A prolonged effort by agriculture interests to craft a program that would oversee vineyard and orchard frost operations to help safeguard the Russian River's endangered fish earned unanimous final approval Tuesday from the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors.
The county-run program provides for an inventory of grape and fruit growers' frost water practices, including stream diversions, which federal officials say stranded and killed endangered coho salmon and threatened steelhead in the watershed in 2008 and 2009.
It also calls for stream flow monitoring by as many as 100 gauges placed throughout the watershed.
A scientific advisory panel will oversee those gauges and report on their findings each year to water and wildlife regulators.
More than a year in the making, the county program is the latest plan by grape growers to win approval from the state Water Resources Control Board.
Agency officials last week offered their tentative support for the program, which will have to mesh with the state's frost control rules, due out in 2012.
Having a local program in place before then was a priority, growers said.
"We're happy that it's local control," said Doug McIlroy, director of winegrowing for Rodney Strong Wine Estates and a grower representative in the effort. "It's a big step forward to be actually solving the problems that exist."
Tuesday's decision came despite lingering questions on the part of regulators and fish advocates, and more full-throated opposition by some environmentalists who wanted the program shelved.
Several streamside landowners and environmental activists said their input had not been welcome before October, when the county and growers first released the program for public comment.
"This was all done in secret," said Jim Doerksen, a Mark West Creek landowner.
Regulators have pushed for public access to the raw data generated by the gauges, while fish advocates have said that more of that data should come from stream gauges that immediately report their measurements online.
County officials have resolved the first issue. Raw data will be owned by the agricultural commissioner's office, and therefore be publicly available, they said.
The ultimate number of online gauges will be decided by the scientific advisory panel, officials said.
Grower registration for the program will handled by the ag commisioner's office. It will begin in mid-January and run until March 1. The amount of the registration fee and an additional fee to support the monitoring efforts will be decided at a January board hearing.
Growers who fail to comply with the county program will be subject to fines starting at $500 and running up to $1,000.
Grower representatives said those penalties should signal that the county and agricultural interests are serious about the effort to protect fish.
"Some of these fellows are going to have to change their practices," said David Fanucchi, an Alexander Valley vineyard owner who has been active on the issue. "It is not going to be an easy pill to swallow."
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