 Good afternoon, I'd like to call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. You may have a roll call, please. Yes, Chair Galvin. Here. Vice Chair Ononi. Here. Board Member Badanford. Here. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Walsh. Here. Board Member Watts. Here. Board Member Wright. Here. Good afternoon, everyone. A reminder to mute your phones or microphones when you're not speaking and to put away your cell phones and your personal computers. Our first item is any statements of abstention by Board Members. Do we have any? Seeing no one, that'll take care of that. We will move to our study session. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. Our study session is an asset management overview and making the presentation will be Andy Allen, our supervising engineer, and Casey Claiborne, our associate civil engineer. Good afternoon, Chairman Galvin, members of the Board. I am Andrew Allen and along with Casey Claiborne, we will be presenting the asset management overview study session here today. We will be answering the following questions through this presentation and what is an asset? What is asset management and why perform asset management? And I will start with those first three. Casey will take over with the hows, how are capital projects identified, how are projects prioritized and how are projects initiated and will both be available for questions at the end of the presentation. Next slide. What is an asset? It's kind of simple. This is a very dictionary type answer of this. This is an item, thing or entity that has potential or actual value to an organization. And more specifically, I will present many of our assets on the following slides. Next, please. You can see we have over 650 miles of transmission and distribution mains, associated water valves and hydrants, reservoirs and booster stations. We have estimated that our total system replacement for water system assets is the tune of $2.5 billion in $2022. And our anticipated need for replacement over the next 10 years will exceed our program funding to the tune of $330 million for water system assets. And we presented that information to you a few weeks ago. Next slide, please. You've seen these before, but it's a good way to present the bulk assets all in one slide. And I'm going to present them water system by age and water system by material. And certainly those are factors in evaluating when pipes need to be replaced. But there are other factors as well. And you'll we'll hear more about those. But you can see that we have, you know, a cross section of age pipe, including some over 100 year old pipe down four street, but still working great. I think it's lovingly referred to as old red steel pipe that every time we've cut into it over the years, we've seen a very competent pipe. So no need to replace it at this point. But we always monitor that situation. And certainly we've got some older pipes that are more prone to problems and are probably scheduled to be replaced before that one. So that's age. Next, please. And then material. You can see that we still have majority of our water system is AC pipe. But we've taken a good amount of we have a good amount of PVC pipe, which should be that last is we're anticipating that lasting a long time. And we're evaluating the AC pipe as it goes. And certainly age is just one factor in deciding when to replace all pipes and AC pipe in particular, we've had some pretty long live asphalt cement pipes. Next slide, please. Here's our sewer system assets. 600 miles of trunks, collector mains, obviously a whole bunch of manholes, sewer sewage lift station, total replacement, total system replacement cost as anticipated be $2.1 billion in 2022 dollars. And as before our anticipated need for replacement over the next 10 years will exceed our program funding to the tune of 410 million dollars for the sewer system over the next 10 years. Next slide, please. Again, sewer system by age. You have quite a bit of quite a few pipes that are over 60 years of age. And we're certainly keeping a close monitor on on those pipes. Again, not the sole factor in terms of when we were place. Next slide, please. And now sewer system by material. We the bulk is PVC and AC. But we've got a lot of a lot of green on that map, which is very nice to see. And of course, our large trunks are reinforced concrete pipe. And you can see them as they head down towards a lot of road and to the Laguna treatment plant. Next slide, please. We also keep an eye on our regional water reuse system, which includes the plant, the laboratory reclamation line, geysers lines and biosolids. Think last count were over 7000 individual assets in that system. And like we presented before, $250 million of CIP additional CIP needs over the next 10 years. Next slide, please. Here's a picture of the system. I think you all know it, but it's always good to refresh. We've got the Laguna regional treatment plant down there near Highway 116. We have reclamation pipeline that goes down into Rohnert Park, Katadi, and up into the valley and up towards Santa Rosa as well. Of course, the geysers pipeline, which is a huge component of our reuse system, it heads north, bypassed on the edge of Windsor. Next slide, please. And then of course, all the way up to the terminal reservoir. So we're keeping an eye on all the assets, including the pump stations, the reservoir itself, for the reuse system as well as throughout all our assets in all three systems, water, wastewater, and reuse. Next slide, please. But I don't want to get by this presentation without identifying that what is our greatest assets weren't for people, we wouldn't be able to keep the system moving and working. And we always want to recognize our staff as being in a very important part in a great asset to our system. And we appreciate them all the time. Next slide. So this, what is asset management? Asset management is the coordinated activity of an organization to realize value from assets. And that is a definition that we obtain from the Institute of Asset Management. And so we are working with them or looking to them, looking to the Institute for additional information and some training. And we've started some of that already with some of our staff. But what it boils down to is, yes, we have assets, but to realize that value, we need to be balancing the cost, risk benefits and opportunities, maintaining a minimum level of service and operating safety, and of course, meeting our regulatory obligations. And we'll talk a little bit about that later, Mr. Claiborne. Next slide, please. Any asset management program really has these six components to it, and I won't read them off, but they're certainly all important to us. And we need to devise plans and policy to govern each of these activities. And some of those are master plans, strategic goals, and then figuring out when to initiate capital projects. And that's that goal. Obviously, we don't forget maintenance in this whole process and figure ways to look at the maintenance and make sure we're doing everything we can to keep the assets going for the greatest amount of time before they need to be replaced. And we'll talk a little bit more about that maintenance, rehabilitation, and then ultimate replacement cycle that you probably saw last year, but we'll show it again to you today. Next slide, please. Why perform asset management? Well, develop a programmatic approach here and versus a patch the problem approach. We're trying to avoid what you see in that great picture. And we're trying to keep an eye on the assets and get them replaced before that happens, but they will continue to will continue to have breaks and leaks. But hopefully this programmatic approach will help us avoid and minimize those. Certainly no surprises. Make sure we make the right decision at the right time. Next slide. And we're developing this asset management program to answer questions, which assets need to be the most maintained? And when should we replace these? We would call them troubled assets that require more maintenance than then we should be anticipated for a given asset. And then checking to see if our costing, you know, how our costs will increase in the near term and the in the long term to also. But next slide, please. And again, some more questions we want to answer with an asset management program as to what level of service do we expect from our utilities? Which assets are critical to sustained performance? And what are our long term costs? And are we investing enough in CIP? And I think you've heard us from us the last time we were here, that we need, we believe we need some more investing. But we understand that's a big challenge for you. So and all of us. So we certainly are looking to do what we can to maintain the life of all our assets to the greatest and possible. But we do want to avoid waiting too long to replace assets that definitely need to be replaced, which again, the challenge at hand. So I will, I've answered these questions. And I will turn this over to Casey Claiborne and let him move through the next three questions. Next slide, please. Thank you, Andy. So zooming in from kind of general asset management best practice and what asset management is all about. I'm going to zoom in on our capital improvement program. And we'll start with just looking at how we identify capital projects, how do we look at our entire system and identify all the different assets throughout the water system, sewer system, and the regional system that have some problem we need to fix with a capital project. And so this initial list, this outline here just talks goes through the major factors that we're considering. Next slide, please. So with the general plan and specific plans, those, you know, outline broad objectives that the city has, what we anticipate in the future for demands on our system. And so we have to reflect those in the assumptions in our master plans and in our hydraulic models, to make sure that we're aligned, we're aligned with broader city objectives and trends. And when we conduct master plans or engineering studies, whether it's with a consultant or in house, those develop scoring systems and assessments that generally fall into these categories below. So we'll look at those next, the next slide, please. So level of service, something Andy mentioned earlier, it's kind of a nebulous term, kind of abstract. But all our assets provide us some kind of service. And in order to quantify that, or just qualify that good, bad, okay, we look at things like percent downtime or how many incidents we have per year. For instance, we might look at a run of sewer pipe and ask ourselves how many sanitary sewer overflows have we had in this neighborhood or on this pipe. We look at things like hydraulic capacity, especially when we do a master plan, we run a hydraulic model. And we look at things like the cost to maintain. So that's level of service with the next slide. Look at condition assessment, which is kind of the other side of the of the same coin as level of service. So over time, assets to experience wear and tear and they deteriorate. And we can get insight on that process with condition assessment activities, whether that's going and looking at the pipe itself, or doing some kind of computer analysis or acoustic sensing, where we sort of evaluate the condition by proxy. Early on, as you might expect, routine maintenance can keep our assets in pretty good condition. And they'll keep performing well, they'll stay above, you know, the level of service that we expect. Over time, though, maintenance and routine renewal activities can only do so much. Our assets will just progressively deteriorate from, you know, new to fair to poor potentially, until they hit some minimal minimum acceptable condition. And that trigger then triggers the need to replace the asset with anyone. Next slide, please. Risk assessment is, as Andy mentioned, essential to any asset management program. And risk assessment really draws on two ideas, sort of two separate axes for looking at our assets. One is their likelihood of failure. And that uses things like condition observations, maintenance history, as well as those fundamental attributes of our assets, like their age and what material they're made of. On the other axis, the other spectrum, we look at the consequences if an asset fails. And those can be financial, social or environmental. Things like, you know, if they're located under a busy road or a creek crossing, or if they serve a hospital or another critical facility. Next slide, please. And so just to zoom in on this graph briefly, look at kind of the four quadrants, just for to draw a couple insights. In the bottom left, in the green area, this is straightforward, their low consequence, low likelihood assets. And so the risk is low, and we don't need to take any specific action. In the top right, we have high risk assets, extreme risk assets under these qualifiers. And so we need to take immediate action to reduce both the likelihood and the consequence. The other two quadrants are a little more abstract. In the top left, these are assets that are reaching the end of their useful life, their condition is poor. But the consequences of one or two failures aren't particularly high. So over time, we need to take action to mitigate risk overall in our system. But these are a lower priority than the high consequence assets, those critical assets. And in the bottom right, these are assets where they might be newer, they might be tend to be more reliable in our estimation. But if there's a failure, the consequences could be major or severe. And so these are those, you know, water mains in front of the hospital or our sewer trunks, where we need to keep an eye on them even when they're in pretty good condition so that they don't sneak up on us over time. Next slide please. So just one example to try and hammer this home briefly. We have a couple sewer pipes near Highway 12 and South E Street. One is in South E Street. It's a busy area for traffic, which means it's it's got, you know, a moderate consequence of failure. And through CCTV we've observed there's a hole in the pipe, we can see soil behind that hole. And so we need to immediately get out and fix it because not only is it pretty likely to fail in the near future, but it's in this consequential location. To contrast, we have a nearby pipe that is newer, nice PVC sewer pipe. It's right underneath Highway 12. Again, a busy area for traffic and be rather expensive and disruptive to go out and fix on an emergency basis. But through CCTV, we haven't observed any issues on this pipe yet. So we just want to keep an eye on it over time and make sure that things stay that way. Next slide please. So we've briefly gone through some of the more technical and analytical approaches to how we identify capital improvement projects. But there are other largely external factors, regulatory requirements being chief among those. And often, regulations and other requirements evolve over time. And they impact the way the context in which we do business, the way in which we need to operate minimum standards that we need to meet. So they rarely filter directly into a capital project. Sometimes they do. But they guide our operational needs and our needs to plan ahead. And then those will drive a need for a capital improvement based on our evaluation of our assets. Next slide please. Thank you. And one very crucial aspect of asset management is listening to our stakeholders and the public. So that the way we're analyzing our assets and the way we're prioritizing projects aligns with those bigger objectives of the city and our customers. Next slide please. So putting all those together, inevitably gives us a great long list of projects. And so we can only do so many each year, we can only fund so many. And so we have to prioritize. So we talked a bit about risk. We want to mitigate and reduce risk in the system. So a project that will replace a high risk asset, it will reduce our risk overall quite a lot. That will be more highly prioritized. And the same goes for projects that make a big impact to our compliance. Perhaps the reliability of our system. And then that feeds into compliance and our regulatory compliance. Some other aspects are the time sensitivity of projects. If we have a grant funding opportunity, or if the asset is deteriorating particularly quickly, if its likelihood of failure is increasing every day, that's much more time sensitive. And so we need to do those projects first, in order to manage risk and get the most value out of our assets. Next slide please. And so just to wrap up before we go to questions, we've talked about, you know, the early phases of initiating and developing our projects and our program. So we review all our data, we review all the information available to us to identify which assets need a capital project. Then prioritize, figure out which assets need work now, this year, next year, as opposed to in the next several years. Once that's done, once we have our, you know, top three or top 10 projects, we really focus in on those projects, refine the scope, make sure we have funding in order, and check with our stakeholders to make sure, for instance, that the method we've chosen to renew those assets or to reduce risk is appropriate and is the best option in the long run over the whole life cycle of the asset. And then once we have all our ducks in a row for those top priority projects, we can queue it for design and turn it over to one of our teams in capital projects engineering, and they can take the project and manage it through design, permitting and construction. Next slide please. And with that, if any of you have any questions, me and Andy would be happy to answer them. Thank you, Mr. Allen and Mr. Claybourne. I'll open it up now for any board member questions or comments. Board Member Walsh. Oh, yes. Thank you very much for the presentation. I especially appreciate the risk analysis in that matrix that was really, really good. And I just wanted to one ask if we can have more detail on the calculation of the shortfall in funding, obviously those amounts were a bit of a surprise three weeks ago, considering the funding that we looked at when we did the rate setting. And then I do have some concerns because I'd like to look at what the plan was before now to replace the capital projects. And then what we're saying today is a shortfall for those projects. And Mr. Chairman, if there's a chance we could work on that in a budget subcommittee, I'd like to do that. That's your pleasure and seek some sort of reconciliation on the scope what we thought was going to be needed, the timing, the estimated costs. Thank you. Response at all from Mr. Claybourne or Mr. Allen? Well, we're certainly here to answer the questions of and and do us to help you understand what we've come up with so far. Obviously, we're not ready to present it here in front of you now. And that's not what you're asking, of course. Certainly, we're here at your bidding to help you understand what we know and presented in a straightforward way. So you can use it to identify how you want to move forward. Well, I really appreciate that. And I just don't want to know if I sat silent, it would almost indicate acceptance of the new numbers. And I'm not there yet without the detail. And if we're using the same methods as many today as the work two or three years ago, when we did rate setting, and I have some reservations, we wouldn't even see what our process for estimating future costs are. So thank you very much. And in just one thing in that regard is we're in the process of finishing working on our sewer master plan and just finished up our water master plan, which is gave us new information. And the sewer master plan indicated some significant issues with our trunks that we were unaware of from the previous master plans and studies. So that's certainly one particular item that's that's out there. So we're we're happy to help. Director Burke had a comment. Thank you, Chair Galvin. And thank you, Board Member Walsh for your question. I'm I'm a blank chair, but I'm not in response to your question. We have recognized the need to invest more in our infrastructure for a number of years. We recognize this as part of the last rate setting that we did. We also recognize the restrictions that we have in the resources to be able to get additional projects done. So we made a conscious decision in the last rate setting that we would continue the investment in our CAP at the same amount that we are currently investing because that is the amount we can reasonably get done in a year over year with the resources we have. And then I've been in discussions with the Assistant City Manager, Jason Nutt, for looking at how we can increase the resources to get more projects done. So we're very well aware and really our limitation and the presentation that we gave to you a couple weeks ago was discussing the the need to try and bring additional resources so that we can get more projects done. Right now by investing even more money, we're not going to get more projects done. And so it doesn't make sense for us to put even more investment for that not to get completed. So we're working on building those resources to get more projects completed, if that makes sense. It does. And I would be interesting and interested in what we might think is realistically the scope work that can be completed within the next five years and the funding sources for that scope because the further out we go, the less certainty there is an estimate of scope that can actually be done, right? The timing of the projects and the resources to fund those projects. And then if we're looking at market value of the assets, if the assets are about a billion out, half depreciated according to the last audit report, we could look out from the city. We don't have the June 31, June 2021 report yet. We'll have to look at the June 2020. But I'd like to have higher quality information before we walk into sort of what we think is a building consensus that we need 2.5 billion market value assets. And then we have that magnitude in the shortfall. I just want to be respectful of the process and make sure that we're typing out those numbers before we consider adjusting the budget in any significant way. Yes, understood. And we can definitely work and get more of that information to you. And at this time, in terms of budget planning, we're keeping within our scheduled rate structure that we've adopted, which incorporates consistent levels of CIP investment. So we're not making any changes through that four year rate setting period, which we're now going to be in rate in year two come July 1. Okay, appreciate that. Vice Chair Arnone. It's kind of following up on your comment that even if we had more money, we couldn't deliver more projects. I guess we have to look at other ways to, you know, increase the efficiency or the manner in which other departments play a role in delivering projects. I guess my question is, to what extent are these, is the work that we're doing now confined to Santa Rosa water? Or are we using other departments within the city to our benefit or to our detriment in the course of delivering projects? Go ahead. Go ahead, Andy. You can, you can, I'll add on if need be. Very good. Thank you, Director Burr. At this time and for many years, all the capital projects from water and throughout the city are being done and the engineer and engineering and construction is all being managed by the Transportation and Public Works department. And I'm not hearing any idea that that's going to change. They, we have, there are four capital projects teams and Transportation and Public Works, two of which are solely dedicated to doing projects for water. And then the other two teams take on projects for water as they have availability. As an example, they, one of the non-water teams hired an engineer recently. And so he was available to take on some projects. And we quickly went in there and made sure he had some water projects as well. And he has that kind of background. So I think it'll be a win-win. So we, I believe the number when we last heard is 75% of the capital projects in the city are water. And so that, that group, those four teams are working hard to get water projects out as well as the rest of the projects, capital projects in the city. So that's the way we do things now. At one point, we did have a team fully in water department and that changed with an engineering reorg back in 2008 or 2009. Yes. And, and I will just say that this has been an ongoing discussion with the assistant city manager nut. And, you know, recently there's been some additional resources. We've hired a new deputy director, or I should say assistant city manager nut hired a new deputy director of capital projects. Mike Prince, he is looking at various ways to streamline and increase productivity. We're looking at outside resources, potentially bringing a consultant team on. So we are definitely aware of the need to build a bigger bench to get more projects completed. And, and it is absolutely what we're working on. And I am very hopeful that at the next rate setting process we will be having even more investment in our CIP at that time. Did I understand correctly that the idea is perhaps moving some of this work back into the center as a water. And is that what you said? Not at this time. So we're still looking at the structure saying within TPW for the capital projects team, but we're looking at ways that we can build a bigger bench in the capital projects team including looking at consultants and other ways to increase the efficiencies to get more projects completed. So. Okay, thank you. Member Wallace, did you have another question or comment? Yes, thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. Just a follow-up with a member Arnone's question. If there are different models for increasing the capacity to complete the projects and plan for them. I know some some entities would have like a project management office that controls the project and have like a certified project manager sort of run that office. I don't know if you have vision on what the water agency is doing. It's not a water, but maybe there's a way to cooperate on some resources so we don't wind up competing for the resources while we're doing all the projects at once. So if everybody had big, huge project years, for instance, the year four or five, maybe that would be an issue. But obviously resources in our area would be somewhat limited. But if you have vision on the project management office and the water agency or could look at that in a way to think about the city's capacity to water projects, that would be appreciated. Thank you. I believe that one of the points I think you just made was that the resources out and our capital projects team hires out and the design and even some construction management of these projects to help leverage the amount of staff that we have. Even with that said, the local and even area nearby, if you beyond local engineering firms are all busy and we are doing our best to to grab as much of their time and talents as we can. And I say we that's obviously capital projects, engineering and transportation of public works. But I know Mr. Prinz is looking at some different options to to try to get as much squeeze as much out of the consulting local consulting group as we can because we have some very talented local engineers that know what we want and are good at producing that. But they're at the same challenge of hiring as we are. Thank you. Any other board member questions or comments? All right, we will open it up now for public comments 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 nine. Secretary Aitha, we have no public comments on this item and we have no one here in the council chambers. That'll take care of item 3.1. Item 4.1 is the approval of the minutes for January 20th. So we'll now take public comments on the approval of the minutes. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. Very good. We'll now move to item 5.1, which is our staff briefing on the water supply update. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Our water supply update will be presented by our deputy director of water resources, Peter Martin. Great. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Here today with a water supply update, I'm unfortunately don't have a lot of good news in terms of rainfall. We've seen perhaps one of the driest stretches in January and February in California's history. So with no rainfall in sight, perhaps towards the end of the month, things are getting a little concerning in terms of the expectations for the upcoming summer. So next slide. Lake Minnesino storage as of today is about a little over forty two thousand acre feet or sixty two percent of the target water supply curve for this time of year. In terms of releases for that reservoir, it's a little of the past few days about sixty cubic feet per second. And overall, it actually gained just a little bit of storage this last week due to some additional releases under the contract requirements for the Potter Valley Project into the East Fork. However, it's mostly flat. So not a lot of changes there. And just kind of a reminder in terms of snow and water's temporary urgency change order that went into effect in December. As of February 1st, storage was below. Sorry, excuse me. Yes, February 1st, storage was below fifty nine thousand acre feet. So it categorized the water year and under their water rights as a dry conditions, meaning that in stream flows were reduced for this month. And so for March 1st, given that no additional storage has been gained this month, much if they hit March 1st and are under fifty two thousand acre feet, it will now be punted into a critical year. So releases could be reduced even further as far as releases out of reservoirs and their corresponding in stream flows for Russian River. So yeah, definitely, you know, mapping out a critically dry year so far. So go to the next slide. In terms of Lake Sonoma storage, current storage is about one hundred and fifty thousand acre feet or about sixty one percent of the target water supply or water supply pool for this time. Storage leases are at about seventy five cubic feet per second and has been losing a little bit of storage over week over week. So in terms of where we were last year at this time here, I think storage was at about sixty four percent of the target storage curve. So yeah, just, you know, still have not recovered storage at a level that we were even out last year. So Lake Sonoma storage continues to remain historically low at this time. Next slide. In terms of our water conservation targets for the city in January, Santa Rosa's residents reduced their water use by nine percent compared to twenty twenty levels. We had a very dry January, if I recall, last year. So that's something to consider to as well. But overall, you know, the target has been since July a twenty percent reduction in water use compared to twenty twenty and we're still seeing overall a twenty two percent reduction in water use over that time frame. For the next slide, I just want to kind of preview some of the outreach activities. A little look ahead is so far as our messaging this month. Obviously, still very much focusing on indoor water saving habits, you know, directing people to upgrades they can make in their home and rebate programs that we have to help them do that. And then that message will switch in March to very much heavy on finding and fixing leaks in people's homes and irrigation systems in terms of events starting to get out into the public again. We have the St. Patrick's Day five K event coming up on thirteenth, the Mary Lou Lowrider project reveal is going to be downtown on the twenty sixth where we'll be there along with the stormwater team, you know, out kind of getting information out. And then we have a water smart garden maintenance workshop coming up on the nineteenth. Folks can register at srcity.org slash workshops. And let's go to the next slide. So I hope everyone's marking their calendars for fix the leak week on March 14th beginning of the week of March 14th. We have quite a bit of activity going on for that week, and that will include obviously the typical promotion through social media and other channels, including city connections. We're definitely going to try to get folks to fix leaky toilets with promotion of dye tabs and several other tips kind of region wide, working with the partnership on a leak checklist. It's basically like a 10 minute kind of challenge to get folks to go through their home and it's all adapted through through US EPA's WaterSense program. So we'll be pushing that really hard in March. Next slide. So I'm happy to report that your water through your water conservation subcommittee, they recently evaluated the rebate amounts for our various programs took a look at how much they were being utilized and sort of weighted the cost effectiveness in terms of our program expenditures by the department. As a result of that evaluation, the subcommittee recommended increasing those rebate programs in their recent meeting. Just kind of a reminder in terms of when evaluating rebate amounts, the department kind of takes a look at the water saved by each rebate and really weighs the cost of purchasing additional water from Sonoma water. And that's kind of the bar for the cost effectiveness of programs and how much the rebates should be. Obviously the cost of things are going up. It's good to go through and refresh that every once in a while. So I'm very thankful for the work by the Water Conservation Subcommittee and staff and take a look at that recently. We hope that this will increase the uptake of the programs this summer. Next slide. And further, some new rebate offerings were also recommended and approved by the subcommittee, those being a pool removal rebate. This is consistent with our turf replacement program under the cash for grass program with a 75 cents per square foot of pool removed. This sort of just further incentivizes folks that are contemplating pulling a permit to remove their pool with putting back a water wise landscape. And then also pool cover rebate, which offers up to $50 per cover to further incentivize folks to reduce their evaporative losses in their pools with a pool cover. Let's go to the final slide. Of course, you know, folks can always go to our WaterSmart resources at SRC.org slash WaterSmart. And for the latest drought updates, go to SRC.org slash Save Water. With that, that concludes my presentation. I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you, Deputy Director Martin. We'll open it up for board questions and comments. Board Member Wright. So I'm just curious. So Lake Minasino is going to go I think you said dry or extremely dry or some condition and they could reduce flows. Is that also the case for Lake Sonoma to reduce that outfall? Yeah, I'm sorry. Thank you, Board Member Wright. I should have clarified yet. So again, with the change order, Lake Minasino is now the storage in Lake Minasino determines the hydrologic index for the water year. So the storage level there kind of changes the in-stream flows for the upper and lower Russian river. I believe that if let me see, I think I have some notes here right now. It is in what's considered dry conditions, which is 85 cubic feet per second in the upper Russian River. And as well as the lower Russian River from the Dry Creek conflicts. No. Yes, I think down down to the Pacific Ocean or actually it's there that the diversion and that would be 85 CFS as well. That could be reduced down to 35 CFS if they go into what's considered the critical hydrologic conditions in the watershed. And that's possible on March 1st. Yeah, so right now Lake Minasino is at about I think 42,700 acre feet of storage. The threshold for critical on March 1st is 52,000 acre feet. So unless they are miraculously pick up, I guess. Yeah, it's unlikely. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah. Yeah, that's very likely. Let's put that. OK, thank you. Any other board member questions or comments? All right, we'll open it up for public comments on item 5.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you dial in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, we have no public comments on this item. I will take care of item 5.1. Thank you for the report, Deputy Director Martin. We'll now move to the consent calendar. There are no questions. I will entertain a motion. I'll move adoption of the consent calendar with consent items. All second. Thank you. We have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar. Are there any board member questions or comments before I open it up for public comments? Seeing none, we'll open it up for public comments on item number six, which is six point one, six point two and six point three. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? We do not. We have a roll call vote, please. Chair Galvin. Hi. Vice Chair Arnone. Hi. Board Member Grable. Hi. Board Member Walsh. Hi. Board Member Watts. Hi. Board Member Wright. Hi. Thank you. That takes care of the consent calendar. We have no report items. Item eight is public comments on non-agenda matters. So we'll now take public comments on item eight. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? We do not. Thank you. We have no referrals. We have no written communications. I believe we have one subcommittee report. Board Member Watts. Yes. So the water conservation subcommittee met on January 31st and staff provided an overview of the water use efficiency activities over the past year, including rebates issued and successful past. I'm not sure if Board Member Watts, did you freeze up or were you finished? Frozen? Looks like it. Perhaps Director Burke, are you able to finish the report for Board Member Watts from the Yes. Water conservation subcommittee. I can. So as Board Member Watts mentioned, the water conservation subcommittee met on Monday, January 31st and staff provided an overview of water use efficiency activities over the past year, including an update on the number of rebates we've issued and our successful past events. And we also provided a preview on the future events and ongoing drought related outreach. Oh, and it looks like Board Member Watts is back. So I will turn it back over to her. I'm so sorry. I'm not sure. I think that. I hope I think I heard the end of Director Burke. So in addition to that, we unanimously approved a proposal to increase rebate amounts for the following program, the irrigation efficiency rebate from one hundred dollars to three hundred dollars to one hundred dollars. The recirculating hot water pump rebate from one hundred to two hundred fifty dollars and the sustained reduction rebate, which is four hundred dollars per thousand gallons up to two hundred dollars. So up from two hundred dollars. So and also we approved two new programs, which was mentioned today, which was the pool removal rebate to incentivize installation of qualifying low water landscape when a pool is removed and then the pool cup pool cover rebate at fifty dollars. So let me know if you have any questions. Thank you. I did have one question. Is the recirculating water pump rebate is that available for residential customers or is it just commercial? I believe it was residential. That is correct. OK, thank you. And I think that's a popular rebate, so hopefully we'll get more in increases for that one with the increase of rebate amount. I know I need one, so that's good to know. Any other board member questions or comments for board member Watts? All right, we'll take public comments on item number eleven. If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, we have no public comments on this item. I'll take care of item number eleven. Any board member reports? Hearing none, we'll move to item number thirteen. Director's report. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. A few things that I wanted to update the board on first. I wanted to provide an update on the place to play emergency groundwater well project. As you may recall, during the course of construction, we conducted water quality testing and found levels of arsenic above existing drinking water standards. This was unexpected. And so in November of 2020, we put construction on hold and informed the board that we would be placing the project in suspension and placing the construction contractor contract in suspension so that we could explore alternatives and pursue necessary redesign to look at additional treatment. Good news is we have found a path forward that will allow for additional treatment and Team Jalotti has resumed work starting at the end of January. I will just put out a note of caution while it is good news that we do have a path forward. We are continuing to see increases in costs due to worldwide supply shortages and we are anticipating that we may have to come back to the board for some additional funding for this project. The engineering team is still reviewing that and working that out. But the good news is we do believe we will stay on our timeline with a project completion date of November of this year. And the water resources division staff are also resuming their work with the division of drinking water to develop the required drinking water permit application for this project. I also wanted to let the board know that we have begun sampling again for COVID in our wastewater. We are working with two separate labs located on the east coast and we are sending them three samples per week. The samples will also be genotyped to determine the relative amounts of the different virus strains in the wastewater. There have been no known occurrences of the virus being able to survive in wastewater so the techniques the labs use can identify dead viruses. And we will as we did before we will be sharing this information with the county health officer if they're able to use this in any meaningful way. Also wanted to let the board know of some really good news. The ultraviolet replacement project is out to bid. We have a current opening of March 29th. This has been a multi-year effort starting with design charrette to look at options through design through really just a huge effort by the team to get this out. And it's our biggest CIP project since the geysers. So I really want to just thank all the staff. There's too many to list that have worked on this project. Some are still here. Some have since gone on to other agencies or retired. But this is an amazing project and we are excited to hopefully start construction this summer in completion in two years. And then last I just wanted to note we had a long term employee John Mendeblis who retired from the city last week. John started working in the water department before water and sewer were actually combined. So he was here since February of 1992. He started working in the meter shop as a maintenance worker and later promoted to a senior USO on the general construction crew. John's talent and work ethic made him somewhat of a legend around the staff. There was never a repair too deep or too complex for John to complete. And he repaired many sewer and water mains teaching his limitless skills to the next generation of utility system operators. When John realized that he wanted to retire a couple of years ago he wanted to move back to the meter shop and finish his career where he started. And while working as the senior USO on the meter shop John continued to show his dedication and excellent customer service skills. He plans to spend time with his family and enjoy his retirement spending time between California and Arizona. I just really want to thank John for his work for his 30 plus year or 30 year career and wish him all the best. Thank you. And I'm happy to answer any questions that the board may have. Thank you. Any board member questions or comments for the director. All right we'll open it up for public comments on item 13. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aether. We have no public comments. Very good that concludes our agenda for today. So we will be adjourned and we will see you all in March.