 says recording okay thank you okay we'll convene this meeting of the board San Rosa Valley Water District and we'll take the roll at this time Holly would you please go ahead and take the roll director Ferris here director Falls here director Henry here director Moran here and president Swan here so we've got let's see here unfinished business to a Rick want to go ahead and thank you chair Swan can you hear me okay sure fine great well first off I want thank the board for convening and those who have joined from the public on short notice I'm planning to give you an update on the district's response in the state of the district in response to the CV the CZU a lightning fire that resulted in an evacuation of a hundred percent of our water district as part of my update I'm I will call on a couple of department managers staff members to give a little more in-depth update especially on water quality and on the district over all can we mute that can we get some muting doing please can we please mute some of these if you're not a speaker or participant would you please mute thank you overall the district's water system is in good shape all except for a few outlining areas the majority of our water system was not impacted by the fire we are still supplying potable water and we'll be supplying potable water in most of our system scott's valley mapeco ziani the town of felton most of men most of ben loman we do have some outlining areas that were impacted by the fire in the far reaches of boulder creek and upper riverside grove our upper reaches of big basin way boulder brook drive featherstone in felton a very small portion of featherstone of our felton system that were impacted and our major impact to the district was our surface water intake supply lines all in all approximately a little over seven miles of high density polyethylene would cross the district's watershed to bring surface water into our lion water treatment plan was completely destroyed by fire it was an htp pipeline placed above ground due to the steep topography the lack of equipment access it was it's very much like a park like setting a trail as the pipe you know weed in and out of redwood trees and and went closely through the cannons of the bell in the mountain that was a hundred percent destroyed that's a major impact to the district not only in cost but the avail of the ability to use surface water in the upcoming winter seasons the other areas that we have impacted we come to conclusion that today as of today we have approximately 300 connections that are out of water in our total system that's in the riverside grove area the eckley area off of highway 236 the blackstone area just outside of boulder creek our south reservoir area which is high reaches of alba road the featherstone area boulder brook drive and our lion zone so to total wheat we believe we have about 300 service connections that we are working to restore water we believe that we will have water restored to most of these areas by the end of next week we are already in the process of procuring materials temporary piping us temporary storage tanks were received today materials are on order on order contractors have already been on site starting to facilitate some of the larger repairs that district staff cannot complete ourselves so we are we are fully in recovery mode we have increased water supply in back into the areas that cal fire asked us to isolate in order to keep water in the active fire areas which was our highway nine corridor we've restored water out to bear creek road water all the way up to Riverside Grove and some other outlining areas mostly the water system is in really good condition except for these outlining areas we do have a water quality issue that I will ask our water quality supervisor nate Gillespie to inform the board of here shortly that is a result of the melting HDPE pipe that we will discuss more I can give you a quick I'll try to give you a quick rundown lightning round of the areas of damage starting with we we had a waterline a two inch waterline break and Felton by a cow fire bulldozer our Bennett spring raw water line has fire damage we need to replace 700 linear feet of four inch we also need some more investigation and assessment at the at the actual intake box bull spring which is in Felton we're unable to access due to still has active fire we cannot get into that area the south reservoir up up Alba Road there are four HDPE tanks that possible with possible heat exposure that may need to be replaced all the above ground HDPE piping was destroyed in the tank area and the supply line from the tanks down to their booster which is in Brookdale was also destroyed it was an above ground high density polyethylene line along Alta via road in Brookdale we lost a section of four inch high density polyethylene to fire that needs to be replaced the Blackstone tanks in Boulder Creek we lost two 10,000 gallon HDPE tanks to fire damage and the above ground plumbing to those tanks need to be replaced the replacement tanks were received today and will be craned into location planning tomorrow afternoon the Eklie tank is a 10,000 gallon HDPE tank it experienced fire damage and it requires replacement that tank also arrived today we also lost in that area that area had pretty good fire damage we lost the two inch HDPE piping from the tank to the booster pump station the booster pump station was destroyed the PG&E power drop was destroyed by fire skated control was destroyed and communications between the booster and the tank was destroyed so there's considerable amount of work to do there but it's a small zone it only has about 12 connections in it but we will be working to restore the it was interesting there is the water system was impacted but the residents are all still standing which is great news so that's an important zone for us to get back in service because they will be re-entering hopefully soon the big steel tank is one that you've all heard about the all above HDPE piping in the vicinity of the tank was destroyed mainline valves on the tank their resilient wedge seedings were damaged by fire by heat we lost a 12 inch 10 inch and 6 inch HDPE pipelines between big steel lion and little lion they were all destroyed by fire those three tanks are welded steel the tanks themselves are in great shape however big steel tank we're concerned about melted HDPE leaching into the tank so we will be doing a scrubbing of the tank before we put it back in line and that's a rather large tank that's a million and a half gallon tank the electrical between all of those tanks was destroyed by fire there is a considerable amount of tree damage in that area that we are in the process now of removing some large fir trees that are burned up the center we have a consultant a forestry consultant on scene there now evaluating and we're removing all those tanks so we can safely or trees so we can safely get in and start to replace the mainline we have a contract crew that is already on site and is starting to work on restoring mainline and getting materials of the big steel booster at that location its power was lost skater control was lost and the HDPE pump-up line to lion tank was lost at the district's largest facility the lion tank the overflow and transmission HDPE mains the big steel and system were destroyed by fire contractors on on location and is starting the repairs the form and creek intake and raw water supply line of the treatment plant the above ground HDPE form and pipe raw water line was destroyed by fire the form and creek diversion structure has fire damage to the intake structure the turbidity station building was completely destroyed by fire and we have a contractor in the process now moving forward with replacing the 12-inch water line that was destroyed by fire approximately 3,360 linear feet to from the from the actual intake to the treatment plant it's important that we get some water back into the treatment plant the treatment treatment plants do not like to be just shut down and not have water running through them there are many chemical feed lines and small orifices and tubing that become plugged if you don't continue usage there's also other moving parts chemical feed metering pumps and so forth that it's important to keep those in service so we're working to get the form and creek intake back online and start getting some water through the treatment plant cold creek intake and piping again that was another above ground eight inch HDPE that was destroyed by fire the wood diversion was destroyed further assessment and material procurement procurement is needed this cold creek intake will be a critical winter intake as this stream typically flows cleaner from turbidity than the rest of our our main our main intakes cold creek is a it's an interesting I think it's part spring and part creek but the water that flows there is it can be used for for treating much sooner than our other sources so we fill with the fire damage to the watershed it's imperative to get this intake online P mine intake and raw water supply line again we were unable to access still because there's still some active fire but that's an 8,000 lineal feet HD 8 inch HDPE piping from mapping and discussion with Cal fire the entire pipeline has been destroyed by fire the five mile pipeline which you've heard a lot about staff has been unable to assess the five mile which is five miles plus of six and eight inch high-density polyethylene above ground piping from mapping and discussion with Cal fire the entire pipeline has been destroyed by fire further assessment needed at our Riverside Grove tank far north Boulder Creek it's a large welded steel tank the tank is in good condition but the Riverside Grove tank PG&E power drop and SCADA control was destroyed by fire big concerns here and the 16 and on the 1620 acres of watershed which Carly will speak on that was consumed by fire there are huge concerns going into the winter months regarding erosion and landslides into our intake structures or what's left of them or into the streams or just landslides in general on that watershed we estimate we lost approximately 175 water meters that have been destroyed by fire that's could be plus or minus we did lose two equipment on some equipment we lost two trailer mounted air compressors and one 45kw mounted generator which was one of our older generators which was due for surfacing we lost a flight pump that was in storage which is roughly a fifteen thousand dollar pump that was in a storage building at Lyon that was destroyed one lawnmower three stamp sampling stations and a construction trail that's kind of our list of damage to date that we know about I'm sure this list will grow but we are moving forward as expedient as possible to get these areas restored in water with that I would like to turn it over to Nate Gillespie who's our water quality supervisor to speak about we have a very challenging water quality issue ahead of us Nate. Pardon me Mr. Rogers chair Swan Nate for just a moment procedure as our procedural point I see that some members of the public have been using chat to try to communicate with the board and I would just ask for Brown Act reasons we try not to use chat there will be an opportunity for members of the public to rest the board with questions for the end of the discussion so for anybody who's who's tried to use the chat function if you could please hold your comment and make it to the board when we reached the public comment period that would be very much appreciated thank you. Yeah so as Rick had mentioned we have quite a bit of melted HDPE mainline out there in the district so what's been learned from the tubs and the campfires is the melting of these these plastic HDPE mains can release volatile organic compounds or VOCs also when the system is depressurized that can create back siphonage which has the potential to suck VOCs back into the water distribution system so we're we're in a relatively unknown the areas that have been depressurized it's it's unknown right now if there's VOC contamination so as a precaution we're going to be needing to getting some appropriate notices out to protect our customers health so the district's actively working with our regulatory agency the state water resources control board about what the appropriate notices that we need to give to our customers in the affected areas so we've got a robust sampling plan planned once we can restore water in these areas we plan on flushing them and following up each depressurized zone with VOC samples as soon as we can we've also sampled areas that have been unaffected out in our distribution system just to you know make concrete sure that we don't have widespread VOC contamination let's see so yeah benzene is a primary concern of chemicals that can be released under paralysis of HDPE means the VOC screen that we are using is EPA method 524.2 that includes a screen of roughly 84 VOC compounds we have taken a couple of samples as previously mentioned in the unaffected areas we expect to have those sample results from our contract lab about midweek next week at the latest. Nate do we have an idea of how long we may have to keep do not drink or yeah so in the the Tubbs fire as well as the campfire those notices did last for roughly eight months to I believe up to 15 months just the VOC's back siphoning into the distribution system what can occur to my understanding is some of those VOC's can adhere to biofilm in the pipe walls it can adhere to rubber gaskets in the distribution system and it can just be really tricky to remove so again that's going to be part of our robust sampling once we we get water restored to our areas that lost pressure and that's one of the reasons that we are removing as much as the damaged HDPE products such as the tanks and piping the pipe may look that its integrity is still restored but we don't want to take a chance of even the heat can release of those byproducts and we feel it's important to cut that out and get rid of it instead of let it go down into the distribution system and we start chasing that around our distribution system and really have to do an increased sampling program you know the samples are $300 piece there's at least a 24 48 hour turnaround and and plus staffing time could be quite expensive not to mention probably the worst of this the prolonging I do not drink order do you want to add anything else to that Nate that's all I have for now all right thank you so we will be getting out notices we hope very shortly on these areas some of the areas that are very small satellite we are going to the door and leaving notices to make sure there's no confusion we will be using changeable message signs in some areas because of the large amount of inflex and people and firefighters that the state wants to ensure that we are notifying not only the homeowners but people coming in so we'll be using changeable message signs for that message and we'll be able to move those around the district as needed as well. On moving ahead on this repairs I have contracted with three different contractors one contractor is working on tree removal up at the lion tank on the damaged fire the trees that the fire is damaged so we can move in and safely put back our pipelines one of the biggest can safety concerns with cal fire right now is that they're getting trees just falling for no reason that have been damaged by fire and it's causing a lot of access problems and road closure problems as well. We have another contractor out that's working on putting back the 12-inch Foreman Creek raw water supply line and then we have another contractor working on replacing all the piping through the big steel lion and little lion tank we're replacing that HDPE with ductile iron and bearing that is probably one of the most important pieces of our distribution system that resulted in the loss of 50% of our water storage that we do not want to go through that again. We're also moving ahead starting the first of next week with three temporary employees basically people who live in the community that are qualified to do maintenance work pulling pipe assisting district staff and hooking up some of these smaller areas we're working on that and we're working on a new an engineer from the firm Sandus brought in today to work with staff civil engineering firm in Campbell there will be working with staff on writing assessments and on design and getting some of our system back up in operations and working with FEMA representatives on damage assessment. So we're moving through that and with the different with a list of things that I talked about I have an updated price the board has already approved that it's last one of its last emergency means the district manager for $200,000 to do replace the piping between big steel lion and little lion what I just went through that list of damage that we're working on the replacement of tanks and above ground lines will be an additional 341,000 so I will be asking the board tonight to approve an additional $350,000 in emergency expenditures. These are not one contract these are for materials these are for some labor some of it's the rental to the changeable message signs all the different things that we're doing now staff running around doing so I will be asking the board to approve that as well. Is there any questions on damage before we kind of move into operations? I have a question for Nate if he's still in still part of the group yes he is. Is it okay to proceed President Swan? Nate I have a question for you you said you're doing a screen test for VOCs are you looking or thinking about doing any specific chemical tests for what we know to be known plasticizers in the HTPE for example steroid I know is is in there and it is a known enzyme inhibitor for biosystems any thought given to doing more testing than just that VOC screen? Yeah so the EPA method 524.2 it does include 84 compounds of that 84 compounds a lot of those are again degrade plasticized compounds I believe styrene is included in that list but it does include 84 compounds in that that screen so we feel like those results will adequately net us with some some really good data on what we may or may not have as far as contamination. And a second question any idea how long the state will require us to continue this testing until we are to tell we are assured that our our chemical levels go back down to normal? I can't speculate on that right now I would expect until we are below the MCL for all VOCs. Yeah that will be that will be determined by the first round of testing. It sounds like we'll just be spending quite a bit more in testing is there no would you agree Nate? Yes we will be spending a lot more in testing. Are we gonna have an estimate of that cost anytime soon? Sample-wise I can't estimate at this time but we do know that they are $300 per sample for a 48 hour turn around time. And again and again that'll determine be determined on our first round of testing when we get the results back and that's the reason we're going in and replacing a lot of this stuff too is so that hopefully we don't have VOC hits come back by removing the HDPE and the polyethylene pipes that are there now. Any thought given Nate to the fact that the chemicals were are released into the ground as well and could potentially end up in the ground water? You know the the affected area right now is not near our our our well field. I would have to consult with a hydrogeologist on potential contamination related to that. I guess I'm worried about the rains coming in the in the rainy season washing some of that those chemicals into the the creeks and getting into our feed system. Thoughts on that? Yeah again I'd have to defer to hydrogeologist on that. I'm not an expert in migration of chemical contaminates in the ground water. That's a great point Lou and you know this watershed we share basically with the city of Santa Cruz and we're collaborating with the city and we will bring that up and talk because the city and our district are very concerned on how we maintain our watershed and how we go back into you know to control erosion and so forth. So that's something we can bring up and Carly I'll have Carly bring that up to the group to discuss because you know you look at the five miles that goes all the way across the watershed there may be that potential and it's it's worth at least discussing at high levels. Okay thank you. Okay okay with that I just I want to leave before we go on to a couple other options. Oh I'm sorry my apologies Bob. No problem. I had my hand up so maybe it didn't get seen. Just a couple of questions here on the it sounds like there's an immediate movement to replace the Foreman Creek supply line the 12 inch. That's correct. That's the shortest one that we can bring water surface water back to the treatment plant relatively quickly. The five miles is going to take some discussion. What you find is going to take some discussion. What kind of pipe are we using for that? Right now I'm using HDPE pipe for that. It'll either be a temporary until we decide what we're going to put in for the final or we will go back in and bury that pipe. It'll be one or the other. And part of the discussion around this is relative to what FEMA will pay for versus what we pay for. Well I believe what the discussion will be what's best for the district to harden these pipelines so this doesn't happen again. Each time we have these disasters we try to learn and that's why HDPE was used. So I will with this engineering firm that we hired we will be discussing with FEMA that we want to put this back above ground and HDPE is unacceptable and I believe that we can negotiate with FEMA and they also want you to put it back so it doesn't happen again. But this is not going to be an easy task on the five mile. Environmental, constructability, cost will be all something that we have to look at. There'll be some real discussion about replacing that pipeline. The Forman Creek we can put it back quick and come winter. Right now it's a little fortunate because our district as you know Bob is roughly 50% split between surface water and well water. This is our low flow time for surface water. So right now it's not too bad. And we know from past practice that when we get rain that Forman Creek can supply most of our water system with surface water. And we can drive to the intake. We can get water and maintain it and operate it relatively easy. So this is the most important one to get back and that's why we are working on that right now. I guess my primary concern, the second Lois, I've got a couple other things I want to mention. My primary concern is the replacement of above ground pipe that melted the HDPE with HDPE. I guess what I'm hearing you say is that all of the replacements that we're planning and doing that you've mentioned in your report with HDPE are considered temporary? That's correct. That's correct. I think we might want to emphasize that as part of the report. We will. A little bit more. I know there's a lot of people concerned about that. To go, some of it we're putting back in steel like the stuff between lion and little lion. It is just too important to the district to lose that again or even to wait. I've talked to some people at Cal Fire and they'll tell you that sometimes you can have refire in an area up to three times and because this fire has gone so long that some of this fire is deep down in the soil and the last thing I want to do is do some replacement of HDPE and have fire degrade the pipe as soon as we put it in. So we're taking special precautions. We're trying to scrape the ground. We're getting rid of these trees that are causing us problems and we're putting a steel pipe in and burying it in between these three critical reservoirs. Very important. But there will be a lot of discussion and I wouldn't doubt because of this and because of the fires up north and the problems with HDPE, I wouldn't doubt that state health would not allow it coming in our standards. They may not allow above ground in fire areas. I could see that because they're very concerned and there's like Nate says, there's not a lot known yet but we do know it's a real issue. I just don't want the HDPE because we're talking about replacing an emergency basis to be considered permanent. I like it to be explicitly labeled as temporary if that's a factor our intention is. Ken, I think you do. The second question was around the clarification of what do not re-bring means. So there's very hard to hear about it. I understand do not re-bring. We can't, you're very muffled. We can't, we can't understand you. Probably the mystery we brought in again. Sorry about that. I will turn over to Steve and drop off and we'll be right back. Okay, Bob will save his question when he comes back or at another time. Rick, you want to proceed? I think Lois has questions. I see some other board members with questions, maybe. Lois, you got your hand up? Yeah, I had my paw up. Am I unmuted? Yeah, you're fine. So, Mr. Rogers, I was wondering how long have those pipes been above ground? I think James and I just had this discussion. Will we come up with James? Five mile pipeline has been on the ground, on top of the ground for 23 years. Okay. And about the same for the other ones too. Yeah, and all the plumbing and everything, big steel and lion. That was done in 90, 94, 95. So it's about 25 years. And PVINE, I think was done right around the same time as five miles. So probably 22 years or something like that. Okay. And it was an excellent shape. Don't, you know, ACPE, if it's installed correctly for that application, the way it bends. It was in very good shape when it was damaged by fire. Yeah. Okay. Just wondering, because there were some rumbles out there. And I really thought those pipes had probably been there a long time. And I was right. Okay. That's, that's it. That's all I'm going to know. Thanks, Lois. Bob, Bob's back on. You're muted, Bob. Go ahead and have Rick go and then I'll, I'll come in. So, so I have a comment and a question. So my understanding is that a lot of rural forested areas use the same kind of piping. So we did nothing exceptional. It was standard practice to use this kind of piping, correct? Correct. Studio Santa Cruz also has that up north in their system. Right. And a lot of places up north on the Sonoma fire. The camp fire, the car fire, all those have everywhere uses that same. Same. Thank you. And so my question is for Rick or James is, could you give a brief layman's terms. Description of how the water was lost from that tank. I don't want to, you know, I think what happened is the piping, there was intense fire around the tanks and the piping in between the tanks was all melted. When that melted, the tanks just started draining through all the inlets and outlets on the tank. So each tank had multiple pipes coming in and out of it. And so out of each, and they're very big pipes are 12 inch, eight inch, six inch. And so it happened very quickly. The water just came flushing out and we weren't able to get in there because there was active fire. And it was kind of suppressing the fire around where the firefighters were at the same time. And so we weren't able to get in there and they didn't have anything to turn the valves off with. And at that point, it was a loss. Okay. Thank you. You're back. Hear me. Do I sound better? Yes. We're good. Rick is part of maybe, I don't know if it's now or later, but I'd like to get some clarification about what do not drink means. There's, obviously, I know you don't want to, you know, drink it as you drink a glass of water, but there's also a lot of other uses of water. That someone might do cooking showers, you know, that sort of thing. And I'd like to make sure that we cover what people can and can't do when under a do not drink order. And I'll ask Nate to answer that because he's been working very closely with our health rep. I'll put a little bit into that. So it's a do not drink. Do not boil. Notice. So that means the water is not even. Should not even be used for cooking. Drinking anything that you're going to ingest. Any way you're going to ingest the water. That is what that is going to state is do not drink, do not boil. And if it gets really bad, it'll go to a do not use. Yeah, I understand. I just think we need to be very clear with people because for example, people in the shower can sometimes get it in their mouth and. Eyes and ears and that sort of thing. And so, you know, just understanding what those parameters are, I think is really important. Yeah. I'm going to go to Nate on that with the mouth and eyes and ears. I'm not sure how that all works there. There's a lot to this. And we hope to have much better information on our website. These are volatile organic chemicals. Nate, you want to take the lead here? Yeah. So, uh, when we do get our notice out, again, we are working with our regulatory agency on this notice right now and how to best protect. The, the, the, um, the community and the payers help. Um, and this notice will include, um, Uh, things such as, uh, uh, you know, do not use to cook with, do not use, um, To brush teeth with things like that. It will be clear on the, uh, the notice, um, you know, Uh, in late turns so that it's easy for people to understand. And we can put some information on the website of what it's safe to use for, you know, such as, you know, how to use this and so forth, et cetera. And then my last question, Rick, on the 350,000 you're asking for, it wasn't clear to me what that scope was. Was it for everything that was on your report or was it for a subset of that? I wasn't clear. Well, it's kind of, it's embedded in my report and you can see it's the pipe that we're running for temporary, it's materials and some labor and some equipment to get back in water. It's not to any one contractor, it's spread out to the tank manufacturer, too. Well, for example, it's several projects. I understand, but for example, it would include cleaning out the big steel. Yes. Includes the big steel booster. Yes. Includes the interconnections. Well, we already talked about the interconnection. It would include the Foreman Creek intake. Yes, no, it won't include anything to do with the, you know, well, that was in the 200,000. That was in, no, that is in here. I apologize, that is in here. Yes, it'll include the Foreman Creek intake. Okay, so it will include everything, but the Bennett raw water line, the bull spring facilities, the Cool Creek intake and piping, the Pevine intake and piping, the five mile piping, but everything else other than those is included in the 350. It won't include the watershed because we don't know what's going on there yet. Right. These are, again, the remedial procurements to get us back in water on the temporary. And there's, you know, all these raw water supply lines will be bitted, projects, RFPs and so forth. And we will discuss it a later term, but this is, most of this is embedded in this list to get this moving forward. Yeah, I think it includes 25,000 for temporary labor. You know, it's got, it's what we need to move forward and I'm already spending some of it to be honest with you. I understand. It's just that from the record and the number, it wasn't exactly clear which ones were which. And I just wanted to make sure we were clarifying that for everybody that's on the phone. My intent was to have us a little better spreadsheet of what needed to be done and what's being done, but we run out of time. I understand. Thank you. Just with respect to the VOC contamination areas, specifically what part of the district are we talking about? Nate, do you want to take that or do you want me to take it? Yeah, so we're looking at the Big Steel Pressure Zone North. From my, that includes Bear Creek Road areas, that includes up Highway 236, that includes all the way up to the Echo Pressure Zone, including Riverside Grove. I believe the, Rick and James, you can correct me if I'm wrong here, but the southern boundary of this notice would be at the Highway 9 and I'm at a loss of the album. Yeah, we can't get it approximately, Sheriff Swann, at 2800 connections, plus or minus, we'll have a do not drink order. And will that include the east side of Highway 9 as well? Up in this, in the Boulder Creek area, yes. Because it's $1. We do plan on issuing a map along with the do not drink, do not boil notice as well, just so it could be a lot clearer who is and who is not affected. As part of this moving in, see as we're talking about water quality, the do not drink, we're moving ahead on putting in a 5000 gallon bulk tank somewhere in Boulder Creek with potable water that customers can come and fill five gallon containers. We will contract with one of our local haulers and have them keep that tank full with potable water. So folks who live in the area of do not drink, we will, we can supply them with water if need be. I'm, you know, from talking and I'll get to this, we talked to a gentleman from another agency, a gentleman named Dave Petterson, and he went through this with the Woolsey fire. And customer outreach customer service was imperative to reach out to your customers, not wait for them to contact us, but for us to reach out to them so they don't have, you know, further discomfort trying to get through this. So we will be putting in somewhere in Boulder Creek and maybe right here our office in the backyard, a 5000 gallon portable potable tank, and we will offer that for people to come in and fill as needed in five gallon containers. We feel that will be very important to reach out to our people. You know, we also will be reaching out to the people who lost their homes or somewhere around, I don't know, 200 plus or minus we're out cataloging those addresses and so forth. And so I intend to have staff reach out to those people. We do have a catastrophic failure for reduction in water rates and to waive the monthly service charges for those people who lost their homes. The last thing we wanna do is send a bill out to somebody that lost their home. We wanna be proactive, we wanna reach out and talk to these people. I think the board should consider also to the people that did have high usage during the fire that we reduce their water bill back to their normal usage this time of year. I know we're gonna have some high water bills from people who lost sprinklers on but they did that in an act of desperation to save their homes. We made it through, we did go around and turn a lot of those off and most likely there will be some high bills but I really think this is a time that we need to extend exceptional customer service. So it may not be pleasant to deal with a government agency but at least I'd like to see people walk away and say, hey, they were helpful, they helped me out and we're looking on the road to recovery. There's not that many, there's no reason why we can't be proactive to reach out to those folks in those affected areas and move ahead with that. And that's just kind of on the customer service end. We are trying to get people back into our front office for phones, for customer contact. We hope next week we will be restaffing our office and we kind of forget, a lot of people forget about COVID. We were still in the COVID problem with social distancing and all the different safety procedures that we were moving on. Our front office was closed. We had unique working hours. We will be trying to restore our front office as I feel it's essential that we have staff to reach out to our customers and work with them. Other things, staff will be working seven days a week until people back in water. Like I said, we were looking to bring on three temporaries and I do believe, James, you can help me out here. The three people that I do believe they live in the district, I hope, before I... Yeah, so right now I have two that live in the district. One lives in Ben Lohman and one lives in Boulder Creek of West Park. And I have been reaching out for a third and I've inquired on a couple of people, one being an employee and a member of the district that works at the Shell station in Ben Lohman and one being a member that works for Morgan Scarborough there at Scarborough Lumber and Ben Lohman. So I'm trying to reach out to those two guys, get their contacts and first one that gets back to me is the one that's gonna get hired. So I just hope they get back to me. That'll be a short period, hopefully in the area about approximately a month of temporary labor and those temporary folks will work side by side with district staff. They'll be non-benefited positions part time. They'll go through our basic hiring process and we hope to have those folks here because we need hands, we need additional people. We're still running our water system, we're still finding leaks and we're still doing a lot of monitoring of the distribution system and storage by driving around. We hope that Comcast will get back up and running. Power is just about restored and correct me staff, am I wrong to all of our facilities from PG&E? So we're looking good with power. Now we're trying to get communications restored. Our radio system has worked pretty much flawlessly. It's been a great system. We're still moving forward but I kind of as I close with my update, I just wanna say that the district's water system in large part remains in good operational condition with storage and potable water. We do have some small localized areas that have fire damage that we are addressing but for the most part, our water system is very strong. Our well field is up and running. It wasn't a little over a year ago that this board approved rehabilitation of several of our wells and that has paid off because the production has been strong from our well fields. We are moving some surface water from the town of Felton which we briefly met with our fisheries biologist or our fisheries person and to talk about the increased water that we're using and he is going to go out and walk the creek and do some inspection. We are increased our flows there. We have moved water from the North-South inner time. We have not purchased any water from other water systems. Scotts Valley water, Santa Cruz water have all graciously and so kill water have all graciously offered help and are staying in close contact with the district which I appreciate and I can't speak enough about the staff and their response to getting our people back in water. I probably forgot something with that. I'll turn it back over to the board. I guess I haven't asked Carly. Carly on watershed. I see watershed that's not crossed off my list. To briefly talk about our watershed. I apologize, Carly. Before you change, Rick, you want to get Bob's question in? Sure. Bob, you got a question with what Rick's been talking about? You're muted, Bob. Very good. And the tank for folks who get drinking water from, what could, there's a lot of businesses that are going to be affected in this area and I'm wondering what we might be able to do to help them out. Well, I spoke with a Boulder Creek fire and they have a representative. One of the commissioners is, I do believe he's an officer in the Boulder Creek Business Association and they're reaching out to businesses, not just in Boulder Creek, but the businesses in general to see what their needs are and concerns. And I spoke with them today and he's still contacting people, but he hopes to get back and give that information to both us and Cal Fire. Well, that's as soon as they know about this situation where we've got some uncertainty about being able to supply drinkable water up there for at least some period of time some of the businesses in the area are going to be severely impacted by that, I think. Probably. I'm not sure what we can do, but we probably need to cuddle with them to see if there's something that can be done. You know, I don't want to guess, but I'm hoping that the Highway 9 corridor because it stayed pressurized and water coming passing through. I hope sampling will show that our downtown areas will clean up and it'll be these little zones, these higher-reach little zones that will have a water quality problem. But I can't guarantee that until Nate does his robust sampling protocol. But let's just keep the businesses in mind once we get more information. Definitely. Thank you. Carly? Great. So as Rick mentioned, we do believe that a majority of our Ben Lohman Mountain watershed property was burned. That's approximately 1,600 acres. We don't know the extent as of yet, just because the fire are still active in those areas. So we haven't been able to actually get out there to assess. The good news is that CAL FIRE's watershed emergency response team, known as MORT, arrived today and will begin their assessments this next week. We've spoke with the CAL FIRE team lead who will also be working with CDFW and the county very closely. They'll be determining the burn intensity and soil condition and then determine where rehabilitation needs to take place from fire breaks, such as dozer lines. The county is going to be providing CAL FIRE with all the mapping from the district. We've actually provided that to the county so far and then have also reached out directly to the response team lead with CAL FIRE to offer assistance with any touring of our properties or additional mapping. Right now, it's pretty much just a waiting game to be able to get out there and fully assess the situation. And like I said, we're gonna keep in close contact with both CAL FIRE and the county to make sure that we're involved in the entire process. Any questions on watershed? You're muted. I have a question for Carly. Carly has our partnership with Panorama been of help here? It has, they've actually completely switched their gears and are helping us with the post-fire response. They're also going to focus a little more on post-fire response in the management plan that was actually going to be released in its draft form next month. So they're going back to the drawing board a little bit to address those concerns. They've also put us in contact with a lot of these different team leads as far as the response goes. And they're going to hopefully work closely with us to be at the table as a representative for the district just because we have limited bandwidth with staff at this moment. Thank you. If there's no other questions, I turn the page here and I have watershed and finance and we have not given a chance for our director of finance, which is probably Bob's more question. Bob's got a good bottom. I think more of a comment, due to the absolutely heroic efforts in the part of our volunteers, they were able to stop the fire at Highway 9, but the East side of Highway 9 is still in the same conditions that the West side was before the fire and the heartbreaking loss we've had of a lot of our communities homes. So I'm hopeful that this fire preparedness effort and exercise will continue because, you know, our entire community is not out of danger at this point. And that's certainly going to be true going forward as well. Thank you. Stephanie, do you, from finance, from the finance perspective, do you have anything you'd like to add? Finance perspective, I mean, we kind of already discussed that we have generally about $3 million in cash reserves. Once we get these projects figured out and estimated and we actually get our FEMA allocation, we'll be able to go out and get the bridge loan for all of these projects. I've reached out to Wells Fargo, who we bank with, San Xuz County bank reached out to us. And then also Chris Prulitz is obviously very familiar since he just did our $14.5 million financing. Everyone's pretty much ready to go once we get some of those different items from a customer service standpoint, you know, staff's been answering and calling back every single voicemail and every single email with answers that we're able to provide to the best of our capabilities. You know, we have a lot of people asking for very specific information about their specific address, you know, which the district at this time hasn't been able to necessarily confirm that type of stuff. So we've been trying to stay in touch with our customers as best as possible. Going forward, like Rick said, we are gonna have some that are gonna exercise our catastrophic event policy to where we'll have some not being billed. Fortunately, you know, a majority of customers' homes, you know, the fire didn't impact as many as they thought it could have. So from that standpoint, you know, that still leaves the district in a stable position. It's obviously gonna be a long recovery. You know, a lot of people, pretty much everyone was evacuated. So there's always a lot of different costs and constraints that people have there. So we'll just continue to work with our customers and we'll likely have some different action items at, you know, upcoming board meetings where we may need actual direction from the board for which route we wanna take. But in general, you know, we have a little bit of a financial stability right now. Which is great. And I, you know, through this, through the fire, I have to shout out to our council, our district council, who's been so valuable on working on agendas and legal contracts and all the things that you may not think is, or I may not think are important, but are very important. And she's been a tremendous help. And I just wanna thank her. She set us up with a meeting with different people who have been through this, through the fire, and FEMA and her resources and her help has just been greatly appreciated. I just wanted to tell that to the board. So with that, Gina, do we need to do anything for a request for additional funds? Yes, I could propose a motion for the authorization for the amount that you discussed. But before that, I think it would be good to get public comment. There were some folks with hands up and a couple of chat questions that would be better posed during the public comment period. Okay, thanks, Gina. Let's go to the, for public comment. And now we've only got one hand up at this point. Let's deal with Tina. You're recognized. Hi, thank you. I had a few questions. So first of all, you mentioned this tank, the 5,000 gallon tank that is planned to be in downtown Boulder Creek for potable water. And I think that's great. I think I was gonna be one of my original questions. It's like, if you have a don't drink water, where do you get the water? So my question is whether that water is going to be free or is it something we have to pay for by the five gallons and are we only supposed to bring five gallons away at a time? I'm just a little concerned that like, if I use more than five gallons in a day, then how is that supposed to work? And you may not have the details for that yet and I completely understand. But I'm also wondering if you're planning on putting another tank, maybe somewhere farther up 236 or somewhere where it's not so convenient to come into town to get water. And that'll be my first question. And I'll pause for that. And then we plan to offer that water free. We don't have all the nuances figured out. If someone comes in and needs a hundred gallons or something like that for horses or an animal or some other use, we'll make arrangements. This is strictly to get people back in small quantities of water, five gallons. I use the five gallon, that's something you carry to walk up to and fill. I picture this as a tank with at least three spigots. And we'll see what the response is. If there's a line to it, obviously we will move and get a second if need be. There are, if you had a tank or something that you wanted to fill, we contact my office and we could go to other parts of the district where bulk water we can get from a fire hydrant or something or another source and not take from what people are coming in and get small quantities. The bottom line is we will work with you and I don't anticipate charging at this time. And I have water tenders readily available through contractors in Boulder Creek and in our area. Right. And if we need to put a station somewhere else like North Boulder Creek or something, those logistics can be worked out. Well, thank you. So my next question was, I know this is an emergency meeting so this may not be in your purview at this time, but I'm concerned that even when the water tests are safe and people from, or even if the water's being pulled from unaffected areas, that people will still not trust that the water is safe. And I'm just concerned that I'm wondering if you have a public relations strategy or even are considering a public relations strategy in the future so that the public can start to trust that the water is safe when you announced that the water is safe. So obviously that's not the case now, but maybe in months from now when that is the case that people are still gonna be skeptical considering like the watershed and so forth. So anyway, that's my other question. And again, I don't expect you to have an answer right now, but I'm just wondering if that's something you're considering. It's a good question and we just hope it's short lived and we'll go from there. And then my last question was whether or not there's anything the public can do to help restore water efforts. Conserve water until the fire is out until there's less fire trucks in the valley. When you stop seeing fire trucks, you could probably more or less go back to your normal, but conserve water right now because we still are restoring water to some areas and we do not have our surface sources. So water conservation would be the best way to help us. And if you see a leak, report it. All right, thank you. And thank you to the board for putting these emergency meetings together. I know it's a big task to be taking on right now. Thank you. Any other attendees? Three more. Yeah, Beth Thomas. Hi. I wanted to say that a number of these questions that have been so well answered for us today, including some of the things that Tina was just discussing, I think will really be helpful to the community if we are very clear in communicating with them, especially through social media because everybody's so plugged into that during this emergency to begin with. I think it's people are really looking for that information. And I think you've got some great answers, Rick, and all the rest of your crew. So I think as much as we can explain those things, because the stories do start to move around. And I really appreciate all of the amazing work you guys have been putting in and even the timelines of things seem like it's amazingly fast. So I know that the community is gonna really appreciate that. Thank you, Beth. Lynn McGiven, you're on mute, Lynn. Is that better? Yeah. I apologize. I tuned in a little bit late because I was out on the road. I'm hotel, the toll house hotel right now and trying to get back home. But I just wanna be really clear. I wasn't, I'm not sure if we have water at our house or not. You're a bit crazy. Lynn, if you contact me, if you contact me, this is Rick, send me an email with your address and I'll see what we can do to answer that. I don't wanna take the time. No, it's just up at Bear Creek Estates. Is the whole valley out of water? No, the majority of our water system is strong and has good water storage and potable water. The North Boulder Creek area, some of the high reaches have issues. But James, Bear Creek Estates, as of today, are we back in storage? We have water in Bear Creek Estates, yes. 18 feet in the tank. So you've got water in Bear Creek, but you will be on a do not drink order. Right. Okay, that's all I wanted to know. Thank you very much. Chris Finney. Hey, there, did I unmute myself? I did. Okay, thanks. As Beth says, there has been a lot of questions and Lynn just demonstrated that. At the San Lorenzo Valley Post, we have been trying to get the word out to people through our website and also through our Facebook page. I've been taking notes on the meeting. I know it is a public meeting, but I would like to try and get the word out from some of the agenda items that you sent out and from some of the notes that I've taken today. Is there anything that you would prefer we not put out to the public at large or anything that you would like that we do tell people? Because a lot of people, the primary complaint that I'm seeing is my area wasn't burned, why won't they let us back in? So, and you've actually spoken to some of that. Well, and Chris, that's a Cal fire decision, not the districts. I knew that. The repopulation were part of that, but we do not make any of that decision. If you want, before you, if you have your questions, if you wanna have a conversation this weekend, we can talk and go over your questions and answers. Okay, if you'd like, I can submit the, you know, what I write up for approval before we post it. We'll review it. If you wanna send it to Carly, we'll be more happy to review it and add to it if we see need to be. Do I have Carly, you see email address. I can post that in the chat, that'd be helpful. Yes, thank you, of course. Okay, thanks. No other questions from the panelists, but in the chat, we had a couple of questions earlier, Rick, maybe from Irene Lustig. You had a question about Brookdale, specifically wasn't mentioned in the list of places that are okay versus not okay. Can you comment on status of Brookdale? Brookdale will have a do not drink. Most of Brookdale is in water, except maybe the high reaches behind the Brookdale Lodge or maybe a handful of homes that have issues, but Brookdale will be an area do not drink. Okay. And you mentioned earlier that Nicolette has a question about publishing the areas where water service is impacted. That was, you'd mentioned there was gonna be a map published on the, I assume the website. Yes, we're working on that now. Hopefully that goes out with all of the water quality notifications. Okay. And one other last question. It's from Sarah Hart. She said something about they're being required by their insurance to provide proof of loss of water to receive compensation for housing after the first two weeks of an evacuation. Is there a resource they can go to to get some sort of documentation to provide them with this? I assume the map that's posted might provide that. We will have those soon enough. We are right now compiling a list. They're being sent to admin staff as we're turning them off. So we should have a list here soon of what ones we have turned off and what homes are burned here in the next few days. Probably, I would say give it a deadline of Wednesday-ish. And we are formulating a response through legal counsel right now. And I don't know, Gina, if you wanna comment on that or not at this time. I mean, there's not a lot that I can add to that. My understanding from our discussions is that that information is being developed and it'll be covered by them. And we will be responding. Okay, that seems to be it for questions from the public at this time. So, Rick, is there anything else or we go to close to? We have a request for additional funds. Still need a vote. Yeah, in the amount of 350,000 for the board to take action. And may I propose the language of a motion to see if a board member will adopt that? Okay, the proposed motion would be to increase the total not to exceed amount for emergency procurement from $200,000 by an additional $350,000 to a total of $550,000. I'd be happy to make that motion as Gina stated, Holly, grab that. And I'll second that. So, Holly, if you'd like to record a vote on that. I think you're still muted, Holly. Sorry, yes, I am, I'm not any longer. Director Ferris. Aye. Director Fultz. Yes. Director Henry. Yes. Director Moran. Yes. President Swan. Yes. Motion passes. I saw we had one quick question from panelists. Is the water safe to shower in in the do not drink areas? Nate, do you wanna address that? I know you wanna move on, but. Yeah, we're still working with the State Water Resources Control Board on that. It'll be included in the notice, but I believe what we want to do to expose any potential contamination is maybe a request not showering with hot water. Again, it'll be included with the notice once we get that finalized. And we're hoping to do that within the next 24 to 48 hours. And just note that he did say with hot water. Well, I think there will be a question about whether not any of these chemicals damage any of the hot water heaters or hot water on demand or anything like that. It's a very complicated water quality issue. I understand. But I need to make it simple, hopefully for. I agree. There are a lot of questions. With that, before we adjourn to close session, can I ask the council to explain the procedures moving forward? As we go to close session and coming back to open session. Yes, absolutely. So the first, of course, there'll be public comment on the closed session item before the closed session occurs. And then the board and the district manager and myself will leave the Zoom meeting and they'll just be a placeholder up during the Zoom meeting will stay active. There'll be a placeholder up for closed session. Once the closed session is completed on another platform, we'll come back to the Zoom meeting to provide any report and adjourn the meeting. There's no more open business, open session business to be discussed after the closed session. And unfortunately, I cannot answer the question what time will return to open session? That simply depends how long the discussion goes. Okay, you're good to go now. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Nate. Thank you. Okay, so the board will leave the meeting at this time. Oh, we're gonna have public comment first. We have public comment, yes. Thank you all. If there is any. I don't see any hands up on the public side here. No questions. So we'll adjourn to closed session at this time. Sorry. We have returned from closed session. We are now back. No, I mean right next to the right bottom. And we have nothing to report out of the closed session. Does Bob, I mean, does just Rick, I don't know what everything we need to be doing. We're not strict. Rick's there. Do we introduce any public comment? We are cadence. President Swan, I just wonder if we could get everybody to mute for a moment. Except for you, I'm not sure we heard the report out of clothes or your statement that there was no report out of closed session. I'll be glad to repeat it. So we are back in session and there is nothing to report out of the closed session. So at this point, do I think we just, do we just adjourn? Do we give the public a chance to ask any questions after the closed session? It's up to you. There's no need for another public comment session, but you could accept questions if you would like. Beth and Mark Smalley, do you guys have a question at all? Since you stayed on the line this long, I'll be glad to let you ask a question. No questions. Okay, great. All right, back then, then this meeting cells be adjourned.