised MRP to the AMWG for 

approval. Motion seconded by Kerry Christensen. 

Representative Stakeholder Entity Vote 

Bill Persons / Scott Rogers Arizona Game and Fish Department absent 

Amy Heuslein / Garry Cantley Bureau of Indian Affairs abstain

Dennis Kubly / Randy Peterson Bureau of Reclamation n 

Mike Yeatts Hopi Tribe y 

Kerry Christensen Hualapai Tribe y 

Ken McMullen / Jan Balsom National Park Service - Grand Canyon y 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 18 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

Norm Henderson / Chris Kincaid National Park Service - GLNRA abstain

Steven Begay Navajo Nation abstain

Jonathan Damp Pueblo of Zuni n 

VACANT San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe absent 

Charley Bulletts / LeAnn Skrzynski Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians y 

Glen Knowles U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service n 

Mary Barger Western Area Power Administration (DOE) n 

Rick Johnson / Nikolai Ramsey Grand Canyon Trust absent 

Larry Stevens Grand Canyon Wildlands Council y 

Mark Steffen / Tim Steffen Federation of Fly Fishers n 

Matt Kaplinski Grand Canyon River Guides y 

Bill Werner Arizona y 

Christopher Harris California absent 

Randy Seaholm Colorado absent 

Phil Lehr Nevada y 

Jay Groseclose / Don Ostler New Mexico n 

Robert King Utah absent 

John Shields / Don Ostler Wyoming abstain

Bill Davis Colorado River Energy Distributors Association absent 

Cliff Barrett Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems n 

Total Yes 8 

Total No 7 

Total Abstain 4 

Total Voting 19 

MOTION PASSES 

Norm Henderson (abstaining): I would just like to see the final product to vote on. 

Amy Heuslein (abstaining): I wanted to see an amendment to this to allow for a short period of time to meet 

with the TWG to take a look at it and not necessarily approve it, because I don’t think we’ve got that 

authority, but for concurrence of those changes. 

Steven Begay (abstaining): GCMRC is going to be forwarding this information to the AMWG anyway so 

irregardless of the TWG’s consent or not, I don’t think it’s a big issue. 

Don Ostler (abstaining): I abstained because I missed most all of the discussion and didn’t feel it was 

appropriate to vote. 

BHBF Science Plan and Budget. John Hamill reviewed several items from his June 22, 2007 memo 

(Attachment 11a). He stated that GCMRC will respond in writing to the comments received on the BHBF 

Plan (Attachment 11b) following the TWG meeting. He expressed concern that only a minority of TWG 

members provided comments and he’s not sure how to interpret that  whether people liked the plan, didn’t 

get around to making comments, or disliked it so much that they didn’t put comments in writing. He feels 

there still may be issues that are going to come up at an AMWG or some other meeting and GCMRC won’t 

have an opportunity beforehand to discuss because only a small portion of the members commented. He 

said the non-technical comments should be addressed by the TWG, AMWG, and/or Secretary’s Designee 

as appropriate. He said today’s presentation would focus on what they felt were the major issues raised in 

the comments. Depending on the outcome of today’s discussion and perhaps having an ad hoc group look 

at the plan in more detail, he wants to request the TWG to consider that the WY08 hydrograph include the 

option to conduct a BHBF subject to a science plan being completed and approved by the Secretary, and 

that the sediment trigger is met. Last year the TWG did not recommend a BHBF as part of the 08 

hydrograph and so the intent is to approve it to this point in time. If the TWG doesn’t do that or forward a 

recommendation to AMWG, John said it casts a little different perspective on how quickly the plan needs to 

be completed. He said the plan has some major budget implications and he didn’t think the BAHG had 

considered those and that may be something that needs to get considered before it moves for approval. 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

Ted invited the authors who were involved in drafting the science plan to answer questions as appropriate. 

He said GCMRC intends to go through the plan as they pertain to each particular part or project in the draft 

science plan. He also told the BAHG recently that at some point they need to look at the budget, review the 

science plan, and provide recommendations to the TWG on the scope of the budget and availability of funds 

which less directly relates to when this or some variant of this plan is actually implemented in the future. He 

gave a PPT presentation (Attachment 11c). 

Matthew said the primary comment received was that more biological studies were desired for any of the 

high flow tests. GCMRC has struggled with the difficulties of sampling the fish. From their projections, the 

tests would be conducted in late winter or early spring, probably March. Matthew said that’s generally a 

difficult time to catch fish especially the small-bodied warm water fishes so they’ve struggled with just how 

to go about studying that. The reviewers stressed that they would be better able to understand how fish use 

habitats that might be created by such a high flow and proposed a change to the plan that’s not reflected in 

the current plan. Matthew said they would propose adding a second trip. There is currently a backwater 

seining trip that’s conducted in late September/early October each year and they propose to more or less to 

replicate that sampling much earlier in the season. He and Lew Coggins estimate that a good timing for that 

would be in May because that’s the time of year when water is starting to warm up. 

John said it’s important to note that the spring seining trips are not only done in years that BHBFs are done 

but also in years when BHBFs aren’t done. Over the long run they have something to compare/contrast 

data to see whether or not they’re getting more backwaters and/or more fish using backwaters. He also 

thinks there may be some potential to address some of the issues Rich Valdez talked about yesterday in 

terms of being able to get on top of non-native fishes that may also be using the backwaters and be able to 

detect non-native fish responses. So there are multiple purposes than just adding a trip that could provide 

information beyond just a BHBF activity. 

Ted added it also gets to the larger topic of how the proposed monitoring program interfaces with research 

events, like a BHBF, as it pertains to the sediment realm. There are some things GCMRC would encourage 

or recommend be done as part of long-term monitoring and would support the TWG’s understanding of 

BHBFs whenever those get implemented but they’re not necessarily BHBF activities so the two, the 

research and the monitoring, truly are integrated. 

Matt said another comment repeated was that people believed GCMRC hasn’t answered all the questions 

about trout. He said the responses have to be put in the context of the entire adaptive management 

program annual work plan and that there is other work that goes on. He tried to address that in the text of 

the report as well as in Appendix A which describes the ongoing work and also some additional work they’re 

trying to pursue for some occupancy modeling. 

Q:.Is it your intent to revise this BHBF Plan to include an additional project that gets into the specifics of how you’re 

going to implement? I know you’re adding another trip - suggesting as far as the questions that you’re going to try to 

answer and exactly what you’re getting at AND a relationship of that backwater trip and the DASA project review 

overflight that will be done in a year or two or something like that and how that all fits together as far as evaluation of 

backwater habitat. Is that intended to be described in an additional project? (Henderson) 

A: Yes. You don’t see a project along those lines in the existing draft so we propose to add that in response to these 

comments. My concerns in thinking about how to control non-native species is that we seem to be relatively effective in 

the southwest and west at catching big fish. The removal of rainbow trout and other non-natives in that LCR Reach 

was relatively effective so they do seem to have pretty decent techniques for that. I’m concerned about what we would 

do or could do to remove small body non-natives. I think this is an area where we need additional research and one of 

the techniques that occurs to me that may be available is a high flow, that these non-native small bodied fishes may be 

relatively less able to withstand floods as compared to the natives which have evolved in this situation in a really flashy 

river. (Andersen) 

Q: Sorry Matt, but doesn’t that get you then to the question of what the range of high flows are that’s necessary to do 

that testing and it brings me to my first question: Why did you restrict this to 41-45 if that really is a viable hypothesis? 

Might you not need higher flows to do so? (Kubly) 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

A: We might but that’s all that’s available from the dam. I don’t know how we could - it would be pretty unreasonable 

for us to propose it. (Andersen) 

Q: This is a long-term plan, right? (Kubly) 

R: It’s off-the-shelf for the potential implementation of a next BHBF but we specifically say it’s not being presented to 

you in any context for long-term implementation because again we don’t know what that is. (Melis) 

C: I think that was the request from the AMWG. It said on the shelf to be used at some future time, not time specified 

was my understanding, but not necessarily part of the long-term. You said this could be incorporated into the LTEP so 

you must clearly have been looking at it as (Kubly) 

R: It could be out of the LTEP if the BHBFs are identified beyond the 41,000 cfs range for future testing. It would 

simply be a matter of making a small amendment to it. We just felt like we wouldn’t be advocating something that in the 

near term was physically impossible. (Melis) 

Q: Maybe that’s all it takes is - your period of consideration of 08 but if we’re going to go beyond that, then you might 

change your position. Is that fair to say?(Kubly) 

A: Sure. We had indications from 1998 TWG meetings by Reclamation that they were open to the concept of testing 

BHBFs using one or both spillway tunnels. Of course that was at a time when the lake was basically full. (Melis) 

C: When I reviewed the BHBF Plan, I went back to the motion and it did say it was off the shelf and the title is “Science 

Planned for Future Experimental Beach/Habitat Building Flows.” If you thought it was only for 08, why isn’t the title 

“BHBF Science Plan for FY08?” If you don’t get one in 08 for whatever reason, then you couldn’t use this in 09. Mark 

Limbaugh said he wanted an off the shelf plan for future BHBFs. (Barger) 

R: That’s true in spirit but what we’re saying is we don’t know in what longer term context. We can’t say. Right now we 

assume that the dam operation that precedes and follows the BHBF test is MLFF not because we’re saying that that’s 

what it needs to be or has to be, but we don’t know of the outcome that would suggest it should be anything other than 

that, stable or otherwise. It is kind of an off the shelf approach in a modular way that we think can be, perhaps with 

some modification, plugged into whatever LTEP outcome there is. We haven’t necessarily said we’re advocating this 

long-term BHBF approach because we don’t know. It’s just one operational component that goes on presumably 365 

days a year for multiple years and we just don’t know enough about what those other operations will be.(Melis) 

C: We are interested in what would you propose for options for post-BHBF flows. Mr. Limbaugh also mentioned the 

BHBF could be anything. Somebody asked him a question and he said we might just spike it and run it right back 

down. He did propose that in the AMWG and this plan but we didn’t see that one in here. (Barger) 

R: My take was the AMWG said to go develop a science plan so we don’t have this problem the next time we come 

into a situation where we have sediment inputs. It wasn’t go back and develop a science plan for the next 10 years.. 

Then we have this LTEP thing that’s going on to define the overall structure of the long-term experiment which may not 

include any BHBFs and may include 10 of them over the next 10 years. As Ted said, we’re not trying to prejudge what 

the outcome of that is but only trying to come up with a plan so that the next time this event comes on, there will be a 

plan in place to implement. This is what we prepared. That was the spirit in which we prepared this. If we need to go 

back and get additional clarification from the Secretary about what it is he wants us to do, I guess we can do that but 

that’s my understanding. I’d be interested if other people see it differently. (Hamill) 

Q: Following the last BHBF, there was a theory that some young chub may have been washed downstream to an 

unknown fate. Have you got enough information now to feel like a BHBF is not harmful to the chub? (Ostler) 

A: That is something that still has to be tested but in our Appendix A we did address that by saying we would like to put 

additional tags, probably the sonic tags, it’s an acoustic technology, into just as many young chubs as we possibly can, 

that would probably be 150 milimeters or smaller. (Andersen) 

Q: Do you think with the tags with one additional test you can determine that it’s not overall harmful to the chub? 

(Ostler) 

A: For anything that I’m suggesting and I think for other resources, the more tests, the more data we will gather but will 

I have the complete answer after one test. I’m not sure. (Andersen) 

Q: The last test showed that you couldn’t find a lot of the young chub that you found before the test and so the data 

came from GCMRC. Where did they go? (Ostler) 

A: What confounds the sampling for that last test was that following the test, as our staff was getting out into the field 

to look for those fish, the LCR flooded so the river went quite a bit more murky and that made it difficult to sample for 

fish so the inability to find them was probably a) they were attracted by some displacement from high flows, but b) was 

also highly impacted by a murky system that was difficult to sample. And that’s been one of the reasons that we’ve 

been so kind of gun-shy about conducting sampling for these native fishes immediately following these tests because 

of that difficulty. (Andersen) 

Q: Dr. Rich had an opportunity to study this and published a paper on it which I believe concluded that based on the 

data that you were able to collect around the 1996 event and immediately following, that there is no dataset that shows 

that it does significantly impact or displace native fish. Is that correct? (Melis) 

A: That’s correct. That information is published in the book that is edited by Webb et.al., by the American Geophysical 

Unit. We radio-tagged 10 adult HBC prior to the 1996 flood that was 45 miles and then we also monitored for densities 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

of various fish species, both in backwaters and shorelines. The adults basically shifted position but they certainly didn’t 

get flushed downstream. All the adults pretty much remained in place.We found significant decreases small bodied fish 

such as fathead minnows, plains gilly fish, and red shiners. After the flood we just couldn’t find those fish. The HBC 

shifted position or habitat and will tend to stay with a similar habitat that is available at he shoreline interface for a 

given flow stage. So if there was talous at one location, you’d find them there but if the flow dropped and you got down 

to a sand beach or something, they would be just downstream or upstream from that location. So the densities of HBC 

in those reaches were not significantly different. In fact, they were very, very similar. That was the indication to us that 

the flood, in fact, did not transport and that was true with speckled dace as well. We didn’t have very many 

flannelmouths or blueheads to deal with. (Dr. Rich Valdez) 

R: We’ve done two of these tests so these are published results from 50% of those tests. The question for you Don 

and others is to consider: Does that information give you enough certainty to make decisions or recommendations on 

management activities around BHBFs in the future or would you rather have three or four of these tests and 

publications from 50% of those three or four tests? How much more replication do you feel you need before you as 

managers are comfortable saying we believe we know enough about BHBFs to move forward? (Melis) 

C: I like the idea of looking at how these tests displace non-native fishes and I didn’t really see that in the plan. I 

noticed some attention paid to rainbow trout in that regard but I think in terms of that particular element, it would be 

nice if you looked at the suite of non-native fishes in the Grand Canyon and how an event would affect them and also 

how you would look at that in the overall context of your non-native program and warm water, cold water. (Knowles) 

C: Our concern in 2004 was there was more small fish in the system than we’d seen in a decade or more and we were 

concerned about how flows displace native and non-native fish. The natives adapted to handle it better but 

nevertheless flows displace fish. We know that when we have floods in the LCR, the flood displaces small fish out of 

the LCR and the mainstem so it’s just physics really. And so when the BHBF was proposed for November 2004, we 

had a lot of small fish in the system. We were concerned because we thought that doing a BHBF at that time would 

displace some of that investment that we had worked so hard to get in part through all the work we were doing such as 

non-native RBT removal. We had spent a lot of money on that. We had a big investment in those fish and we were 

concerned about what effect the BHBF would have. The data that came from that did suggest that some of those fish 

might have been displaced. As Matthew said, there was a lot of turbidity in the system associated with the flow that 

confounded those results. Nevertheless, we’re still quite concerned about the timing of conducting BHBFs and we 

would suggest that spring would be the best time to do that to avoid that type of impact, that is the time of greater 

abundance of small fish in the system associated with monsoonal storms in the LCR. It’s still a concern of ours but we 

do agree with the basic premise that the natives are better adapted to handling but nevertheless we want attention 

paid to that potential effect. (Knowles) 

Ted proceeded with the slides on the biological aspects of the program and then Helen provided summary 

comments on the Aeolian process. 

Mike Berry said he was glad to see acknowledgement that there are some negative impacts of BHBFs. The 

general tenor has been that BHBFs wait for archeology. He referenced the first slide which said, BHBFs 

have the potential to preserve archeological sites.” He said that statement should be paired with a similar 

statement that “BHBFs have the potential to adversely affect National Register properties as they did in the 

last BHBF” that Balsom and Walden evaluated. Helen said that as a result of the 1996 BHBF a letter did 

come to the Bureau of Reclamation in which a decision had been made that BHBFs, those up to 60,000 cfs, 

would not adversely affect or potentially be a beneficial effect to cultural resources. That was the 

determination made the SHPO and Advisory Council in consultation with the NPS and the Bureau as a 

result of that experiment. Mike said the 1998 decision of that level needs to be revisited because they know 

a lot more about the impacts of flows. 

R: And I’ll note that that was why mitigation was conducted at those particular locations. We can continue 

this discussion later. (Fairley) 

Kurt reviewed the action requested on the agenda and asked the TWG if they were comfortable with 

GCMRC’s response to their comments. He reviewed the proposed next steps: 

• GCMRC respond to remaining comments 

• Further TWG review --> ad hoc work group(s) 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

• TWG recommend to the AMWG that the WY08 hydrograph include the option of conducting a BHBF 

subject to (a) the sediment trigger being met, and (b) finalization of BHBF Science Plan and 

acceptance by the Secretary of the Interior 

• TWG recommendation on the budget implications of implementing a BHBF Science Plan in 2008. 

Kurt asked the TWG if they were comfortable with the above process in an effort to recommend approval of 

the science plan to the AMWG. He further asked how the process of recommending the 08 hydrograph 

include a BHBF and approving a science plan would come together. 

• TWG can send a clear message to AMWG that based on the resources and what we know about BHBFs and their 

benefit to the system, we think it’s technically the right call if the triggers are met and if this review process that we 

haven’t defined yet of the science plan occurs and is accepted by the Secretary, we have the option in 08 to run a 

BHBF. (Kaplinski) 

• The policy issues need to be addressed by the AMWG or the Secretary’s Designee before the science plan can go 

final. I was disappointed with some of the responses from GCMRC just because they seem to very defensive 

rather than trying to create more of a collaborative or collegial response. Our comments have not been addressed. 

We would like to see a new rewrite on the BHBF before we move forward on the science plan. We’d like the 

Sediment AHG to provide some input into that before we move forward. (Barger) 

• If a BHBF were not approved now, is there still sufficient time for the AMWG to meet again in December and is it 

likely that if a BHBF were done in 08, would it be done in March or April? (Ostler) 

• Would GCMC be able to give some input to the AMWG in August on how you’d advocate flows should be 

managed for the remainder of this water year if we get a trigger? (Kubly) 

Ted said that last December some AMWG members questioned that even if they didn’t approve a BHBF, 

wouldn’t some knowledge be gained by simply monitoring the fate of the inputs under normal operations for 

purposes of developing the sediment model that Scott Wright had talked about and just having a better 

monitoring dataset. GCMRC acknowledged that that was the case so when they were directed by Interior 

that a BHBF wouldn’t occur in the spring of 2007, they continued monitoring the sediment inputs from the 

Paria in October and brought those results back to the AMWG at their spring meeting. And so the concept 

of pre-conditioning of a new sediment supply which comes in as a point source through the use of just 

normal MLFF operations throughout winter months seemed to be the operation that most effectively took 

that material and distributed it more evenly down throughout Marble Canyon and perhaps eastern Grand 

Canyon. Based on the data that we collected on the last enrichment event, GCMRC feels normal MLFF 

operations would probably be the best thing to do throughout the fall and winter. 

C: One of the things that Ted was just describing is a policy change so the critical reach previously for sediment 

conservation was Marble Canyon and what’s being proposed with the conditioning flows is a policy change for 

distributing sediment throughout the canyon. So when I mentioned that part of the science plan is a change and some 

of the things are policy driven, this is where those pieces really need to go to AMWG so they can address. This is an 

example of one of those policy statements that is a shift from what has been agreed upon previously to the Record of 

Decision. (Barger) 

Kurt asked the TWG if they wanted to add to the following list of concerns already noted: 

1. Establishment of a BHBF Science Plan ad hoc group to review document and work with GCMRC 

to do a revised draft 

2. 08 hydrograph include BHBF upon review approval of science plan 

3. Send the BHBF plan to the Sediment AHG for review 

4. BHBF Science Plan policy issues need to be addressed by AMWG 

5. Disappointment in responses by GCMRC before they begin another reiteration of the Science 

Plan 

6. Process to Revise Science Plan 

Matt Kaplinski suggested the BHBF Science Plan go to the Sediment AHG for a review. Since they’ll be 

working with GCMRC, GCMRC could make revisions and send to the TWG a month before the Oct. 2-3 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 23 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

meeting. During that meeting the TWG would have time to discuss and possibly approve and/or forward the 

BHBF Plan to AMWG. Kurt responded that the Sediment AHG already has three assignments and he 

questioned their ability to accomplish that review as well. He asked if the TWG wanted to establish an AHG 

to work on revising or responding to GCMRC’s response to comments and work with GCMRC to revise the 

Science Plan. Ted suggested that the newly formed DFCAHG could possibly look into what’s needed for 

establishing sediment desired future conditions. A BHBF is intended to be, at least for the time being, the 

main way of achieving that, and Ted thought the DFCAHG could encompass that as part of their work as 

well. John reminded people that there were a lot of questions raised that go beyond the purview of the 

Sediment AHG - a lot of biological and cultural issues. Dennis concurred with Kurt that he felt the DFCAHG 

may be getting tasked with too many assignments. As temporary chair of the DFCAHG, Ken said he didn’t 

think the group could address any of the policy issues and still meet their requirements for producing a 

review by the end of the year. Kurt advised Ken that the group would only be addressing the technical 

aspects of the science plan with a BHBF and that the AMWG would deal with the policy issues. 

Kurt questioned that if the BHBF Science Plan went to the Sediment AHG as one of the options discussed 

earlier today, would they have enough time to deal with that plus the other sediment plans and modeling 

assignments. Since many of the same people who are on the Sediment AHG are also on the DFCAHG, 

there was some thought that the assignments could be done in tandem. Kurt said it would be better to send 

it to a group that has more diverse expertise that could comment holistically on the plan rather than an ad 

hoc that is focused on one resource. Kurt asked how many people were in favor of sending the BHBF 

Science Plan to the DFCAHG. The response was 13 in favor and one opposed. Dennis reminded the 

TWG that come October, many of the cooperating agencies and Reclamation personnel will be working on 

the LTEP EIS so they won’t have much involvement in the DFCAHG or the Sediment AHG. 

ACTION ITEM: The DFCAHG was tasked with reviewing the BHBF Science Plan and providing comments 

to the TWG prior to the October meeting. They are to focus only on the technical issues and leave the policy 

issues to AMWG. 

FY08 Budget. Dennis passed out copies of the Budget Ad Hoc Group Report (Attachment 12a). One of 

the things the group has struggled with the past two years is having less than its full membership at voting 

time to make a recommendation to the TWG. The group only reached consensus on one of four proposals 

for additions to the FY08 budget. He asked the sponsors of those projects to make individual presentations 

and how their projects should be funded. 

Project D.4 Glen Canyon and Grand Canyon Treatment Plan Implementation: Mike Berry said 

approximately $600,000 has been spent in developing treatment plans for Glen and Grand Canyon over the 

past several years and now it’s time to do something to satisfy Reclamation’s Section 106 responsibilities 

under the Programmatic Agreement. The treatment initially had a placeholder in the budget for $300,000 

but that is now $500,000. Mike said the increase is due to him assuming that a budget would have to be in 

a place before Jonathan could finish his GRCA treatment plan so the amount he estimated was too low. 

Following the direction of the cooperative agreement, Jonathan generated a long-term budget for the work. 

His initial estimate was $500K over a 10-year period and the estimate was that if he went with the lower 

number ($300K), it would probably go for as many as 20 years. In adjusting for the CPI rate increase over a 

20-year period, they arrived at the $500K. Mike said there were some objections to Jonathan doing the 

estimate because he might be competing for implementation so Mike did it as the contracting representative 

on the project. Mike feels the $500K is a realistic amount for getting the work done in a reasonable amount 

of time. 

Project D.5 Grand Canyon National Park Service Cost-Share Proposal. Mike said this budget item is tied to 

the cost sharing project sponsored by himself and Lisa Leap. They supported the Park Service for a 

combined treatment plan and monitoring protocol with GCMRC last year for $137,500 and this year it is for 

$142,000. In exchange for that, they would get 1520 hours toward the Reclamation treatment plan as 

Park Service labor, 1360 hours toward GCMRC monitoring protocol development, $86,000 and 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 24 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

related monitoring activities, $5,000 toward completion of a historic preservation plan. In addition to 

that, they’re spending $261,180 per year on treatment for ten sites in Grand Canyon that were once 

part of Reclamation’s 106 responsibility. The funding request of $142,000 still includes GCMRC’s budget 

line item. GCMRC initially had $69,000 but Mike thought it had gone to $70,000 to support Helen’s work on 

protocol development. This issue was discussed at the CRAHG and Mike said he has no objections if 

GCMRC wants to administer the Park Service portion, but he would continue to administer the requested 

amount for the treatment plan support. 

Mike said $75,000 was allocated for treatment plan consultation in FY07. The Park Service volunteered to 

actually run the consultation trip and provide the funding for that as well as initial funding support in 

organizing the consultation. That meant that he could had to obligate the $75,000 or it would go into the 

Experiment Flow Fund. He opted to write a modification to the existing Park Service contract and added the 

$75K to it. With GCMRC’s contribution, to the Park Service, they can fund the program in whole and begin 

work on the treatment plan. One of the main benefits to the treatment plan is a reduction in what they want 

to outsource. Given this is the first year, Mike thinks they could do the work for the $300,000 which is 

already in the budget. 

Another issue that came up at the CRAHG and BAHG meetings was that some of the stakeholders are 

concerned about what is being excavated in the treatment plan. Mike said he is operating under the 

National Historic Preservation Act, Section 106, requirements. They negotiated an APE (area of potential 

effect) 161 sites with the SHPO as well as with the Park Service. It was a compromise after ten years of 

people arguing over what the APE really was so the treatment plan never got started. They agreed upon 

this even though some of the sites are fairly high and dry and will not be directly impacted but they are sites 

which were actively eroding according to the Park Service’s monitoring plan. That’s the NHPA definition of 

what the real task is. However, some stakeholders won’t support because some of the sites to be treated 

are not directly affected by dam operations. To counter that argument, Mike said in FY08 he proposes doing 

treatment and excavation on sites that are well within the area of direct dam effects and are unequivocably 

related to dam operations beginning with the site in Glen Canyon that according to the project 

geomorphologist will be destroyed by the next BHBF. 

 

Q: I don’t see a $70,000 line in the budget table. (Kaplinski) 

A: The remaining money is within the cultural R&D fund, goal 11. (Fairley) 

Q: I know there were some unobligated funds that might have been able to be carried over. (Barger) 

A:. We had performance issues with the Navajo Nation Archeological Department so I could not obligate the second 

$120,000. If I don’t obligate power revenues, they go into the Experimental Flow Fund. (Berry) 

Q: The original proposal was for $300K and then there was a request by the CRAHG to increase that to $500K so we 

still have a $200K difference. (Kubly) 

A: No, only $100K because of the Park Service deal. (Berry) 

Project Title and ID: BIO 1.R4.8: Impacts of Various Flow Regimes on the Aquatic Food Base. Mary Barger 

said that when GCMRC proposed the foodbase program, Western had recommended some modifications 

in order to analyze the effects of fluctuating flows on drift. They offered some modifications to GCMRC and 

it just didn’t work out. Western started working with Argonne National Labs and Ted Kennedy at GCMRC to 

add some changes to their foodbase monitoring program because right now their foodbase monitoring does 

monthly monitoring and Western felt it needed to be focused on more fluctuations or more steady to see 

what the differences were. They worked with Ted Kennedy on that and came up with a proposal. She 

distributed a handout (Attachment 12b). 

Mary explained that originally Western proposed three locations to collect the data: at Diamond, the LCR, 

and Glen Canyon. In talking with the BAHG and others, they agreed to reduce that effort to two sites so that 

a river trip wouldn’t be required thereby reducing the amount significantly. As such, they came up with a 

budget requirement of $72,700 to do that work. If the proposal goes through, Western will work with 

GCMRC making modifications and proceed with the work. A foodbase PEP is going to be done in a couple 

of years but Western would really like to have some of that work done ahead of time so that it will be more 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 25 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

useful for future monitoring. In looking at the bottom line in GCMRC’s budget, Mary said there is 

$79,000 on the table (line 176) and she is suggesting the $72,700 be taken from that amount. 

Q: There is a project that’s BIO1R308, Diet Drift and Predation Data Analysis that has in it research information need. 

How is the value of availability of drift as a food source for HBC changed with the implementation with the Record of 

Decision? I’m just trying to get at how much overlap there is between what you’re requesting to do and what’s being 

done on this ongoing project. (Kubly) 

A: The project you’re describing was for FY07 only. It was to bring together the stomach data. When many of the fish 

were moved as part of the mechanical removal project, stomachs were taken for diet analysis. Most of the data had 

been entered but not analyzed so we had a one-year only project to get that work done. The report isn’t going to be 

available until the spring of 08 but there is no 08 budget for that. (Andersen) 

Q: It says in here diet and drifting organic matter were both sampled. Are they not being analyzed? (Kubly) 

A: Again, that was in FY07 so that work is underway now. (Andersen) 

C: The data was collected in 2002 and 2003 so as far as I understand it, this is an analysis of data collected in those 

two years. (Capron) 

Q: Yes, but we’re going to have similar flows in the next year so is the drift expected to be comparable? (Kubly) 

A: If the flows are the same, that’s pretty likely. It’s two very different techniques. The project you’re describing is 

looking at stomach contents and this is more sampling of the drift. (Andersen) 

C: They’re complementary. The new project is primary productivity, algae production and then secondary drift but the 

other project that we were talking about, R3, is looking at what eventually ends up in the stomachs of the fish so 

they’re complementary but R3 isn’t going to be continued as far as the sampling goes. (Capron) 

R: That’s right. And I think there were drift samples taken as part of that too. (Andersne) 

C: There were drift samples plus stomach samples so it was going to compare what turns up in stomachs versus 

what’s available for those 02 and 03. (Andersen) 

Q: Comparing 2002 and 2003 to now, how can we expect them to be the same? We’ve had several things happen in 

that time frame. We had the flood in 2004 and we know that even though GCMRC didn’t study it, we’re pretty sure 

there were tremendous aquatic foodbase consequences from that flood. Things have changed tremendously since 

then. (Steffen) 

A: We’re not talking about making comparisons back to 02 and 03. This R3 was looking at just opportunistically looking 

at the data that they collected back then and trying to make some conclusions from those couple of years. What we’re 

talking about in this new proposal is basically taking the foodbase proposal that GCMRC has put forward and adding 

an additional capability to that foodbase work that’s going to happen in the future to look at smaller time scales so 

they’ll be sampling monthly. We basically want them to around that same monthly sample do a 24-hour sampling of 

what’s going on to look at impacts of flow regimes on the foodbase, algae production, and drift. So if you don’t put 

forward our proposal, what you’re going to end up with is monthly sampling views of foodbase and drift. If you vote and 

implement this one, you’ll also get in addition to that a view of a smaller time frame and potentially the impacts of flow 

regimes on that drift. (Capron) 

Q: Question about whether or not these proposals being put forth in here have any sort of external review going on 

with them. Most proposals that come into the program have a fairly extensive review process, external peer review. 

(Kaplinski) 

A: There were external contributions to WAPA’s proposal in the sense that Argonne National Labs drafted this so there 

has been an outside party contributing to it but the final proposal hasn’t been sent out to a university professor or 

USGS. (Andersen) 

C: Bill Leibfried participated and so did Mark Steffen and Bill Persons so we did have a group of people that took a 

look at this. (Barger) 

Q: So you had an external group actually review this? (Kaplinski) 

A: They helped put it together. (Barger) 

C: Right, so it hasn’t been reviewed. (Kaplinski) 

Q: The proposal is to work within ROD flows, MLFF flows to make these comparisons, is that right? (Henderson) 

A: Yes. (Capron) 

A: The main problem is that if you’re just sampling monthly, you’re just going to get a generalized view throughout the 

year of what primary production and drift might be in the system that you can sample on a shorter time frame, you can 

get an idea of what these other factors, how they’re playing into drift and production in the system. And so our question 

is what is the impact of changing flows on drift. And so we’re just adding this capability of looking at a shorter time 

frame period to the project that’s already going to be going forward. (Capron) 

Q: Probably just want to look at the proposed time frame. This is supposed to start in 08 and end in 2010 so if different 

flows were implemented, it would only be for that final year is what I’m expecting. I thought it was a 2-year study, yes, 

so the October 1, 2007 – Sept 30, 2010, is that correct? (Andersen) 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

A: Yes, to match with the last two years of your foodbase monitoring. (Barger) 

Q: Fiscal year 09? (Andersen) 

Q: So is that a 3-year commitment of funds? (Yeatts) 

C: We talked at this at the BAHG and thought it was two years. (Andersen) 

Q: Well, your foodbase says Sept. 2005 to Sept 2009. Has that been going on since 05? (Capron) 

A: Yes. (Andersen) 

Q: As proposed here? (Capron) 

A: Yes (Andersen) 

Q: And is going to end in 09? (Capron) 

A: Yes, I expect that’s through Sept 30, 2009. (Andersen) 

C: So our expectation will be that this would be hand in hand with your foodbase program so it would end in 09. It 

wouldn’t be independent, it would be dependent. (Capron) 

Q: So this will end on the first day of FY 2010? (Andersen) 

A: Right. (Barger) 

Q: So I think that addresses your question, Norm, because it limits the amount of flow variability is my perception. 

Would you agree? (Andersen) 

C: The reason I’m doing this is because our proposal is not done. It’s to work with GCMRC subsequent to approval by 

the TWG to move it forward and if GCMRC identifies that some new experiments related to this would be necessary in 

order to complete the understanding of aquatic foodbase and its relationship to drift, then that would be proposed. So I 

don’t disagree with Shane that it sits on top of flows that are already occurring under either the MLFF for the LTEP but 

if there are many experiments that would be required, that is by many experiments changes in flows that would be 

required to complete the study, then those would be identified by GCMRC and they would then proposed. (Palmer) 

C: Our understanding is to do this under ROD. (Andersen) 

C: You know one day of flat flows is under ROD so what I’m saying that so many experiments are allowed within the 

ROD and those haven’t been identified because we agreed with you guys that if the TWG determined this was a 

priority item and moved it forward, that it would be revised by GCMRC in order to fill its purpose. (Palmer) 

R: We talked with Ted about that and so we were trying to find a good match and so we agreed to talk Ted after it was 

approved to make sure it was more effective but there would be nothing out of ROD. (Barger) 

Dennis: Maybe in the interest of time, we can move onto the last project. 

Project and ID: B.x. Facilitation Contract. Larry said the concept for having a facilitator was to greatly help 

the process. Even those there is a TWG Chair, having someone to assume the responsibilities for 

coordinating the meeting seemed like a very good idea and one that Bill Persons had worked out. Bill is of 

the mindset that the TWG needs to get the meetings cleaned up and trimmed down. A professional 

facilitator might help make them more efficient. 

Dennis said the associated funding proposal is to move the funding of the TWG chair to the 

facilitator at an equivalent amount which is $23,521 in FY08 and continue to have a TWG chair but 

have an uncompensated TWG chair. The only thing that I would add to this is hearing the desire to 

have a facilitator engaged in ad hoc group deliberations, that this is likely not a sufficient amount of 

funding if the TWG wants both. Dennis said the TWG chair’s salary is based on the expectation of six 

meetings a year. He added that Mike Berry’s experience in getting a facilitator for a 2-day CRAHG meeting 

was about $5,000. Dennis also said that in reading the AMWG Charter, the AMWG may not agree with the 

TWG doing this so will need to be brought up to them at their next meeting. 

OPEN DISCUSSION ON BUDGET ISSUES

Kurt said the group would have about 45 minutes to discuss the budget issues and then 30 minutes to 

develop a motion. 

Request for $10K to Chute Falls, Line Item 61. Glen Knowles said that Pam Sponholtz asked him if he 

could get an additional $10K to complete the monitoring work but also move about 500 fish upstream. The 

money would be for helicopter support primarily and logistics. He proposed taking $10K from the 

Experimental Flow Fund so they’d be adding $10K to $79,652 to Line 61. 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 27 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

Shortfall for Sediment Goal 8. Matt Kaplinski pointed out that this project is short $99,323. Ted explained 

that this is a different matter in that this is one of the proposed elements of that proposed recommendation 

for long term monitoring of sediment. In FY07 the budget for Goal 8 was zero. There were questions raised 

last year and why nothing was going into Goal 8 and GCMRC said they were still in the process of going 

through peer review and trying to finalize a recommendation on long-term monitoring protocols. As they 

developed the FY08 work plan, Ted suggested putting in $200K into that line item as nothing more than a 

placeholder. With the budget process as tight as it was, they ended up zeroing it out initially because they 

couldn’t specify exactly what the need was and then later John, in balancing the books, identified there was 

at least $95,000 that could be put in there simply as a placeholder. The disparity here is that they didn’t 

have a placeholder of $200K because they could only find $95K. Ted said this is a long-term monitoring 

activity that isn’t currently sufficiently funded to proceed ahead with long-term monitoring in 08 and they 

need about another $100,000 to do it effectively. It’s a 30-mile reach that needs to be re-mapped. Dr. 

Topping added that this is one aspect that the sed tran project which was identified as providing the ability 

see what’s really happening with the long-term sediment budget. This would be the first installment of that. 

This is also the item they would recommend deferring during years of BHBFs. It would cost $200,000 to do 

it and if a BHBF were done, then the money could be rolled into something else or the experimental fund. 

John said his dilemma on this issue is that they’re presenting a proposal while the TWG has yet to adopt a 

plan. He concurs with Ted that it doesn’t make sense to fund it partially. It should either be fully funded at 

$195K or probably defer it until FY09 after the TWG has had a chance to look at it. 

John said that there were a couple of items that were in the MRP that they didn’t have funding to implement. 

One was the hiring of an ecosystem scientist to help better integrate a lot of the work that we’re 

doing and also taking the conceptual ecosystem model that was developed back in 2000 and 

basically updating that with a lot of new information that’s been collected and bring that into the 

program. He said the BAHG did not address those issues. 

Amy said she would like to see some footnotes added to the Bureau of Reclamation’s portion of the 

budget: 1) Travel reimbursement cost savings by not having her or her alternate have to travel to 

AMWG/TWG meetings; 2) Cost savings for holding the AMWG/TWG meetings at BIA; 3) Under the tribal 

consultation, the sole source contracts. Since five Interior agencies (USGS, Park Service, Reclamation, 

FWS, and BIA) are contributing dollars for the tribal consultation on a yearly basis, she feels the other DOI 

agencies should have the opportunity to review/receive copies of those contracts. She also addressed cost 

savings and where money could be utilized if the AMP Effectiveness Workshop weren’t going to be held 

and asked John how much the science symposiums typically cost. 

John responded that the AMP Effectiveness Workshop is currently on hold. As for the science 

symposium, there has been some discussion about charging a modest registration fee to offset some of the 

costs. Normally the symposium runs about $25,000. Ted said the last symposium cost over $50K because 

of a lot of logistics costs and travel costs for speakers. 

John said he has also been talking to people in the Upper Colorado River Recovery Program, the San Juan 

Program, and the Lower Colorado Program about maybe trying to do a joint symposium with GCMRC in 

2008 where they would all contribute funds and do some kind of cross-basin exchange of information. This 

is something that would be done on a periodic basis. He asked if that was worth pursuing. 

Norm asked J.D. to explain the totals in columns H and G on page 7 because he didn’t feel the totals were 

correct. J.D. said that lines G thru 0 are a projection of what they say GCMRC is going to need. Both J.D. 

and Helen explained the totals to Norm. 

Budget Check. Kurt said it looks like there are at least six additional projects worth consideration for the 

FY08 workplan and budget and there isn’t sufficient funding to deal with all those additional projects plus the 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 28 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

08 workplan and budget that’s been proposed by the Bureau and GCMRC. He asked if there were any 

additional questions before asking the TWG to consider making a recommendation for the AMWG. 

• Glen asked about the concept of a hydrograph and the need to fund a BHBF in FY08. 

• There is $46,800 now available since the AMP Effectiveness Workshop is postponed. 

• Mary Barger said as the chair of the CRAHG, there was series of questions they wanted Helen to 

answer in order to make a recommendation to the BAHG. Mary said she didn’t bring the questions with 

her so Helen couldn’t answer their concerns. 

• Mary also said that for future budgets that the $1 million (line 157, “estimated cost share expense 

required by USGS policy), does reduce the burden rate that is shown project by project and Western 

had proposed that they should not do that and separate out the $1 million, rather they should show 

full burden for every project and then subtract the $1 million at the bottom as a bottom line so 

that everyone can see the full cost of every project rather than having it reduced. Western will continue 

to request GCMRC do that in their portion of the budget for future years. 

Budget Summary. Dennis summarized the following proposed projects: 

• The facilitation proposal doesn’t require additional funding. It may not fully fund a facilitator but we 

could in the first year, as an experiment, use what we have. I propose that we pick that up and move 

it over here and lock it in. 

• The treatment plan funding. Mike has indicated he’d be willing to work with the $300,000 but that 

allows us to pick that one up and put it over here, right? It’s not an issue. We’re not asking for more 

than $300,000. 

• The Park Service funding, as we indicated, is taken care of by his discovery of some funds that he 

can move in conjunction with what’s already in the budget so pick that up and move it over here. 

• That leaves us with funding a sediment project that Ted has now identified what he believes his real 

costs are. 

• Funding the drift project. You don’t have enough money to do both. I think I hear GCMRC saying it’s 

not a partial project, right? It doesn’t work to fund it in part, if that’s correct. So what I’m trying to do 

is narrow this down to now we’re down to the point where we have two different projects that are 

competing for funding here and let’s decide what we’re going to do and try to move on. 

Based on the above, Dennis said the competition for dollars is between the drift and the sediment projects, 

and $10K for Chute Falls. As such, there is only $79,022 available. 

John asked Mary if it wasn’t the recommendation of the BAHG that the foodbase study, if elected to do, 

would be funded out of the Experimental Flow Fund. Mary said that she reserved the right to switch where 

to take those funds but at the time of the BAHG, she opted for taking from the Experimental Flow Fund. 

However, she also told the BAHG she would look for another more reasonable option which was to take 

from the FY08 carryover vs. the Experimental Flow Fund 

John said he didn’t think it was such a bad idea is that what she is proposing falls under experimental 

planning, and it made sense to him fund the project out of that Experimental Flow Fund. He said if it was 

going to be done, then it should be done right and said they should probably drop the Diamond site. He 

thought the biggest effects would be seen at Lees Ferry where you have the highest amount of drift and he 

thought it would be nice to know how that translates downstream to where HBC are. 

Treatment Plan Mike Yeatts said he would 1) push for the entire amount of funding to go to the treatment 

plan and certainly one option is to take the $100,000 out of the Experimental Flow Fund because it was his 

understanding that there was $100K that was directly related to treatment from the sites up in Glen Canyon, 

but because it couldn’t be allocated, by default it ended up in the Experimental Flow Fund so that was 

money that was directed towards that in past years. 2) Three of the five tribes have completed what was 

necessary to get essentially the 07 funding for that. Two tribes will not complete the work so $50K that won’t 

be allocated in 07 but carryover and by default goes into the Experimental Flow Fund. The remaining three 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 29 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

tribes could potentially get the $25,000. Mike Berry added that he has a drop dead date of July 13 to submit 

any simplified acquisition proposals. He thought that perhaps Hualapai and Hopi may get their paperwork in 

on time, but that still leaves $75K that they’re going to lose unless it gets obligated. 

Kurt tried to clarify where the budget issues were: 

• There’s a recommendation to have the treatment plan remain at $300K and make it a part of the 

budget. 

• There’s another recommendation to see the additional $100K that would raise it to $500K and have 

that money come from the Experimental Flow Fund because that money was originally slated for 

data recovery but it was moved over into the Experimental Flow Fund and it wasn’t expended. 

• There’s a motion to fund the facilitator proposal and move that over into the budget. 

• The foodbase comes from Line 176 as an additional for $79,000. 

Facilitator Comment: Cliff said he didn’t like the idea of funding a facilitator at the expense of not funding the 

TWG chair. He recalled going back several years when the program agonized long and hard on funding a 

TWG chair. He feels the money for a facilitator can come from another source. 

Foodbase. Mary said she just spoke with Matthew and suggested GCMRC support the full amount that 

goes back up to $132K for the foodbase so that would go from $72,700 to $132K because he agrees with 

John that they’re getting the drift information at the LCR and it might be important understanding the needs 

for the HBC. John said he was pretty confident that the AMP Effectiveness Workshop wasn’t going to be 

held in FY07 so that frees up $46K and that it probably won’t be done in FY08 so that would free up another 

$29K. 

TIME CHECK: Kurt said the group had 15 minutes to make a decision on the projects and make a 

recommendation to the AMWG and BHBF in FY08. He asked for “soft” votes on the following: 

1. Facilitator for TWG, $23,521 (funds would come from TWG chair funding) to keep in FY08 budget

 Voting Results: Yes = 6 No = 9 Abstaining = 2 

 

2. Project Title and ID: D.4. Glen Canyon and Grand Canyon Treatment Plan Implementation and

Project and ID: D.5. Grand Canyon National Park Service Cost-Share Proposal 

Mike Berry would like to see the funds increased to $500K for D4, with $100K coming from the 

Experimental Flow Fund. Dennis said the so-called funds in the Experimental Flow Fund are really 

remaining in the Basin Fund. They don’t come out of the Basin Fund until they’re obligated. To some of 

the stakeholders, that’s important and he wanted to make that clarification. Mike said it’s important to get 

the $500K in a relatively short time period otherwise you’re going to get stung on CPI on the other end. 

Voting Results: Yes = 2 No = 12 Abstaining = 2 

Results: stays at $300K 

3. Foodbase study. Mary Barger moved the money ($72,700) come from line 176 ($79,022), leaving 

 $6,322 remaining. 

 Voting Results: Yes = 11 No = 3 Abstaining = 2 

 Comment: The amount to be funded was $72,700 

4. Add $10K for Chute Falls (line 61). This was withdrawn as GCMRC will find the money if needed. 

5. Sediment Shortfall of $99,323 (line 95). Actual need for this project is $194,323. There is $95,000 

already in the budget as a placeholder, so GCMRC still needs $99,323. The group considered two options: 

Option A: Shortfall, that the sediment study doesn’t get fully funded.

 $ 95,000 = already in the budget as a placeholder 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 30 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

 $ 6,322 = difference between the $79K and the $72,700 for foodbase 

 $ 46,800 = AMP Effectiveness Workshop (FY07) 

 $ 29,000 = AMP Effectiveness Workshop (FY08) 

 $177,122 = short by 15K 

 194,323 

-177,122

 17,201 shortfall 

Option B: Deal with shortfall by taking funds out of the Experimental Flow Fund. 

Budget Motion: The TWG moves to remand both budget options to the AMWG. 

Motion seconded. 

Voting Results: Yes = 16 No = 0 Abstaining = 1 

Amy offered to make a motion but Mary said as the foodbase proponent, she proposed taking out of the 

sediment money and the other Experimental Flow Fund. 

Kurt said members were beginning to leave and there wouldn’t be a quorum to pass a motion. 

Dennis said there are two possible paths that have been identified. He advocated to remand both options to 

the AMWG and leave the decision up to them. 

Adjourned: 3:20 p.m. 
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FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Conference Call 

July 23, 2007 

Conducting: Kurt Dongoske, Chairperson Convened: 9:42 a.m. 

Committee Members Present: 

Jonathan Damp, Pueblo of Zuni 

William Davis, CREDA 

Jay Groseclose, NM Interstate Stream Comm. 

Norm Henderson, NPS 

Amy Heuslein, BIA 

Robert King, UDWR 

Glen Knowles, USFWS 

Dennis Kubly, USBR 

Phillip S. Lehr, Colo. River Comm./NV 

Ken McMullen, NPS/GCNP 

John O’Brien, Grand Canyon River Guides 

Don Ostler, UCRC 

Bill Persons, AGFD 

D. Randolph Seaholm, CWCB 

John Shields, WY State Engr. Office 

Mark Steffen, Federation of Fly Fishers 

Larry Stevens, Grand Canyon Wildlands Council 

Bill Werner, ADWR 

Michael Yeatts, The Hopi Tribe

Committee Members Absent: 

Steven Begay, Navajo Nation 

Charley Bulletts, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians 

Kerry Christensen, Hualapai Tribe 

Rick Johnson, Grand Canyon Trust 

Christopher Harris, Colo. River Board of California

Alternates Present: For: 

Shane Capron Mary Barger, WAPA 

Committee Members Absent: 

Steven Begay, Navajo Nation 

Charley Bulletts, Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians 

Kerry Christensen, Hualapai Tribe 

Rick Johnson, Grand Canyon Trust 

Christopher Harris, Colo. River Board of California

Interested Persons: 

Matthew Andersen, GCRMC/USGS 

Helen Fairley, GCRMC/USGS 

John Hamill, GCRMC/USGS 

J.D. Kite, GCMRC/USGS 

Meeting Recorder: Linda Whetton, USBR 

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Welcome and Administrative. The Chairman welcomed the TWG members, alternates, and interested 

persons. A quorum (16 members) was established. 

Kurt said at the meeting held on June 26, the final vote was taken in haste and he wanted to make sure that 

the TWG knew what they had recommended to the AMWG or if they wanted to discuss a different 

recommendation. The TWG also didn’t have time to discuss what the 08 hydrograph would look like and a 

BHBF in that hydrograph. He said some folks thought the BHBF was off the table until the Science Plan had 

been thoroughly reviewed and sent to AMWG and to Secretary with approval to implement. If the DFCAHG 

comes back with a BHBF plan in October, the AMWG will determine at their meeting in December whether 

to forward the recommendation to the Secretary. 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 32 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

Kurt recapped the following budget items discussed at the June 25-26, 2007, meeting: 

1. Facilitator for TWG, $23,521 (funds would come from TWG chair funding) to keep in FY08 budget

 Voting Results: Yes = 6 No = 9 Abstaining = 2 

 

2. Project Title and ID: D.4. Glen Canyon and Grand Canyon Treatment Plan Implementation and

Project and ID: D.5. Grand Canyon National Park Service Cost-Share Proposal 

Mike Berry would like to see the funds increased to $500K for D4, with $100K coming from the 

Experimental Flow Fund. Dennis said the so-called funds in the Experimental Flow Fund are really 

remaining in the Basin Fund. They don’t come out of the Basin Fund until they’re obligated. To some of 

the stakeholders, that’s important and he wanted to make that clarification. Mike said it’s important to get 

the $500K in a relatively short time period otherwise you’re going to get stung on CPI on the other end. 

Voting Results: Yes = 2 No = 12 Abstaining = 2 

Results: stays at $300K 

3. Foodbase study. Mary Barger moved the money ($72,700) come from line 176 ($79,022), leaving 

 $6,322 remaining. 

 Voting Results: Yes = 11 No = 3 Abstaining = 2 

 Comment: The amount to be funded was $72,700 

4. Add $10K for Chute Falls (line 61). This was withdrawn as GCMRC will find the money if needed. 

5. Sediment Shortfall of $99,323 (line 95). Actual need for this project is $194,323. There is $95,000 

already in the budget as a placeholder, so GCMRC still needs $99,323. The group considered two options: 

Option A: Shortfall, that the sediment study doesn’t get fully funded.

 $ 95,000 = already in the budget as a placeholder 

 $ 6,322 = difference between the $79K and the $72,700 for foodbase 

 $ 46,800 = AMP Effectiveness Workshop (FY07) 

 $ 29,000 = AMP Effectiveness Workshop (FY08) 

 $177,122 = short by 15K 

 194,323 

-177,122

 17,201 shortfall 

Option B: Deal with shortfall by taking funds out of the Experimental Flow Fund. 

Budget Motion: The TWG moves to remand both budget options to the AMWG. 

Motion seconded. 

Voting Results: Yes = 16 No = 0 Abstaining = 1 

Kurt answered questions from the members regarding factors leading to the above budget breakdowns. 

John said he thought GCMRC could possibly fund the sediment shortfall out of his administrative budget 

and could have some 07 carryover and it may be enough money to cover the sediment shortfall. Kurt asked 

the group if they wanted to make a motion regarding the FY08 budget and workplan acknowledging that 

GMCRC will dedicate that funding in the sediment program and not punt two options to the AMWG. He 

asked were comfortable with passing a new motion. 

Bill Davis said both options were remanded on whether funds should come out of the EFF and Option A 

was modified. He felt the group needed to figure out how to do Option B because it a policy issue. 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 33 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

Bill Persons said he wasn’t entirely comfortable withdrawing a motion made earlier. He feels that the AMWG 

needs to get a sense of deliberations the TWG went through. Don said he didn’t think the TWG took action 

because they didn’t have sufficient time to debate it. 

Shane Capron proposed the following motion: 

Motion: Move that the TWG strike the recommendation #5 from the June 25-26 Summary and not remand 

the sediment proposal to the AMWG and fund the sediment budget as described under Option A under #5 

with the shortfall being funded by carryover funds from GCMRC. 

Motion seconded by Norm. 

A roll call vote was taken: 

Motion: Move that the TWG strike the recommendation #5 from the June 25-26 Summary and not remand the 

sediment proposal to the AMWG and move to fund the sediment budget as described under Option A under 

#5 with the shortfall being funded by carryover funds from GCMRC. 

Motion seconded by Norm Henderson 

Representative Stakeholder Entity Vote 

 

Bill Persons / Scott Rogers Arizona Game and Fish Department n 

Amy Heuslein / Garry Cantley Bureau of Indian Affairs a 

Dennis Kubly / Randy Peterson Bureau of Reclamation y 

Mike Yeatts Hopi Tribe y 

Kerry Christensen Hualapai Tribe absent 

Ken McMullen / Jan Balsom National Park Service - Grand Canyon y 

Norm Henderson / Chris Kincaid National Park Service - GLNRA y 

Steven Begay Navajo Nation absent 

Jonathan Damp Pueblo of Zuni (latecomer) abent 

VACANT San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe 

Charley Bulletts / LeAnn Skrzynski Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians absent 

Glen Knowles U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service y 

Mary Barger Western Area Power Administration (DOE) y 

Rick Johnson / Nikolai Ramsey Grand Canyon Trust absent 

Larry Stevens Grand Canyon Wildlands Council (latecomer) absent 

Mark Steffen / Tim Steffen Federation of Fly Fishers y 

John O'Brien / Andre Potochnik Grand Canyon River Guides y 

Bill Werner Arizona n 

Christopher Harris California absent 

Randy Seaholm Colorado (latecomer) absent 

Phil Lehr Nevada y 

Jay Groseclose / Don Ostler New Mexico (Jay = latecomer) y 

Robert King Utah y 

John Shields / Don Ostler Wyoming y 

Bill Davis Colorado River Energy Distributors Association y 

Cliff Barrett Utah Assoc. Municipal Power Systems (latecomer) absent 

 

 Total Yes 13 

 Total No 2 

 Total Abstain 1 

 Total Voting 16 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 34 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

CRAHG Concern. Shane said there was a concern about the cultural budget (line #108). Helen got back to 

the CRAHG on Sunday night with response and questions. There hasn’t been time for a response to that 

and WAPA would like a recommendation from the CRAHG with a recommendation to the TWG before it will 

be moved to the AMWG. Kurt said the issue was done and dealt with at the TWG meeting. Shane said it 

wasn’t specified at the meeting and they want to hear something back from the CRAHG. Kurt asked if there 

were any CRAHG members on the phone call. Mike Yeatts was but said he was getting more confused. He 

got the impression they (CRAHG) were approving the budget but there are some specific questions within 

the cultural budget, more technical questions than budget questions. He wasn’t sure if there would be time 

to resolve before completing a budget. Helen said that Mary sent out a list of dozen questions in May and 

so it took awhile for her to respond but she did respond and what she got back from Mary today was a note 

that they had different questions so Helen was presented with new questions. She said that none of what 

she provided is going to change what’s in the budget. 

Addressing the process, Dennis said the CRAHG provided input to the BAHG some time ago. There were 

four projects promoted by members. He said it’s difficult to go back to what the CRAHG had in there so he 

suggested the TWG could make a recommendation and the BAHG and CRAHG could work as a team to 

resolve how the money is spent. 

Ken said the TWG had the discussion at the last meeting and the budget went through finalized so he 

doesn’t feel comfortable revisiting the discussion again. The funding was allowed and approved. Allowing 

them to work it out afterwards shouldn’t prevent the TWG from moving forward on the 08 budget. 

WY08 Hydrograph: Kurt said GCMRC is recommending continuation of MLFF for WY08 with the option for 

a conducting a BHBF test in the late winter/early spring of 2008 if approved by the Secretary of the Interior. 

The estimated cost for implementing all the studies included in the draft BHBF Science Plan is $1.4M in 

year 1 and $525K in year 2. If the TWG is serious about a BHBF, then they need to set some priorities and 

allow sufficient time to complete needed compliance and logistical requirement. Accordingly the TWG may 

want to recommend that the AMWG hold a conference call in early November and prepare draft motion 

language for the AMWG to consider in forwarding a recommendation to the Secretary of the Interior.rather 

than waiting until the next regularly scheduled meeting in December 2007 or January 2008. 

Don asked if there was $1.9 million in the Experimental Flow Fund. Dennis said the LTEP EIS will likely use 

some of that money so it may be reduced. He said it’s a hard call because the ROD will be in December 

2008. There would be a need for some of those funds. The BHBFs are likely to be a part of any alternatives. 

Kurt said he heard some concerns about the issues raised about the science plan but that those issues 

might be resolved. He asked if there were still concerns. John O’Brien said he felt the BHBF was a policy 

decision best left to the AMWG to make. Norm said it had both policy and technical issues and it should be 

sent forward to the AMWG. 

Ken proposed the following motion: 

Motion: Recommend the continuation of MLFF for another year based on a segway to a BHBF Plan if the 

sediment trigger is met and the Secretary concurs. 

The TWG continued to discuss and made several iterations to the motion. 

Concerns: 

• There’s a good possibility if the shortage is completed on time and the AOP would be in major revision 

and these changes could be incorporated into it. 

• That range in the AOP has to be in there. 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 35 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

• It’s not just sediment for a BHBF but consider other resources as well. Hope the science plan takes that 

into consideration. Not sure it’s a policy or technical issue. But has to be dealt with. 

• Need for additional NEPA. 

• Not sure we want to make any recommendation on a BHBF until we know what the LTEP is going to be. 

• Concerned about not having a Science Plan in place 

• Don’t think we should be throwing out the BHBF on policy concerns 

• Don’t think we need all the answers to recommend a science plan based on what we have. We know 

what it entails. And we certainly have the information from the November one that we can work off of. 

• Couple budget language onto the hydrograph motion 

A roll call vote was taken. 

Motion: The TWG recommends the FY08 budget and workplan in the amount of $ 9,485,056 as adopted by 

the TWG on July 23, 2007. The TWG is recommending continuation of MLFF for WY08 with further 

deliberation and a recommendation by the TWG for or against conducting a BHBF test in 2008. 

Motion seconded by Bill Werner 

Representative Stakeholder Entity Vote 

Bill Persons / Scott Rogers Arizona Game and Fish Department y 

Amy Heuslein / Garry Cantley Bureau of Indian Affairs y 

Dennis Kubly / Randy Peterson Bureau of Reclamation y 

Mike Yeatts Hopi Tribe y 

Kerry Christensen Hualapai Tribe absent 

Ken McMullen / Jan Balsom National Park Service - Grand Canyon y 

Norm Henderson / Chris Kincaid National Park Service - GLNRA y 

Steven Begay Navajo Nation absent 

Jonathan Damp Pueblo of Zuni n 

VACANT San Juan Southern Paiute Tribe 

Charley Bulletts / LeAnn Skrzynski Kaibab Band of Paiute Indians absent 

Glen Knowles U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service y 

Mary Barger/Shane Capron Western Area Power Administration (DOE) y 

Rick Johnson / Nikolai Ramsey Grand Canyon Trust absent 

Larry Stevens Grand Canyon Wildlands Council absent 

Mark Steffen / Tim Steffen Federation of Fly Fishers y 

John O'Brien / Andre Potochnik Grand Canyon River Guides y 

Bill Werner Arizona y 

Christopher Harris California absent 

Randy Seaholm Colorado y 

Phil Lehr Nevada y 

Jay Groseclose / Don Ostler New Mexico y 

Robert King Utah y 

John Shields / Don Ostler Wyoming y 

Bill Davis Colorado River Energy Distributors Association y 

Cliff Barrett Utah Associated Municipal Power Systems y 

Total Yes 18 

Total No 1 

Total Abstain 0 

Total Voting 19 

Adjourned: 4:31 p.m. 
Glen Canyon Dam Technical Work Group Page 36 

FINAL Minutes of June 25-26, 2007, Meeting 

General Key to Adaptive Management Program Acronyms 

ADWR – Arizona Dept. of Water Resources 

AF – Acre Feet 

AGFD – Arizona Game and Fish Department 

AGU – American Geophysical Union 

AIF  Agenda Information Form 

AMP – Adaptive Management Program 

AMWG – Adaptive Management Work Group 

AOP – Annual Operating Plan 

BA – Biological Assessment 

BAHG – Budget Ad Hoc Group 

BE – Biological Evaluation 

BHBF – Beach/Habitat-Building Flow 

BHMF – Beach/Habitat Maintenance Flow 

BHTF – Beach/Habitat Test Flow 

BIA – Bureau of Indian Affairs 

BO – Biological Opinion 

BOR – Bureau of Reclamation 

CAPA – Central Arizona Project Association 

GCT  Grand Canyon Trust 

CESU – Cooperative Ecosystems Studies Unit 

cfs – cubic feet per second 

CMINs  Core Monitoring Information Needs 

CRBC – Colorado River Board of California 

CRAHG - Cultural Resources Ad Hoc Group 

CRCN – Colorado River Commission of Nevada 

CRE  Colorado River Ecosystem 

CREDA – Colorado River Energy Distributors Assn. 

CRSP – Colorado River Storage Project 

CWCB – Colorado Water Conservation Board 

DBMS – Data Base Management System 

DFCAHG  Desired Future Conditions Ad Hoc Group 

DOE  Department of Energy 

DOI – Department of the Interior 

EA – Environmental Assessment 

EIS – Environmental Impact Statement 

ESA – Endangered Species Act 

FACA – Federal Advisory Committee Act 

FEIS – Final Environmental Impact Statement 

FRN – Federal Register Notice 

FWS – United States Fish & Wildlife Service 

FY – Fiscal Year (October 1 – September 30) 

GCD – Glen Canyon Dam 

GCT  Grand Canyon Trust 

GCMRC – Grand Canyon Monitoring & Research Ctr. 

GCNP – Grand Canyon National Park 

GCNRA – Glen Canyon National Recreation Area 

GCPA – Grand Canyon Protection Act 

GLCA – Glen Canyon National Recreation Area 

GRCA  Grand Canyon National Park 

GCRG  Grand Canyon River Guides 

GCWC  Grand Canyon Wildlands Council 

GUI – Graphical User Interface 

HBC – Humpback Chub (endangered native fish) 

HMF – Habitat Maintenance Flow 

HPP – Historic Preservation Plan 

IEDA  Irrigation & Electrical Districts Assoc. of Arizona 

INs – Information Needs 

IT – Information Technology 

KA  Knowledge Assessment (workshop) 

KAS – Kanab ambersnail (endangered native snail) 

LCR – Little Colorado River 

LRRMCP – Lower Colorado River Multi-Species 

Conservation Program 

LTEP – Long Term Experimental Plan 

MAF – Million Acre Feet 

MA – Management Action 

MLFF  Modified Low Fluctuating Flow 

MO – Management Objective 

MRP  Monitoring and Research Plan 

NAAO – Native American Affairs Office 

NAU – Northern Arizona University (Flagstaff, AZ) 

NEPA – National Environmental Policy Act 

NGS – National Geodetic Survey 

NHPA – National Historic Preservation Act 

NPS  National Park Service 

NRC  National Research Council 

NWS  National Weather Service 

O&M  Operations & Maintenance (USBR funding) 

PA  Programmatic Agreement 

PEP  Protocol Evaluation Panel 

POAHG  Public Outreach Ad Hoc Group 

Powerplant Capacity = 31,000 cfs 

PPT  PowerPoint (presentation) 

Reclamation  United States Bureau of Reclamation 

RBT – Rainbow Trout 

RFP  Request For Proposals 

RINs  Research Information Needs 

ROD Flows  Record of Decision Flows 

RPA  Reasonable and Prudent Alternative 

SA  Science Advisors 

Secretary  Secretary of the Interior 

SCORE  State of the Colorado River Ecosystem 

SHPO – State Historic Preservation Office(r) 

SOW - Scope of Work 

SPAHG – Strategic Plan Ad Hoc Group 

SPG Science Planning Group 

SSQs  Strategic Science Questions 

SWCA  Steven W. Carothers Associates 

TCD  Temperature Control Device 

TCP  Traditional Cultural Property 

TES  Threatened and Endangered Species 

TWG  Technical Work Group 

UCRC  Upper Colorado River Commission 

UDWR  Utah Division of Water Resources 

USBR  United States Bureau of Reclamation 

USFWS  United States Fish & Wildlife Service 

USGS  United States Geological Survey 

WAPA  Western Area Power Administration 

WY – Water Year (a calendar year) 

Q/A/C/R = Question/Answer/Comment/Response

Updated: 7/27/07