Hydro Leader November/December 2020

Leader ydro H VOLUME 1 ISSUE 3

november/December 2020

Leslie James of CREDA: Advocating for Hydroelectric Power Customers in the Colorado Basin

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Leslie James of CREDA: Advocating for Hydroelectric Power Customers in the Colorado Basin

Contents

November/December 2020 Volume 1, Issue 3 5 M anaging the Mighty Colorado

By Kris Polly

22 R eclamation’s History in the Colorado Basin

26 R eclamation’s Modeling and Research in the 6 Leslie

James of CREDA: Colorado Basin Advocating for Hydroelectric Power Customers in 30 How the Hydroelectric the Colorado Basin Design Center Supports the U.S. Army Corps 12 Commissioner

Burman: of Engineers’ Crucial The History of Collaboration Hydropower Services in the Colorado Basin 16 D r. Tim Petty on the New Water Management Executive Order

34 H ow Worthington’s Barrier Systems Can Mitigate Fire Debris Issues

20 T erry Fulp: Three Decades of Public Service in Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Region

Do you have a story idea for an upcoming issue? Contact our editor-in-chief, Kris Polly, at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

4 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Hydro Leader is published 10 times a year with combined issues for July/August and November/December by

an American company established in 2009.

STAFF: Kris Polly, Editor-in-Chief Joshua Dill, Managing Editor Tyler Young, Writer Stephanie Biddle, Graphic Designer Eliza Moreno, Web Designer Caroline Polly, Production Assistant and Social Media Coordinator SUBMISSIONS: Hydro Leader welcomes manuscript, photography, and art submissions. However, the right to edit or deny publishing submissions is reserved. Submissions are returned only upon request. For more information, please contact our office at (202) 698-0690 or hydro.leader@waterstrategies.com.

ADVERTISING: Hydro Leader accepts half-page and full-page ads. For more information on rates and placement, please contact Kris Polly at (703) 517-3962 or hydro.leader@waterstrategies.com.

CIRCULATION: Hydro Leader is distributed to all hydroelectric facility owners in the United States, to hydrorelated businesses, and to every member of Congress and governor’s office. For address corrections or additions, or if you would prefer to receive Hydro Leader in electronic form, please contact our managing editor, Joshua Dill, at joshua.dill@waterstrategies.com.

Copyright © 2019 Water Strategies LLC. Hydro Leader relies on the excellent contributions of a variety of natural resources professionals who provide content for the magazine. However, the views and opinions expressed by these contributors are solely those of the original contributor and do not necessarily represent or reflect the policies or positions of Hydro Leader magazine, its editors, or Water Strategies LLC. The acceptance and use of advertisements in Hydro Leader do not constitute a representation or warranty by Water Strategies LLC or Hydro Leader magazine regarding the products, services, claims, or companies advertised.

hydroleadermagazine.com hydro_leadr

COVER PHOTO:

Glen Canyon Dam. Photo courtesy of Jeff Brunton.

Inset photo: Leslie James, Executive Director, Colorado River Energy Distributors Association.

Photo courtesy of Leslie James.

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PHOTO COURTESY OF LESLIE JAMES.

Coming soon in Hydro Leader January: Brenna Vaughn, National Hydroelectric Association

Hydro Leader

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Managing the Mighty Colorado

By Kris Polly

T

he Colorado River is the lifeblood of the Southwest, providing irrigation and drinking water to millions of people and driving mighty hydroelectric installations that provide power to major cities and communities. Many entities are involved in the proper management and use of this invaluable resource, including the Bureau of Reclamation, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, other federal agencies, states and municipalities, trade groups, and others.

In our cover story, we speak with Leslie James, who has been the executive director of the Colorado River Energy Distributors Association (CREDA) for more than 20 years.

Ms. James tells Hydro Leader about CREDA’s advocacy on the federal level for the firm power customers of the hydroelectric facilities of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado River Storage Project.

Next, we speak with Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman, under whose leadership the agency has taken important steps in the Colorado basin, particularly the 2019 signing of the Drought Contingency Plan (DCP), an ambitious agreement designed to reduce risk on the Colorado River and sustain the river system into the future.

We also speak with U.S. Department of the Interior Assistant Secretary for Water and Science Tim Petty about the October 2020 Executive Order (EO) on Modernizing America’s Water Resource Management and Water Infrastructure and its formalization of a water subcabinet.

Dr. Terry Fulp, the retiring director of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Region, tells Hydro Leader about his

work over more than three decades in public service, and Reclamation historian Dr. Andrew Gahan tells us about the last century and more of Reclamation’s activities on the Colorado. We also speak with Carly Jerla, an operations research analyst for the Lower Colorado Region who is stationed at the University of Colorado’s Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems, where she contributes to research, modeling, and forecasting activities.

John Etzel, the deputy director of the Army Corps’ Hydroelectric Design Center, tells us about the center’s role in supporting the Army Corps’ biggest-in-the-nation hydropower fleet.

Finally, Paul Meeks of Worthington Products tells us how his company’s barrier systems are keeping major dams safe from wildfire debris after the devastating 2020 fire season.

With proper management and care, the Colorado River will continue to provide critical clean energy supplies for decades to come. We salute and thank the professionals who work every day to make this possible. H Kris Polly is the editor-in-chief of Hydro Leader magazine and the president and CEO of Water Strategies LLC, a government relations firm he began in February 2009 for the purpose of representing and guiding water, power, and agricultural entities in their dealings with Congress, the Bureau of Reclamation, and other federal government agencies. He may be contacted at kris.polly@waterstrategies.com.

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Leslie James of CREDA: Advocating for Hydroelectric Power Customers in the Colorado Basin

The power plant at Glen Canyon Dam.

T

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

6 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Leslie James: I was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona, and still live there. I am a fourth-generation Arizonan on both sides of my family. I went to college at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and graduated with a dual major in political science and paralegal studies.. My first job out of college was working as a file clerk for a law firm.

In 1978, I started working for the Salt River Project (SRP) as a risk analyst. I had great opportunities there. I worked on the power side and in the contracts department; I didn’t have much of an opportunity to work on the water side. I managed the wholesale markets and contracts department at SRP until I left in 1998. During my tenure at SRP, I had the opportunity to represent SRP on the CREDA board of directors and served as CREDA board president from 1995 to 1996, so I got to know the organization while I was hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

he Colorado River Energy Distributors Association (CREDA) is a trade association that represents firm power customers of the hydroelectric facilities of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Colorado River Storage Project (CRSP). CREDA aims to protect and enhance the resources of the CRSP while also advocating for affordable and transparent power rates. Its efforts are carried out primarily at the federal level, where it advocates for legislation and provides input on regulatory matters. Leslie James has been executive director of CREDA for more than 20 years. In this interview, she tells Hydro Leader about the association’s work and current top issues.

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Navajo Tribal Utility Authority power customers.

still at SRP. I have held the position of executive director of CREDA since 1998.

Hydro Leader: What are your responsibilities as executive director of CREDA? Leslie James: I am CREDA’s only full-time paid staff member. My job is to manage all the organization’s business, federal affairs, and environmental issues and to represent the board in its mission of protecting and enhancing the resources of the CRSP.

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE NTUA AND CREDA.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about CREDA as an organization.

Leslie James: CREDA was established in 1978 by a group of CRSP firm power customers. At that time, the CRSP’s costs were skyrocketing. There was a lot of transmission construction being done as CRSP units came online. Glen Canyon Dam in Arizona came online in 1963.

Other CRSP units include Flaming Gorge Dam in Utah and the Aspinall Unit, which comprises the Blue Mesa, Morrow Point, and Crystal generators in Colorado.

The power generated by Reclamation is transmitted by the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) to its wholesale customers. hydroleadermagazine.com

Each of CREDA’s members is a nonprofit entity that is a firm electric service customer of WAPA. That general description covers quite a range of entities, including tribal utilities, state agencies, municipalities, cities, towns, and co‑ops. The one requirement to be a member of CREDA and to have a board seat is to have a CRSP contract with WAPA. In my role as executive director, I work with a board with 24 voting members that meets every other month.

There is also an executive committee of 6 members. My responsibility is to represent the CREDA membership in my work with WAPA and Reclamation, with the objective of keeping rates as low as possible and keeping CRSP resources available. I work with those agencies on rate case issues; environmental issues; operational issues; records of decision related to Glen Canyon Dam, Flaming Gorge, and the Aspinall Unit; and federal legislative initiatives that may affect the resources of the CRSP. Internal to CREDA, I am also responsible for developing an annual budget that is then approved by the board.

Hydro Leader: What is the history of CREDA? Leslie James: CREDA was started back in 1978 by a handful of CRSP customers who noticed that their CRSP firm electric service rates were continually rising. That rise November/December 2020 | HYDRO LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT case, the process started well over a year ago. Currently, the final rate has been approved by the administrator of WAPA and the U.S. Department of Energy and is awaiting approval

by FERC. WAPA’s objective is to ensure the repayment of federal investments and obligations while keeping costbased rates as low as possible consistent with sound business principles. That’s what FERC looks at in the rate filing.

Over the last 2 years, CREDA worked with WAPA to understand what would be included in the rate case and to work with it through the public process. After the Federal Register notice process and public process started, we developed and submitted comments on the rate brochure.

We’re pretty pleased with where the rate is going this year; the final rate information was published in the Federal Register on August 21. The rate will take effect on October 1. That’s intended to be a 5‑year rate.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your work with Congress.

Glen Canyon dam.

was being driven by the fact that CRSP power customers are responsible for repaying all the federal investment in the CRSP, plus interest, as well as paying for ongoing operations and maintenance costs. That includes all of Reclamation’s and WAPA’s costs. It also includes irrigation assistance beyond the ability of the irrigators to repay, although that piece is not interest bearing.

When the individual customers started seeing these rates increasing, they decided to form an organization that would give them a common voice and that could work with Reclamation, WAPA, and other federal agencies to keep rates as low as possible. It would also help them to collectively deal with the operational effects of the National Environmental Policy Act, the Endangered Species Act (ESA), and major species-recovery programs. CREDA was incorporated in 1978. It’s a 503(c)(6) nonprofit corporation.

It was originally incorporated in the state of Colorado; since then, we’ve also incorporated in the state of Arizona, which is where our office is located.

Leslie James: It depends on the year, on the Congress, and on the agency’s priorities for the year. In 2020, WAPA just wrapped up a 5‑year rate case for the CRSP firm electric service rate. WAPA rates have to be approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC). WAPA has a robust public process for dealing with rate changes, and in this

8 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

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PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

Hydro Leader: What are your top issues?

Leslie James: The intensity of our work with Congress varies year by year. We are always interested in watching energy and water development appropriations proceedings, even though CREDA differs from many of its sister organizations in being financed by a revolving fund rather than by direct appropriations. The Upper Colorado River Basin Fund was established by the CRSP Act of 1956 and is funded almost entirely by CRSP power revenues. That means that our involvement in the appropriations process is usually less intense that that of other water users and project power customers.

Our direct involvement in Congress has to do with things like the upper Colorado River and San Juan River endangered fish recovery programs, in which we are a partner. Up until now, the primary funding sources for those programs have been CRSP power revenues, and those revenues have also funded $17 million in capital funds for those programs. Looking toward the future, it’s pretty clear that the funding model needs to change—power revenues can’t continue to be the only source of sustainable funding for those programs. We’ll be working with the other partners over the next year or two about sharing the funding and extending the authorization for that program. Right now, its authorization goes through 2023. We’ll be working with the states, our environmental partners, Reclamation, and WAPA on that process.

In general, we’re more involved with authorization matters than with appropriations. We get involved with any legislation that has the potential to affect the operations of CRSP facilities or cost sharing.

My first opportunity to testify before Congress occurred when I’d only been on the job for about a week. That testimony was on the Dutch John privatization bill, which transferred the town of Dutch John, Utah, from federal to private ownership. The negotiation leading up to the federal

ADVERTISEMENT legislation provided for a 10‑ or 15‑year subsidy from power revenues to the town. We testified to ensure that there was an understanding that the power customers had an interest in what was going on, given that we would have a 15‑year obligation to subsidize the town following title transfer.

We’ve had a long and varied history on title transfer issues.

Generally, CREDA doesn’t have a dog in those fights unless the facilities in question have a hydropower component, have been funded by power revenues, or have an allocation of project use power.

We’ve also testified on transparency bills. I think one of the first was a bill introduced by Congresswoman Cathy McMorris Rogers a few years ago to ensure that the costs of environmental compliance are transparent to the entities that have to pay them. There have been various ESA transparency bills as well. Before Senator Jeff Flake left Congress, he introduced a WAPA transparency bill to ensure that WAPA’s expenditures are available and transparent to its customers. In that bill, there was also a provision to ensure that the Upper Colorado River Basin Fund is not considered an unobligated balance of WAPA. That fund is clearly earmarked by the CRSP Act for specific purposes, so we do not want it to be lumped in with the rest of WAPA’s unobligated balances.

PHOTOS COURTESY OF LESLIE JAMES.

Hydro Leader: What advice do you have for other river systems with hydropower components?

Leslie James: One of the things I learned pretty quickly was that DC representation is crucial. For my first 20 years at CREDA, our DC-based representative was Deborah Sliz; there is no one who can replicate Deborah. Since then, I have learned quickly that it’s important for the members of these trade organizations to establish relationships with their congressional delegations, both at home and in DC. I know it’s costly and challenging to send people to DC, but I have heard from many staffers that is important for them to hear from the people on the ground.

I try hard to establish relationships with like-minded and sometimes not-so-like-minded trade organizations. You never know when an issue may arise on which you can help support another organization or on which your organization may need support in a public process. For example, when the last Glen Canyon environmental impact statement process was underway, we believed that it had the potential to negatively affect the hydropower resource of Glen Canyon Dam. The relationships that we’ve cultivated over many years allowed us to get comment letters from the American Public Power Association, the National Hydropower Association, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, and the National Water Resources Association.

To get all those entities to support a common message on the public record was an achievement.

It is important to make an effort to get to know and

hydroleadermagazine.com

Generators at Glen Canyon Dam.

understand where a lot of these organizations are coming from and to identify common themes to work together on. We work in a six-state region, but we don’t deal with state legislation, only federal, which is why long-distance relationships come in handy. It is also important to make sure that your members are making connections with their federal delegations. As an association, you should also introduce your members to members of other organizations.

Hydro Leader: What are your thoughts on the Colorado River Water Users Association’s yearly meeting?

Leslie James: It’s one of the best opportunities to talk with people and reestablish those connections I was discussing.

I’ve had the opportunity to speak at the meeting twice, which I appreciated. It is primarily a water-oriented organization, but I think there has been an increasing recognition that water and power are joined at the hip.

There are more commonalities than differences. I really hope that these association meetings will always continue, because a lot of work gets done there. H Leslie James is the executive director of the Colorado River Energy Distributors Association. She can be contacted at creda@creda.cc. For more about CREDA, visit www.credanet.org.

November/December 2020 | HYDRO LEADER

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Commissioner Burman: The History of Collaboration in the Colorado Basin

On August 24, 2020, Reclamation Commissioner Brenda Burman, Daniel Simmons of the U.S. Department of Energy's Water Power Technology Office, and Ryan Fisher of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers signed a federal hydropower generation memorandum of understanding at Hoover Dam.

F

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

12 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Brenda Burman: I have been interested in water and working in water my whole career. That goes all the way back to my time as a park ranger at Grand Canyon National Park. I was immediately interested in the Southwest and how important water is to its history, communities, and environment. When I decided to go to law school, I knew I wanted to work in water and natural resources.

I started off in private practice in Arizona. As a young attorney, I worked on tribal settlements. I learned so much from doing that. I learned how important water is to different communities and that you can only find success when all the neighbors and communities are working together. You really need to find a win for each of the communities and to establish certainty about their water supplies in order to move forward. hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

rom its roots at the turn of the 20th century, the Bureau of Reclamation has grown to be the nation’s largest water supplier and its second-largest supplier of hydroelectricity, playing a critical role in western agriculture and urban development. Under the leadership of Commissioner Brenda Burman, Reclamation has played a key role in moving forward collaboration in the Colorado River basin, particularly with the 2019 signing of the Drought Contingency Plan (DCP), an ambitious agreement designed to reduce risk on the Colorado River and sustain the river system into the future. In this interview, Commissioner Burman reflects on the history of collaboration in the Colorado basin that paved the way for the DCP and the agreements of the future.

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Brenda Burman speaks at the Drought Contingency Plan signing ceremony on May 20, 2019.

From there, I was hired by Senator Jon Kyl of Arizona to be his water and energy lawyer. That was incredible work. Senator Kyl is a great leader in water and energy. It was impressive how he was able to bring people together, both in Arizona and in other states, to support what we wanted to get done. I then worked as deputy commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation and then as deputy assistant secretary of water and science at the U.S. Department of the Interior about 15 years ago.

After leaving federal service, I knew I wanted to stay in water, so I went to the Nature Conservancy and then worked for water districts in both Arizona and California.

I was honored to be asked by the president to rejoin the federal government as the commissioner of Reclamation.

Coming back to Reclamation is like coming home for me. I was happy to have another chance to work with the incredible, dedicated, results-driven, problem-solving hydroleadermagazine.com

women and men of the agency. Despite all the challenges we’ve faced in 2020, I am so proud of Reclamation and how it has remained focused on its mission, which is to deliver reliable water and power for the people of the American West.

Hydro Leader: Why is the Colorado River basin different from other basins with regard to the collaborative partnerships that are its hallmark?

Brenda Burman: When I look at the Colorado River, I see a history of collaboration and a history of success. It is a model for everyone who works on water supply issues across boundaries. The Colorado River passes through nine states and crosses an international border. That poses challenges for coming to agreements. You have state governments, tribal governments, two different countries, November/December 2020 | HYDRO LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT and nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), all with their own priorities and views. The Colorado River stands out because all those parties have been able to collaborate with each other, reach across boundaries, and come up with solutions that can hold. In many other basins, both in the United States and across the world, people are at war over their water supplies. In the United States, we tend to go to court for our water supplies. Many basins are controlled by judges who weren’t brought up to be water managers.

Hydro Leader: Was there a particular event or events that changed the tenor of the relationships on the Colorado River basin from adversarial to collaborative?

Brenda Burman: I think the leaders of the Colorado River basin, including the leaders of water districts, states, tribes, and NGOs, have found ways to communicate and compromise rather than taking the path toward litigation and conflict. They did that with hard work, week after week, month after month, year after year. The modern model of river management started in the 1990s, which was when the first few people were willing to reach out across state lines, looking for areas of agreement in which to move forward. From the early successes of those days, such as those involving the ability to store water in different states, the surplus guidelines, and the quantification settlement agreement with California, we’ve continued to build our trust in each other and to build on our successes. We’ve recognized for a couple of decades now that litigation is not the way to go. You lose control of your subject, and you spend enormous amounts of money that you could be investing in your water projects. I think we all got a little bit smarter and realized that the more you work with someone, the more you can trust them. The more you can trust them, the more you can build, try new things, and find successes.

Hydro Leader: What challenges do you see as you move into negotiating the post‑2026 operational guidelines?

14 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Hydro Leader: What should Colorado River water users and customers know about Reclamation’s stewardship of this historic river?

Brenda Burman: Reclamation has been there for more than a century, working with our partners and acting as good stewards of the Colorado River basin. We do that in an unbiased, transparent, and inclusive manner. That’s what people should expect and demand from Reclamation for the next 100 years.

Hydro Leader: Is there anything else that you’d like to add?

Brenda Burman: I would like to highlight the importance of President Trump’s recent Executive Order (EO) to Modernize America’s Water Resource Management and Water Infrastructure. This is a historic action that ensures that federal coordination on water policy is standard practice by formally establishing a water subcabinet. This EO brings together key policymakers who will coordinate actions to streamline the management of the Colorado River basin and bolster the resilience of our water infrastructure.

Hydropower on the Colorado River is critical for the West and the Southwest. That has never been truer than in 2020. When California and so many other states were facing heat waves this summer, and when fires were ravaging California, Colorado, and other states, who was called on?

It was Reclamation’s hydropower in the Pacific Northwest.

That’s because hydropower is incredibly resilient and flexible. When we had to go into emergency operations to make sure that the grid could be stabilized, we were prepared. We had done our studies and knew how to do it. I want to give a big shout-out to all the folks who are making our power plants run, even during a global pandemic. They were there when the western grid needed them, making sure that people were protected and could turn their lights and faucets on. H Brenda Burman is the commissioner of the Bureau of Reclamation. For more about Reclamation, visit usbr.gov.

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

Brenda Burman: I look at what we’ve faced before.

Whether in the development of agreements with Mexico; Minutes 318, 319, and 323; or the development of the upper- and lower-basin Drought Contingency Plans, we have developed a culture of collaboration. Back in 2007, when we were putting together the guidelines, the atmosphere was much different. We had incredible drought years in the early parts of the 2000s. We’d lost half our storage, and the states were preparing to litigate with each other. Through that, the states made incredible efforts to try and come together. Reclamation was right with them. We came up with the 2007 operating guidelines.

Those guidelines will finish in 2026. We also have agreements with Mexico that will end in 2026. We’ll have a lot to get done. What we have now that we didn’t have then is a history of success and relationships of trust. We’ve had

the ability to work across international lines with Mexico and to work closely with the tribes, NGOs, and states. We are well positioned to start thinking about the future.

We also know a lot more than we knew in 2007 because we’ve had a chance to operate according to those guidelines for 12 years. We put the DCPs in place just last year and have already seen how well they’re working. We are working on a look-back project right now. It’s called the 7D report, because it concerns section 7D of the 2007 guidelines. We will have a draft out shortly, and the final version is expected in mid-December.

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Dr. Tim Petty on the New Water Management Executive Order

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE US DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR.

Dr. Tim Petty below Hoover Dam. (May 2019)

16 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

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r. Tim Petty, the assistant secretary for water and science in the U.S. Department of the Interior, is responsible for the Bureau of Reclamation and the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), and consequently, for a wide variety of issues related to water infrastructure, water resources, energy, ecosystems, and natural disasters. Because this broad scope naturally brought Dr. Petty into contact with many other federal agencies, he and other officials at the assistant-secretary level assembled an informal water subcabinet that met monthly to discuss, plan, and execute water-related projects. With the October 2020 Executive Order (EO) on Modernizing America’s Water Resource Management and Water Infrastructure, the Trump administration formalized this water subcabinet and took other steps to streamline and coordinate the work of the various executive agencies that work on water issues. In this interview, Dr. Petty tells Hydro Leader about the importance of the new EO. Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

Tim Petty: I worked for 9 years in Congress with Senator James Risch of Idaho on western water and environmental issues. I also worked on two different legislative committees.

I was the deputy assistant secretary for water and science at Interior under the Bush administration. That experience made me an option for the new administration. I started in January 2018 as the assistant secretary for water and science.

Now, I work with Commissioner Brenda Burman, who also served as deputy assistant secretary for water and science in the past. Our team has a long history of working in the water and science hallway.

Hydro Leader: Please describe the importance of the recent EO and the water subcabinet. What are the biggest benefits of the EO for Reclamation and USGS stakeholders?

Tim Petty: I am excited about the opportunities that President Trump has established for focusing on water. In October 2018, he released a western water memorandum.

Because we were able to successfully complete all seven of the sections of that memorandum ahead of schedule, the president saw the importance of what we were doing with western water and decided to apply a similar focus to water across the United States. Taxpayers expect the federal government to work collaboratively, and this EO has codified the requirement that we do so.

There are six departments identified as members of the water subcabinet. Each department then designated an assistant secretary, assistant administrator, or undersecretary to serve as their representative on the subcabinet. Interior and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency are designated the two coleads; the other four agencies include the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic hydroleadermagazine.com

and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy and Electrical Office, and the U.S. Department of Defense’s U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. All those agencies have large water portfolio projects that we need to work collaboratively on.

President Trump has requested that we get together and determine which agency would be the best lead for any particular project that is being considered. A perfect example of this process was the reconsultation of the long-term operations of the Central Valley Project in California. We did the record of decision through Interior and designated the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as the lead agency. Interior and Commerce got the environmental impact statement and the record of decision done. Similarly, in September 2020, we completed the record of decision on the Columbia River System. Interior and Energy worked on that, and the Army Corps served as the lead.

Designating one agency as the lead on a given project works phenomenally well.

In the past, when there was litigation caused by different groups suing the federal government over records of decisions, the different federal agencies were pitted against each other because they had written different decisions and interpretations of the work that they were doing on the same project. Now that we have one federal lead, we work together better. Each agency still has its own mission and requirements, and the fact that there is one federal lead agency doesn’t mean that the other agencies are subservient, but it does allow us to work together better.

In the course of the litigation over California’s decision in 2019, the judge specifically said that all participating government agencies, federal and state, had signed off on the record of decision. Interior got sued on the second day after we came out with that California record of decision, but the judge threw the lawsuit out because the different agencies could not be pitted against each other. The judge said, “We’re going to let this program work itself out and manage it.” The situation is the same on the Columbia River. The federal government has been sued by several different groups, but if the judge in the Columbia River looks at it the same way that the judge in California looked at it, they will recognize a singular U.S. government position.

Hydro Leader: You have been working with your counterparts in other federal agencies for some time now on an unofficial level. What do you see as the biggest benefit of formalizing the water subcabinet?

Tim Petty: The first section of the EO identifies over 300 existing task force working groups, many of them in areas that most of us are unaware of, and all of which require federal taxpayer money. We want to organize this so that the six relevant federal agencies are tied in to all these working groups and can make sure that they are coordinating their November/December 2020 | HYDRO LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT Tim Petty: The primary focus of the water subcabinet is to break down the silos between departments and agencies, aligning and leveraging federal resources to accomplish priority water actions across the United States.

Each section of the EO is laid out with a focus on large basin regions and key water sectors and directs the subcabinet to coordinate, identify, and supercharge the accomplishment of actions in each. One federal agency will take the lead to coordinate and build an action plan, prioritizing and assigning a shot clock on the work to be done.

I’ll give you two examples. Section 5 of the EO focuses on drought. Right now, the Colorado basin has had over 20 years of drought. Right beside it is the Mississippi basin, which has had more water in the last 10 years than has ever been recorded. Of these two neighboring basins, one has too much water and one does not have enough. Each has its own unique challenges and needs, and both equally need a coordinated federal family to partner with the states to maximize effective and efficient water management.

Hydro Leader: What is your message to Colorado River water users and customers?

Tim Petty: I want to communicate that the Colorado basin is a priority for us. The USGS has recently identified its next generation of water monitoring for the upper Colorado.

We’re implementing new, cutting-edge technologies to monitor water resources management and quality from the mountain peaks all the way to the coast. We’re partnering with all the states, communities, and governors’ offices in the upper and lower Colorado basins to make sure that each state knows what the others are doing.

Hydro Leader: Is there anything else that you would like to add about the EO?

Dr. Tim Petty high above the Colorado River.

Hydro Leader: What are the primary focus areas of the water subcabinet, and how will the EO improve interagency coordination in these areas?

18 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Dr. Tim Petty is the assistant secretary for water and science in the U.S. Department of the Interior. For more about Interior, visit doi.gov.

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE US DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR.

work on a basin-by-basin model. The main goal is not to eliminate working groups, though we do want to consolidate them; it is to make sure that we streamline their work and save money.

Tim Petty: Something that is specifically spelled out in the EO that sometimes gets overlooked is the importance of opportunities for U.S. water workers. We want the six agencies to work together to build the future of water resource managers. That is important for this next generation. The people who actually live in a given basin are the ones who understand the long history of water resources there. H

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Terry Fulp: Three Decades of Public Service in Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Region

In March 2014, Dr. Terry Fulp visits a section of the Colorado River in Mexico during the Minute 319 Pulse Flow. That section of the river had been dry for many years.

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he Bureau of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Basin Region manages the agency’s water and power facilities on the last 688 miles of the Colorado River, across southern Nevada, Southern California, most of Arizona, and small portions of New Mexico and Utah. Reclamation facilities in the region, including the iconic Hoover Dam, deliver 9 million acre-feet of water a year and generate 5–6 billion kilowatt-hours of hydroelectric power. In this interview, Dr. Terry Fulp, the retiring regional director of the Lower Colorado Basin Region, tells Hydro Leader about his work over more than three decades in public service.

Terry Fulp: My background is in geology and geophysics. I worked summers in the oil patch and thought I’d always stay in the oil patch. During the mid-1980s downturn, I reevaluated my career goals and took a night class in environmental resources. During a class break, I was talking to the professor, and he asked me what I did and what I’d like to do. I told him

20 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Hydro Leader: What accomplishment are you most proud of from your time at Reclamation?

Terry Fulp: I think I am most proud of the relationships that I’ve developed. Relationships are critical to solving the complex water-power issues that we face. I’m a firm believer in the idea that relationships provide a basis for finding solutions among people with different points of view.

Without relationships, that is much more difficult. I have been fortunate to have the opportunity to build relationships broadly but also deeply. hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

I was interested in living in the West. He told me that I should get into water—that water was as valuable as oil in the West.

That was an eye-opener for me. I started looking into water and decided to go back to school. I got another master’s degree in Boulder, Colorado; joined a research center; earned a PhD; and got hired by the Bureau of Reclamation. I have been fortunate to have the opportunities I have had at this agency. After 31 years, I am retiring as a regional director.

ADVERTISEMENT Hydro Leader: How is the drought affecting hydropower production, and how are those effects being mitigated?

Terry Fulp: Reduced head, which is caused by decreasing elevations, particularly at Lake Mead, means we don’t produce as much hydropower. At Hoover Dam, we have refurbished five of our turbines to operate efficiently at much wider head ranges. Those turbines were originally designed to have what I often call a sweet spot. If you stayed in that range of head, they operated efficiently. If you get out of the range they were designed for, particularly as head decreased, they operated inefficiently, and at some point, they couldn’t really operate at all.

The power contractors who fund our operations and maintenance at Hoover Dam decided that refurbishing those five turbines was worth the investment. It took about 3 years to replace them one at a time. Now they work really well. Our contractors feel that we could get what we needed from Hoover Dam by refurbishing five at this time; if we need more down the road, they can do more.

Overall, we can mitigate some of the effects of drought by putting more water in Lake Mead; that’s what the Drought Contingency Plans (DCPs) are all about. Through those efforts in both the United States and Mexico, our estimate today is that Lake Mead is about 35 feet higher than it would be without all the conservation efforts that led up to the DCPs. Hydro Leader: How many turbines does Hoover Dam have in total?

Terry Fulp: It has 17, of various sizes. It also generates station power, so the turbines aren’t all of the same design and don’t have the same megawattage.

Hydro Leader: Are the five new turbines you installed all the same brand and type?

Terry Fulp: They are all basically the same, with four of one brand and one of a different brand. They’re stainless steel.

The veins of the turbine are curved to allow them to be more efficient with a broader range of head. The veins in the old turbine were vertical. This is a really high-tech design.

Hydro Leader: As the talks begin for the next set of operational guidelines, what are the biggest challenges that negotiators will face?

Terry Fulp: There are many challenges. The main thing is to figure out which of those challenges to address immediately and which ones to address later. That’s going to be a challenge in and of itself. The changing climate is a huge issue because it’s affecting our water supply. The other big piece of the equation is water use, especially between the upper and lower Colorado River basins. hydroleadermagazine.com

Dr. Terry Fulp takes part in the renovation of the Bureau of Reclamation administration building in Boulder City, Nevada, in March 2017.

The building was built in 1931 and served as the administration building during the construction of Boulder Dam.

Hydro Leader: What is your fondest memory from your 31 years of public service?

Terry Fulp: I have many fond memories. My fondest memory is from early in my career, around 1992 or 1993. There are four penstocks at Hoover Dam that serve the turbines with water.

They are essentially 30-foot-diameter pipes. We periodically take one out of service and go inside it to inspect it and fix the coating.

Former commissioner Bob Johnson, who was the regional director at the time, invited me to join him and my direct boss, Tim Ulrich, inside the penstock. We walked all the way back to where it turned vertically to meet the intake tower. It was remarkable. Just being able to do that was so exciting.

Hydro Leader: How do you get inside a penstock like that?

Terry Fulp: There is a cover that looks something like a hatch you would see on a submarine. Each penstock has one.

The penstock gets dewatered, the bolts get taken off, the hatch is opened, and then you can climb down a ladder. H Dr. Terry Fulp is the regional director of the Bureau of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Region. To reach Dr. Fulp, please contact Patti Aaron, the region’s public affairs officer, at paaron@usbr.gov.

November/December 2020 | HYDRO LEADER

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Reclamation’s History in the Colorado Basin Sunrise over the Colorado River.

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he Colorado River is the lifeblood of the Southwest.

From the Front Range of the Rockies in Colorado to the metropolises of Southern California, it is Colorado River water that supplies agricultural and residential needs. It is only thanks to the work of the Bureau of Reclamation, however, that this water gets to where it needs to go. Over the last century and more, Reclamation facilities have captured, stored, and delivered the flows of the Colorado, enabling the development of cities like Las Vegas and Phoenix where once there was only desert.

In this interview, Reclamation historian Dr. Andrew Gahan tells Hydro Leader about the history behind Reclamation’s development of the Colorado River basin.

Andrew Gahan: I grew up in Southern California. I began my academic journey somewhat later in life. Prior to becoming a historian, I worked as a pipefitter-welder at two of Chevron Oil’s West Coast refineries. I eventually received my PhD from the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR), where my fields of study were 20th century U.S. history, U.S. cultural history, and public history. All

22 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about the importance of the Colorado River to the Southwest.

Andrew Gahan: The Colorado River wasn’t prominent in public awareness until John Wesley Powell made his epic journey down the river in 1869. Until then, most people looked at the surrounding region as a blank spot on the map of the United States. The West was still sparsely settled, but as its population grew, agriculture became an important component of state and territorial economic growth, and interest in developing the river’s resources increased. Unfortunately, along most of the Colorado River, the topography made reaching those resources difficult, if not practically impossible. The Colorado River is moderately sized compared to some of the other rivers in the United hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

those focused heavily on the history of the American West.

I began my career with Reclamation as an intern during my undergraduate years at UNR. My principal responsibilities were researching and writing a two-volume set of Reclamation history, of the second volume of which I was the primary author. It was that work that eventually got me to Denver and into the position I currently hold.

ADVERTISEMENT States, but it’s called upon to do a lot, including irrigation, power development, and recreation. The Colorado River is in many ways the lifeblood of the American Southwest.

Hydro Leader: What was the primary trigger for the federal presence on the Colorado River?

Andrew Gahan: Initially, the federal presence on the Colorado River was small. Prior to the construction of Hoover Dam, the Reclamation Service had built only two projects: the Yuma Project along the Arizona-California border and the Grand Valley Project in Colorado. Those were relatively simple diversion projects that served moderately sized irrigation areas.

The seven basin states that share the Colorado River watershed all had an interest in the river and wanted to figure out a way to protect and appropriately divide up its water.

Private developers also took an interest in developing the Colorado River, primarily in California’s Imperial Valley. The tremendous growth in the Imperial Valley greatly worried the Colorado Basin states. They were concerned about California’s use of the Colorado River and its implications for any possible developments they might pursue.

Another thing that gave them urgency was the 1922 Supreme Court ruling in Colorado v. Wyoming. The court ruled that the doctrine of prior appropriation applied to interstate streams, regardless of state lines. That decision got the attention of the seven basin states. They got together to establish an equitable distribution of the Colorado River.

Representatives of the seven basin states met and signed the Colorado River Compact in 1922. The compact divided the river resources between the upper basin states of Colorado, New Mexico, Utah, and Wyoming and the lower basin states of Arizona, California, and Nevada.

Eventually, the compact led to the passage of the Boulder Canyon Project Act in 1928 and the construction of Hoover Dam and the All-American Canal. This firmly established the federal presence on the Lower Colorado. Additionally, the Boulder Canyon Project Act essentially designated the U.S. secretary of the interior as the Lower Colorado River water master. That gave the federal government an incredibly important role regarding the allocation and distribution of water resources.

Hydro Leader: How big a concern was flood control on the Colorado River?

Andrew Gahan: Initially, that was a major motivation for the construction of Hoover Dam. At the beginning of the 20th century, irrigators in the Imperial Valley used a small diversion dam in Mexico to divert water from the Colorado River. In 1904, the dam failed, and the entire flow of the Colorado River jumped from its bed and started flowing into the Imperial Valley. That went on for 2 years, forming today’s Salton Sea. After 2 years of intense effort, Imperial hydroleadermagazine.com

Valley farmers and the Southern Pacific Railroad closed the breach and returned the Colorado River to its original bed.

To avoid another similar disaster, Imperial Valley residents began clamoring for flood control dams somewhere on the Colorado River. Flood control was the central motivation for constructing these dams and canals. At the same time, the residents called for what they termed an All-American Canal, which would eliminate their reliance on water supplies coming from Mexico.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about some of the major projects on the Colorado River during the 20th century and their role in the development of the Southwest.

The All-American Canal.

Andrew Gahan: The construction of Hoover Dam influenced the whole basin. It initiated development of multipurpose projects that, along with irrigation, contained components to supply water for municipal and industrial purposes, produce hydropower to a wide customer base, and establish flood control and recreation. The Colorado River Compact emerged from the desire of each basin to develop its water resources. Some of the projects in the upper basin, such as the Colorado River Storage Project, were initially constructed to store water to meet the upper basin’s compact obligations and to produce hydropower to aid irrigation development within the region.

There were also major transbasin diversion projects to bring Colorado River water to the Front Range of the Rockies to serve as supplemental supplies and to expand irrigation developments, such as the Colorado–Big Thompson Project. They all had a heavy emphasis on hydropower development.

In short, each basin state sought to use its share of the river. In the late 1960s, the Central Arizona Project was designed and constructed and began to bring Colorado November/December 2020 | HYDRO LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT River water to central Arizona communities. Similarly, the Central Utah Project diverted Colorado River water to provide irrigation supplies to the folks in Utah, eventually expanding into the Salt Lake City municipal area and surrounding regions. There was also the R.P. Griffith Project, which uses the entire Nevada allocation of Colorado River water to provide water to the city of Las Vegas and Clark County.

Hydro Leader: What is the historical explanation for why Nevada has the smallest portion of Colorado River water?

Hydro Leader: What should every Colorado River water user and customer know about Reclamation’s stewardship of the river?

Andrew Gahan: Reclamation’s stewardship of the river goes back to before the construction of Hoover Dam. There was interest in developing the resources of the Colorado River in the best possible manner to benefit the folks living in the Southwest. Today, Reclamation is adopting a consensusbased Drought Contingency Plan that represents the best path forward to safeguard the single most important water resource in the United States. We work tremendously hard with our partners, which include the Colorado River basin states, local and state water agencies, Native American tribes, nongovernmental organizations, and Mexico. We feel we’re succeeding to the best extent we can at reducing the risk from ongoing drought.

I think the biggest takeaway of all this is that the issues that folks were facing at the turn of the 20th century and throughout the 20th century are still the issues folks are facing today. The only change is that this moderately sized river is asked to do so much more, simply because of the exponential increase in demand caused by population growth. The Colorado River is called upon to do much more than it should be able to. Reclamation’s work over the course of the 20th century, the dams it built, and its ability to preserve flows serve as a backbone of water resource savings.

Our work on the river is never-ending.

Hydro Leader: What is the historical importance of Reclamation’s work on the Colorado River?

Looking downstream at the Colorado River from the Glen Canyon Dam tailrace.

24 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Andrew Gahan, PhD, manages the Bureau of Reclamation’s History Program.

He can be contacted at agahan@usbr.gov or (303) 445‑3314.

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

Andrew Gahan: I wrote a paper on that. In 1922, when the compact was agreed to, there weren’t really any major irrigated areas in southern Nevada that could use the flows of the Colorado River. There were some small ones that used water resources from Colorado River tributaries like the Muddy River. At the same time, Nevada was the least-populated state in the United States, with barely 100,000 people. Nevada’s political leaders at the time were more interested in power development and the revenues they could potentially gain from the construction of Hoover Dam. Their idea was to sell their power allotment to supplement state revenues. At that time, nobody foresaw the development that would occur in Las Vegas and Clark County after World War II, so securing water resources wasn’t as much of an immediate concern to them as power development. They didn’t see water as a particularly important resource because of the state’s topography and the lack of available arable areas in southern Nevada.

Andrew Gahan: As a historian, I see the water and power resource development on the Colorado River as having helped to drive the industrialization and urbanization of the entire region. Without those facilities, major cities in the Southwest would have been hard pressed to find solutions and resources to meet their growing needs. The federal government’s role in helping to develop Colorado River resources aided the growth of the large urban centers that we see in the Southwest. That’s an incredibly important element of the history of the West, which has gone from being a sparsely settled area to having some of the largest urban centers in the United States. Much of that growth is based on the water resources development of Reclamation. H

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Reclamation’s Modeling and Research in the Colorado Basin

The University of Colorado at Boulder, home of CADSWES.

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Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

26 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Carly Jerla: I am originally from Yellowstone National Park, since my father worked and still works for the National Park Service. I moved to Boulder, Colorado, to pursue graduate studies at the University of Colorado in 2002. I was hired as a research assistant at CADSWES, of which Reclamation was one of the original sponsors. At that time, I was not too familiar with Reclamation. What drew me to CADSWES was the strong linkage between river and reservoir systems modeling and policy development.

A couple of years later, in 2005, Reclamation hired me through its student program and helped shape my master’s research. I was hired by Dr. Terry Fulp. At that time, things were starting to heat up regarding the development of what would be the 2007 Colorado River interim guidelines. The basin was 6 years into the current drought, and storage in Lakes Powell and Mead hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO.

he Bureau of Reclamation plays a critical role in managing the priceless water resources of the Colorado River. Even under ideal circumstances, this monumental task requires technical expertise, accurate information, and experience. This is even more true during a time of drought, like the one the basin has been experiencing since 2000. In this interview, Hydro Leader speaks to Carly Jerla, manager of the modeling and research group of Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Basin Region. Ms. Jerla is stationed at the University of Colorado’s Center for Advanced Decision Support for Water and Environmental Systems (CADSWES), where Reclamation staff play a critical role in the research and modeling work that the agency needs to manage the waters of the Colorado.

River Basin Study; the Tribal Water Study; the Drought Contingency Plans (DCPs); and, currently, the review of the 2007 interim guidelines. I’m still stationed at CADSWES and manage our region’s modeling and research group there. There are eight Reclamation engineers stationed at CADSWES, five from the Lower Colorado Basin Region and three from the Upper Colorado Basin Region. We all work together closely to develop and maintain the modeling tools that are used throughout the basin and to pursue research to support Reclamation’s decisionmaking and operations in the Colorado River basin.

Hydro Leader: What is the role of modeling and research in the basin?

had declined from nearly 100 percent capacity at the start of the drought in 2000 to just over 50 percent. In April 2005, concerned with declining elevations in Lake Powell, the upper basin states requested that Secretary of the Interior Gale Norton consider reducing the release from Lake Powell scheduled for that year. This request ultimately kicked off the development of what became the 2007 interim guidelines.

Dr. Fulp believed that to prepare for the process to develop such guidelines, we needed to start developing modeling tools that would allow for the rapid assessment and screening of different kinds of operational policies. That’s what I ended up focusing my master’s research on. It was exciting research that helped shape the interim guidelines.

I continue to work for Reclamation and have been involved in many exciting initiatives, including the Colorado hydroleadermagazine.com

Carly Jerla: Modeling and research are critical to managing the Colorado River system. The significance of the Colorado River basin in the West is well known.

Modeling and projections of future reservoir conditions are critical for operating Reclamation’s major facilities in the basin. It contributes to our operations on a variety of time scales, including short-term (hourly and daily) scheduling; medium-term operations, which include monthly or yearly reservoir releases; and long-term planning, which involves projections into future years and decades.

We use the modeling software RiverWare, which was developed and is maintained at CADSWES. For the short and medium terms, we use water supply forecasts provided by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Colorado River Basin River Forecast Center. Looking out further than the next 2–5 years, we collaborate with researchers and incorporate science in developing longerterm water supply projections.

Because CADSWES is situated within the University of Colorado, we have the opportunity to learn about and work on a lot of exciting and important new research in the field. We also recruit young talent that comes through the university. I believe this was part of Dr. Fulp’s vision. I’m one of a dozen or so students who were hired at Reclamation through CADSWES. Hydro Leader: How would you characterize the condition of the Colorado River basin? Is it experiencing a prolonged drought, or is it going through aridification?

Carly Jerla: There is no question that the drought we’re experiencing is significant. It is the lowest 20‑year period in our measured historical record, which dates back about 100 years. It’s even one of the most significant by paleo standards, although the paleo record does hold some megadroughts that were longer and more dire than the current drought. We know from scientific evidence that the current drought has been exacerbated by a shifting temperature trend. Multiple published research studies state that beginning in the late 1980s, an increased temperature November/December 2020 | HYDRO LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT affected runoff efficiency in the basin, resulting in lower average flows for the same amount of precipitation.

We will need to address and plan for this situation the same way, whether it is labeled prolonged drought or aridification.

We need to incorporate assumptions about greater hydrologic variability and the possibility of longer, direr droughts into our planning. We explored this in the Colorado River Basin Study.

The DCPs were developed assuming a drier future, more similar to what we have experienced recently than to the norm of the earlier part of the 20th century. Going forward, we need to make sure we understand the wide range of variability that is possible in the basin and build robust policies that can stand up to that variability.

A night view of Glen Canyon Dam on the Colorado River.

Hydro Leader: What is the current chance of a lower basin shortage?

28 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Hydro Leader: What is your message to Colorado River water users and customers?

Carly Jerla: Colorado River water users know the importance of the Colorado River. It supplies water to over 40 million people; irrigates nearly 5½ million acres of farmland; and supports a wide array of resources, including environmental, recreational, and hydropower uses. It really is the lifeblood of the West. In operating the system reservoirs, Reclamation knows that it is imperative to use the best information available for its shortto long-term operational decisions.

In making those decisions, there are two threads: first, the importance of transparency, inclusivity, and collaboration with our partners and stakeholders on those decisions and operations; and second, making use of the best information available.

Reclamation’s partnership with CADSWES and its use of the tools developed by CADSWES are instrumental in these areas.

We’re committed to ensuring that those decisions are made using the best information available in an unbiased, transparent, and inclusive manner. We believe it is important to educate our partners, stakeholders, and the public about the types of information that we can provide. We’re always willing to sit down with people to answer questions and show them the types of information that we have available. H

Carly Jerla leads Reclamation’s Lower Colorado Basin Region modeling and research group. She can be contacted at cjerla@usbr.gov.

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTOS COURTESY OF THE BUREAU OF RECLAMATION.

Carly Jerla: Lake Mead is currently at about 1,082 feet, which is about 39 percent capacity. It has been hovering in that range for the past 6 years. According to the 2007 interim guidelines, which provide the operational guidelines for Lakes Powell and Mead, a lower basin shortage would be declared if, in August, we project that the elevation of Lake Mead will be at or below 1,075 feet on January 1 of the following year. In August, we projected that the level of Lake Mead would not be below 1,075 feet on January 1, 2021, so there will not be a lower basin shortage in 2021.

If the dry hydrology we’ve seen in the recent past continues, we see a 32 percent chance of shortage in 2022 and a 42 percent chance in 2025. We expect these

percentages to change as we learn more about what type of year 2021 will be hydrologically.

It is important to note that a large amount of conservation has been undertaken in the lower basin since the implementation of the 2007 interim guidelines. It has been an effective drought-response tool. Since 2007, over 3 million acre-feet of water has been saved in Lake Mead, which has boosted the lake’s elevation by almost 35 feet.

If not for that conservation, it is highly likely that a lower basin shortage would have been determined.

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How the Hydroelectric Design Center Supports the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Crucial Hydropower Services

The sun sets over John Day Lock and Dam in eastern Oregon. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ role in supporting the national grid is to operate and maintain its generating assets to assure the highest level of reliability and stability and to ensure that it can deliver power to power marketing administrations.

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he U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has many crucial roles: It maintains the nation’s navigable waterways, it works to reduce flood risk, it engages in civil engineering projects both at home and abroad, and it helps rebuild war-torn areas.

Less known to many is that the Army Corps is also the largest single owner-operator of hydropower and clean energy plants in the United States, with 75 hydropower stations. The entity in charge of maintaining the engineering and design of this hydropower fleet is the Hydroelectric Design Center (HDC) in Portland, Oregon, the professionals of which provide hydropower planning, engineering, and design services and also serve as the “Maytag repairmen and women” of the Army Corps. In this interview, HDC Deputy Director John Etzel tells Hydro Leader about the Army Corps’ role in supporting the national energy grid and how the HDC helps enable it.

John Etzel: I have a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering from Oregon State University and a master’s in public administration from the University of Colorado. I worked in private industry for about a year before beginning to work for the Army Corps in 1986. My first position at the Army Corps was as a structural engineer in Portland, Oregon.

I have also held other positions within the Army Corps, including technical lead and project manager. In 2004, I started working for the HDC in Portland as its first project management branch chief. In 2010, I was selected to serve as the deputy director of the HDC, the role I currently hold.

30 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Hydro Leader: Would you give a general introduction to the history of the Army Corps and its relation to the rest of the Army?

John Etzel: The Army Corps’ history dates back to 1775, when General George Washington needed engineering support to design and construct military fortifications. The Army Corps’ fortifications were instrumental in defending the new nation. I think the Army Corps’ best-known modern-day legacy is the civil works mission we carry out on the nation’s rivers. Rivers were identified as a strategic highway of our new nation from both a military and a commercial perspective, and the Army Corps was commissioned to keep the nation’s waterways free from snags and sandbars.

As the dam-building era began in the early 1900s with the dream of harnessing hydropower, Congress asked the Army Corps to maintain the balance of damming up the nation’s waterways while assuring that they remained navigable. The Army Corps was put in charge of providing approval to individuals who wanted to dam rivers. The Army Corps also designed and built two small hydropower plants in the early 1900s on the Mississippi and Tennessee Rivers.

Under the New Deal, President Franklin Roosevelt hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS PHOTO BY DALE QUINTON.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about your background and how you came to be in your current position.

I work with a team of 170 professionals who support the hydropower planning, engineering, and design for the Army Corps’ 75 hydro power plants across the nation. I’ve been humbled to serve such amazing professionals in my 34 years of public service, tackling some of the nation’s toughest water resource challenges.

ADVERTISEMENT charged the Army Corps with developing three large federal hydropower projects with the goal of providing consumers with low-cost energy. This is the beginning of the era when the Army Corps began to include hydropower as one of the missions of our many multiple-use water projects, along with things like navigation, flood risk management, recreation, and water supply.

Hydro Leader: Does the Army Corps fall under the normal command structure of the Army?

John Etzel: Right now, the Army Corps has 34,000 employees worldwide; less than 1,000 of them are army officers. The vast majority of the team is made up of civilians. The Army Corps is led by a chief of engineers, Lieutenant General Scott Spellmon, who works out of our headquarters in Washington, DC. There are also 9 division offices and 44 district offices located throughout the United States. These offices and their missions are led by military officers and senior civilians under the general Army command structure.

Our chief of engineers works directly with the Pentagon on the military side for military missions. We also have civil works missions, in which we work with the assistant secretaries of the Army and civil works. We serve at the direction of the administration. Of course, we need appropriations, and those appropriations come from Congress. We don’t work on anything on our own accord.

We are essentially directed by the executive branch and funded by Congress.

An exception to the congressional funding piece, particularly in the hydropower world, is the use of customer funding. Recently, customers have provided funding directly to the Army Corps for use in capital hydropower improvements.

Hydro Leader: Do civil works projects make up the majority of the Army Corps’ activities today?

John Etzel: In my world, yes, but there are large military missions that the Army Corps participates in that are related to defense. We build defense facilities like barracks and air bases, for instance, both domestically and abroad.

Hydro Leader: Is there anything else you wanted to add about its size and the scope of the Army Corps’ work?

John Etzel: The Army Corps is the steward of the nation’s water resources. Water particles know no boundaries, including state boundaries, so Army Corps missions are most often attached to water on the civil works side of the spectrum. Our nation’s waterways serve multiple purposes, and the Corps is charged with facilitating all those purposes, including flood risk management, navigation, environmental stewardship, irrigation, drinking water, recreation, and hydropower.

Within the Army Corps, subject-matter experts and hydroleadermagazine.com

their teams in each of these business lines come together to collectively develop holistic solutions. We are, of course, the Army’s engineers, which means we also provide military design support and aid in the nation’s toughest natural disaster and recovery missions and engineering challenges.

Most recently, we were asked by the Federal Emergency Management Agency to support it by building hospitals for the COVID‑19 pandemic. We worked to do that in short order by converting other buildings to hospitals.

Hydro Leader: How many dams does the Army Corps operate and maintain, and where are most of those located?

John Etzel: The Army Corps owns, operates, and maintains approximately 700 dams across the nation. Seventy-five of those facilities include powerhouses that operate a total of 376 power units. Roughly speaking, about one-third of our 75 hydropower plants are located in the Northwest, and two-thirds are located in the Southeast. Since the Northwest plants are the larger plants, that one-third of our plants represents roughly two-thirds of the Army Corps’ generation capacity. The remaining two-thirds of the plants in the Southeast represent one-third of the capacity.

The Army Corps’ plants produce over 21,000 megawatts of energy a year, which is enough to supply 5.4 million homes with clean, zero-carbon, renewable energy, making the Army Corps the largest single owner-operator of hydropower and clean energy plants in the United States.

Hydro Leader: Tell us about the HDC. John Etzel: The HDC is the Army Corps’ hydropower mandatory center of expertise. It is made up of 170 professionals whose work consists of performing hydropower planning, engineering, and design on a dayto-day basis. The vast majority of the HDC’s staff are located in Portland, Oregon, but we have a handful of employees stationed in other parts of the country, including in Mobile, Alabama, and Washington, DC. As I mentioned, we provide services across the United States. We also provide hydropower engineering services to other agencies, including the U.S. Department of Energy and the Bureau of Reclamation. We have also supported hydropower engineering needs outside the United States, including in places like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Hydro Leader: Would you tell us about how the HDC supports the national grid?

John Etzel: Our role in supporting the national grid relates to the grid’s generation supply. The HDC’s focus is limited to hydropower planning, engineering, and design services.

The Army Corps’ local operations departments operate and maintain its hydropower plants. Power marketing administrations (PMAs) and local utilities market and November/December 2020 | HYDRO LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT transmit the power to the customers. The Army Corps’ role in supporting the national grid is to operate and maintain its generating assets to assure the highest level of reliability and stability and to ensure that it can deliver power on demand. Many of our systems are equipped with automated generation control, which automatically ramps up or down power generation to meet real-time power demand.

Hydro Leader: Would you tell us about the HDC’s role in rapid response to failures and mechanical issues at the various Army Corps dams and hydroelectric facilities?

John Etzel: I like to say that the HDC are the Maytag repairman and women of the Army Corps’ hydropower fleet. The HDC is on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, to immediately assist our project operators to identify what is causing a problem and what the solutions are. In many cases, we can troubleshoot the problems virtually with our subjectmatter experts on generators and turbines and controls.

In other cases, the HDC deploys a field crew for on-site troubleshooting, forensic testing, and resolution of the problem.

Hydro Leader: Does the HDC respond only to issues at Army Corps–owned facilities? Are you ever tasked with giving aid to non–Army Corps facilities?

John Etzel: As I mentioned earlier, our primary funding today comes through direct customer funding tied directly to specific projects. We do work for other agencies— Reclamation, for example—including the design of controls and monitoring for operation at Grand Coulee Dam. We also support the reconstruction of war-damaged facilities in countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. We are open to support other agencies and other causes.

Hydro Leader: Would you tell us about hydropower’s role in supporting other renewable energy resources?

Hydro Leader: Is the role of hydropower changing as the prices of energy from other renewable sources fall?

32 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Hydro Leader: How do you see the Army Corps’ role in hydropower changing in coming years?

John Etzel: There’s a lot of interest in doing things better at a lower cost. One item we’re working on with the PMAs is setting our equipment up to enter the Energy Imbalance Markets. This step would allow energy balancing authorities to expand outside of constrained local markets to provide stabilized power to larger regional markets. This change would allow for greater opportunities to balance power from regions that have a surplus of energy to those that are in need.

That’s a new and powerful thing in the hydropower world.

More project remoting—that is, the virtual operation of our powerhouses from a central location—is also something that may allow us to be more efficient as an agency.

Hydro Leader: What is your vision for the future?

John Etzel: Many people think of hydro power as an old technology. In some ways, it is. However, I think of hydropower as the future of energy. It’s an exciting time to be working in hydropower. We’re moving from old, mechanical, analog systems to new, digital, reliable ones. Equipment efficiency continues to squeeze out more megawatts from the same amount of water with each generation of design. We are focused on mitigating environmental impacts in rivers, designing more fishfriendly turbines to improve juvenile fish survival, and removing oils where we are able to. The HDC will continue in its quest to be a leader in hydropower and engineering and to be a steward of the nation’s water resources. H John Etzel is the deputy director of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ Hydropower Design Center.

He can be contacted by e-mail at f.john.etzel@usace.army.mil.

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE U.S. ARMY CORPS OF ENGINEERS.

John Etzel: I believe that one of the world’s best-kept secrets is hydropower’s role supporting and enabling other renewable energy resources in their ability to supply the power grid. Hydropower is reliable and predictable. It can pick up and drop off power generation instantaneously as necessary to meet both supply and demand. Our team of subject-matter experts design automated generation controls that provide the right voltage and frequency to consumers 24/7. With a predictable power source, namely flowing water, hydropower can immediately accommodate the unpredictable start and stop times of less-predictable renewable resources, including wind and solar power, and thus maintain a constant power source for the grid.

John Etzel: Hydropower provides not only power, but also critical ancillary services for regional grid stability. What this means in layman’s terms is that it’s not enough to provide an electrical current that must be coming to the end user at 240 volts and 60 hertz on demand. Hydropower generating equipment provides proper power spinning reserves and adjustments to power output to ensure that consumers won’t receive too much power coming into their households, which would burn up their electrical equipment, but enough power to keep things like clocks running at just the right speed to accurately tell the time. It’s not enough to be the cheapest power source on the block. Other energy sources, such as wind and solar, cannot provide the constant power output that consumers need on their own.

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How Worthington’s Barrier Systems Can Mitigate Fire Debris Issues

A Worthington barrier installed at Don Pedro Dam, California, prevents fire-related debris from causing damage.

T

he 2020 fire season was one of the worst in recent memory. Immense fires swept across California, Oregon, Washington, and other U.S. states, causing loss of life, property destruction, and air pollution. Perhaps less known, however, is the fact that wildfires also pose significant problems for dam and waterway owners and operators. After a fire, debris is often swept into conveyance channels, ending up in water intakes, spillgates, and reservoirs. This causes operational disruptions, requires extra expenditures, and can even pose a danger to human lives. Worthington Products is a multidisciplinary designer, manufacturer, and installer of waterway barrier systems that can help address and mitigate these problems. In this interview, Worthington President Paul Meeks talks with Hydro Leader about how his company’s products can help dam owners face up the challenge of fire debris.

Hydro Leader: Please tell us about Worthington Products.

Hydro Leader: With the many fires in the West, debris

34 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

Paul Meeks: Debris is going to be a huge and costly issue. One of my first exposures to the issue of fire debris was in Australia in 2003. Worthington sent five ocean containers full of barriers to the snowy mountain region of Australia following a series of devastating wildfires. That’s when I became aware of how much wildfires can affect dam and hydroelectric power operators.

Fires, especially the ones that occurred during this 2020 fire season, take a huge personal toll. We see this on the nightly news, and our hearts ache for the people who have lost their lives, homes, livelihoods, and businesses. While the news focuses on the human toll, we do not see the disruptions these fires cause for irrigation companies and other entities that supply water and generate power. The effects on dam safety, power generation, and water quality are significant.

Unfortunately, 2020 will go down as a record year for wildfires. It has given rise to a new term: gigafire. The August Complex fire in Northern California has burned more than 1 million acres across seven counties—an area larger than Rhode Island. It is still not fully contained.

Four million acres in California this year alone have burned, and that doesn’t include what’s happening in Colorado, Oregon, Washington, and other states.

There’s much debate about the causes. The August Complex fire started with a huge, dry thunderstorm. It hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF WORTHINGTON PRODUCTS.

Paul Meeks: Worthington has been around for 20 years.

We help our customers to increase their power output and decrease their public safety risk by providing waterway barriers. Those barriers prevent debris from clogging power plant intakes and blocking critical spill gates. This allows hydro operators to generate clean hydroelectric power while being able to safely pass excess flows.

will be a major concern for irrigation districts and water agencies. What barrier options are there for fire debris?

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caused little rain, but there were more than 11,000 lightning strikes. It is estimated that that single event started over 300 fires, including the August Complex. The fire is now the largest on record in California. Five of the top 6 fires in California history are 2020 events.

What does that mean for folks who are operating irrigation and hydro installations? When rain comes, it brings welcome relief, but it also brings the threat of fire debris washing into river systems and reservoirs, causing massive water quality issues. This wreaks havoc for the professionals charged with maintaining the quality of water for consumption or operating storage and delivery systems for irrigation or power generation. The tons of debris that are washing down into their canals, lakes, and reservoirs threaten their ability to operate normally. When debris blocks water intakes, it can damage equipment, interrupt service, and necessitate costly removal and maintenance efforts.

These costs are further increased by revenue losses from the temporary inability to generate power or convey water.

When debris blocks spillgates, it reduces spilling capacity and can threaten the integrity of the dam and downstream communities during a probable maximum flood event.

Conversely, when debris lodges in a spillgate, it can prevent gate closure, potentially leading to downstream flooding and scour. Fire debris floating in reservoirs jeopardizes recreational activities and may require the reservoirs to be closed while operators try to restore safe conditions. hydroleadermagazine.com

We’ve worked with clients worldwide to provide solutions that stop, deflect, or corral fire debris so it does not disrupt operations. In California, we often put boom lines in the tributaries of large reservoirs to catch debris as it washes down the canyons, before it gets into the main area of the reservoir. A proper debris boom system will effectively promote dam safety and power generation while preventing intake and equipment losses.

In many cases, the federal government and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) offer help, including financial help, to dam owners. In 2018, the wine region of Napa Valley was hit by large fires. Milliken Dam, owned by the City of Napa, is the city’s primary water supply source. The area surrounding the dam was badly burned, and the city was facing a bill of $336,000 for the initial cleanup.

It also needed to install a barrier system to keep debris away from the dam’s intakes. The federal government ponied up roughly 75 percent of the cost of installing emergency debris barriers at Milliken Dam. The city was in such a rush to finish the installation before winter that it assembled the boom line off site and flew it in with helicopters.

Another example occurred in 1997 at Slab Creek Reservoir in California. Managers at Sacramento Municipal Utility District had anticipated potential debris problems and had installed a boom line to keep debris away from the dam. That foresight and action was rewarded when, on New Year’s Eve, 1997, heavy rains poured down on a record early-season snow base. Fire debris quickly washed into the reservoir. More than a mile’s worth of debris piled up behind the boom line. During this event, water was flowing 10 feet over the crest of the dam. Fortunately, the vast majority of the debris was held back. FEMA picked up the tab for the cleanup effort.

Hydro Leader: How can irrigation districts and water agencies determine which barrier is best for them?

Paul Meeks: The best thing to do is to talk to a manufacturer of barriers. At Worthington, we typically start the conversation by pulling up an aerial image on Google Maps. This provides our advisors with a wealth of information on what we might expect. It provides us an idea of the conditions we might see and gives us a sense of the additional information we might need from the agency. We ask about flows in the canals and rivers to be able to determine loads on the boom lien. This informs us about the type of boom that would be most effective.

Infrequently, we have to tell an irrigation company that the flows in a given location are too high for a boom to be effective. We have a frank discussion about the agency’s goals and where else we might consider placing a boom.

We’ve been down that road so many times that we can give good advice about how to place, position, and angle booms to make the agency’s systems most effective.

November/December 2020 | HYDRO LEADER

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ADVERTISEMENT Hydro Leader: Does Worthington install the booms, or is that something that irrigation district and water agency crews do themselves?

Paul Meeks: If it’s a standard boom line like a Tuffboom or our new high-density polyethylene (HDPE) boom, the OdinBoom, installation is relatively simple. We designed the units in easy-to-handle 10‑ or 20‑foot-long modules. For a typical irrigation district, the booms are usually less than 300 feet or so in length. Something of that size can be installed by an irrigation district’s maintenance crews. Assembling and installing the booms is simple and does not require specialized equipment. The only complicated part is setting an anchor, and that just requires someone who knows how to dig a hole in the ground and pour some concrete. We do offer technical assistance and onsite guidance for that. We also have relationships with contractors and marine companies all over the United States that can do the installation as a turnkey project or work with the agency on it. We can work with any local subcontractor an agency has an existing relationship with.

Hydro Leader: What type of information is needed to design the barrier?

Paul Meeks: Google Earth gives us a general layout and allows us to take measurements that are accurate within a foot or two. That’s close enough for a boom line. If we’re dealing with a canal, we need to know the total volume of flow and the specific surface velocity in feet or meters per second. We need to know about water level fluctuations, wind loading, the wind speeds that typically occur in the area, whether ice is an issue, and how much debris gets in. Not every agency knows all this information, but we can make good assumptions based on the expertise we have built over the years.

Hydro Leader: How long does design, manufacturing, and installation take?

Hydro Leader: How many debris barriers have you manufactured?

Paul Meeks: If you asked me that question 3 weeks ago, I would have told you 63, but today it’s 65. We just received two large projects, one in Cameroon and the second in Argentina for a nuclear power plant.

Hydro Leader: What should every manager and board member of an irrigation district or municipality know about working with you and Worthington?

Paul Meeks: We’re going to give it to you straight up. We value the power of a handshake and our word, and we stand behind our product. A warranty and a written policy mean absolutely nothing if we don’t back them up with action. Our actions are always focused on helping our clients achieve their goals. We want to make sure that what we do speaks so loudly that it is clear that we are an action-over-words company. Our clients can trust us to provide the right solutions and to be there throughout. We don’t care if we’re 5, 6, or 10 years past a warranty expiration—if there is an issue with how we made a product, we’re going to address that. We do that because our name is on every one of those products. We’re an easy company to work with: Our people love what they do, and it shows in how we interact with our customers.

Hydro Leader: Who should people call if they want more information about Worthington?

Paul Meeks: They can call our general number— (330) 452‑7400—and they’ll be directed to one of our barrier experts, who will then guide them through the process, answer their questions, and provide useful information.

Hydro Leader: Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Paul Meeks: There are a lot of theories about these wildfires.

Climate change is real and plans to address it need to be in place, because we’re already seeing a longer fire season and more severe events. Regardless of your views on what causes climate change, the bottom line is that it’s real and people need to be prepared. A big part of that preparation program is having some type of barrier system in place. My good friend Tom Reiss, owner of Hydro Component Systems, advised me several years ago on the seven Ps: Prior proper planning prevents pitifully poor performance. If you plan for what’s going to happen, you’ll have good results. H Paul Meeks is the president of Worthington Products. He can be contacted at pmeeks@tuffboom.com or (330) 452‑7400.

Paul Meeks: A lot. I estimate we supply 30,000 lineal feet per year.

36 | HYDRO LEADER | November/December 2020

hydroleadermagazine.com

PHOTO COURTESY OF WORTHINGTON PRODUCTS.

Paul Meeks: It all depends on the complexity of the project.

We had the Milliken Dam boom line done in 5–6 weeks.

During the fire season, we always maintain an additional inventory of booms because we know there may be emergency demand. A complex design can add 3–6 weeks to the project.

We try to run parallel paths. Most design work centers on designing the anchors, and fairly early on in the design process we already know the type of boom and its layout and depth. That means that we can start on production and manufacturing before the design is completely finished, which helps us get products out to our customers quickly, especially if they’re in an emergency situation.

Hydro Leader: How many countries do you work in?

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Upcoming Events

November 5 Columbia Basin Development League, Annual Meeting and Conference (virtual) November 8–11 Edison Electric Institute and American Gas Association, Taxation Committee Meeting, Scottsdale, AZ CANCELED: November 9–10 Kansas Governor’s Water Conference, Wichita, KS November 9–11 Edison Electric Institute, Virtual Financial Conference November 9, 10, 12 National Water Resources Association, 89th Annual Conference (virtual) November 10 American Public Power Association, Public Power Forward Virtual Summit November 15–18 Edison Electric Institute, Fall Accounting Conference, Bay Lake, FL November 16 American Public Power Association, Cybersecurity Virtual Summit November 19 Edison Electric Institute, Property Accounting and Depreciation Training Seminar, Bay Lake, FL November 28–December 3 International Commission on Large Dams, 88th Annual Meeting, New Delhi, India December 1–3 Oregon Water Resources Congress, Annual Conference, Hood River, OR December 2–3 Association of California Water Agencies, Fall Conference and Exhibition (virtual) December 2–4 Washington State Water Resources Association, Annual Conference (virtual) December 3 National Hydropower Association, California Regional Meeting (virtual) December 8–10 National Ground Water Association, Groundwater Week, Las Vegas, NV (virtual option) December 8–11 North Dakota Water Users Association, 57th Annual Joint North Dakota and Upper Missouri Water Convention and Irrigation Workshop (virtual) CANCELED: December 14–16 Colorado River Water Users Association, Annual Conference, Las Vegas, NV January (Date TBD) National Water Resources Association, Leadership Forum (virtual) January (Date TBD) Irrigation Leader Operations and Management Training Workshop and Tour, Palm Springs, CA January 5–7 American Public Power Association, Joint Action Conference, Palm Springs, CA January 18–21 Idaho Water Users Association Annual Convention, Boise, ID January 25–28 Nevada Water Resources Association, Annual Conference (virtual) January 27 Nebraska Water Resources Association, Legislative Forum, Lincoln, NE January 27–29 Texas Ground Water Association, Annual Convention and Trade Show, San Marcos, TX January 29–31 Colorado Water Congress, Annual Convention, Aurora, CO

To sign up to receive Hydro Leader in electronic form, please contact our managing editor, Joshua Dill, at joshua.dill@waterstrategies.com. hydroleadermagazine.com

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