Marys River Watershed Council
Land, Air, and Water Use Committee
  MEETING

Minutes of Land, Air and Water Use Committee, May 27, 2004

Present: Ken Crouse, Jesse Ford, Curt Seeliger, Jana Seeliger, Bill Pearcy, Amy Schoener
Convened at 5:40 pm

  1. GROUNDWATER/SURFACE WATER materials and how these may/may not apply to Lakeside Development, in Philomath.
    1. Evidently, news that we would be screening a short video on conjunctive use of surface water and groundwater was just what people wanted for a Thursday night. Unfortunately, the VCR turned out to be dysfunctional, so we will circulate the materials lent by Todd Jarvis and view independently.
    2. This interest is spurred by the findings of the OSU/UofO Willamette Valley visioning project (led by Stan Gregory and David Hulse, respectively) that water is going to be limiting in the Willamette Valley with even the most conservative development scenario. How does this play out for Lakeside, the biggest business development ever in Philomath, that includes potential for various water-demanding activities (e.g., meat packing).
    3. Two action items resulted from the ensuing conversation:

                                                               i.      a poster for the Tyee event about this issue of water being a developmentally sensitive issue for the entire Valley(Amy S. is taking the lead)

                                                             ii.      possible conversations with Philomath business leaders (will be broached at the full MRWC meeting next week) about pursuing studies on groundwater/surface water situation with respect to Philomath. Amy indicated that there seems to be a group of these leaders who are interested in knowing more about local water resources. The availability of several potential funding sources to actually field such studies was noted, and MRWC’s dilemma aparently being  stonewalled by the Philomath City Council to work cooperatively on such studies was discussed. We have been trying to get a partnership in place now for many months. Regardless of the level of political interest in this issue, however, we feel that data on water resources is needed.

    1. One additional action item is for Ford to circulate a .pdf file of a relevant peer-reviewed manuscript to the group (Dole and Niemi, Future water allocation and instream values in the Willamette River Basin; A basin-wide analysis).

 

  1. GIS:
    1. The  questionnaire that Ken circulated to the membership produced 9 responses that indicated that few people have access to GIS, and GIS experience ranged from none to novice. However, there was signifiance interest in using GIS products. For this reason, Ken concluded and we concur that the best way to pursue MRWC GIS is via the development of a Web/browser interface, rather than creation and circulation of GIS files.
    2. Benton County Planning Dept has agreed to host data for MRWC and will provide assistance in getting data onto their server
    3. Ken is working on a set of guidelines for GIS data for the watershed council. It is important to note that because we are focused on endusers rather than data authors, there may be an ongoing need for relevant files to be translated into the final format. Ken is open to input on the guidelines until 15 August 2004, and will circulate a set of draft guidelines at the September meeting for comments. The plan is to finalize guidelines by the October meeting, and then proceed in creating sets of files of interest to the membership and posting them to a website.

 

  1. In response to the comments at Philomath city council meeting recently questioning whether in fact the city was actually part of the MRW, Ken created a simple coverage that placed Philomath in spatial context. Again, what to do with this coverage will be broached at the June 2 MRWC meeting. Perhaps it would be of interest to have a LAWUC member attend the next Philomath City Council meeting and put the coverage into the record, in which case we should make enough copies for all council members.

 

  1. EVANITE: There has been a proposal to decrease water quality monitoring at the Evanite facility (due to the shutdown of some of the units). There is a public comment period. Curt will follow up on this issue in time to file comments, if needed, which requires as a first step getting the documents in question to review. The second step, if response seems warranted, is to discuss (via email) with committee members, and probably also with the Water Quality Committee.

 

Adjourned ca. 7 pm.

 

Respectfully submitted,

 

Jesse Ford