 Mr. Russell, you have your hand raised. Well, I just responding to your question. This is Larry Russell, MMWD. You asked about that, how I signed in. I thought that's what I'm not hearing you one moment. Mr. Russell, can you hear me? I can hear you loud and clear. Can you hear me? You're loud and clear. I'm sorry, Mr. Russell, I see you're speaking, but I don't hear you coming through one moment. Mr. Russell, can you hear me now? I can hear you loud and clear. Oh, now I hear you. Thank you. We're having a little technical difficulty. Are you the administrator and MMWD? No, that's actually Jack Gibson, but I'm the number two. OK, thank you so much. So administrator and MMW, I'm going to rename you to Jack Gibson, if that's OK. OK, well, Jack is probably going to sign on. Oh, OK, thank you so much. But I have no idea. Yeah, that's what I think. Thank you. OK, thanks. Administrator and MMWD, is that true? That would be true. That's in MMWD, right? Yes, I'm going to rename and promote. OK, were you asking about MMWD before or in MMWD? No, and is in Nancy. OK, yeah, that would be true. Thank you. Thanks, Jack. Hi. Good morning, everyone. Roberta, I see that Susan is listed as an attendee. I think she needs to be promoted to a panelist. Yeah, I'm trying. I've tried a few times and it's not working. Give me a second. Thank you. Thanks. I'm sorry, Ms. Harvey. I see you as an attending. I've tried several times to promote you to a panelist. Would you mind disconnecting and trying to rejoin and we'll see if you can promote you from there? Ms. Bled, I think that's how you pronounce it. I unmuted you. I refer to this as Veronica. Can you hear me OK? Yes, thank you so much. OK, thank you. It's bloody, but thank you. My apologies. We've tried to promote Susan Harvey several times and we're not able to promote her to a panelist. Oh, we see a hand raised. Ms. Harvey. Ms. Harvey, can you hear us? How's that? I can hear you now, but we can't promote you to a panelist for some reason. Well, it looks like maybe you promoted, so maybe you zoom in on some issues this morning. Maybe, yeah. And I'm on my cell phone, which is not ideal, but it is what it is. Thank you. So do we have a core and I can't. Oh, here we go. I'm having a hard time seeing things. So I believe we have all Black members present at this point. OK, then I will. Sorry for the technical difficulties. I will call this meeting to order for November 1st, 2021. And I would ask the recording secretary, Althea, to please do a roll call. Yes, city of Katari. Yes. City of Petaluma. Here. City of Roaner Park. Here. City of Santa Rosa. Here. City of Sonoma. Yeah. North Marin Water District. Jack Baker was here. I thought he was going to be here. He was on the screen earlier. Jack, are you muted? We're not showing him as a panelist at this point. OK, bye. And I don't show him as an attendee either. Town of Windsor. Here. Valley of the Moon Water District. Here. Marin Municipal Water District. Here. And then for TAC members, city of Katari. Thanks, Scott, city of Katari. City of Petaluma. Mike Elmarini, city of Petaluma. City of Roaner Park. City of Santa Rosa. Jennifer Burke, Santa Rosa Water, here. City of Sonoma. Aleem Ferguson, city of Sonoma. North Marin Water District. Drew McIntyre, North Marin Water District. Town of Windsor. I thought we did have Town of Windsor. Town of Windsor. This is Christina Goulart, Town of Windsor, and Mayor Sam Samlin is on as well. Thank you. Valley of the Moon Water District. Matt Hulner, Valley of the Moon Water District. Marin Municipal Water District. Paul Celia, Marin Municipal. And for other attendees, we have Veronica Blede, Armin Munivar, Bob Anderson, Chelsea Thompson, Claire Nordley, Colin Close, David Keller. Don Seymour will promote him. Engineering Department, I'm not sure who that is. That might be Mary Grace Pawson. Let me just check. Mary Grace, is that you listed as Engineering Department? Mary Grace, can you hear me? Mary Grace, is you signed in as Engineering Department? Thank you. I'll rename you in a moment. Let's see, Jake Spalding. Larry Russell, Lynn Raselli, Margaret Giuginova, Paul Celsky, Shannon Cattulla, Steven Hancock, and Tony Williams. Is it just me or do I hear like another meeting kind of on top of ours? I'm hearing it as well. OK, well, all righty then. This is going to be a challenging morning to see. So now that we have everyone present, are we ready to proceed? We have everyone promoted that needs to get promoted. And I'm going to give my computer a shot again while Drew takes over item two. I believe Drew, you're going to present this item. Yes. Thank you, Madam Chair. So item two is for the WAC to adopt the resolution finding that there continues to be a state of emergency that would authorize the reason to meet remotely. The TAC did this in its TAC meeting 30 or about a month ago. This is something that's required by Assembly Bill 361. And so it's in front of the TAC. This morning, they would cover this meeting and then go for another 30 days. I'd be happy to answer any questions that the WAC has. Susan, it's back to you if you can hear me. OK, all right. Does anyone on the WAC have any questions? And unfortunately, it's hard for me to see hands at this point. Let's see. Let me see if I can. Oh, let's see. I am not seeing any hands. Then if no one has any hands to raise, we will move to public comment on this item. We are taking public comment on item two. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. And Secretary Reyes, are there any comments? There are no public comments. OK, because I see no hands either. So with that, Drew, did we get any written or verbal public comments? We did not. OK, with that then, I would be looking for a motion. I move that we approve the resolution. Thank you for that. And do we have a second? Second from Petal Lema. Thank you. Then could we get Recording Secretary Appla to please take a roll call? Yes. And I'm sorry. Who moved, please? Was that Mr. Gibson? No. John Borman. Oh, thank you. Thank you, John. Roll call. City of Katadi. Yes. City of Petal Lema. Yes. City of Rohnert Park. Yes. City of Santa Rosa. Aye. City of Sonoma. Aye. Northman Water District. OK, it's gone. Town of Windsor. Aye. Valley of the Moonwater District. Aye. OK, thank you for that. We will now move on to public comment. We'll open public comment for any items that are not on the agenda. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via phone, please dash star nine to raise your hand. And let's see, this is harder on a phone. Let's see. I am not seeing any raised hands. Are you? Secretary Reyes? There are no raised hands. OK, thank you for that. Drew, did you get any verbal or written public comment? I did not. OK, thank you for that. So then we will move on to item four, which is recap from the September 13th special WAC-TAC meeting and approval of the minutes. Are there any questions or comments from that meeting from any of the WAC members? I am not seeing any hands. Then we will ask that there be public comment on this item. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Reyes, are there any comments on item four? There are no live comments. OK, Drew, did we receive any written or verbal comments? We did not. OK, then I would be looking for a motion on this item. Motion by Petal Lehmann. Thank you, Mike. By belly of the moon. Thank you. We have a motion and a second. A second from the city of Sonoma. Pardon me, Jack, what did you say? I second. Oh, we already had a second, but thank you, Jack. We had two seconds. So with that, could we get a roll call vote? City of Katadi. Yes. City of Petal Lehmann. Yes. City of Rohnert Park. Yes. City of Santa Rosa. Hi. City of Sonoma. Hi. Northburn Water District. Hi. Town of Windsor. Hi. I'm sorry. Hi. Thank you, Valley of the Moonwater District. Hi. OK, thank you for that. And then I guess, Drew, I will turn the next item over to you. Thank you, Chair Harvey. OK, for the TAC meeting that was held on October 4th, this will be for the approval of the minutes. Does any of the TAC members have any questions or comments at all in the meeting minutes as presented? I don't see any hands raised. So we'll now go ahead and open it up for public comments. Again, this is agenda item number 5, October 4th, TAC meeting minutes approval. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand or dial star 9 via phone. Also, just let the record reflect that there were no previously recorded public comments on this item. So Secretary Reyes, any public comments that you see? There are no public comments. OK, thank you. So I'll turn this back to the TAC. We're looking for a motion in a second before we're doing a roll call or vote. We have to approve from Colleen Ferguson, City of Sonoma. Second, Craig Scott, City of Cotadi. OK, thank you. We have a motion in a second. So recording Secretary Reyes, would you please do a roll call? Actually, it's Athe, but here we go. City of Cotadi. Oh, thanks. Craig Scott, Cotadi, yes. City of Petaluma. Mike Omerini, yes. City of Brunner Park. Mary Grace Paulson, yes. City of Santa Rosa. Jennifer Burke, yes. City of Sonoma. Colleen Ferguson, yes. Northman Water District. Drew McIntyre, yes. Town of Windsor. Sorry, Christina Goulart, Town of Windsor, yes. Valley of the Moonwater District. John Forman, yes. OK, so thank you. That unanimously passes. Chair Harvey, turn it back over to you for agenda item number six. OK, thank you for that. I got my computer back up here, but I'm going to have to get off of my phone or we're going to get echo, OK? We're trying to promote, and it's still not working. My apologies, Ms. Harvey. I've given you permission to talk, but I still can't promote you through the computer sign on for some reason. Roberta, if she got a dedicated invite, you know, the one that comes from Zoom, would that help at all? Well, she's showing up as an attendee. There's just some reason we're able to promote her as a panelist. Ms. Harvey, if you can hear me, I have given you permission to speak. Are you able to sign on with your phone again, perhaps? My apologies. Looks like she's muted. I can't tell if that's on your side or her side. It looks like it's on her side. We've given her permission to speak. Thank you, Pam. All right, I think Ms. Harvey, can you hear us? Ms. Harvey, I can see you, but I can't hear you. Drew, are you able to hear Ms. Harvey? I am not. OK. It looks like she might be frozen. So Mike is vice chair. You might need to take over on this agenda while we try to get these technical problems fixed. You're muted, Mike. Are we up to agenda item 6? Yes. OK. I don't have the cheat sheet that staff prepared for Susan, so I'm going to have to win you here a little bit. Mike. I think she'd be up back on it. That sounds like we've got. Mike? Yes? I don't know. I had to get back on my phone. I'll give it my best shot. So we're on. We'll give you a minute. Go ahead. Go ahead. OK. We are on the Water Supply Coordination Council. We met, and with that, we came up with this agenda. We met on October 25th with the Water Supply Coordination Council. And before you, we have this agenda. Are there any questions from the Whackertack on this item? I am hearing no questions. I'm seeing no questions. So we will open this up to public comment on item 6. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via phone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. And recording secretary Reyes, are there any comments on this item? There are no public comments. Thank you so much. Drew, did you get any verbal or written comments on this item? I did not. Thank you, Drew. Then we will now move on to item number 7, which is the Whackertack meeting schedule for 2022. And I see we have that before us. And it is the typical schedule that we usually have every year. And are there any questions on this item from the Whackertack or the Whackertack hearing any? Then we will open this item up for public comment. We're taking public comment on item 7. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via phone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. And secretary Reyes, do we have any public comment on item 7? There are no public comments. Thank you so much. And Drew, did you receive any written or verbal comments on this item? I did not. OK. Then I would be looking for a motion and a second. I move that we accept the Whackertack schedule for next year. Second from Petaluma. Thank you for that. So then I would ask the recording secretary Altha to please do a roll call vote. City of Katadi. Yes. City of Petaluma. Aye. City of Roaner Park. Yes. City of Santa Rosa. City of Sonoma. Aye. North Marin Water District. Aye. Town of Windsor. Aye. Valley of the Moonwater District. Aye. Thank you for that. Looks like we have a plan for next year. So with that, I will move on to item 8, which is the water supply conditions and temporary urgency change order. And I believe that Don Seymour is going to take this one for us. Yes. Good morning, Chairperson Hardy and members of the Whack. So as you can imagine, following last week's atmospheric river event, things have changed quite a bit in the Russian River watershed, which respects both water supply conditions and regulatory, and from a regulatory perspective also. That starting with water supply conditions, Lake Medesina is now at about 18,000 acre feet, which is a gain of about 6,000 acre feet, where we were about a week or so ago. It was down about 12,000, just a little above 12,000, so that's good news. Lake Sonoma is currently at a little over 120,000 acre feet. Lake Sonoma gained 15,000 acre feet from that event. And both reservoirs are still rising slightly. And because there's so much natural flows in the system right now, we've been able to minimize our releases from both reservoirs to preserve that storage. Going to the top of the watershed to the Potter Valley Project, Lake Tillsbury actually gained about 23,000, 24,000 acre feet. It's now above 40,000 acre feet, which means the variance PG&E was managing. The project under is now expired, and they're operating under their normal license condition and our RPA requirements. So from the regulatory perspective, with all this natural flow in the system, the state board actually about 10 or 12 days ago temporarily suspended all the pertailments to appropriate of water rights in both the upper and lower Russian River. That means the three permits, three of the permits in a water house, three of the four that were curtailed are now under that's been suspended. They're going to be periodically analyzing water availability to determine whether they have to reinstate some of those curtailments. Unlike the previous implementation, where it was a blanket to every appropriate of water right on the upper Russian River, and then on the lower, they used a prior seniority system. On both the upper and lower, they do need to implement, bring back the curtailments. It'll be under seniority system for both the upper and lower. However, with the amount of natural flow in the system and forecast for additional precipitation events, it's likely the curtailments will be lifted for at least through the end of November. Also, recently the state board on October 22nd issued in response to the national flow in the system, issued an amended order for Sonoma waters temperature change petition. That order now ties the 20% mandatory reduction of our diversions to the curtailments. So since those curtailments are suspended, so is that 20% diversion reduction requirement. We're no longer under that at least for a while. And I would say likely till, at least till the end of the month, if we weren't to see additional storm events. This doesn't mean we can just start using lots of water again, we're still under the governor's proclamation from October 19th, which requires urban users to implement their shortage of contingency plans to still meet that 15% conservation goal. But it does mean that, you know, we have this water available in the Russian river right now that could be used to offset, kind of shift water supply off of local groundwater, local surface water that both all the contractors may have been using to shift that load now to Russian river sources while it's available. So, you know, maybe cutting back on groundwater pumping and surface water use for both North Marine and Marine Municipal. So we're coordinating with the contractors right now on how we can best use the available water in the Russian river right now to help offset. One thing that also happened about two weeks ago, that's applicable that I think some of you may be aware of is PG&E announced that during routine maintenance and inspections of the powerhouse, they discovered that the transformer bank that it's associated with the powerhouse has failed. This is really concerning because, number one, it's a huge capital project. They estimate under, if this isn't an off the shelf type item it has to be designed and manufactured specifically for the project. So they estimate if they were to move forward, it's an 18 to 24 month lead time. And on the order of the capital investment is on the order of five to 10 million dollars. So, a lot of uncertainty and probably I would say unlikely they will move forward with that project right now with the uncertainty of the license. So the consequence of that is both physical and has a regulatory consequence also. From the fiscal perspective, they can bypass the powerhouse. They constructed the bypass a few years ago to meet their obligations for their FERC license and also their contract to Potter Valley Irrigation District. And that obligation varies between 45 cubic feet per second to a maximum of 135 cubic feet per second depending on the water year classification and the time of year. Right now that obligation is 45 cubic feet per second and that will last at least through May. The maximum transfer will be 45 cubic feet per second with respect to their obligation. The other type of transfer they can do is what's referred to as discretionary and it generally applies to when their hydrologic conditions are met on the Eel River where they can transfer additional water for hydro for hydropower production. They're right now reviewing both their water rights and also their FERC license and other legal issues which they feel might constrain them from making a discretionary transfer of water without it being used for hydropower production. So to give you a perspective of what that means, when they produce power, they can transfer up to 240 cubic feet per second through the powerhouse and right now it looks like they're limited to 45. This is gonna make it really difficult to fill that really big hole that's in Lake Medesino right now, it's gonna really depend on large precipitation events like we saw a little over a week ago and a number of them to fill that reservoir because it's gonna be really, it's gonna be highly dependent on some watershed. So we are meeting with water users in the Russian River, our meeting with PGD and plan on doing so ongoing to see how this unfolds. But right now there's still a lot of questions and not a lot of answers yet from PGD. So that's where we are with that project. So with that, I'd be happy to answer any questions. So are there any questions from the Wacker TAC on this item? I don't see any from what I can see on my iPhone. Susan, I have a question, this is Drew. Certainly. A question for Don. Don, you talked about, there are future meetings with PGD to figure out whether these discretionary releases can occur if they're happening without generating power. I'm just curious, are there upper Russian River managers meetings being scheduled as part of that ongoing discussion? So the last meeting we had with PGD did involve upper Russian River water managers. So it included our Valley Irrigation District, Inland Water Power Authority, the Mendocino County Flood Control District, and Sonoma Water. And so at this time, they are kind of there, we had met last week, there was some still outstanding questions. PGD was going to get back to us on and we were going to be submitting additional questions if they came up. But we don't have the next meeting scheduled yet, but I do anticipate we will be meeting again with PGD. Okay, thank you. Any other questions? I am not seeing any other questions. Secretary Rez, do you see any other questions from the board? I do not. Okay, thank you. Then we will open this up for public comment on item eight. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. And do we have anyone from the public? Yes, we do. David Keller? Great. Thank you. Go ahead, David. Thank you very much. Good morning all. For Don, you say that at this point, diversions to East French Russian would be limited to 45 CFS through May or into the beginning of May, if I got that right. And do you have any sense about what the diversions could be particularly useful for helping fill Lake Mendocino after that date? So we're really dependent to fill Lake Mendocino right now. It would be those transfers that occur this winter. Right. So obviously if they're limited to 135 with the bypass, under power production, they can do 240. So with how low Lake Mendocino right is right now, if it could go up to the 135, a discretionary transfer up to 135 would be a huge benefit to trying to bring up that reservoir storage. As I mentioned, we had that, that was a really big atmospheric river event that was a week ago Sunday. And granted, the watershed was still fairly dry and a fair amount of it was, some of it went to starting to replenish that soil moisture. But even with an event that size, we only saw 6,000 acre feet coming to the reservoir. And so shy of supplemental transfers from the Power Valley project, we're likely gonna have to see five or six more events on the scale of what happened a week or so ago. So that would be a very, very wet year for us. All right, which is not predicted. And if after, did you say May 1st, the 45 CFS is currently estimated by PG&E to be effective as they're capped through May 1, did you say? It's approximately May. I don't have the RPA in front of me, Dave, but it's approximately that springtime. It's when it changes when TV ID starts taking, you know, they go from five CFS at the 50 CFS. Right. And depending on the water year classification, the minimum stream released to the East branch, so it can be anywhere from, if it's critical, it'd be five. And if it's normal, it could be 75 CFS. And so under a normal water year classification, the transfer starting around May or so could be as high as that 135 max of the bypass. That answer your question, Dave. Secretary Reyes, are there any other questions out there? I've seen none. Okay, thank you for that. Then we'll bring it back. Boy, we just, it seems like we win some and we lose some. We get the storms, but then we have technical difficulties. We just can't seem to catch a good break. So thank you for that report, Dawn. Before we move on, does the WAC or TAC have any further questions? I'm not seeing any. Then thank you again, Dawn. We will move on to item nine, which is the Snowm County Water Agency. Chair Harvey. Yes. We still have, Dawn has a report out for item 8A. That's what I was moving to. 8A, the temporary allocation of water deliveries for November and December 2021, and Dawn gets that one also. And actually, is it okay if I just back up to the temperature change order just briefly? There was one thing I left out. I just wanted to let everybody know that Sunam Water is preparing another petition to submit because the order we're currently operating manages the reservoirs and rivers to expires December 10th. And this is really being driven by this disconnect with the Potter Valley Project right now, the fact that the powerhouse is down and there's such little transfer that we're gonna be seeing. So we'll be filing a petition. We'll be very similar to what we submitted last January. It will be in January, it only applied to the upper Russian River. This will apply for the entire Russian River. But basically, we're gonna be dependent. We're gonna be requesting that the water your classification be determined based on storage levels in Lake Medesino, because regardless of how wet it is in the Eel River, how much water is in Lake Pillsbury, we know we're not gonna be getting much transfer. And so to try to set our minimum, determine our water your classification, the Russian River, which sets the minimum stream flow requirements would just wouldn't be correlated at all. So we're moving that index to determining the water your classification to Lake Medesino. So I just wanted to mention that and then we're working on that right now. We hope to get that filed with the state board in the next week or so. With regards to the allocations, as I think everybody recalls, Paul Piazza brought this to the last WAC meeting. However, based on, and it was allocations for November, December, a methodology for those allocations. However, right now with the conditions in the Russian River watershed and the suspension of the curtailments and the 20% diversion reduction, those are no longer, we don't see those no longer being necessary. And so there will be, unless there is the suspension is lifted, which I mentioned earlier, I can't imagine that even under very dry conditions, that would happen before the end of November, the allocations are no longer necessary. Okay, great. Thank you for that, Don. Any other WAC members or TAC members have any questions on that item? Let's see. I am not seeing any hands on that. So then we will ask if there are any public comments on item 8A. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Reyes, do we have any comments on this? I don't see any hands myself. We have no public comment. Okay, thank you. And Drew, did you receive any written or verbal comments on this? I did not. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Don, for all of this information. We'll just keep hoping that we get more rain that we can work our way through this and we catch some breaks. So with that, we will move on to the regional water supply resiliency study and drought management options. And I believe that Jay is going to take this one for us. Good morning, Chair Harvey and WAC and TAC members. Yeah, I have a status update on the regional water supply resiliency study. This is a study we've reported to you in the past, you know, as we move through the work involved with the study. And it's been a lot of activity over the summer and into the fall on this activity focusing on one of the shortage scenarios, which is the drought scenario. Obviously we've working with ATAC or really pushing that one forward and holding off on other shortage scenarios such as seismic. We'll catch up with that later, but given off the obvious circumstances with the drought, we elected to move forward with that part of the, expedite that part of the study. And so this is a collective effort between Sonoma Water and working with our consultant, Jacobs Engineering and Armin Munivar who's attending this morning. And then also working with ATAC collectively. So just as a reminder, the overall concept of this study is recognizing that our regional system, all of us together have interconnected systems, whether they're water supply systems like reservoirs or groundwater basins, as well as built infrastructure pipelines and booster stations in storage reservoirs, et cetera. And we all operate within our own jurisdictional authorities and boundaries. And so the concept with this study is, let's look and evaluate all of this infrastructure, natural and built infrastructure we collectively have by removing the jurisdictional boundaries and then applying certain, what I call stress tests, these shortage scenarios. And again, the major ones are drought and seismic. And to do that, we've developed, or I should say Jacobs has developed a comprehensive model that goes, that covers the whole region in the north up to Potter Valley that we were just talking about all the way down the south through MMWD. So down to Sausalito, I'd like to say Potter Valley to Sausalito. And the connectivity of that system that exists through putting together and really recognizing the interconnection of our systems. And so the idea here is then to apply these stress tests and identify how well our system responds to these shortage scenarios, where the real vulnerable points might be, and then identifying are there resiliency projects that we could work on to move the needle for overall water shortage resiliency, whether it's a very acute emergency like an earthquake or if it's a longer term emergency like drought. And so that's the idea. And then one of the benefits, there's a few benefits of this obviously is identifying those vulnerabilities and identifying potential projects. But just the fact of the process working together, Sonoma water and the contractors on this, there's a lot of intangible benefits, I think collectively understanding all of our systems and the strengths and weaknesses they're in, but also identifying from a regional sense and hopefully agreeing on some projects that we can put forward to grant funding. That is kind of a high level of the study and what, what the concept and what it's intended to do or achieve if we could go to the next slide. In this slide, really, if you look on the picture on the right, this is, I mentioned this model, this is a, that picture on the right is a schematic of what the model, this regional model that Jacobs has built looks like. And there's a whole lot of information, each of the contractors has worked with Jacobs to make sure that the model has the appropriate information, whether it's hydraulic, historic hydrology or engineering parameters for the respective systems from Sonoma water system to each of the contractor systems. And again, we're using that model then to really apply stress tests for water shortages. And also identifying key metrics that we're gonna use to identify resiliency and drought impacts or water shortage impacts, I should say. Next slide. This just shows you the overall three phases of the project. We're in phase two, we reported to you last, I believe after we completed the work plan and scoping document last year. And we're in phase two, in the part of it, we're working on the drought, as I said, we're gonna catch up and get the other water shortage scenarios after we get through the drought analysis. And then phase three, moving forward is really a modification or update maintenance of this model. When we've built this model, we hopefully will continue to use this model with a process of engagement by the contractors in Sonoma water into the future to periodically reevaluate regional water resource planning. So the idea is we've invested in developing this tool and we've developed a process to use the tool together. Let's keep using it and updating as new information comes along. Next slide. From that work plan, we identified these tasks here you can see. And as I mentioned, we are fast tracking the drought scenarios. And we're very busy right now in tasks four through seven. I just noticed there seems to be a typo in that we don't have a task five in there, but excuse that. But a task four, six, seven and eight is really what we're focused on now. And the model has been developed and it has been validated as you'll see based on historical data. And it really responds and characterizes historical information and data like reservoir levels, river levels, et cetera pretty well. And now what we're doing is we're putting in we're developing different drought scenarios. And I'll talk about that. And then the next step is once you use the model and you forecast what future drought scenarios might look like, these are those stress tests, then you identify where the vulnerabilities are. And then we work together on what kind of projects they can be projects or they can be management actions, operational changes. But anyway, what kind of mitigation measures can we apply that maybe it wasn't apparent when we're all just focused on our own individual systems? And so that's what we're gonna be looking at here. We're starting to look at now in the coming days and weeks on the drought scenarios. And then ultimately there will be a study report and then ongoing efforts with this project as we now then move to the seismic and other hazard drivers. Next slide. So the decision support model, as I mentioned, covers the Russian River and Potter Valley system and then Sonoma Waters transmission system and then each of the retail customer systems it synthesizes and combines all of those. And this is kind of the first time that's been done. The model inputs, as I mentioned, are reservoir and river flows and not just our reservoirs, Marine Municipal North Mariners reservoirs, member agency demands, water demands, local supplies is a key part of all this. And then we've, the model takes into consideration certain rules that we operate under or engineering constraints due to the built infrastructure that we have to consider too. Next slide. So I mentioned that the validation where we look at historical data and we compare key metrics like river flows and reservoir levels, et cetera. And that has been wrapped up for the model by Jacobs and the validation period they looked at was 2009 to 2017. That's the period that overall it's a fairly dry period. And also it's recent enough that it represents, reasonably represents existing land use. You don't wanna go too far back into the past because if you went back in the 1970s, for example, the land use was completely different, the water use, et cetera. So we wanna get something fairly recent but also that has, I think, representative hydrology. And so this is the range that was identified as being fitting those two main criteria. And then the next step is once you validate it based on the historical data, you use the model then to predict future scenarios due to different routes. Next slide. And so I think I've just covered this, but we've completed, or Jacobs has completed the validation period. Now we're pivoting over to now simulating the drought scenarios. Next slide. And to do that, Jacobs has also met individually with each of the tractors of Marin Municipal to get their own ideas to put them together with different drought management options or practices. And there's four different, just in general, four major categories. Of course, there's increase in supply, reducing demand, improving operations, and then modifying maybe policy or regulations in order to be more flexible or adaptive to respond to these shortage scenarios. Next slide. And so the drought scenarios we're looking at in the model for forecasting are one that's been done, and this is in process right now, but one has been done, has just been completed is taking the last two years, 2020, 2021 drought, and then adding on the other significant dry years, a five-year period, 76, 77 drought, which were roughly equivalent to the 20 and 21, and then including that out for a five-year forecast from basically right now for another five years. And so you would bring in 76 and 77, which were extremely dry, and then 78, 79, 80, which were wetter, certainly 78 was wetter. And so that's one scenario. And then we're also looking at 20 climate forecasts per the California Fourth Climate Assessments. There's four, there's 20, there's 10 models with two emission scenarios each for climate forecasts that California has identified as most representative within that ensemble. And so we're gonna be looking at those drought scenarios too. So we're not just looking at one type of drought, we're looking at multiple types of stressors. And then we'll identify the drought impacts, as I said, and then run the model with certain mitigation or programs and projects to see how we can improve resiliency against these impacts. Next slide. And we have certain objective criteria for comparing which drought measures are gonna be most effective. And so it's important to have those objective criteria so we can compare apples to apples. And there's performance, how well do your reservoir levels respond, for example. But there's also other criteria too for like costs, environmental impacts, feasibility, et cetera, as you can see there. And so overall we'll be waiting for these different criteria, different solutions, if you will, or projects and management actions. And finding out which ones really should be pursued at a higher priority. I don't think we'll ever remove anything off of the list, but there will be some that will rise to the top and those are the ones that we can put forward and look at potentially implementing and possibly seeking funding, federal or state funding also. So I think that is, I think I have one more slide. Just on next steps, as I said, this is a very active project right now and Jacobs is modeling the other drought scenarios and then has I think about 15 different types of projects that all the contractors have put together collectively and we've sorted through and kind of got a list of about 15. And we're gonna then run through this process with ATAC and using the model to really see which ones shine and which ones we wanna prioritize. And so those are, that's the work that's gonna be conducted here in what's being conducted right now and through the next few weeks. So that in the end of the day, our drought assessment part of the study will have a pretty good understanding which measures are gonna move the needle on drought resiliency. And with that, I think that's all the slides I have. I'm happy to answer questions. We also have Armin here too if there's anything at depth on the model and assumptions that you have. Thank you for that, Jay. That's a lot of information to kind of absorb but great work. And I think it's very timely considering the situation that we're in that we move this one up. So anyone on the WAC or ATAC have any questions? Please raise your hand. I'm kind of looking to see, Drew, did you have any questions? You're not. No, not seeing any hands go up. Okay, so with that, I will open this item up to public comment. We are now taking public comment on item nine A. If you wish to make a comment, please raise your hand via Zoom or if you're dialing in, please dial star nine. Secretary Reyes, are you seeing any hands? Yes, David Keller. Okay, great, David. All right, back again. Thank you, Jay. Really appreciate the work being done on the assumptions in terms of getting to reduced demand. Is this accounting for both the required and other population increases within the service area? So we're looking at conservation, urban conservation as well as agricultural and groundwater conservation too. And some of the work that's been done in the groundwater sustained, drop groundwater sustainability plans will be leveraged for this too. There's been a lot of work there. Looking at a 50 year forecast for water use across all of those sectors too. So we'll be leveraging a lot of that work. So even with, for instance, the path that we're on in terms of the reading numbers for housing, you're still showing a demand decrease in drought scenarios? Well, we haven't finished running the drought scenarios, but we, the work we did that we're using from the Groundwater Sustainability Plan does consider the arena numbers in the Department of Finance numbers also. And we're, but remember, we're really focusing here. We're looking at a five and then a 10 year also. So where it's the horizon we're looking at right now is gonna be a shorter horizon than say the urban water management plan or the sigma planning too. So some of those factors are a little bit, for the longer, they come into play for the longer term than the next couple of years, et cetera. Right, okay. And then the other question is given the current transfers available at Pada Valley Project, which is what's happening now and effective for probably two years, if not longer, depending on what PG&E wants to do and what happens, what's the ultimate disposition of that project. Are you accommodating in the modeling wintertime transfers only from the yield to Lake Mendocino or does that not affect supplies for water agency customers? It does impact, it's more of an indirect impact, but it certainly needs to be considered. And this is as Don reported, this is kind of breaking news. So this is one of those things where we calibrated the model using that historical range. But on the forecasting, I think we need to do some evaluation of what we're gonna look at for the model looking under these brand new conditions. So that's an area of active consideration that we have to take into account. But as Don just mentioned, this is kind of breaking news. So we're working on that. And as Rosanna always said, it's always something. Thank you. Thank you, David. I am not seeing any other questions from the public. Secretary Reyes, are you seeing any other hands? I don't see any other hands. No, I don't see any either. Okay, thank you for that. Drew, did you get any written or verbal comments on this item? I did not. Okay, so thank you for that. Then we'll move on to the next item, 9B, approve the WAC letter of support for Santa Rosa Plain Drought Resiliency Project Grant application. And I believe this is you again, Jay. Yes, it is. So this is a letter of support, a draft letter of support that we're asking the WAC to approve and submit in support of a project that Sonoma Water is working on. And indeed, it's one of those regional resiliency projects, one of the projects that's being evaluated in the prior study. And this entails, and we've talked about this before, Sonoma Water has three wells in this water transmission system in the Santa Rosa Plain that were initially installed in the 1977 drought and have been used since that drought through the last drought, which ended in 2016. They've been used for every single drought since then to help mitigate drought impacts. In addition, they were operated for 10 consecutive years, a continuous basis 24-7, 365 days a year from 1999 to 2009. So these wells are an important supplement to our Russian river supplies in that they diversify our portfolio, especially in times such as we're experiencing now with this drought. So I mentioned that these have been used for every drought since 1977. However, since the last drought ended in 2016, we didn't use them because we use them except for that one 10-year period. We just use those for periods of water shortages in the Russian river. However, between 2016 and now there were some changes in state water quality regulations having to do with pouring contact time, the amount of time pouring is in contact with the water before we could put it in our transmission system. And that effect was that we were unable to operate those wells for this drought because of those recent regulatory changes. And so we have been busy, I think as everybody knows, we've reported to this body through the summer and into this fall activating one of those wells, the Todd Road well, which is, I'm happy to say, is currently operational and providing needed water supply. We made the fix for that well and we got it operating thanks in part to a funding we received from the County of Sonoma to help us with that. And what this project is, is kind of the second phase of the overall project, which is focusing on the other two wells, which remain inactive, the Occidental Road well and the Sebastopol Road well. And what we have to do is we have to construct a similar type of solution that we did for the Todd Road well to get it moving to improve pouring contact. However, what we also are adding to this, these two well sites is having them, also the sites be able to recharge Russian river potable drinking water into the aquifer so that when water is used during the drought periods and the dry seasons, we can then in the winter time and when winter water is available like right now, we would be able to utilize that water, that natural flow to recharge the aquifer. And so this helps create sustainable groundwater conditions and it's really important in our current water management structure that we don't just pump the water out but that we also replace it and recharge the groundwater aquifer for sustainability. This, these three wells are in the Santa Rosa playing groundwater basin and there's a groundwater sustainability agency. Many of you are involved with that. And so this project also aligns well with achieving groundwater sustainability and the draft groundwater sustainability plan for that GSA specifies that in order for this basin to comply with Sigma that these projects these types of projects aquifer storage and recovery are going to be needed in this basin. So this funding request we're planning to put forward to activate the wells and to have the recharge. We're putting this forward to try to seek state drought emergency funding. And so there's quite a potential opportunity here for the water contractors but also for the groundwater sustainability agency to realize some benefits here and leveraging this drought funding to kind of move the needle for drought resiliency for the water contractors but also for groundwater sustainability in the longer term for the groundwater sustainability agency. So this letter is really is a draft letter of support we're seeking from the Water Advisory Committee to support our application to move forward and seek funding to support activation of these two wells with also the ability to recharge at these two well sites too. Happy to answer any questions. Thank you, Jay. Anyone from the Wacker Tech have any questions on this item? Please raise your hand. Chair Harvey. Yes, Drew. I just want to mention that we don't have an official roll call vote for this. We're just looking for you to obtain a consensus from the WACK members to authorize you to sign the letter. Okay, that was going to be my next question as I noticed that this had approved but we didn't have a formal. So thank you for answering my question before I could answer it. You're reading my mind, Drew. Right. So with that, are there any questions? I'm not seeing any hands. So we'll move to public comment on item 9B. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. And let's see here. I am not seeing any hands raised. Are you, Secretary Reyes? There are none. There are none. Okay, then I will bring it back and I am looking to see, I guess from a consensus perspective, does anyone have any objections to us putting forth this letter? Please either speak or raise your hand if you have any objections. And Drew, did you get any written or verbal format while people are deciding if they need to raise their hand or not? I did not receive any earlier pre-recorded public comments. Okay, so if no one objects, I'm not seeing any objections, then I will take that as consensus for us to move forward and sign this letter. So thank you for that. And now we will move on to item 9C, which is the Water Smart Water and Energy Efficiency Study Grant Application. And I believe that Paul Piazza is going to take this item. Is that true, Paul? Yes it is. Good morning, Sarah Harvey and other members of the WAC and TAC. So this item essentially is tied to the resiliency study that's previously mentioned by Jay and specifically relevant to some of the drought mitigation options and the evaluation criteria that are used in the study in terms of environmental impacts, the cost and feasibility it's energy use. So and all of those projects and the resiliency study hoping to better improve our chances for grant funding. And so with that in mind, the partnership is submitting an application to the Bureau of Reclamation for the Water and Energy Efficiency Grant that is currently open. Applications for that project are due this Wednesday. And so we are working rapidly to complete that application. We've solicited input from eight of the partners in the partnership to put forward a couple of programs that focus predominantly on turf removal. As you can imagine, you know, turf removal in our area has one of the biggest impacts in terms of reductions in peak demand, which is one of the constraints that we see during droughts, times of droughts. But in addition to turf removal, this project also focuses on indoor efficiency upgrades regarding efficient clothes washers. And then also gets at the ability to provide additional information to homeowners through a home water monitoring device. And this is a device made available through a company called FLUME that essentially provides an indicator of, or a very granular indicator of actual use in the home, provides leak detection services and helps influence behavior change by very easily detailing to homeowners how their water's being used and to prioritize actions that they can take in their home to become more efficient. The funding opportunity is a three-year grant. We are proposing a total project cost of just over $4 million. The reimbursement funding from the Bureau is limited to a maximum of $2 million. And again, primarily focused on turf removal for this project. And I'm happy to take questions. There are additional funding opportunities that we are currently tracking that are coming our way from the state. And we are gonna be working with our other partners to make those applications a priority as well. And perhaps focused on some additional measures. I would remind you also, we do have current funding that is being worked on through Proposition One. That funding was divided up between North Coast and Bay Area opportunities. And virtually all of the partners are involved in either some aspect of the Bay Area or the North Coast Prop One funding. And so those are really just getting underway, finalizing agreements. And so we have additional work on top of these new opportunities that we're continuing to maintain. Thank you, Paul. Does any of the Wacker Attack members have any questions on this item? I am not seeing any raised hands. So with that, I will open this item up for public comment, Item 9C. 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. And I am not seeing any raised hands from the attendees. Secretary Reyes, are you seeing any? There are no other raised hands. Okay, thank you for that. Then we will bring it back. That closes public comment on that. Drew, did you have any written or verbal comments on this item? I did not. Okay, thank you. Thank you for that presentation, Paul. And hopefully you guys can speed that up and get that in on Wednesday. And every little bit helps in helping us get the savings that we need. So thank you for that. So we will move on to Item 10, which is the Snowmower and Water Saving Partnership. And we will start with Item A, which is the 2021 water production relative to 2013 benchmark and diversion reduction relative to the 2020 benchmark. And I believe that, Drew, you're gonna take this. Yes, thank you, Chair Harvey. So this is our regularly reoccurring summary here of overall water production. You can see here, when we look back to our historical benchmark of 2013, September water use is down 28%. Just going back and comparing it to where we were in 2020, a year ago, it was down 9%. So significantly additional water conservation significantly increased this year with the ongoing drought. If you look at Table Two, which is water usage to date for this calendar year, it shows that for the entire year to date, it's down 20%, last year in 2020, it was down 11%. And then you have in these charts, you have other additional presentation of water use data in chart two, going back to the 1995s. And then a little bit different that we've been carrying through this year on the next chart is related to the requirement to reduce deliveries or diversions from the Russian river by 20%. This is the ongoing tracking here. You can see that the 20% diversion reduction there is shown in the rust color and then the actual performance of the aggregate for the water contractors is in blue and actual diversion reductions are right now 23.5%. So meeting and exceeding that 20% diversion reduction. So that's it. And I guess I'll bring it to the whack and tack for any questions on the current water production versus the earlier benchmarks. I don't see any hands raised from the whack or the tack. So I'll go ahead and open this now up for public comment. If you'd like to make a comment on this item, again, this is agenda item 10A. Please raise your hand and zoom or dial star nine via phone and let the meeting minutes reflect that I did not receive any earlier pre-recorded public comments. Great. Secretary Reyes, do you see any public comments? The hands raised. There are no public comments. Okay. All right, then we will move to item 10B, drought outreach messaging. And this will be tagged team by Barry Dugan and Paul Piazza from the agency. Thank you, Drew. Good morning, Chair Harvey and members of the whack. I'm gonna share my screen if I may. Well, you have it up there. In any case, so we're gonna, Paul and I will provide the regular public outreach update for this meeting. If you wanna go to the next slide, Paul will share about the drop by event. Thanks very much. So the partnership conducted a third drop by event on October 9th at five locations in Marin and Sonoma counties. The picture you're seeing is at one of the parks that the city of Santa Rosa staff maintained for this drought outreach. And just a quick reminder, we were distributing drought kits to customers that included water sense, EPA water sense certified shower heads and faucet aerators, automatic or self-closing hose nozzles, toilet leak detection dye tablets and a variety of other water-saving information for customers to pick up a course of bucket was used to convey those materials and was something we were putting forward for them to utilize for reuse of water in their house, either through capture of rinse water at their kitchen sinks or through their shower and tub to reuse for either plants or other opportunities in the home that they could use that water as an additional savings during the drought. You can see also lawn signs being provided to help amplify the message that water savings is needed by our communities. Next slide. So you can see that we continue with our drought messaging and bilingual drought messaging. And given last week's storm, we're going to continue with our turn your irrigation off message and that will continue into the foreseeable future. As you can imagine, we're discussing some nuancing of the message given how much rain we receive to continue to stress that this one storm doesn't get us out of this drought and it'll be a long way before we're out of the drought. So that'll be our continued messaging. Next slide. So part and parcel with the outreach messaging campaign we recently completed a series of graywater webinars for those of you who are aware of graywater essentially is the reuse of water in your home from your laundry could be used from your bathroom sinks, showers and tubs and beneficially put to use in the landscape. So the series was a partnership partnering with the nonprofit daily acts to provide a three part series. The first part really was a general overview webinar of the opportunities and information about graywater in the home and some of the code requirements and concerns that people need to be aware of to reuse that water safely. The second was focused on landry landscape systems. Essentially, these are DIY projects that enable homeowners to repurpose laundry rinse water from their clothes washers to make available subsurface in their landscape to water plants. And then the third webinar was focused on the more complex systems, the single and branched drain graywater systems that would require a permit locally to implement. And so it was a successful series. The introduction unfortunately occurred on game five of the Giants Dodger series. And so we had nearly 400 people registered for that webinar but saw participation drop to 125 which we consider successful nonetheless. We had close to 130 folks registered for the second webinar and 65 in attendance and about 110 registered for the October 28th. And I don't have those final participation numbers but all in all, great attendance and a great way to get information about the drought group source of water available in people's homes. This is going to be amplified by our partners that also conduct follow-up workshops for their constituents specifically including more DIY approach type workshops that help break down barriers to participation in graywater for those that want to undertake the project that might have some reservations about how to get it done. Next slide. So this is our last slide but I just wanted to follow up on Paul's statement that the encouraging thing about the graywater series was that there's significant crossover between interesting graywater and baseball fans. So that is a market that we're going to continue to try and reach a segment and I'll do my best. So finally, this is a program that we have launched in partnership with all the partners but again, Santa Rosa Water taking the lead on developing the marketing. Are you a super water saver? So all of our partners are encouraged to reach out to their customers, answer a few questions, send in a photo and you can get your 15 to 20 minutes of fame. This just happens to be one of my former neighbors in Santa Rosa Abigail and I do know that she is a legitimate water saver. So these are real people. So we're encouraging everyone to participate in this program and Paul and I are happy to answer any questions. Okay, thanks Paul and Jerry. I was looking at Susan, it's still me, here we go. Yeah, that's right. I'm waiting to see you Drew with the little glasses on and we'll have to get you some of those glasses. All right, I'll try to remember that. So I do have a question for Paul on the Gray Water webinar series, for the folks that were not able to attend, are those webinars where they recorded and would they be available for folks to view? Later. Great point Drew, thanks for the reminder. Yeah, we do have those as a recorded product that'll be available on the partnership website for an indefinite period of time for those interested in following up that weren't able to attend. So we'll be sure and include in our social media marketing additional follow-up information to let people know that those exist. So Paul, since you have the information for those people, can you push that video out to those that were unable to attend? Absolutely, and that information was also shared as part of the outreach materials for those interested in attending the event. There was language in the initial registration materials to let people know that they would be available as future recordings. Great, thank you. It's always a balancing act. If you let people know, they don't have to attend to get it, they tend to miss all the funds. So we like to encourage them to take part and then emphasize if they'll be recorded and shared later. Okay, thanks for that. And then any other questions from the WAC or TAC? Again, we're on agenda item number 10B, drought outreach messaging. Don't see any hands raised from the WAC or the TAC. So we will open this up for public comment. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand or dial star nine. If you're participating by phone. And also let the meeting minutes reflect that I did not receive any prerecorded public comments earlier. Secretary Reyes, do you see any public comments? I see none. Okay, thank you. So we will now move to agenda item number 10C, 2020. This is 2021, Paul. Yes, sorry, it's a typo there. 2021 EPA WaterSense Excellence Award. And Paul, you wanna start this? Yeah. Sure, thank you, Drew, appreciate it. So I'm very happy to announce that the Cinema Rinse and Water Partnership is the recipient of the 2021 Water EPA WaterSense Sustained Excellence Award for its qualified water efficient landscaper program. As you know, we've been the recipient of a few of these wards in the past. And in this particular case, it's really gratifying given it occurred during a pandemic year when everybody was really struggling to maintain the functionality of their programs that rely on direct to customer connections. And so for this particular award, I wanna highlight that, you know, the staff here at Sonoma Water that manages to qual program did an amazing job of quickly transitioning to in-person trainings to allow, not only for the program to continue on a virtual basis, online trainings and online proctoring, but to do it in a way that makes those solutions available to all of the professional certifying agencies that also provide well trainings in five Western States and a province in Canada. So the reach that we were able to achieve during the constraints of the COVID continued and additional water savings was able to be achieved as a result from this quick pivot in our ability to offer these trainings virtually. As was mentioned with the drop by, you know, we do have additional programs to touch base with customers, to provide information about qual trainings, to build a market for landscape contractors that obtain certification as landscape irrigation auditors through qual to be able to market those programs to their customers and to create value and demand in the program by educating customers about the benefit of qual training in terms of both keeping landscapes healthy and productive and providing beauty and function at their homes, but in a way that minimizes additional water use. So I'm super excited about the ward, want to really provide thanks to Chris Loomis and Brian Lee and my staff for all the work that they've done to keep the qual program moving forward productively. I certainly wanna thank EPA for their continued support for this and our other programs and also thank all of our professional certifying agencies which includes the California Water Efficiency Partnership, Metropolitan Water District in Southern California, San Diego and a host of others that continue to grow and make this program a success. And with that, I'm also honored to make introductions to Veronica Bledy who is the chief of the WaterSense branch at the EPA who's joining us this morning and was kind enough to be willing to provide a few words on behalf of EPA and our partnerships award this year. So if she has been elevated to presenter, I'm going to allow Veronica to say a few words. Good morning, members of the WAC intact. Thank you to Paul. I did not share my talking points with him but he pretty much nailed like a lot of my talking points but it's okay because you can hear them twice and that way they'll really just get embedded in your brain. So I do manage the WaterSense program here with my spokes down flow, maybe some of y'all have seen her at some point and I'm really happy to join you. WaterSense is focused on helping everybody learn how to save water and by using those more efficient products, practice and professionals and we really value our partners because you all are out there on the front lines helping to spread the word about water efficiency. And so we have a lot, we spent a lot of our time actually working on resources development for the water utility community because you guys are engaging with the consumers every single day. Over the past 15 years our more than 2000 partners from around the country have helped us save a total of 5.3 trillion gallons and more than 108 billion in consumer water bills and energy bills. So I think some of you might remember me from last year like really on, I guess like in the first six months of the pandemic, I don't know, I think I was still maybe even, I don't know if I was still working at home at that point. I'm the only one here at EPA in the office. I'm holding down support in DC. But you know that one of the highlights of my year is the annual recognition of our partners at the WaterSmart Innovations Conference. It happens in Las Vegas in the first week of October. But with the ongoing travel restrictions we weren't able to attend neither were many of our partners. So we had 34 award winners and in early October we presented 17 awards to those who were able to attend. But the rest of them were sort of doing whatever we can to get the word out and to recognize them in front of their leadership. So I'm happy to recognize the Sonoma Marin and say we want a partnership today as a sustained excellence winner for your efforts in 2020. And this is your fifth sustained excellence award. Paul pointed out you guys have received a lot of recognition. This is your fifth sustained excellence and it reflects your fine ongoing work with your qualified water efficient landscaper program. And as I said last year has been tough. And I think if we all learned anything it's really the power of resilience. We all learned how to immediately learn how to use Zoom and Teams and every other sort of remote virtual meeting device that we have. And our partners really showed that they have the ability to adapt to whatever was thrown at them. As he said, you had to pivot your programs and our PCO programs we know were really challenged because they were used to doing all their training and courses and exams really in-person out in the field in some cases. And so it was very challenging for them to change their programs. And they hit the drawing board and the Qual staff reached out to us pretty shortly after the shutdowns began to talk to us about a strategy to shift to online classes and to shift to remote proctoring which was a challenge because nobody had really done it for our specifications certainly at universities they were doing it. But you guys were sort of the first to step out and do that within our PCO community. And during 2020 you also took the time to do a really great rework of your website. It's in English and Spanish which is nice to see. And you also have a great portal for your WaterSense welcome materials that you make available. I kind of looked at it and I was like, you know, I want to talk to my staff and say like, can we put together something that looks as nice as this portal that you guys have put together? And I know that a lot of the partners have done things that they had to do to respond to the pandemic but they're going to stick with those going forward. And I think a lot of the virtual offerings that you started offering and courses were so successful I think you'll probably keep them up afterwards. And Paul kind of hit on this, you know something I like about Qual is that because it's a program of the partnership there's a connection with the broader effort to the partnership to encourage efficient water use. And outdoor water use is such a big deal in California and with the drought going on, it's not going to go away. So being able to link those two programs is really great. You can share the program offerings with the other offerings that you have whether it's a public event, whether it's a course whether it's media outreach that you're doing in social or traditional media. If it's a smart home evaluation that you pivoted this year to make more of a DIY thing but you could also like share the practices that are associated with efficient irrigation. And so it was great that one side of the house is kind of supporting the other side of the house. And I think that's what is true and what has made the program attractive to a lot of your adopting PCOs which many of them are associated with utilities. And speaking of the adopting PCOs I don't know that you could have imagined when you set the program up that you'd have 20 other utilities in California and other Western states. And as you said, even in the provinces in Canada who really wanted to emulate and have a program that was just like yours. And I know it's a big responsibility but Gali, it's a really, you guys have a lot of influence. You have a lot of influence around the professionals whether they're available for work or at hire or if they're working at utilities or commercial businesses to really set like what water efficiency looks like for irrigation and sustainable landscapes. We set minimum requirements for water efficiency, water sense, but you have the ability to add additional components to your exams. So it's really exciting, it's big. And I can't really say enough about the efforts of the partnership. I think you guys are very deserving of the recognition for the hard work that you do. So as I said last year, I get excited every time I go to the website because then I find out something else that you're doing that's really exciting. And this year the excitement was double because I saw you updated your Quelt website but then I just saw you just updated this month or last month now I guess, first. Updated last month the Sonoma Vermin City Water Partnership website which also looks fabulous and I'm gonna go and dig into that some. So I look forward to seeing what the partnership has in store for the future especially with the Quelt program. And I just wish you big congratulations. Oh, the award he's got. I don't think the award is physically that large. It's not bigger than Paul's. Say EPA really stepped up. Yeah, we really, we have a life-size award but I just congratulations and best wishes for more achievements and I hope to see Paul next year at WSI and hand an award in person for your efforts in 2021. So that's all I have for you today. If you have any questions, I'm happy to take them but again, congratulations. Great. Thank you again, Paul, to you and the agency staff and everybody else that participated in making this award happen. Kudos and to Ms. Bleddy. It's great to see you again the second year and it's really good that you could take some time out of your day to just sort of reinforce the efforts that the partnership has been doing and we really appreciate those words of support as well. I wasn't kidding when I say it's like one of the favorite things I do during the year. That's great, that's good to hear because I'm sure there are a lot of things that are definitely not up by there on the list for one of the most favorites. So any other questions from the WAC or TAC? Seeing none, we'll go ahead and open this up for public comment. Again, this is agenda item 10C on the 2021 EPA WaterSense Excellence Award. If you're participating via Zoom, please raise your hand or dial star nine by phone. While we're waiting on that, let the meeting minutes reflected, I did not receive any pre-recorded public comments on this agenda item. Secretary Reyes, do you see any hands raised? We have no hands raised. Okay, great, thank you for that. So that'll turn us over to agenda item number 11, biological opinion status update and back to Chair Harvey. All right, thank you. And I believe that Pam is going to lead us through this item. I am, thank you, have it up there in front of me. No, thank you. Hopefully, everybody can see what's up on the screen right now. So I'll run through this as quickly as I can. On the fish flow project, there's not really any update. I believe we updated the timing of the draft environmental impact report at the last, at least tack mating, maybe not WAC meeting. I don't recall. So we are looking at the draft, not until 2022 for a number of reasons, including the fact that everything keeps changing at the Potter Valley, which changes what our project description may look like. So anyways, that's where we're at with that. As far as the Dry Creek Enhancement Project goes, our contractor who was out there this year working on reach five of the project is completed with their work and they finished their work in late September and they're fully demobilized from the project. And you can actually see the photo here is of that project just this last week during all the rain. So you can, it's pretty bankful in there and the project is mostly underwater. As far as habitat monitoring and maintenance goes, our environmental staff continues to conduct physical and biological surveys on projects that have already been constructed. And they are doing that to identify habitat that is to quantify that habitat as well as determine if there's any changes for maintenance of the projects once they're completed. There's a little bit longer description in here of exactly what they're doing, but I won't go through that. So that also just in October did a post construction drone flight of the work that's been done out there. They have a second flight. It was scheduled for last week. I don't know if that happened or not, but they wanted to check out the projects out there once the water started to recede. You can see this photo here where the water is starting to recede. You can see sort of a high watermark up on those berms. And so hopefully there wasn't a lot of damage to the sites which very recently completed with the 3000 feet per second that was coming down dry creek last Sunday and Monday. On phase two, I'm sorry, phases four through six, phase four, the big documents are ready to go. And the core did complete review the right-of-way agreement modifications that were being requested by some of the property owners who are participating in the project. They, the core provided those results to us and we are now reaching out to the property owners to either give them feedback or possibly even revise the agreements with them as necessary. So we're getting closer on the right-of-way for that particular phase, phase four, and are looking forward to construction next year in 2022 on that phase. Our consultants have completed, I think this was reported before, but they have completed the 99% design submittals for phases five and six. And they will begin phase five and 2023 construction in 2023 and begin construction at phase six in 2024. Right-of-way appraisals are completed for phase five and the offers are being presented to the property owners right now. And they're working on right-of-way for phase six at this point. Let's see, the next bottom of the page here we do have a 30% design package for a site additional site. This is not part of the phases that I've described up to this point, but an additional site upstream of a prior site that was completed. They're doing this work in case we need extra mileage, so to speak for the project to meet our requirement under our biological opinion. So they held an internal design review meeting in September and they are starting to meet with the property owners. Actually, it looks like they met with the property owners in October, mid-October to show them the plans and get some feedback from them. So the property owners in general, I thought sounded like they were okay with what was being proposed. And they'll be setting up on-site meetings with regulatory agencies in December to get sort of preliminary approval of those projects for that project, excuse me. The next page, as far as fish monitoring goes, we did have to remove the camera, the underwater video system camera and all the cutraments that go with that from the Mirabelle Fish Ladder before the storm last Sunday or Saturday and Sunday. So that has been taken out of the facility. It's not certain whether or not we'll be able to reinstall that into the facility in order to be able to do more video monitoring this winter. And if we're unable to do so, according to our records, October 21st, which first 23rd, which is the day that the system was removed, is the earliest date we've ever had to stop doing that video monitoring since 2000. So that's a pretty long period of time. Unfortunately, we only saw about 38 Chinook and a few Steelhead since we started counting fish this year. That was due to a lot of things, not just low flow out in the river system, but also the estuary was closed for a good portion of that period of time. It didn't open up until last weekend. So speaking of the estuary, we go down to the bottom there. The Russian River Estuary Management Project, management season ended in October, mid-October. So we're continuing to do pinniped monitoring on a weekly basis. And we suspended water quality monitoring because of the flows out in the river, but that may start back up again. So the mouth of the river closed in late September, but last week with the amazing sort of wave action going on out on the coast, as well as the flows in the river, we did have some flooding going on in the estuary. We got to about the nine-foot level, reached about 11.2 feet and then it self-breached. So we did not have to go out and do mechanical breaching. The berm across the estuary, the beach, so to speak, did breach by itself and it's currently open at this point. And Don already talked about the interim flow changes. There's a couple of great photos here. That's Lake Mendocino in mid-October. Looks a little different than that right now, but anyways, Don provided a pretty good update on this. So I'm not gonna go through it unless there's any questions. That's it for me, Susan. Great, thank you, Pam. Anyone in the whack or tack have any questions for Pam on the biological opinion? Let's see here. I am not seeing any hands. We have a very quiet group today. Must be all this weather. Anyways, with that, then I'll open it up to public comment on item 11. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. And I am not seeing anything. Susan, this is Grant. If I could take advantage of this lull of the rains coming to comment about Pam's last item on there. The right-of-way and the negotiations with the landowners, I feel like I really need to commend our right-of-way agents, John Monahan and his whole crew who've been working diligently with the Army Corps of Engineers. It's quite an achievement to be able to get the Corps to accept what are concerns that private landowners have about how this is going to be operated over at perpetuity. So I just want to stress to the WAC members how incredibly important that work is. We've been down some staff with the retirements as things evolve, but I expressed my appreciation for getting that through and how important that's going to be for the long-term, three miles left on Dry Creek. Great, thank you for that, Grant. Secretary Reyes, I did not see any hands from the public, did you? There are no raised hands. Great, thank you. I'll bring it back in. Drew, did you have any written or verbal comment that you received? I did not. You did not. Okay, thank you for that. And thank you for the great report, Pam. It's crazy to look at some of those pictures, both the ones from last weekend and the ones of Lake Mendocino. Picture paints a story. And I'm glad to hear that the Dry Creek held up during that storm. So that's great news. So hopefully everything is intact when the water clears. So with that, we will move on to the Potter Valley Project re-licensing update. And I believe that this is also you, Pam. Yeah, it is. So I have two updates. Don already gave you an update on what's going on operation. I'm going to put the Potter Valley Project, so I won't discuss that. But I have two things. One is under that same grant program that Jay talked about a little bit earlier, the Urban and Multi-Benefit Drought Relief Grant Program that Department of Water Resources is operating. The partners, really specifically the Russian River partners are looking at applying for a grant. We're in the process of developing a grant application, looking at a couple of tasks that we need help with in the process, the FERC process that we're in. So right now we are looking at doing a couple of things under that grant application, three things specifically. One of them is establishing a Russian River water user form so that we can not only educate folks about where their water comes from, but also be able to understand the benefit that they're receiving from the Potter Valley Project and have us understand what benefit they're receiving and whether or not they would be willing to participate financially in a continuation of transfer of water through that project, even if it's not operating as a hydroelectric power plant. So that's one of the tasks, the second task under that grant application is going to be assessing the actual physical facilities that some regional entity may or may not own in the future to continue the transfer of water. So looking at the facilities themselves, including passage at Cape Horn Dam, the diversion facility, the tunnel, the penstocks and looking at them from a condition standpoint as well as what is the risk as well as the associated cost of operating those facilities should some regional entity choose to acquire them from PG&E for future transfers of water. And then the third item, it's a couple of different things under this third item, some sub items, but it's looking at what we're terming a reach specific water reliability assessment. And so it's looking specifically in Potter Valley and looking at whether or not they have any decent groundwater resources up there or not, whether or not they could build surface water storage, other things looking at Potter Valley itself. And then also a second task would be doing some modeling work so that we can understand how the waters, if the transfer continues, how the water would get to the Russian in terms of timing and quantity of water. So those are the tasks that we're looking under that grant program right now. The second thing I wanna mention is the abeyance request and actually Chris, I see that you're Chris, I'm sorry, Drew is going to be talking about this, I think hopefully when I'm done here. So the abeyance request was submitted by the partners at the beginning of September. We notified FERC that we had not secured funds to undertake the studies required by the study plan determination. And we were considering whether or not to relicense the project or withdrawal or NOI. And we requested an abeyance until May of 2022, the end of May of 2022, which would allow us to complete condition assessment and do more due diligence and determine benefits and costs and risks associated with ownership of the Fodder Valley project or at least a portion of the project. So at that time, we waited until about September 23rd or so and got a response from FERC saying that they wanted the parties, the two basin solution partners to file a new license application by April 14th of 2022. And they also directed us to file status reports in November and again, another status report in January of 2022. So they also told us that if we didn't file a new license application in April of 2022 that they may direct PG need to commence license surrender proceedings that didn't say they will, just said they may. So we do intend to file a status report with FERC in November per the letter back from them on our advance request. And we will, the parties, the two basin solution partners right now are working on that draft response at this point. Our governing boards, especially for the public agencies, are still deliberating exactly what to do here, but we have yet to decide on that steps as far as exactly what that response is going to look like. So we're working on that right now. And I do want to mention to you that there was a, a Potter Valley Project ad hoc committee meeting last Friday. This is a group that Congressman Huffman has convened. It's been together for quite a while and probably about four years now. And this was discussed at that meeting. So just want to make sure everybody was aware of that meeting happened. I think that's it for me. Great. Thank you for that, Pam. Are there any questions from any of the Wacker Tech members on this? Yes, Jennifer. Thank you, Chair Harvey. Thank you, Pam, for that report. I just, I was hoping you could just clarify when you said applying for the grant application, you said, particularly the Russian River Partner. So does that mean it's a subset of the NOI parties that are applying for the grant? Yeah, well, the grant applicant is a single party, but we are, we're working very closely with the Mendocino County Animal Water and Power Commission on the grant application. Our other partners, the folks to the North, I'll call them, have been working diligently on a different grant application, which is more targeted towards habitat and fisheries restoration rather than water supply reliability. So it's that we're kind of splitting up the work that way. Okay, got it. Thank you. And is NOMA water going to be the grant applicant? Yes, we will be. Great. Thanks, Pam. I did not see any other hands. I have a question, Pam. You talked about Potter Valley and them looking at groundwater. Did they have to go through the SIGMA process? Are they one of the basins that had to provide a plan or not? Do you know? I do not believe they did. Jay, you can correct me if I'm wrong. There is a groundwater sustainability agency in Ukiah Valley, but I don't believe it included Potter Valley. And Jay, you can correct me if I'm wrong. You're correct, Pam. There's no SIGMA requirement in Potter Valley Basin, but the Ukiah Basin is a medium basin and it has a groundwater sustainability agency. It's actually kind of unfortunate that there's not one in Potter Valley. Otherwise, a lot of this work would have been done. Yeah, exactly. I'm not seeing any other hands from the Whacker tax. So I will open this up to public comment on item number 12. If you would like to make a public comment, please raise your hand via Zoom. And if you're dialing by phone, please dial star nine. Let's see. I am not seeing any hands being raised by the attendees. Secretary Reyes, do you see any hands? There are no hands raised. Thank you so much. And Drew, did you receive any verbal or written comments on this item? I did not. Okay. Then, as was pointed out by Pam, we will move on to the WAC comment letter supporting a partnership, a BANTS request to FERC. And I believe Drew, this will be another consensus item. Correct. Okay, so what we will need is if anybody objects to this, when we get that far, please let us know, because we're looking for consensus on this item. And with that, I will let you take it away, Drew. Thank you, Chair Harvey. So just as a follow-up to Pam's summary of, you know, where the Potter Valley project relicensing is, there's no actual comment period with FERC right now in the open comment period, but we did have a meeting with the WAC, Potter Valley Project Subcommittee, about just this a BANTS period. And as a result of that meeting, this support letter was drafted. And essentially, it just would be sent to FERC to again support what the agency, what all the planning agreement partners had requested in September to allow more time for some additional studies to take place, more due diligence. And Pam had indicated, you know, that the planning agreement partners had originally requested till May 31st of 2022. And this letter essentially just supports at least what FERC had given through the April 14th and just reiterates the water contractor support for the two basing solution. So we are looking for just a general consensus on sending this letter. And I'd like to add another ask and that is to utilize the intent of this letter and actually get a consensus from the water contractors to send a second related letter it would be a support letter for the funding of the grant application that Pam had just talked about. It would be submitted to the state similar to the earlier support, the grant funding support for, that was discussed earlier in the agenda. So this all came out of just the Huffman's Potter Valley Project ad hoc meeting on Friday was trying to get as many agencies to support the Sonoma County Water Agency's grant application to try to secure more funds for this due diligence period between now and April 14th. So I think it makes sense for us to go ahead and have two support letters, one from the WACC to FERC and then the other related one that would go in support of the agency's submission for the state grant fund. So that would be my request. Be happy to answer any questions or comments. Any questions or comments by the WACC or TAC? Please raise your hand. I am not seeing any, Drew, are you? I'm not. Okay, then we will open this item up for public comment. We're now taking public comment on 12A if you wish to make a comment via Zoom. Please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via phone, please dial star nine. And I am not seeing any attendee raised hands. Are you Secretary Reyes? There are no raised hands. Okay, then I will bring it back to the board. Drew, did you receive any written or verbal comments on this? I did not. Okay, so we are asking for consensus on this item. So if you could please let us know, any of you that do not agree with moving forward on those two letters of support as outlined by Drew, please either speak or raise your hand at this point, please. And Drew, I don't see anyone objecting to those, that consensus, do you? I do not, that's correct. Okay, thank you everyone for that and we will get those moving forward. So with that, we will move on to item 13 which is the integrated regional water management plan update and I believe Grant's gonna take this. Chair Harvey, very briefly, we tend to put this on in our WAC meetings just to make sure and remind folks of some of the progress that's being made with regard to efforts, most notably this time around for the Bay Area region, which we're part of and Sonoma Water is a fiscal agent on a project called AQPI. I still think it's not the best name but it's the best we've got at this point. So it's advanced quantitative precipitation information. It's a process that hit the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle and I asked Drew to please include that with your packet. If you haven't had a chance to look at it, the Chronicle has done some pretty good work here with regard to graphic representation of what AQPI is actually going to do, including listing the proposed and current sites where these next band radars are being deployed. This is gonna be what I call the next generation of precipitation. It's not just for water purveyors, however, some of the bigger beneficiaries are ultimately gonna be the emergency management and flood agencies and folks that have to deal with inclement weather and knowing exactly where rain is gonna fall. So we have an MOU that's just been completed with Scripps Institute of Oceanography with CW3E, the folks that are working with Furo. And the fact that this hit the Chronicle the same day that we were briefing Senator Feinstein's staff was another just fluke and a good sense of timing. But please take a look at that and know that certainly the North Coast, North Bay, Marin County's actually from a separate funding source eligible for putting one of these located up on Mount Tan that's gonna improve the coverage for the entire Bay area. So that's ongoing. And then I just highlight the fact that the North Coast Resource Partnership which we're also part of on the Northern side, includes seven counties. And with the significant $15 billion climate resilience package that was passed earlier in September and signed by the governor, we all know that these letters of support are meaningful. There's money that's becoming available for integrated projects, much like that this was started years ago. And we need to continue working together to secure funding for a lot of the drought resiliency dollars that are eligible. So a lot more to come with your staff, but these are two of the areas where the state allocates a lot of money if it has a regional significant benefit which we think we do very well with. And I think that's pretty much what I wanted to update. Right, thank you, Grant. Does anyone have any questions or comments for Grant? Please speak or raise your hand. Not seeing anyone. Then I will open this up for public comment. Anyone wishing to make a comment on item 13 if you raise your hand in Zoom or dial star nine if you're calling in by phone and Secretary Reyes. Chair Harvey, I did see a hand raised by Mr. Dane. Oh, perfect. I don't know what. Yeah. Have a comment? Yes, I don't have any specific question. I just want to take this opportunity to say thank you to all staff part of work during the past, you know, Severian and a drought from the local and from the city of the Sonoma, all of the people participate saving water. So the drought is here, save the water should not be only a slogan. We should have still carried out a day to day base because overall, you know, we still in a drought. So the thank you for all in the updated and looks like an everything we are on at the top of it. Oh, yeah, thank you. Thank you all your hardworking and scientific work. Thank you. Thank you for that, Jack. Secretary Reyes, I did not see any public comment hands. Did you on this item? There are no raise times. Okay, thank you. And Drew, you got no written or verbal. That's correct, I did not. Great, thank you. Thank you for that. So the last item on our agenda is items for the next agenda. Does anyone have anything? We've had a very, very full agenda and I really appreciate everyone's time. I know that there was a lot to go through and thank you for being so patient with my technical issues. And we could not do this without Roberta and Priscilla. So thank you so much for helping us with this. So any requests for items next month or next meeting in February? February the 7th, I am not seeing any there. So I will open this item up for public comment. Anybody wanting to make public comment on item 14, please raise your hand via Zoom. And if you're dialing in via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. And I am not seeing any attendees with their hands up. Secretary Reyes, are you? There are no raise chance. Great, I will bring it back Drew. Did you receive any written or verbal items? I did not. You did not, okay. Well, thank you everyone again for your patience and we will adjourn this meeting at 1116. See you all in February. Thank you. Have a good day. Thank you. Bye. Bye.