 Hi, good afternoon. I just wanted to test my audio. Can you hear me okay? Okay, terrific. I'll go back on mute till it's my turn. Good afternoon, everybody. I am not sure if we have everyone on, but I will be chairing this subcommittee in Board Member Grable's absence today. So, Director Burke, do we have everyone from staff on? Yes, we now have everyone from staff present, and I think we have all members of the subcommittee who are going to be here present. So, you can start whenever you are ready. Thank you so much for chairing. Yeah, great. Thank you so much. So, I'd like to call the meeting to order at one-on-one. If Secretary Aitha, you could do a roll call. Yes, Chair Grable, Board Member Mullen. Here. Board Member Watts. Here. Thank you. And as a reminder, if we can remember to mute ourselves when we are not speaking, that will be great. I will now open it up for public comment on non-agenda items. We are now taking public comments. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have any live or e-mail or voicemail public comments at this time? We receive no public comments. Great. Thank you. We will move to item 3.1. Director Burke, if you could introduce this item. Thank you, Board Member Watts and members of the committee. Our first item is a very timely item. We have our 2020 Water Shortage Contingency Plan, and call in close. Our Senior Water Resources Planner will be making the presentation. I just wanted to verify. Are you able to see my screen? Yes, we are calling. Thank you so much. So thanks for that introduction, and thanks to the Water Conservation Committee for convening today. You'll be hearing from staff this month and the following two months about the Urban Water Management Plan and the Water Shortage Contingency Plan. So we want to make sure you get a really strong foundation in this because this is a very significant effort that the department does every five years. Normally we would come to you first to talk about the Urban Water Management Plan. That's the overarching document that is updated every five years, as well as the Water Shortage Plan. However, you are going to be hearing at your study session on February 4th during the rate study session about some water shortage charges. So we wanted to make sure that you understood the water shortage charge part of that water rates study session in context of the Water Shortage Contingency Plan. So what we're doing is we're going to provide you with information about the Water Shortage Contingency Plan today to lay that foundation. We'll come back to you in February and in March, and we'll talk quite a bit more about the Urban Water Management Plan and more in detail about this Water Shortage Plan. I do want to make sure you have a pretty good foundation today so there'll be quite a bit of background. And then I'm going to really zero in on the water shortage charges and the water shortage stages so that, again, that conversation that you're going to have on February 4th will be in context. The California Urban Water Management Planning Act was adopted in 1983 by the California legislature. And it applies to urban water retailers. That's retailers that have at least 3,000 connections. We've got over 50,000 and that deliver at least 3,000 acre feet a year. We deliver about 18,000 acre feet a year. So as you can see, this definitely applies to us. The purpose of this long-term planning is to assess water supply reliability and it asks water suppliers to think about things like population growth and land use changes and climate change to make sure that they have adequate supplies for today and then looking out over a long horizon. This is to ensure that we have good water supply reliability. We consider this a very important exercise that we repeat each five years and this document guides quite a bit of the work that we do. We think it's very foundational and important. It also complies, of course, with state law. It also makes us eligible for grants and drought assistance from the state. This is due every five years and the Urban Water Management Plan itself, as well as the Water Shortage Contingency Plan. I'll just make a little side note here. In the past, the Water Shortage Contingency Plan predominantly was an appendix and a chapter in the Urban Water Management Plan. We will do that again this time. The Water Shortage Plan will be a chapter and a full appendix in the Urban Water Management Plan, but the Water Shortage Plan is also going to stand on its own two feet. So it's going to be a much more extensive document this time to meet some new requirements that the state has laid out. So there's a little background on the Urban Water Management Plan. It has a lot of sections. Ours has about 10 chapters. We talk about our water system and facilities and our service area, our population and demographics. We talk about where we get our water from, how much, how reliable it is, how much we expect to have in the future. We talk about water use in the recent past, the past five years. We've also done an analysis going back further than that. We look at the present and according to this year's Urban Water Management Plan, 2020 is considered the present. And then we look out to the future and look at what we think our demands are going to be considering population growth, land use changes, development, housing, and climate changes I mentioned before. We'll also discuss our conservation targets. The state mandated some targets for us for 2020. I'll just give you a short spoiler alert. We did a terrific job. We more than met the standard for conservation for the 2020 goal that was set by the state. You'll hear about that in more detail, but I just wanted you to know that good news right up front. We then take all of that information that I laid out already and we do a comparison and an analysis to look at whether or not we have adequate supplies going out over a 20-year horizon. Well, the state mandates 20 years, recommends 25-year horizon, and we as well as other water suppliers in our region have chosen for many years to use a 25-year horizon. It is simply a smarter way to go, allows us a little bit more flexibility, and really doesn't take all that much more effort to look out 25 years. And we look at years as though they were normal water supply years, a single severely dry year, and we'll be looking at five consecutive dry years. So as we look out over a 25-year horizon, we're going to be looking at these different scenarios along with population growth and land use changes and climate change, and determine whether we have adequate supplies. So this is, again, a very important piece of the work that we do. The water shortage contingency plan, of course, is critical because in times of water shortage, we have to have a way to address that. So the water shortage contingency plan will be a full appendix, but it will also be summarized in a chapter of the urban water management plan. Focusing now a little bit more narrowly on the water shortage contingency plan, this is a response plan, and it takes into account very mild shortages to very severe shortages and everything in between. So anything from a 10% shortage to over 50% shortage, we'll have a plan to address what we'll do to help make sure that our community, that their demands for water don't exceed the supply that we have available. So one of the ways that we do that is we look at providing prohibitions and restrictions on end uses to prevent any water waste, for example. We also outline all of our programs that we have in our water use efficiency team and all of the work that they do and anything in addition that we'll be doing during times of water shortages to help our customers with strategies and practices to reduce their water use. We describe operational changes that we can make to reduce any water losses or water uses that we have in our department during our operations. And today we're going to be talking to you very specifically about these water shortage charges. Again, that's an important piece of what you'll be hearing about on February 4th, so that's a big driver for why we're here before you today. And we'll also end in March and we'll get into more detail about what these are so that down the road when we come to you as a full body for the full BPU to consider the urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plan. All of these elements by that point will make sense. Speaking very briefly though, there's a lot of work that's done in the urban water management plan that now needs to be imported into the water shortage contingency plan. We can't simply refer to sections in the urban water management plan. Again, that water shortage plan has to stand on its own two feet. So we'll be bringing in that water reliability assessment that looks out for 25 years. We'll be looking at a short-term drought assessment that will be completed in the urban water management plan for the next five years, 2021 to 2025, assuming what would we do if we had the five driest years on record? We'll take those findings and bring them into the water shortage plan. We'll have to provide procedures for a new requirement that will explain to the state how we're going to on an annual basis report to the state about our current water supplies and whether or not we think we're going to be in a water shortage in the next 12 months, assuming the following 12 months would be dry. So the state is asking us to report to them starting in July of 2022 every year on our water supply conditions. So this is a new requirement and we're going to lay out the procedures in this document. We'll also have to describe our water shortages. I'll show you a table of those water shortages and show you how those align with the state's requirements. And then also all of the water shortage actions. I briefly mentioned those things like prohibitions to reduce waste and operational changes we can make and the ways we'll help our customers reduce water. We need to describe all of those in detail. We'll also need to include a seismic risk assessment and mitigation plan. Some of that work was done with our local hazard mitigation plan that was adopted by our city council in 2016. We've also as a department done additional risk assessment under some requirements of state law. So we'll be importing some of that information as well to address that requirement. The communications plan will be a description and great detail of how we will communicate with our staff, with other departments, with stakeholders and interested parties, with customers, with the state about what water shortage stage we're in and what we're doing and what we're asking of them and the help that we need and what the requirements are. So that communications plan is going to be much more extensive than it has in the past. We'll also have to lay out what we're going to do to require customers to comply and how they can be subject to some enforcement requirements, but also how they can appeal or request an exemption. So we'll give you more details about that in the future, but just as a short example, if there is for perhaps a company that's done extensive work with our water use efficiency team to reduce their water use, and we've determined there really isn't a whole lot more they can do, then we'll take that into consideration when we are restricting their water use and asking them to cut back. We also need to detail the legal authorities that empower the water shortage plan, things like city council ordinances and resolutions. And here's a piece you're going to hear more about on February 4th, the financial analysis. Water shortages mean that we ask our customers to use less water, which means we have less revenue. So again, this is where the water shortage charges come in and I'll talk a little bit more detail about those in a moment, but it's a plan for one way to recover some of the loss of revenue that we experienced during water shortages. So you'll hear more in detail about that financial analysis and how that affects our revenues as well as how it affects customers on February 4th. We'll need to discuss how we will monitor and report to the state on a monthly basis when we're in a water shortage, and also how we'll reevaluate and improve the water shortage plan if for some reason we found it wasn't adequate. We don't need to wait five years to update that plan. If we need to update it at any point to make it more effective, we can do so. And then we also have to talk about how the plan will be adopted, submitted to the state, and made available to the public during the five-year increments, but also at any time if we update it in between those five-year increments. So those are the major elements for a shortage plan. We first adopted a shortage plan in 1992 and it's been updated six times, and we're currently updating the plan now. And it's called the 2020 Water Shortage Contingency Plan, and it's due on July 1st of 2021. And that may seem a little strange that it's due six months after its date, but that's because the state wants us to include all of the data from 2020 in our 2020 plan so that that's part of our analysis and the projections and the estimates that we do. So the preparation's underway, and we're going to make sure it complies with all of the new requirements that I briefly reviewed. Here's the focus for today, though. We're going to talk to you about the shortage stages that we're proposing and the water shortage charges that we're proposing to help recover some of the revenue losses. We'll also mention to you the concept of water allocations. Those are under development, so we'll bring back detailed proposal for you in the future. But we'll also talk to you about the excess use penalties that would be associated with water allocations, because again, you're going to hear a little bit about those penalties during your water rates discussion on February 4th. So we want you to be a little bit more aware of those as well. For proposed stages, this plan includes eight proposed water shortage stages. One of the things I'll mention is that the 2015 plan that was adopted had seven stages, and they were identical to this plan except stage seven included over 50% shortages. We're proposing to split stage seven into two stages, seven and eight, so that there's a demarcation between a shortage that's up to 50% versus over 50%. That'll make sense in just a moment. As you can see, stage one is a voluntary stage. That's where we're asking our customers to cut back, but there are really no enforcement pieces to that other than our water waste ordinance. So that is a voluntary stage where we think there's a slight shortage. We need some help from our customers, but it's less robust in the implementation because we don't need to be quite so robust at that stage. You can also see that this is progressive. It goes up by 5% increments initially, and then when we get to more serious stages, it's by 10% increments. I want to show you how this maps to the state's requirements. The state now requires that we show how our stages map to six required stages. We have to have a minimum of six required stages, but we have the flexibility to do what we've done, which is to have eight stages. So let me show you how we map to the state. Stage one for the state is also voluntary, so that matches up. It's up to 10% shortage. Stage two in the state is anything up to 20%. We've split that into two stages so that we have a little more flexibility. If all we need is a 15% reduction, we can call on our constituents to reduce up to 15%, and we'll have an action plan that will help us achieve a 15% reduction. If we find we need a 20%, we can go to stage three. You can see we've done the same thing with our stages four and five. We've given ourselves more flexibility than the state's stage three. And from there, you can see that we match the stages that the state has. We just have different stage numbers, but we've lined up with the state. And we feel that this flexibility is really important for being able to communicate well and respond well with our constituents. So those would be the proposed stages. Now, again, as I mentioned before, as you're well aware, when we have water shortages, when we ask our customers to cut back on their water use, we also experience revenue declines. And you may recall that in the recent drought, we had significant revenue shortages that we were able to address with a three-pronged approach. We were able to use some excess funds that hadn't been allocated in the past. And we were able to use some reserves and we were able to delay some capital improvement projects. So what we're proposing now is a very similar approach. But however, we would propose that we use water shortage charges that we had in place during the last drought, but they weren't adopted until after the drought actually had been broken after we'd already come out of drought. So we've not had to use these in the past. So these water shortage charges would apply to stages two through eight, only the mandatory water shortage stages. We would not apply water shortage charge to a voluntary stage one. It applies to all of the water sold. So every water rate we have in place would experience a water shortage charge in stages two through eight. This is to encourage conservation. And when the financial analysis was done by the READ group, the same group that's working on our water rate study and the four-year water rate plan, they set it up in such a way that these water shortage charges will have no significant impact on a customer's bill provided they meet the reduction target. And that would be in comparison to a normal water here with normal water rates and normal water usage. So we expect customers who are complying with the call for a reduction will not see an increase in their water bill. In fact, very likely their water bill will be lower than normal. So this water shortage charge structure will help recover some of our revenues, but not all of our revenues. Again, on February 4th, you'll see more of the detail of that financial analysis. And because this applies to all water rates in stages two through eight, this must go under a Prop 218 process. And so we have put it into the same process as our water rate plan. So again, you're going to hear about this on February 4th. So here's what's being proposed. This is very similar to what was proposed in 2015 and adopted in 2015. It's been slightly modified based on a revised updated financial analysis and based on actual customer water usage and this sort of thing. So this is slightly different than what exists in our 2015 plan. So it's a progressive water shortage charge. So in stage two, we would have a shortage of 15% of our water supply. And we would be applying a 5% charge on top of the existing water rates for each customer. When we get to a severe water shortage, for example, stage eight being greater than 50% water shortage, the charge would be 45% on top of the existing rate. You may notice that in stage five, we shift from saying on top of existing rates to on top of existing uniform rate, because in stage five, we move away from different customer classes having different rates to one uniform rate for all customer classes during those kinds of water shortages when it's that severe. We simplify the rate structure. And again, customers will not experience an increase in their water bill provided they are able to reduce to meet that water shortage target compared to what they would have paid under normal water conditions with normal water rates and normal water usage. Now in more severe stages five through eight, we are proposing water allocations or sometimes they're called water rations. And that would be to each customer. So each account would have its calculation done based on the particulars for that account, what kind of customer they are and some of the characteristics of that customer account. Water allocations require conservation. And we'll come back to you with the details of these. But just to give you a sense of what they are, we had these in place in our 2015 plan. But one example would be if there's a single family customer, we would base it on an allotment for their landscape and an allotment per person per day. But again, we need to fine tune these a little bit and we'll get back to you with that finalized analysis probably in February or the latest in March. We do know, however, that these need to have a penalty structure in order to enforce it. Our hope is that we never have to assign any penalties to any customer. Penalties are completely avoidable. If a customer meets their allocation, they will not have the penalty. So that's our goal to help our customers stay within their allocations. And because they're entirely avoidable by all of our customers, this is not subject to a Prop 218 process. However, you'll hear a little bit about it on February 4th during the study session on water rates, because there has been a financial analysis done on this as well. Again, our hope is to not collect any penalties from our customers. If we do, we don't really consider this normal revenue. We're not trying to rely on this as a way to make up lost revenue during the water shortage. The penalties collected could be used for things like offsetting the cost of a water emergency. We have additional staff time and overtime, temporary staff. We might be buying additional items to give away to our customers, these sorts of things. We could use it to rebuild our reserves, or we could develop a rate stabilization fund for post-emergency recovery. You probably are aware that once the drought was lifted in 2016, customer water use did not immediately return to normal. And in fact, it's still below the average use in 2013. So we still see that our customers are using less water now than they did before the drought. So a rate stabilization fund could be a possibility. But again, our hope is not to have to collect any penalties at all. And we'll work closely with customers to help them achieve their allocations. Here's how the penalty structure has been set up. And again, this was done with assistance from the READ group. In a Stage 5, we would have a water shortage of 30%. And the excess use penalty for water use that goes above that allocation, 101% to 150%, in Stage 5 would be a 10% penalty on top of the existing water rate with the water shortage charge on top of it. If a customer in Stage 5 used more than 150% of their allocation, they would also have a penalty of 20% for that use that's over 150%. And as you can see as water shortages get more severe, the penalties become stronger because we really want to make sure that all of our customers are able to help us meet those targets when we're in severe water shortages. So just to summarize next step in a proposed timeline, we're going to come back to you in February and in March to talk to you, the Water Conservation Committee, more about the Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan. Again, in February, you will have a BPU study session on the water rates that will include a discussion of the water shortage charges and we'll have some mention of the excess use penalties as well. In March, the City Council will have study sessions on the water rates. In addition, they'll hear about those water shortage charges as well. In April, we will be going to the full BPU with a study session on the Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan. And by that time, you will have heard from us three times, perhaps four times, in Water Conservation Committee meetings so that you have a very strong foundation for that study session and can help us to make sure that the full BPU really understands what we're doing and why we're doing that. In May, we'll publish a draft of the Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan for public comment. Now, there will be drafts, but they will be very, very strong drafts that will have been reviewed by you, by the BPU, by staff, by key stakeholders. So these will be drafts that really are very close to being the finished product. And that way, when public is giving comments, they're really giving comments on what we think the actual document will be. And we'll collect those comments for 30 days before we have a public hearing with the City Council. Also in May, the City Council will have a public hearing and adopt the water rates, as well as the water shortage charges. In June, we'll come to the BPU and ask the BPU to give a recommendation that the Council adopt the Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan. And then a few weeks later, we'll go to the Council for a public hearing and ask them to go ahead and adopt the Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan. And then by July 1st, to meet the state requirement, we will upload the Urban Water Management Plan and Water Shortage Contingency Plan and all of the additional appendices and tables and analysis to the state's online portal to make sure that we meet that requirement. At this point, I'm happy to take any questions that you might have at this time, and we can go back to any slides that would be helpful. I'll go ahead and exit out of the... Well, I'll leave it up for now. Let me see if there are any questions. Thank you very much. Board Member Mullen, do you have any questions regarding this presentation? Yes, I do. Thank you. I have a whole list that I was taking some notes. First of all, thank you for the presentation. It was very easy to follow through. There's a lot to unpack. There's a lot of layers here. So if you could bear with me, Madam Vice-Chair, I'd like to just kind of run through them. Is that okay? Okay. First, the issue about the Urban Water Management Plan and the Water Shortage Plan, were you indicating that the Water Shortage Plan will be a part of the overall Urban Water Management Plan or their standalone documents? Well, you know, it's a little bit of both. It will be a standalone document, but the way we'll make that happen is we will make it an appendix to the Urban Water Management Plan so that that appendix can be updated as needed if we found we needed to update it. But the plan will also be summarized in a chapter of the Urban Water Management Plan. So yes, it will absolutely be an integral part of the Urban Water Management Plan. It is a requirement of the Urban Water Management Plan, but the state has asked that we also adopt it as a separate document and a standalone document. So yes, it will stand alone and yes, it will be part of the Urban Water Management Plan. And I realize that's a little confusing, but the state is trying to work out some of those bugs and has asked us to just do our best to make sure that that gets accomplished. Sure. So the reason I asked the question is, so when this goes forward in the steps that you outlined in the coming months, there will be one CEQA document that includes both plans? You know, that's a great question. And I'm wondering, Director Burke, are you in a position to speak to that CEQA question? Yes. So it is a category, not categorically, it's specifically exempt. So when the Urban Water Management Plan legislation went into effect, the state specifically exempted any CEQA compliance for Urban Water Management Plan. So we don't have to worry about CEQA. We have a statutory exemption. Thank you for that. Good. Great. Thank you. Then moving on, when you talked about all of the water supply would be subject to these regulations and restrictions, does that include recycle water? Yes, it does in terms of we certainly always the water waste ordinance is always in place for recycled water as well as we have compliance requirements under the state's recycle water policy. In terms of water shortages, if we trigger a water shortage, our water shortage contingency plan focuses primarily on the potable water supply. But we will be including recycled water supply to the degree that it needs to be. But we do not project a shortage of water, recycled water for the urban customers. And there are two reasons why. One, the urban customers use about 0.7% of the total water produced for recycling. So it's a very small amount of the water that's produced, as well as we have quite a bit of restrictions on them already. We they're under water budgets and they are watched monthly and also annually and we report to them about how they're doing on their water budgets. As well as the fact that with all of the water use efficiency messaging, they will be receiving it. They receive a newsletter every week reminding them to make sure that they're applying water according to weather conditions and that sort of thing. So there are a number of elements to that. So we have not anticipated that we think any there will be a shortage of recycled water for the urban customers but they will get all of the same messaging and they have access to all of the same programs. So if someone has turf and they want to convert it, they can participate in our turf conversion program and have the exact same benefits. So again, they're going to get all of the same messaging and they have all of the same waste prohibitions as our regular water customers. Okay. Thank you for that. The one of my other questions was relative to the when we go into the plan where water is actually allocated ration is the word you used is how are we going to treat irrigation only meters? We have formulas for those meters as well as for any mixed use meters that serve both purposes as well as meters that strictly serve indoor or industrial processes. And so each kind of customer will have an allocation. So for example, if you have an irrigation only meter, then we will look at the weather conditions. We do this already. We look at current weather conditions and your water budget is based on current weather conditions and the square footage of landscape by the type of landscape that you have. So when we're in water shortages, then we ask customers to cut back on that water budget and we'll use long term historic ET values to help us sort of course correct that so that they're not necessarily having to deal with, you know, the most recent year, which may have had a lower or a higher ET than normal, will normalize that ET a bit. And so for example, a customer at certain stage might be asked to cut back 50% of their normal irrigation water supply or in very severe droughts, they might be asked to only water trees and shrunks. In the very worst shortages, we might ask all customers to eliminate all irrigation should the shortage be severe enough. So again, it's going to depend on which stage we're in, the kind of landscaping they have and where we're at in that water shortage contingency plan. And we'll bring all of those details to you so that you can see exactly the formulas for each type of customer. Okay, all right, great. Again, moving down my list, I appreciate your patience. I commend you for bringing forward the idea of a rate stabilization fund. I've seen that firsthand where you go into a water shortage situation. You ask the ratepayers to get on board and meet certain reduction goals. And for the most part, people respond to emergencies as in our county has gotten really good at responding to emergencies when asked. And when they do that, oftentimes the agency comes back and says, thank you for reducing your water usage x% to meet our goals. Now our revenue is down, and so we have to raise rates. So the rate stabilization fund, I've always supported that as a way to help reduce or offset that shortage because when people respond, the reward shouldn't be we're going to raise your rates. So I support including the rate stabilization fund embedded into the rates so that we have that as an ongoing revenue source to build up that fund so that when we have an emergency like a drought and a water shortage situation, we can offset the revenue losses with the rate stabilization fund. So I commend you for that. Can I add just something to that for you? Sure. Okay, great. Thank you. So you'll hear more on February 4th about this, but we have a three pronged approach that is designed to deal with temporary revenue shortages due to water shortages. So certainly these temporary water shortage charges are one element they'll recover some of our revenue shortfalls. The other piece that we have is to use undesignated funds or some of our reserves if we need to, as well as to delay CIP projects for a short time in order to make sure that we have sufficient revenue to keep operating during a water shortage. So you'll hear more about that and some more of the details and you'll see some graphs and charts that help. But we're definitely thinking about at least a three pronged approach to make sure that during a water shortage that our revenues are sufficient so that we don't have to do what you're talking about sort of spike rates permanently after a drought. We really don't want to do that. We'd like to avoid that if at all possible with this three pronged approach. And I appreciate the explanation just I'm one board member and in all likelihood I may not be on the board when this starts heading down the road, but the rate stabilization fund, the one I'm suggesting is it's embedded in the water rates that are on an ongoing basis and it's funded and the fund balance is well known and available during the budget making process. I'm not suggesting deferring capital improvements to offset that loss because those improvements were put into the budget for a reason and I wouldn't want to minimize that and say oh now we're going to take it and use it to offset revenue loss. I'm talking about an ongoing rate stabilization fund that is funded through the ongoing water rates at all times and it reaches a certain limit and then we stop funding it until it's used and then you replenish it over time. So that's the sort of rate stabilization fund that I have been advocating for and would support down the road. So thanks for that clarification and Director Burke works directly with our Chief Financial Officer so I'm sure that Director Burke and Deputy Director Zinino will take that to heart. Thank you. Thank you. Only a couple more questions here. The enforcement element in past years and having seen how penalties have worked in the 45 years that Northern California has been dealing with these serious droughts, people have started to push back and say these are wrong, I'm not paying them and what they have selectively done is they've paid their regular water usage charges and fixed charges and they have taken out whatever penalty has been assessed to them and then when you go to turn off their water for non-payment they say I've paid my water bill, I'm just not paying the penalties and there's a process, there's an appeal process and so forth but say you go through all that process and it's clear that you have earned these penalties, what enforcement actions do we propose or have we been using to assure that those penalties are paid and they're not playing fast and loose with the billing system? It's a great question, I'm not a lawyer but what I can speak to and then if I could I'd ask Director Burke to perhaps fill in any blanks or correct anything I say that might be misdirected but when we get into a water shortage water use over and above an allocation could be considered water waste, we have a really great water waste ordinance that can help us, that gives us authority as well as the ordinance itself and the resolution we take to city council should we get into a stage five or higher are pretty robust legal documents that give us the authority to do what we need to do to make sure that each customer is not using more than their fair share during a water shortage. So I haven't experienced this sort of situation that you're referring to, we typically really have been able to help our customers comply with water waste ordinances in the past and to help us achieve our water reductions in the past so we've not had to implement penalties but at this point what I'd like to do is just see if Director Burke has something else that she might want to add to that because again I'm not an attorney and I want to make sure I'm not misspeaking. Thank you. Thanks Colin and thanks Board Member Mullen. You know it's a really good question and honestly something that we're going to have to delve into a little bit more. Our typical well two things I'll say so one is we have been very successful and having our customers respond very well when we've implemented our shortage plan before so I think was mentioned earlier in the presentation we've never had to implement our water shortage charges or excess use charges and hopefully we'll be able to work with our community and get them to respond and be able to go down that path. And that said too we also would work closely with both the Board and the Council because this gives us the framework to use these as tools but if we don't need to use them say if we have significant fund balance or other things in place we don't have to enact them. So we want to have the framework have that available make it very clear to our community and then we can make decisions as needed as we're getting into a shortage. However what we've always used in the past is the ability to shut off our customers and in the current situation we're in with COVID that is a little less clear because we actually have requirements in place that don't allow us to shut off water service for non-payment. It does allow us to shut off water service for other reasons so we we probably need to look into this a little bit more in light of COVID but normally what we would do is if folks aren't paying we have a very clear process for how long they have to pay what options they have payment plans and then if they choose still not to pay then we turn their water off and then they have to pay a deposit and we have to work with them before they're allowed to have service again. That's been a very useful tool it gets people's attention very quickly and usually we have no issues with that but it's a good point because we're going to have to figure that out a little bit if and depending upon how much longer COVID restrictions stay in place. I appreciate the response and the reason I raised this is having seen it it's where it's very popular the stance about trying to game the system so to speak is in multifamily residential because there's a single meter there's whatever number of units in there and many times many times sometimes the landlord and the tenants are in a dispute over other issues and one way when you get into water shortage one way the tenants can get back at the owner for their other disputes is to wastewater leave the waters on and what it does is it runs up these penalties and the property owner says look I'm doing everything I can do here it's my tenants how am I supposed to control them and so why do I have to pay these penalties when I've encouraged them to do this and I've encouraged them to do that so that's one example that is exploited quite a bit in these water shortage situations in multifamily settings. Yeah it is a good point we have looked at some things in the past could we look at various ways that we might be able to kind of restrict flow in some fashion would we you know I think one of the things that is going to be quite helpful is with AMI in place now we'll really be able to look at data trends and help tease out more usage patterns especially if we have folks that are you know really not making their allotments because our goal is to really go into it to try and help our customers and provide them with whatever resources we can to get them to meet their allotments as opposed to really trying to go after them for not. Sure and again I know you have a lot of really smart attorneys on staff that'll be able to wade through the legal implications of this so I appreciate you bearing with me. Only two other issues Madam Vice Chair and they're not questions they're more statements and I'm not going to go through the the spiel that I did at the last BPU meeting about you know looking at redoing our water conservation programs or amending them to include some new technology and new outreach and things but I asked that we we start to look at things like retrofitting existing properties at change of ownership you you sell a home it's verified that they have a low flow toilet low flow shower heads and so forth at time of sale other cities and jurisdictions have been doing that for years and what it does is it gets it gets the property retrofitted at time of sale secondly is to look at and I'm not sure if the city's already doing this look at limiting turf installation on new construction because that's where a lot of the water waste is I'm not sure in 45 years has changed much outside the irrigation is still the biggest opportunity area and the biggest opportunity for waste in a water shortage situation overhead sprinklers by their nature are wasteful so limiting new turf installation to a certain square footage amount on new construction so that we can at least keep new construction from the 70s style which is front lawn that the only time you walk on it is when you mow it and the water runs off into the gutters as you irrigate it every day so again I appreciate Madam Vice Chair your your patience with me and all of my questions and that concludes my questions thank you thank you Board Member Mullen and I would just ask Collin if you could or if not either Claire but we do have a very robust water efficient landscape ordinance so we can talk a little bit about that and then in terms of time of sale we have looked into that in the past it is very time consuming there is new requirements that came from state law that require that you have to have at least efficient fixtures in place and so Collin I'm hoping you can also talk to that as well because we incorporate that into our planning for the urban water management plan yes and I think Claire also can speak to this as well I'll just let you know that there have been a number of times in the past when I was the water conservation coordinator where for example multi-family units were seeking to sell or refinance and they were required by California law to come up to efficiency standards and they worked with us many of them exceeding standards and were able to earn rebates from us at the same time so there that's often where the most difficult area is on those multi-family especially low-income multi-family units so but yes there is California law in place for that and we do have a very robust water efficient landscape ordinance and it is enforced and after the fires all of the homes that are rebuilding our staff did an extensive project with the Sonoma Marine Savings Water Partnership to develop these very beautiful landscape plans and drawings that could be easily adapted to any property and so we were able to provide support to folks to have very low water use landscapes that were beautiful and those were used extensively I think something in the neighborhood of 50 percent of the properties directly used those and some percent of them were used by builders who were doing lots of homes at the same time so yes so we are very active with that and of course we do have our turf replacement program and the rebate was recently augmented it was increased by 50 percent so that we can make sure that customers find out an appealing process we've got market penetration I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 6 or 7 percent on our turf conversions it may not sound like much but we're ahead of a lot of other larger agencies that offer much higher turf replacement rebates so we've had a very active community for a long time really great water use efficiency programs the only other thing I was going to mention is that our water use efficiency programs also have a sustainable reduction program which allows an individual or a company or a church or whoever it might be to come to us and propose a way to reduce water use sustainably at their property and once they've done that if we can see sustained use over a year we rebate them so we don't limit the kind of technology and approaches that are available for rebate we actually encourage innovation at this point I'm kind of stepping into to clear territories I'm going to kind of shut up but I just wanted to mention those things because they came to mind as you were speaking thank you and I would just add that other jurisdictions in their way of on new construction you indicated that our history has been about 50 participation is they also included a financial distance incentive for new construction that came in with overhead sprinklers basically turf and they they basically charged them a higher connection fee because their demand was going to be greater because of their proposed landscape plan so it's sort of a financial distance and I didn't mean to miss speak I meant about 50% of folks made use of our free landscape plans that were adjustable to any size property but I'm pretty sure we have 100 compliance with the water efficient landscape ordinance and most properties really just there isn't enough property to with the formulas to put much of a lawn these days so and overhead sprinklers yeah lots of restrictions on those so yeah I'm sorry if I misspoke I didn't mean to mislead you no I you didn't mislead me at all and and again I apologize for monopolizing the conversation I used to do this for a living and so it's kind of like getting back on the bike so I apologize for taking all the time thank you thank you board member voland for those those questions I had one question in regards to the timing for when we go into some of these restricted you know this different stages how long does a does our rate payers how long do they have in order to make these adjustments before we would start seeing any sort of penalties or any you know those types of things if that makes sense yeah it does and that's part of what we need to work out I believe in the 2015 plan we had built in I think two months or three months worth of working with customers and if they continue to violate then we really started enforcing but I'll have to it's a little it's a little gray in my mind right now I was actually writing another section of the plan this morning so I've been focused on another piece of it but yeah definitely when we get into those severe we have not had a severe water shortage on that level I think the last time we had the that level of severity was in 1977 and we didn't have any of these pieces in place in 1977 but since that time we've had a series of droughts and we've asked for voluntary compliance and gotten anywhere from 15 to 20 percent just with voluntary requests more recently we had to do a mandated water reduction because the state required it and we went into a stage that called for a 20 percent reduction but it didn't have any of these other elements it didn't have allocations and penalties at that stage so we've not had to you know test the waters with this but absolutely we would work with our customers and again that's a big piece of why we would have the communication plan so that we could let our consumers know that this is an important piece we have folks who are here to help them this is the way that we're developing these allocations here's what they can do to appeal if they feel like it's impossible or they need to provide more information perhaps they haven't updated the number of people who live in their home that sort of thing so we will definitely work with our customers our goal is to have zero penalties our goal is to achieve the reduction goal so um and again I don't know if director Burke you've been so intimately involved in the water shortage plan in the past if you recall what the um progressive enforcement was adopted in 2015 so in 2015 as Colin mentioned we did have a mandatory 20 reduction that we were trying to achieve and we used the water waste format and to go ahead and follow up with our customers and get compliance we also really took a carrot not a stick approach so we upped our rebate amounts at least for the turf conversion program our green exchange program and got a lot of participation that way we had a very robust communication plan and we worked with our customers so we had a lot of the pieces already put in place what we went through for the you know 2013 through about 2016 drought I think a lot of why you're seeing all these additional requirements is because these are all things that we did as water agencies during the drought and the state wants to make sure that they're clearly now in in place because some agencies were able to adapt and implement quicker versus others I would say we were one of the ones that was able to do that pretty well because we had pretty robust plans already in place the so we really used water waste we didn't we decided not to enact water shortage charges and we don't get to access use penalties until we're actually in a much higher stage with allocations so we were getting all the information out and and letting people know and being prepared and also showing them what what it could look like under their allocations so we wanted to make sure they have that information of what their allocation would be and what their bill could look like under if their current uses stayed or if they reduce their uses what they would look like but we weren't we didn't need to do anything above and beyond just our typical outreach rebate programs and water waste at that time and I just I wanted to add this as well because I think it's a really important question particularly for lower income households that that we'd be really mindful about increasing water rates and any penalties so I think the other piece is that if we have a severe shortage that came on us all at once with no warning we can certainly immediately implement our water shortage plan but as director Burke has already mentioned we have flexibility about whether or not we implement water shortage charges and we have flexibility about whether or not we implement uh excess use penalties and we have flexibility about when those would go into place so if it made the most sense to have those two pieces go into place as well there could be some delay built into the resolution or the ordinance that city council adopts such that the water shortage is immediately in place and people need to start saving water right now but we could perhaps you know looking at the financial analysis decide that the water shortage charges would start in x number of days or the excess use penalties would start next number of days so we have flexibility as director Burke said this is a framework but it does allow us to respond in the moment appropriately to our circumstances and to our constituents thank you for that I appreciate that comment I think that you know that's one of the things and I'm listening to some of you know this this conversation and this plan that I want to be mindful in our language around our customers and our repairs especially those you know most the time when you are they're not paying their water bill it is not a choice and it is managing priorities around paying rent and food on their table and and and water which is a necessity so I think that I really appreciate that proactive approach that we do with our customers and knowing that this is flexible and just the language that I want to make sure we're speaking about you know our repairs and our customers as is always that of of understanding and and really empathy and especially in this time so I just thank you for your presentation and with that I will open it up to public comment on item 3.1 if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand secretary if I do we have any live or email or voicemail public comments at this time we have no public comments great thank you so we will move to item 3.2 director Burke if you'd like to introduce this item thank you and so item 3.2 is going to be a presentation on our 2020-2021 dry year response update and Claire Nordley our sustainability coordinator uh water will be making the presentation thank you director Burke deputy director martin is actually going to be running my slides much appreciated thank you great thank you uh so like deputy um or like director Burke said I'm Claire Nordley and the sustainability coordinator and I'm going to be giving a brief update on our dry year response so far next slide please so you know you you all have seen this slide a few times now just recently last week at bpu um obviously we're in a short amount of rainfall this year so we're about 33 percent of normal I know we have a storm coming which is great but likely won't offset the deficit that we've already occurred so far normally at this time of year just to give you a reference we would be about 17 inches of rain and we've you know roughly got about uh five inches so we're in a drier situation next slide please so to help remedy that Sonoma water did file a temporary urgency change petition earlier in January and their strategy is around that to preserve Lake Mendocino storage so it adjusts the hydrologic index uh index and corresponding in-stream flow requirements based on the Lake Mendocino storage levels we still haven't heard back from the state water resources control board but hopefully they will respond by February 1st so that those in-stream flows could change by that next slide please of course Santa Rosa water is ready and we're always ready our tagline is it's a dry year do your part to be water smart and some of the marketing that we've undertaken this recent year and in this last winter in 2020 obviously we've been providing updates to the bpu into council we have had bill inserts going out since November we're doing weekly city connection newsletter articles and that e-newsletter goes out to 20 it's something like 19 000 customers within our area but social media posts going out regularly bill snipe messaging which is messaging on the water bill itself the envelope and then bill messaging and then we have wine country radio spots that have been can you continually going and then something i'm going to be talking a little bit more in detail about our targeted outreach approach both to our customers and to our internal staff and then we always have additional marketing sort of ready and prepared for launch should we need it if it continues to be a dry year and of course we are always coordinating and monitoring with our regional partners the cinema marine saving water partnership and i'll be showing some slides about what that marketing looks like next slide please so here's one of our a sample of one of our pieces of marketing that has gone out on social media and as a bill and sir just reminding customers to turn off their irrigation and then we actually did do some research and look at our dedicated irrigation meter customers and specifically called them if we noticed that their irrigation was on during this last month so we proactively reached out to them and tried to establish a relationship and let them know that their irrigation should be off at this point next slide please so here's just a picture of the bill snipe this will be going out for the next two billing cycles so a few months and we're hoping this gets people's attention gets them excited about what are you sufficiency and it provides them some free and easy ways to be water smart next slide please so i just wanted to take a moment and talk about some of the changes that have occurred in our section in the water you sufficiency section due to covid it's allowed us to have some flexibility and change things up a little bit and become a little bit more innovative so we have developed the water smart home checkup kits these are kits that contain a flow bag die tabs information about how to find and fix leaks and we've been distributing those since since march we started tracking in may we've distributed over 260 kits to various customers who've requested them we should drop them off at their homes so they're it's contactless and easy for them to request on our website and then customers have in turn used those kits found that they have inefficient devices or have a leaking toilet for example and then they've requested devices from us shower heads faucet aerators etc and then after we distribute those kits we actually give every single one of those customers a call and ask them how was the kit did you find any leaks or issues at your home can we do anything to help you out and we've received 100 positive feedback so far from customers so that's always nice to feel like you're helping out and then of course many of our offerings have turned virtual we're still offering indoor appointments but we're not going into people's homes so we can do appointments you know over the phone we've been doing FaceTime Zoom WebEx BlueJean I mean all sort whatever video conferencing is available to the customer we can certainly offer and so we've been doing indoor appointments with customers and then I'll talk about the targeted outreach in just a second as well as the water waste next slide please and next please great thank you so the background picture is a screenshot of our website you can see customers can request a water smart checkup and a water smart kit really easily on our website it provides information about the water smart kit and then we are still offering free outdoor socially distanced checkup where we do review irrigation and provide information about a new irrigation controller or irrigation upgrade rebates so we are still doing those of course they're masked and they're socially distanced but those are available to our customers as well and then I just wanted to provide a little example of the number of kits that we've distributed for those water smart kits over the last handful of months so it looks like January's had a huge response and I think some of our marketing is working which is always great to see people are responding to that and we had a big uptake in January of requesting those kits next slide please so one of the things that I wanted to highlight and this is really exciting and I was listening in and excited about the conversation that we were just having with Colin and the water waste ordinance is you know our water waste cases have significantly increased in 2020 and that's specifically because we've been using our AMI data to look at continuous use cases so we've been very proactive last year and into this year reaching out to customers who have continuous use across all customer classes and customers have been thrilled when they find out that we're giving them a call proactively you know maybe even before they receive their bill and offering them assistance to find and fix their leak and so this has included some really substantial water savings as well one of our commercial customers that we worked with a very large account has a large campus they actually found four different leaks you know we gave them a call they they said well we have continuous use but it may or may not be normal we help them troubleshoot where they might have had some continuous use we went to the site with them we talked to the site supervisor the facility manager walked the site with them they found four different leaks they hired a leak detection company they repaired those and their water use dropped almost a million gallons a month just from fixing those four leaks so that's substantial water savings that we're finding just from customers being proactive and from us establishing establishing a personalized relationship with these customers and I think this does go a long way additionally to back to the conversation that we're just having with Colin in calling for conservation you know once we have a relationship already set up with a customer and established prior to meeting that conservation goal we can then call on that same relationship once we're in a shortage in the future and pull on that relationship and let them know that we are requesting conservation so we're we're we're proud of this program and we've certainly seen a lot of happy customers who were thrilled that we're reaching out to them and letting them know that they may have a leak because of showing continuous usage on their AMI and so we've really had a large number of cases this last year so this is about 350 water waste cases in the last year as you can see significantly higher than the years past next slide please in addition we are also and always working together with our regional partners through the Sonoma Marin saving water partnership they are putting together we are all putting together a regional awareness campaign it's a dry air safe water with us they've got social media posts that I'll show you next and they're directing customers to our rebates specifically next slide please so these are some pictures of the recent Sonoma Marin saving water partnership outreach messaging we are actually tailoring these and adding our city of Santa Rosa logo to them we're using them on social media and and we could certainly modify them to put them you know use them in other marketing ways as well so it's great that we're having a concerted and regional message that really unifies no matter where you are in Sonoma County it's time to save water next slide please so with that I'm open to any thoughts and feedback that anyone has on this current campaign thank you very much for the presentation board member Boland do you have any comments or questions yes just a few thank you very much I appreciate the presentation and outlining the various programs relative to what typically happens in a situation where you get into a shortage is you look for the blame game and now you know the media neighbors call on neighbors for water waste or irrigation overspray or whatever it is and with and now we can take pictures with our phones and everything else so are we and one of the most vulnerable areas is our parks so is part of our outreach or do we have an ongoing relationship with the park and rec people to eliminate or reduce overspray and runoff at our city parks we do everyone in the city regardless of whether they're part of our city accounts or not is subject to the water waste ordinance so certainly if we saw water waste at one of our city parks we would work with the parks department to make sure that that was fixed we also do just have an ongoing relationship with the parks department and we've looked at providing them water budgets we often audit their sites we just recently actually went to one of the city parks over here on the west side of Santa Rosa and provided them an audit and talk to talk through their controller programming with them and let them know hey you don't need to have you know running so many days so yes it's certainly part of our water use efficiency outreach and will continue to be and thank you for that and you know the public sometimes particularly the people that use the parks a lot sometimes are are real watchdogs with that because if you it's walking that fine line between a big green space and then a space that looks a little bit stressed because we've become a little more efficient with the the water application but it's not letting it die so it's it is walking that fine line and so I appreciate that that we're doing that kind of outreach and then the only other question is relative to the urban uses for recycle water do we go out and and make sure that the signage is really very visible so that when those areas are being irrigated the public can easily see that because of signage that this area is being irrigated with recycle water yeah I'll turn it over to Colin could be because he runs the recycled water urban program sure thanks Claire yes a signage is required and we do have adequate signage at major entrances and key points we're also in the middle of developing some new kiosk type signs for a place to play because that also has a pond with recycled water so we're developing some we had some previous kiosk signs out there we're going to develop some new ones that are a messaging important information about the use of recycled water throughout the city but also in that location specifically but yes we absolutely do have signs about about that also there are other restrictions for example they cannot have the normal faucets outdoors that someone could just hook a hose up to they have to have specialized quick couplers that require a special kind of quick coupler so that someone can't tap into that water use without having the right equipment to protect say for example you know if a child was at a multifamily family complex we don't want them being able to access that recycled water they're not going to understand although it's not a particularly dangerous product we do want to make sure we're complying with all the state regulations so yeah signage as well as other steps to make sure that water is safe studies have shown though that someone could be essentially showered in the recycled water for something along the lines of 35 years before they got a single dose of Tylenol so we have a really good high quality product but yes we definitely have signage and other steps in place to protect the public great thank you that's all my question thank you very much um I will now open it up for a public comment on item 3.2 if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you are calling in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand secretary atha do we have any live or pre-recorded emails or voicemail comments at this time we have no public comment on this item thank you very much I believe that concludes our meeting for today so with that I will adjourn the meeting at 2.13 thank you very much for your participation and have a good rest of your week thank you