Lakeport >> A large crowd of representatives from a number of area agencies filled the Lakeport City Council Chambers Friday to discuss the reformation of the Lake County Resource Management Committee, or RMC; an organization whose purpose is to identify and fix environmental issues and promote information sharing about Clear Lake.
The committee is to be led by county supervisors Jim Steele and Anthony Farrington, the latter absent from this inaugural meeting due to scheduling issues. Attending the meeting were representatives from Lake County Water Resources, Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board, Lake County, Lake County Agriculture Department, United States Forest Service, City of Clearlake, Lake County Chamber of Commerce, Elem Indian Colony, Big Valley Rancheria, BLM, Senator Mike McGuire’s office, County of Lake Community Development Division, East Lake Resource Conservation District, Lake County Air Quality Management District, California Department of Fish & Wildlife, Robinson Rancheria, Assemblymember Bill Dodd, and Habematolel Pomo of Upper Lake.
Several other groups were asked to attend, but representatives were unavailable.
The previous iteration of the committee fell apart slowly as funding disappeared at the beginning of the Great Recession, according to Steele and the Lake County Director of Water Resources, Scott DeLeon. The new group is supposed to represent a “fresh start,” said Steele, with a new approach to make staffing and funding issues less of a concern.
According to Steele, the committee will be composed of teams, to be in operation in subsequent waves of each other, of technical staff from each of the participating groups. Each team will identify and focus on specific issues affecting the lake’s ecology, from sediment flow to cyanobacteria to the potential threat of Quagga and Zebra mussels, attempting to identify the best way to mitigate those factors and “create specific collaborative processes.” That information will then be used to create a cohesive plan to revitalize the lake and to apply for grant funding to implement those plans. The idea behind this structure, said Steele, is to minimize the cost to any one particular agency and to maximize the flow of information between the different groups involved.
Steele identified five general areas the committee teams would try to address: The reestablishment of “emergent habitats,” or the natural plant life that tends to grow around the edge of the lake and in wetlands, which includes tules; the reestablishing of wetland areas to act as natural filtration systems for particulates in the water flows leading to the lake; the establishment monitoring equipment in upland areas to track the amount of sediment flowing to the lake; the identification of best management practices for upland areas; and invasive species protection programs.
Amongst the other goals of the group are to recruit and experienced grant writer to help improve the chances of the county being awarded funds from the government sources, such as Proposition 1, which provides funding for ecosystem and watershed protection progress, amongst other water-related issues.
The committee will hold quarterly meetings with the Lake County Supervisors and the various organizations involved in order to present status updates and to share any knowledge gleaned from their research.
“We shouldn’t compare the lake to the past, to the 1910s, we should look to what it could be in the future,” said Steele. “[Lake County] can be a powerhouse.”
