 Secretary Aether, other than possibly Board Member Grable, I thought everybody was supposed to be here. Is that your understanding? That was my understanding. Okay, we'll wait a couple more minutes and then see if Board Member Walsh joins us. Okay, thank you. Well, I guess we can get started. Hopefully Board Member Walsh would be joining us, but it is 137. So, with that, I'll call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. We may have a roll call, please. Yes, Chair Galvin. Here. Vice Chair Arnone. Here. Board Member Badenford. Here. Board Member Grable. Board Member Walsh. Board Member Watts. Here. Board Member Wright. Here. Good afternoon, everyone. I would like to remind you to keep your self on mute unless you're going to be speaking. Put away your cell phones and personal computers and try and keep your video on if at all possible. We have any abstentions, statements of abstention by Board Members. And we have no study session. The minutes from June 17th will be approved and entered. And we will move to our staff briefings. Good afternoon. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. Our first staff briefing is an update on the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency. And Deputy Director of Water Resources, Peter Martin will be making the presentation. Great. Thanks for that introduction, Director Burke. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. Definitely very happy to be here before you today to provide you with a brief update on the activities of the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater. Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency. I will be potentially bringing back another item on a study session after this. So this is sort of a placeholder and to get us to that point. And we can talk a little more in depth very soon about some more of the activities in the background of the actual planning process is going on. Next slide, please. So at this point, I imagine you've had quite a bit of orientation into the Sanibel Groundwater Management Act throughout the several last several years since that we've been participating. But I did just kind of want to quickly reorient those who may need a little bit more bringing up speed on how the city and others in the region became involved in the Sanibel Groundwater Management Act and carrying out the planning elements necessary to meet the state mandates. The Sanibel Groundwater Management Act was a landmark legislation that was introduced in 2014 in response to rapidly declining groundwater levels throughout California, which were sort of continuing to create a wide variety of issues, especially those concerning economics, water supply, water quality, environmental issues, as well as environmental justice issues. Many of these were very prominent in wide swaths of the Central Valley and received quite a bit of attention leading up to the time when this policy was enacted. Governor Brown at the time did sign it into law in September of 2014 and became effective on January 1st of 2015. I do want to note that typically California policies regarding groundwater supplies and access to groundwater have not been sort of as tightly controlled or regulated as surface water supplies, which is probably why we got to this point. In most instances, with some exceptions specific to certain court adjudicated groundwater basins, the right to access groundwater resides with the overlying property and well. And so that means that for the most part, California doesn't have a permit process for regulation of groundwater use and groundwater use doesn't require approval from the State Water Resource Control Board or court. And you can see how this particular wrinkle has led to perhaps an overuse or overdrafting of certain basins in the state. The Sustainable Groundwater Management Act, also known as SIGMA, I'll refer to it as SIGMA from here on out, ultimately tasked local agencies and authorities with managing the groundwater resources in a sustainable manner on a 20 to 50 year planning horizon. First, though, it required local agencies to form what are called groundwater sustainability agencies or GSAs in all high and medium priority designated groundwater basins by June 30 of 2017. Santa Rosa Water and other agencies in the region with jurisdictional boundaries and authorities formed a joint powers authority to act as the GSA Groundwater Sustainable Agency for the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Subbasin, which is now known as the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency. The legislation also required comprehensive groundwater sustainability plans would be created in a very transparent public process and imposed timelines on the adoption of these plans. So basins designated as critically overdrafted by the Department of Water Resources and their published Bulletin 118 had to have plans in place by January 31 of 2020. And then basins designated as high or medium priority must have plans in place by January 31 of 2022 coming up very shortly. Santa Rosa Plain Basin is a medium priority basin and thus the GSA is in the process of drafting their plan for adoption by the end of this year. Next slide. So I just wanted to quickly throw up a graphic of the boundary of the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency. The Santa Rosa Plain Subbasin encompasses approximately 80,000 acres. It is generally bounded on the west by the low lying hills of the Mendocino Range on the east by the snow mountains and myocomus mountains. The Subbasin is approximately 22 miles long and it's kind of in and out about approximately nine miles through the Santa Rosa area to six miles wide at the end at the valley near the city of Cotadi and sort of obviously narrows very much at the top of the basin as well. The Subbasin includes the town of Windsor, cities of Cotadi, Rona Park, Santa Rosa and Sevastopol, as well as unincorporated rural communities and various agricultural cultivation areas. The principal streams in the Subbasin are Mark West Creek, Santa Rosa Creek and the Laguna de Santa Rosa, which ultimately drained a combined watershed area of about 250 square miles. Next slide. As I mentioned, the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency is a joint powers authority comprised of the representative cities and towns in the basin, the county of Sonoma, Sonoma Water, various resource conservation districts and a representative from several independently owned water systems in the basin that also utilize groundwater. The governance also has an advisory committee that's comprised of the representatives from the same members at the JPA Board, but additionally has community members with sort of specific diverse perspectives on various beneficial uses of groundwater in the basin. And it includes representatives from agriculture, the environmental community, the business community and rural residential well users, as well as the same publicly owned water districts. Sorry, independently owned water districts, excuse me. The GSA itself also has a variety of staff and technical consultants that sort of administer various activities of the GSA. For now, it's including creating the Groundwater Sustainability Plan, generally carrying out various directors of the board and as well as many of the public processes that are going along with that. Your representatives for the City of Santa Rosa and the Board of Directors are Council Member Todd Schwedhelm, who also happens to serve as a chair of the Board of Directors now, and Council Member John Sawyer as the alternate. And then staff from Santa Rosa Water, including myself, and Collin Close Senior Water Resources Planner serve on that advisory committee. Next slide. So I'm going to try to stay at a really high level with the description of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan elements, but SIGMA does mandate that specific elements be addressed in the plan before it can be submitted and approved by the Department of Water Resources. The plan must have a very comprehensive description of the basin and the aquifer, including various hydrogeologic characteristics, land uses, and many other sort of important descriptors that can orient someone as to the conditions occurring in the basin historically and perhaps even planning going forward. And then the plan, of course, must identify goals specifically tailored to our local basin and address how the region plans to meet the goals of sustainability on a 20-year planning horizon and beyond. And how we'll prevent the groundwater basin from sliding back into specific undesirable results or actually, for instance, here we have not seen those undesirables roles preventing those from occurring. The plan needs to lay out the various actions that the GSA will undertake to achieve those sustainability goals. And, of course, we'll want to develop a wide-ranging watering plan to determine the health of the basin and how we're doing with achieving the goals outlined in the plan and ensuring success in the future as well. So let's go to the next slide here. Thank you. The plan will have several chapters that are mandated to be covered by law under SIGMA, and the GSA is planning to have a GSP consisting of seven chapters that will cover that. Several of those are already drafted and some are already available for public review. So chapter one will just be an introduction and overview to the basin, the planning process, and those that are participating. The plan area description will have quite a bit of description on various technical elements of land use and other technological elements as well. The basin setting, of course, just talks about the historical basin uses and other things like that. We have sustainable management criteria that will have objectives and clear goals for how we'll make sure that the basin is sustainable long-term. A very clearly delineated monitoring program and, of course, potential projects and management actions that will help achieve sustainability on the long-term planning horizon. And then finally, just a plan for implementation over a 20-year planning horizon. Let's go to slide seven next. So I think briefly in my earlier slides, I kind of gloss over, but I did mention that the plan must address how the basin will ensure that we achieve sustainable long-term, sustainability long-term for the basin. I think that specifically identifies what they call six sustainability indicators that are going to be the anchor of the groundwater sustainability plan. And these will sort of determine how we measure success going forward. So these are the issues that must be addressed long-term and areas that I must ensure do not harm the beneficial users of the basin. Those are the chronic lowering of groundwater levels, potential reduction overall and groundwater storage in the basin, sea water intrusion. This one is not particularly an issue in the Santa Rosa Plain, but it is in other areas of the state. So I think that the degraded water quality is a concern. Land subsidence. I think we've all seen those very interesting pictures of the gentleman standing next to that pole where he shows the level of the ground over decades falling and falling. You don't want unrecoverable land subsidence as a result of reduced groundwater storage. And of course, depletion of interconnected surface waters, that being rivers that have relationships with the groundwater basin themselves. A drawdown of that groundwater basin can actually potentially disconnect those streams and cause harm to various environmental and other users that particularly use that water and rely on that groundwater input. So I guess we'll just go to the next slide. So there's been a, an ongoing schedule for developing this groundwater sustainability plan. It is a monumental effort, many, many meetings, quite a bit of work by all kinds of technical consultants and the various agencies that are represented. The advisory committee is currently in development and the advisory committee is currently working with staff for the GSA and developing project and management actions, which will be chapter six of the plan. And these chapters and pieces continue to be brought before the board with recommendations from the advisory committee for final approval. The draft to the plan is expected to be released to public at the end of September for review and is proposed for adoption by the board in December of this year. So there's not much wiggle room for us to get to that final date in January, the end of January 2022. Next slide please. So a little bit about the next steps here. So the plan GSA staff will provide a study session on the GSP to the Board of Public Utilities on August 5th. That's, that's what we're planning right now. Outreach is very much ongoing. We held a community-wide meeting on May 19 of 2021. My understanding has received at times 8200 participants in that Zoom specific community meeting. You may be familiar with the groundwater user information data exchange program, but mailers were sent out to well owners throughout the county. They were allowed to update various elements of their water use data for their wells. And there was quite a bit of outreach around that and a lot of communication between the public. I'm close and I participated and helped with that effort and answering calls and technical questions that came in from the public. It was quite a bit of work, but it has seemed to been a success so far. There are a variety of groundwater sustainability specialty focus groups. Their work is completed. They were focused on some of those more dicey sustainability indicators that relied upon people that had a specific set of technical expertise. Many of those from agricultural areas, entities, and as well as regulatory entities focused on wildlife preservation. We also have continued to conduct rural residential outreach. Survey and focus groups have been completed and a further outreach campaign is in development as a result of that. And then of course, draft chapters one or three are available for review and comment right now. Of course, those are just preliminary drafts. They will be finalized and brought into a final draft, as I mentioned at the end of September. Next slide. A rate and fee study is going to occur. A rate and fee study consultant will begin work in September of this year to review, revise, and update. And of course finalize the groundwater use of fee schedule. This is an update to the 2019 fee schedule. This will determine groundwater user fees. There was, if I was not here, but as I recollect, you know, there was a fee schedule that was established. However, the county decided to cover the individual groundwater users and rural areas and the cities agreed to pay fees as well for the term of the development of this groundwater sustainability plan. With regard to the fee going forward, it will be focused on the implementation of the plan. So, and then I just want to point out that Center for the Plain Board of Directors is meeting regularly and is approving elements of the groundwater sustainability plan often. So just kind of progressively moving through that. And a final public draft will be released in September, as I mentioned, with a 30 day comment period. This is a preparation of the final document for the Board of Directors for adoption in November of 2021. And ultimately submitted in December or January. I just want to note, by law, the plan must be adopted and submitted to the California Department of Water Resources by January 31st of 2022. Looks like I got a typo there. But yeah, there is no sort of, there is a backstop. And you could put basins into probation if that date is not met, which is not something that is desired probably. So, and let's go to the next slide. So that'll conclude my update and presentation. I'm happy answering any questions that folks may have at this time. Deputy Director Martin, open it up for Board Member Questions or Comments. Board Member Wright. Oh, just a simple question. Is the GSA writing this report with members of various agency staff, or are you hiring a consultant to do it and with SAF oversight? Yeah, so you're correct Board Member Wright. There are various consultants as well as Sonoma Water Agency technical staff. Some of those fees that were collected are going towards paying them to basically draft many elements of the plan, and they have been very much involved. There's a whole team of consultants, as well as folks that help facilitate the public process as well. The advisory committee reviews a lot of that information as it comes along, and ultimately they can provide a slew of recommendations on how to proceed. And that's typically how the Board of Directors receives them as sort of a variety of options on many of these things like the sustainability management criteria in other areas. Thank you. Other Board Member Questions or Comments. One of us have been getting more regular updates obviously on this through one of the standing committees, but tremendous amount of work has been going into this by staff and the consultants. And I know that they're well aware of the time constraints and when we have to get this submitted, and I know we'll make it. So keep up the good work. We'll now open it up for public comments on item 5.1. 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 Aether. We have no public comments on this item. Thank you. Thank you, Deputy Director Martin that'll take care of 5.1 and I know you're going to do 5.2 so Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. And yes, Deputy Director Martin will be doing item 5.2, which is our water supply update. Yeah, I like when I get to just go one right after the other. It's great. So, yeah, so I just going to give you your regular water supply update today. Lots going on right now. A lot of activities that you're likely aware of. Director Burke and I have both been very busy responding to media requests and the public about the stages of our storage plan that we just recently taken to City Council. So, I'll talk a little bit about that today and a little bit about water supply. So, next slide. As of today, reservoir storage in Lake Minasino is about 30,700 acre feet. So, water and Army Corps of Engineers are coordinating very closely and monitoring their forecasts very often as far as what's expected going into this winter. They continue to sort of message a lot that the forecast show that 20,000 acre feet of water will remain in the reservoir by October, which is cutting it pretty close because my understanding. But that estimate definitely relies on the upper Russian rivers to using doing quite a bit of conservation to to to meet that that operational scenario at the end of October. So I guess that's a little bit about the upper Russian river going to the next slide. As of today, Lake Sonoma has about 129,000 or about 130,000 acre feet of storage and Sonoma water reservoir releases have been significantly reduced since the temporary change order was issued by a state water resource control board on June 14. You can kind of see on this graphic here on the tail end of those the black line that changes are starting to occur and sort of leveling off a little more water levels are dropping pretty fast in Lake Sonoma in the beginning of June. So, of course, all the contractors including Santa Rosa water will be receiving reduced allocations of water story in July 1 consistent with that temporary change order that was issued by state water resource control board, which is also going to help reduce the burden on Lake Sonoma water supply shortage for the remainder of the year and preserve water supplies going to what is hopefully a very wet winter. So, next slide. I did, I did mention those allocations just want to remind everyone that section 3.5 of the restructure agreement for water supply outlines how water will be allocated during a water supply shortage. So, we have a provision in there that allows the Water Advisory Committee can by unanimous though determine an alternate allocation methodology on May 3. I think we've talked about this previously but the WAC did unanimously adopt a temporary allocation of water deliveries through October. The allocation is up to 20% less compared to 2020 and sort of flat across all of the contractor agencies up until that point. Next slide. So, on June 29, the Council of the City of Santa Rosa passed a resolution. One declaring a drought emergency adopting stage three of the city's water shortage contingency plan. The resolution also directed staff to go ahead and implement the water conservation program as is outlined and defined in stage three of the water shortage contingency plan. And all those things add up to us realizing a mandatory community wide water use reduction of 20%. And then of course, it also authorized the utilization of water enterprise catastrophic reserve funds, if necessary. You've probably seen the slide very recently as part of the development and adoption of the urban water management plan. I just want to bring it back up again and highlight how the water shortage contingency plan works in these shorter scenarios to help us manage our demands and meet required emergency, required reductions to get us through this emergency. It's consistent with what we're expecting as far as reduced water supplies from some water to the remainder of the year. So, what is a water shortage contingency plan. You know, you're obviously very uniquely familiar you just have seen that water shortage contingency plan, and you recommended adoption, which was ultimately adopted by the city council on June 8. But I just want to highlight the function of the plan which is sort of two fold this state mandated plan sort of helps the city be prepared for water shortages and emergencies by defining sort of the levels of severity of the shortage and the corresponding stages of action. So our plan happens to have eight stages with each stage anchoring a commensurate level of reduction needed as defined by those stages. So the plan also identifies various corresponding actions needed for each shortage stage. So there's planned responses to reduce demand. Our plan identifies a variety of demand reduction measures, just at a high level. Those include sort of outreach and education, prioritized customer service and assistance and of course, prohibitions and restrictions to meet the necessary reduction in water supplies. And then, you know, a sort of outlines how we'll institute compliance and enforcement objectives and how we're going to monitor and report out shortages and various drought measures to regulatory agencies. Next slide. Let's go ahead and just advance the slide. There we go. Perfect. Thank you. So as I mentioned in that last slide, this plan has eight stages. Given that where it's very clear, we know the allocations and short scenarios. We are recommending we recommend it to the council and which they approved an acting mandatory stage three of the water shortage contingency plan, which is consistent with an up to targeted 20% reduction in community wide use. I don't know if you've heard about this with the public, but I just want to make sure that, you know, it's understood that this stage includes a community wide target reduction. That will be achieved with the various demand reduction activities collectively as outlined in the water shortage contingency plan. But it does not at this time place targets on individual customers or households use. We ask all our customers to comply with several prohibitions and restrictions and strictly adhered to various water saving behaviors that they may or may not already be instituting in their home in order to for us to achieve this 20% savings target over 2020 levels on a month to month basis. Just to kind of highlight stage three of the water shortage contingency plan has several prohibitions and restrictions on water use their necessary measures designed to help the city achieve a 20% reduction in water use this summer. Of course, our, our water waste ordinance is always in effect, which prohibits leaks or breaks in a customer's property and really has some explicit prohibitions on irrigation overspray and run off from a customer's property. This is always enforced whether we're in a shortage or not. So, water waste ordinance always remains in effect. So stage three, though, does have several specific important prohibitions that will need to be communicated to the public and are already being communicated to the public. Now the council has acted in active stage three. Those sort of include very strict limitations on irrigation between the hours of 8pm and 6am. All outdoor hoses must be outfitted with shut off nozzles. We happen to provide those free to customers. And no washing of hard surfaces like sidewalks and driveways unless it's required for public health and safety. And then of course, restaurants are only to serve water upon request. And then hotel and lodging establishments are going to need to message their guests about washing towels and linens only upon request. And then pressure washing with pot of water is also prohibited with limited exceptions or with a variance issued by the department. Next slide. So the water shortage contingency plan, as I mentioned earlier, also outlines ways that we sort of enforce the prohibitions and restrictions of the plan. We have a very simple strategy and that's that we take a progressive approach to enforcement and work to educate and alert customers to issues and provide them with the information of resources to tackle this and address the problem as they may come up together. So when an issue of not compliance is found, staff typically follow up promptly by various ways of communication, letters, phone, sometimes hanging the oops tag. And if you're aware that we've had water waste patrols out there, you know, monitoring irrigation very early in the morning. And that sort of, you know, leaves the door open for education and quick resolution of the issue. You know, most of the time, the customer probably doesn't even know that they have an issue so the vast right time customers very appreciative and works well with staff to resolve leaks or water waste. You know, however, in rare instances, a customer can perhaps be the unresponsive and stuff staff to have the option to sort of progressively issue warnings and assess enforcement measures including penalty says only occur in the later stages of the plan, not during stage three, but also up to suspension of service if a customer is uncooperative or continues to be, you know, unresponsive in the situations. And then finally, there's a variance for certain prohibitions for customers that may have a health or safety need that is specific to those existing prohibitions in the plan. Next slide. The sort of water shortage contingency plan did identify that the council could institute 7.5% water shortage charge could be applied on the customer usage charge that being the amount per 1000 gallons on each piling cycle. You're probably familiar at this point with the water shortage rate structure we've brought that before this board several times in terms of slowly adopting it. And the water shortage charge was approved by city council at the rate hearing in May. And that water shortage charge is meant to address budget shortfalls associated with lost revenues due to reduce sales in the scenario where we are selling less water due to mandatory cutbacks. You know, also it's outlined in the city's shortage plan and pursuant to policy 57 Santa Rosa waters reserve policy cast rough reserves can be also be used to offset revenue loss during a mandatory water use restriction. You know, although we know Santa Rosa water will experience revenue losses due to these reductions in water sales, you know, hopefully if everything goes to plan. I think we recognized earlier in the year that this drought was a possibility and and folks begin planning for the possibility of reduced water sales. So, this board is aware that Santa Rosa water sort of incorporated a forecasted 10% reduction of revenues for fiscal year 2021 22. And also I want to note that our undesignated fund balance partially established to ensure rates moving emergencies is forecasted to be ample enough to address the short term revenue loss. So therefore, when we went to council we did not recommend the institution of this shortage water shortage charge. Additionally, the challenges that our community can still continues to face from COVID, as well as other additional challenges from the drought. We did not make that recommendation. But at the same time, Santa Rosa water staff did ask council to authorize use of catastrophic reserves on their action and June 29, if necessary to perhaps address any unforeseen revenue shortfalls for the water enterprise fund. However, that action was that Santa Rosa water would only use those catastrophic reserve funds, only if the revenue and undesignated fund balances could not continue to cover the cost of operations due to this reduced water sales and water use. So when we went to the council we did report out that we'll continue to watch revenues and operational fund balances very closely. And we will return to the council to consider implementation of this charge, if at some time it is deemed necessary. So I just, you know, obviously, one of the most valuable tools that we have in this point is, you know, our outreach. It is the most valuable tool. It's the most bank for your buck for getting folks to respond and reduce their water use immediately. The snowmower in water saving partnership has a challenge this month, where folks can go and pledge to save water by making small changes in their everyday life throughout the remainder of June, July, and they can't win prizes as part of that. We will be sending out a letter to all customers shortly, similar to the letter that went out when we instituted voluntary 20% reduction. And that is a very effective tool in getting as much information out to customers in a very short time. And then we've continued to already make a lot of outreach to the various industries that are impacted. We'll be contacting those that are going to be subject to restrictions and prohibitions and working with them to educate them, as well as providing them with all the tools they need to move forward. It is Smart Irrigation Month. We'll be hosting drip irrigation basics workshop coming up very shortly in Spanish and English. We're hoping people will come and go and sign up. We already have quite a few participants signed up for that workshop at this time. It is a virtual offering. And then, of course, we continue to use bill insert social media, radio and city connections to get the message out as quickly as possible. That continues to be a very vital tool. And when we're seeing, you know, every day, just a huge response in the community, based on call volumes and a lot of the back and forth with community, you know, people are concerned but they're definitely very much wanting to do their part. So it's very good. And then additional drop drop by events are also planned for August and October. I think we may have solidified a date on August 21st for events events occur in two different locations and throughout the city. I believe that's Coddingtown Mall and gosh, I'm blanking on the park. I'll just assist from Director Burke in a minute on that. And so I look forward to more information on that as well. So we can just get the last slide here. We also are really trying to get our customers to go to src.org slash water smart learn about the variety of rebates and incentives that we offer to help and say what are now that number for the water smart hotline is also posted there as well. So that concludes my update. Happy to answer any questions at this time. Thank you, Deputy Director Martin. We'll open it up for board member questions or comments. Board Member Watts. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation. I was just curious you mentioned some messaging to the community around the 20% being community wide versus, you know, individual households and just for my own purposes of education because I have heard some from a lot of people who are in the community. I think we should be a little bit confused about that. Is there a, you know, an easy way to explain that to people to kind of ensure that, you know, this is community wide and it's not individual households at this moment. Yeah, thank you Board Member Watts and that is something that we're continuing to work to communicate to the community about. So we're going to continue to direct folks there and it will have a response to that specific question. Great. Thank you very much. If I could add to that, Chair Galvin. Sure. For, it's a great question. We have always had community wide reduction targets for drought before. When we're in lower stages of drought, it's appropriate. So what we're really asking our customers, if you're doing everything you can, if you're a Super Saver, keep it up. If there are small changes, you can make every drop counts. And so we're asking everyone, if you're as efficient as possible, indoors and outs, indoors and outdoors. Great. Keep it up. If there's any little thing you can do or even big things you can do, we have resources, education tips, tools, rebates will help you. And also our new WaterSmart portal will really help folks identify ways that they could actually reduce water more. Some folks may just not realize that there's additional things they can do. So we're not targeting individuals. We're not penalizing individuals, but we're asking those that could do a little more. Please do so. Well said. We're never right. Well, just a sort of a water supply issue. Do you know if water is going into Lake Mendocino from the band, our sale project. So I can't provide too many details, but you know, at this point, there is there is a very minimal amount of water coming out of the Potter Valley project. They did obtain a variance from their FERC mandated flows, the BG&E project did. And it is very minimal. And so that is at the moment, my understanding is that it is a, not a final, it is just a temporary require, excuse me, operational plan, and that it is still being evaluated by FERC, as far as how they will proceed with their mandated flows going into the later times of the summer. I would imagine if it's very low flows, it's all being used by Potter Valley Irrigation District and very little of it's getting down into Lake Mendocino, but I don't have any proof of that. Yeah, the Potter Valley Irrigation District was severely cut back on their deliveries as well as part of that action. And so, yeah, not much is being bypassed beyond that. That's unfortunate. Thank you. And good presentation. Additional board member comments or questions. All right, we will open it up now for public comment on item 5.2. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please dial star, or please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comment. Thank you. We have one item on the consent calendar. I'll move the consent calendar. Okay, we have a motion by Board Member Wright, seconded by Vice Chair Arnone. Any comments from the board? If not, we'll open it up for public comments on item 6. If you wish to comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Do we have any public comments? We have no public comments on this item. May we have a roll call vote, please? Yes, Chair Galvin. Vice Chair Arnone. Aye. Board Member Badden-Ford. Aye. Board Member Watts. Okay. Board Member Wright. Aye. Very good. That'll take care of the consent calendar. We'll now move to our report item. Item 7.1, Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 7.1 is a report item. Item 8.1 is an approval of Town of Windsor Master Services Agreement with City of Santa Rosa for on-call stormwater and wastewater environmental services. And Patrick Pullis, our environmental compliance inspector, will be presenting. Good afternoon, Chairman Galvin and members of the board. If you wouldn't mind giving me some feedback if you can hear and see me. Perfect. Thank you very much. Next slide, please. The previous agreement with the Town of Windsor began in 2012. The agreement was to conduct wastewater inspections for commercial and industrial industries in Windsor with stormwater concerns involved. City of Santa Rosa coordinated with the Town of Windsor to establish the framework for their current industrial waste program. Windsor did not have an industrial wastewater program in place prior to its agreement with the City of Santa Rosa and City staff helped to establish a program with them. The previous agreement expired yesterday, June 30th. If approved, Santa Rosa would continue to provide services that were included in the previous agreement. Next slide, please. On January 1st of this year, Windsor sent out a request for proposals for contracted services. The RFP was sent to six entities, including the City of Santa Rosa. On March 4th of this year, City staff submitted a proposal to the Town of Windsor. On March 19th of this year, Windsor awarded the contract to the City of Santa Rosa. Town of Windsor staff commented that Santa Rosa's was the most professional and well done proposal that was received. Next slide, please. The proposed agreement would provide the Town of Windsor with the following services. Sampling wastewater of industrial industries. Inspecting and permitting industrial and commercial facilities. Assisting in enforcement actions for instances of noncompliance. Any enforcement actions will be in coordination and at the direction of the Town of Windsor. Santa Rosa staff would also assist in reviewing development plans for industrial and commercial facilities. Provide pollution prevention and stormwater outreach material to businesses. Investigate illicit sewer discharges. And provide advice on pre-treatment issues. Next slide, please. The proposed agreement would provide the Town of Windsor with the same services as the previous agreement. The agreement would run until 2024 with possible extensions till 2026. There are two one-year extensions that could be optioned in the agreement. Environmental services would return with an agenda item. Per approval from the board for each of those extensions. The value of the contract is $35,000 per fiscal year with a maximum of $50,000 per fiscal year. And the last couple of years of the previous contract, the average invoice per year was around $33,000. The Town of Windsor would provide final approval on all city of Santa Rosa actions. While Santa Rosa provides the same services as the previous contract, the city of Santa Rosa provides the same services as the previous contract. The city of Santa Rosa provides the same services as the previous contract. The city of Santa Rosa actions. While Santa Rosa provides the work that is performed independently in the field is always coordinated with the Town of Windsor at their direction. Next slide, please. There are many benefits of the Town of Windsor agreement for the city of Santa Rosa. The main benefit is additional income to the city of Santa Rosa. The city of Santa Rosa will have access to additional staff members. As Santa Rosa staff, I have performed this contract for Windsor for the last nine years as a well established system of meeting the task of the contract without additional staff. The second main benefit of the agreement is consistent compliance culture for the local area. With this agreement, city of Santa Rosa staff will be administering the pre treatment program for most of the local area. for the regional partners Katadi, Runner Park and Sevastopol. Consistent compliance culture ensures local businesses will get consistent requirements in education. Consistent messaging aids and expectations for the business community. For instance, when businesses move or talk to other businesses in different local towns, it will feel like they're being treated the same with consistent message of the right and wrong things to do. Next slide please. It is recommended by Santa Rosa Water that the Board of Public Utilities, by motion, approve and authorize the Chair of the Board to sign a three-year Count of Windsor Master Services Agreement with two one-year extension options with the City of Santa Rosa for on-call stormwater and wastewater environmental services. Next slide please. That concludes my presentation. Are there any questions? Thank you, Mr. Poulos. I'll open it up for Board member questions, comments. Thank you for the presentation. If there are none, I'll entertain a motion. I'll move that we, sorry, okay, I'll move that we, I guess, enter into the agreement with Windsor for these consulting services. Okay. All right, we have a motion by Board member Wright. Was that Board member Batenforth that seconded? Yes. Okay, great. Thank you. I'll now open it up for public comments on item 7.1. 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. All right, may we have a roll call vote, please? Chair Galvin. Hi. Vice Chair Anoni. Hi. Board member Batenforth. Hi. Board member Watts. Hi. Board member Wright. All right. Thank you all. That will take care of that matter. Now move to item number eight, which is public comments. We're now taking 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. We have no public comments. Thank you. That'll take care of item eight. We have no referrals, no written communications. I don't believe we have any subcommittee reports. Seeing nobody indicating otherwise, any Board member reports. Okay, no Board member reports. We will move to the Director's report. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. I have a short Director's report for you. First, I wanted to give an update on our Farmer's Lane wells. We've been operating our two production wells and our water treatment facility at Farmer's Lane since April 1st, which is our typical start date, to help supplement increasing demand and reduce the amount of water purchased from Sonoma water. This year, our operations team noticed that the groundwater level was lower than past years when we started the wells. In the past, both wells are typically beginning to artesian by the end of winter, by the end of winter. And this year, that did not occur. A couple of years ago, the Board may recall that we rehabilitated the Farmer's Lane wells. And as a result, last year, we were able to maintain greater production later in the season. Although we typically see groundwater levels fall throughout the summer, this year, due to the lack of rain and a critical drought, it appears that water levels are dropping quicker than in previous years. Operation staff continues to manage our groundwater wells very closely to optimize our production through the remainder of the summer. But it does appear that we may not be able to achieve the greater production through late in the season as we were able to do last year. And then second, I wanted to update the Board on our Water Smart Portal. As we begin to roll out the communication on our Water Smart Portal, we wanted to share that we're starting to see our customers respond, which is great news. So far, we have 712 customers that have registered. There is currently a bill insert that is going out with this month's bills advertising the portal. And as each cycle of bills goes out, we are seeing a study uptick as customers receive those bills and register for the portal. In addition, we are putting out information through our City Connections newsletter and including information about how to sign up for the portal in our drought letter that will be going out to all of our customers in the next few days. This letter in particular is going to let all of our customer know that we are now in stage three and the prohibitions and restrictions that are required. This tool is a great tool for customers to help respond in the drought. And so far, the feedback on the portal has been very positive. And it's a great way for our customers to understand exactly how much water they're using and if there's opportunities to reduce. And that is my report. And I'm happy to answer any questions the board may have. Thank you. Any questions for the director? All righty. At this point, then we will take public comments on item number 13. You wish to make a comment via Zoom. Please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Atha. We have no public comments on this item. All right. That concludes our agenda. I wish you all a good afternoon and a happy 4th of July. Stay safe. And we'll see you in a couple of weeks. We're adjourned.