Catch up on the latest GSA board meeting recaps anytime—at home, on the road, or on your tractor.
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The board approved a $17.75 million canal operations budget, up about 27%, with approximately $3.4 million in non-labor golden mussel costs. Staff moved planned canal dewatering to late October amid concerns about possible winter flooding. The board also approved a $3.06 million general membership budget and a 2.9% cost-of-living adjustment for eligible employees.
The board authorized the General Manager to sign five MLRP project agreements, subject to final legal review. The roughly $4.7 million, 11-project pipeline includes Tri-State, which was not approved. The Governor signed a Round 2 grant extension through June 2028. About 80 accounts that reported cover cropping or fallowing in 2025 have not reported for 2026; staff urged prompt reporting to support upcoming true-up invoices.
The board approved a Confluence Engineering technical support contract for up to $167,798, covering state reporting and evaluation of possible monitoring-network expansion. Directors discussed seven proposed groundwater priorities through 2029 but did not adopt a plan. Staff identified three potential grant programs and expects to bring grant-consultant recommendations to the board in November.
Staff recommended against the proposed one-time golden mussel treatment in 2026, favoring a broader 2027 approach; no treatment vote was taken. The committee approved $25,000 for Pool 3 repairs without scheduling the roughly two-week outage and increased the membership-fees budget by $10,400. Staff will circulate revised A/B power-cost allocations for review before issuing invoices or refunds; the agency holds about $800,000 in participant funds.
Woodard & Curran modeled eight supply and recharge projects yielding about 65,000 acre-feet per year under assumed full buildout around 2042. The projects nearly eliminate modeled groundwater-level undesirable results; adding roughly 2,000 acre-feet per year of demand reduction in Non-District East eliminates the remaining ones. The GSA must also demonstrate sustainability through management actions alone. Full project benefits depend on implementation.
