 For Burt it looks like we're just waiting for Board Member Grable. Yes, I believe that's correct. Thank you. Chair Galvin, it looks like he just joined, so we should be good to go. Good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order if we may have a roll call, please. Yes. Chair Galvin. Here. Vice-Chair, our number. Board Member Badden-Fort. Here. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Mullen. Here. Board Member Watts. Here. Board Member Wright. Here. Thank you, everyone, for being here. A reminder to mute your phones and microphones when you're not speaking, and also to please put away your cell phones and any personal computers. Item number two, Statements of Abstention by Board Members. Anyone? Very none. Item three, we have no study session. Item four is the minutes. So I will now take public comments on the minutes approval. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary, do we have anyone? We have no public comments. Very good. Thank you. Then the minutes from December 3rd will be entered. We'll now move to staff briefing 5.1. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Our staff briefing for today is a water supply and recycle water supply update. And Deputy Director of Water Resources Peter Martin and Deputy Director of Regional Water Reuse Operations Emma Walton will be making the presentation. Thank you, Director Burke. Peter Martin here. Thank you, Board Members. I'm happy to give you the presentation today about our water supply. Obviously it's been sort of a critically dry period right now. But we did get some rain last night. While we're waiting to pull up that presentation. I'll just talk a little bit. About sort of where we are with regards to. Our rain right now. We're currently sitting. About 30% of our normal for this time of year in December in our region. I think we did pick up about three quarters of an inch last night. But typically we would be seeing about. Perhaps nine inches of rain. If it was in normal time here. So luckily our region's wettest months are yet to come. January, February and March. But it is something we're continuing to monitor closely with our partners in the watershed. Next slide, please. So just a reminder. Snow water is operating under a temporary emergency change petition order. That expires in December 27th of this year. This order allowed snow water flexibility on their releases in order to protect. Late year flows needed for fall run fish species. Once this order expires, they sort of revert back to their typical dry weather flow regimes, which were established in June. This figure sort of shows that they've been able to manage their in-stream flows and also continue to keep water storage in Lake Minasino above critical levels. So I just wanted to note at the technical advisory committee this month, we did receive some updates on their planning ahead for the water year. The forecast and foreign reservoir operation program. Also known as the water supply. The forecast and foreign reservoir operation program. Also known as Furo. Working with the Army Corps of engineers at Lake Minasino. Has been a success the last few years. Last year's snow water was able to store. An additional 11,000 acre feet of water. That historically would have been preserved for flood control purposes. In September of this year. The Furo steering committee met and agreed. Once more to pursue a major deviation from operations at Lake Minasino of 11,000 acre feet of storage. But the term of this time, this time would be five years. So. It's expected that request will be granted in February. And some water should be credited, I guess, you know, and that they've given the Army Corps a lot of confidence over the last few years of the success of Furo. They've been to this date. Also given the green light for an interim. In the meantime, I'm going to give you a little bit of a summary of what's going on with the Furo steering committee. 5,500 acre feet of storage in the meantime. Next slide, please. I did want to note too that this is a critical time for some water and determining their operational conditions for the water. You're based on. The criteria in decision 1610 that governs their water rights. They've recently been informed by PG and E. That they likely will be seeking a variance from their water rights. But this is a critical time for them to go through the future of power project. If you remember. This is what triggered the need for the TUCP last year. Therefore. Snow water is already seriously considering having to file and petition. But relief from their mandated flows. As of today, Lake Minnesino is sitting at about 50% of their target storage for this time of year. But hopefully that's starting to level off as we start to see precipitation. We are sort of aware at the moment that the storage trends noted by that black line there are tracking very closely with those in 2013-14 water year. That was a year, if you'll remember, that kicked off the most recent historical drought. Next slide, please. Lake Sonoma is storing about 66% of their target water supply for this time of year. Those are also set at 120 CFS. And storage is starting to show signs of leveling off with the recent precipitation. And next slide, please. So at the last meeting, Board Member Wright had asked about fish counts in that previous meeting. I just wanted to note that Sonoma Water is reviewing video collected in the Mainstem Russian River at Mirabel to monitor returning adult salmon and steelhead. This slide sort of shows the most recent fish counts at Mirabel. I did want to note that Sonoma Water is reporting weekly on their fish counts and also water quality in the Russian River watershed. That is a term of the temporary sea change petition order. So as you can see, the fish counts are starting to come in. For comparison, in 2019, Sonoma Water counted 909 Chinook salmon throughout their total migration period. Next slide, please. So yeah, I guess Santa Rosa water staff have been really busy the last few months, sort of looking ahead and sort of preparing for dry conditions continuing. I guess I want to say on a positive note, we've sort of done this before. We know exactly what the triggers are going to be for a potential drought scenario. And right now, while we are kind of looking at a demand shortfall, we're sort of not there yet. So we're still sort of running those scenarios in order to be very prepared with our regional partners to respond. So right now, just sort of our ongoing preparations are obviously providing you with routine updates at the BPU. Director Burke will likely start to put more information out to the city council going forward. We've sent out bill inserts and continuing to release information in the city and connections and newsletter, additional social media. A wine country radio spot has also been launched and also we're sort of pre-packaging outreach and actions to respond based upon what we've learned in the previous, most recent historical drop. And then, as I mentioned, we're continuing to monitor and coordinate with our regional partners, the Sonoma Water. And their contractors has a conservation subcommittee, we're planning to meet very shortly. So we're getting points that are starting to be created, and we're just really working on adaptive and consistent messaging amongst all our contractors in order to be nimble going forward. So, and then I just wanted to remind you that the Water Shores Considency Plan is always available. It's obviously a flexible tool for respond to ongoing dry conditions and asking our customers for conservation. You know, you can have sort of everything ran again from just voluntary conservation requests to more stringent mandatory cutbacks. But obviously, those actions are going to be worked through the more public utilities and accounts before we get to that point. But that is currently being updated as part of our efforts through the Urban Water Management Plan. And it did, but we can have that in our back pocket to respond to the inside. Next slide, please. So as I mentioned, we are running a wine country radio spot. It's about 60 seconds. I was hoping we could fire that up today so you could hear that. So if you wouldn't mind, Madam Clerk, please. Santa Rosa Water has an important message for you. It has been an historically dry year, which means we all need to be water smart this winter. You can start saving water today by turning off your irrigation system. Saving in the winter months is not necessary to maintain a healthy landscape. Plus, you have the added benefit of being water smart and saving money. We don't know when it will rain, but we do know how to help you save water. Contact Santa Rosa Water today and learn about a do-it-yourself water smart home checkup kit. Free water smart devices available to you, water smart rebates, water saving tips and more. Do your part to be water smart this winter. Call 707-543-3985 or visit srccity.org slash water smart today. Thank you to the marketing and outreach team for their efforts on that. I thought it was actually really nice if you could continue the slides, please. So I think I've mentioned briefly some of our efforts that we've been doing with the county health order and the limitations for us being able to interact with customers I just wanted to highlight real quickly the home water smart kit drop-off efforts that we've been doing. This is sort of a DIY drop-off that we do for customers at their homes. So essentially a kit is delivered to a customer's home at their request for free. They're given instructions and a survey form about many of the fixtures in their home. They're also given a flow bag to measure the efficiency of their customers' faucets and shower heads and as well as dye tabs to test for toilets for leaks. And then also we give them sort of directions for requesting no-cost water saving devices and other information on how to fix leaks. Next slide, please. So I wanted to highlight the success of this program. Since May 2020, 150 kits have been dropped off at customer homes and we've been able to have a near 100% follow-up by staff to not only confirm the receipt of the kit but provide them with technical assistance and walk them through any questions they may have. Pretty much had nothing but positive responses. Customers are very appreciative. They've gone and found leaks in their homes. Also I think it's been an educational experience for a lot of them to do it. You know, DIY because they have a better understanding of their pertinences and how much water they're actually using. So since this time we've actually delivered 145 water saving devices to customers' homes and that includes shower heads, faucet aerators, and hose nozzles. So next slide, please. So with that, I'm happy to take any questions. I don't know if we wanted to wait until the second presentation but this is probably a good spot to go ahead. Why don't we let Deputy Director Walton do her presentation then we can open up the questions. All right, thank you, Deputy Director Martin. Roberta, could you move to the next slide, please? Thank you. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Here to talk a little bit about our recycle water supply and what we're projecting for this year. As we're considering drought conditions on the water supply side, similarly our recycle water supply is impacted as well. Next slide, please. I'll start off by just doing a quick recap of what we have been able to deliver this year. So January through November of this year, we have been able to deliver about five and a half billion gallons of recycle water to our users despite some challenges. At the beginning of the year, we were anticipating being able to deliver about 1.7 billion gallons to our ag users and through just amazing efforts of our staff, we were actually able to deliver more than that about 1.9 billion gallons to our ag and urban users, which was really a great success given the constraints we had in our supply. We ended in November around 372 million gallons in storage and that's where we are about today. For the next slide, please. As you can see from our storage curve, we're about 370 million gallons in storage, which is about average for what we would normally be seeing about now, which sounds great, but unfortunately our storage curve doesn't really tell the whole story. What is unique about this particular curve is that it's on the downward trend, and that's not where we typically find ourselves about this time of year. Typically, we are gaining in storage, which is what we would be expecting. If you can move to the next slide, please. I've taken an opportunity to look at where we normally would be producing water about this time of year and our average production of water. This is the water that's being generated at the treatment plant and going into storage and going out for reuse. Right now, typically in December, we would be over 20 million gallons per day in production if we base it on the last 35 years of plant flows. Last year, this is about where we were, and then as you all know, we experienced a little to no rain after that. This year, we are currently at a very, very low production in water, and this doesn't actually even tell the whole story. This is just looking at the average productions, and quite honestly, our recycle water production fluctuates every year throughout the season, just depending on the weather and depending on how much rain we've received that year. I wanted to show you all of the productions over the last 35 years, so you could get a better sense of really where we are, not just the average. If you go to the next slide, please. You can see how variable it is, our water production is, but despite the variability, we really are at an all-time low in water production. You can see over the last 35 years, it's very variable in the gray there is the average line, the dark blue is our last year water production, and the black along the bottom is our current water production. Next slide, please. Even though we have kind of average amounts of water in storage right now, given the downward trend and given how low we are in production, we really want to make sure we're getting the message out as early as we possibly can that we may be going into a season where we just have very, very little recycled water supply. So in order to do that, we are continuing to have ongoing ag user meetings to let our ag users know not only where we are in storage, but where we are projecting to be in storage throughout the rest of the season. We just had a meeting yesterday with our ag users to start these conversations. We are preparing for another dry year, likely potentially drier than we saw last year, talking about what that means for recycled water allotments. We are continuing to have ongoing discussions with our regional partners, including Windsor, who has agreed to increase their flows to the geysers so that Santa Rosa is able to back off on what we're sending to the geysers in order to help preserve as much as we possibly can in storage to just every little bit helps. We also are in conversations with Sonoma Water and plan to remain in close communication with both Sonoma Water and Windsor throughout the rest of the season. On a positive note, we did complete the Delta Pond repairs this season. It's hard to show in one picture a mile-long worth of levy repair, but that kind of gives a good perspective of the massive amount of work it was. And just a reminder, we were anticipating this work to take multiple years and we were able to complete it in a single year, which should really help next year not having to take Delta Pond offline again. Next slide, please. We also had a lot of success with the geysers deliveries this year. Despite the pipeline being offline for 37 days, we are currently at 91% of our contract. And we anticipate maintaining that percentage through the rest of the year now that we are halfway through December and are confident that we are going to make our 90% of our delivery. We are backing off on even what we're sending to the geysers to really cut that 91% as close to 90% as we possibly can again to just preserve as much in storage as we possibly can. Next slide, please. And with that, I'd like to open it up for any questions for Deputy Martin or myself. Great. Thank you both. Board member questions or comments? Board member Mullen. Thank you, Mr. Chair. Questions for Deputy Director Walton. Relative to the Recycle Water Report, I appreciate the efforts that staff has made to date to make up the gap that we were facing with the geysers. So congratulations for that and to the staff for their work on that. As far as the lack of production on the inflow, is the majority of the significant drop in inflow on the commercial side because people are working from home now? And conversely, have we seen a spike or an increase in the residential flows? Great question. Thank you, Board member Mullen. We actually haven't seen any changes in what we're receiving at the plant. What we're seeing for the production is really just a matter of the lack of rain. Right now, we would normally have had at least some rain, which we benefit from the inflow and infiltration into our sewer system. We then get to store that for reuse. Unfortunately, with the lack of rain, we are just experiencing average dry weather flows as we have been all year long. And so really, the impacts to the inflow are not from the pandemic. They are just simply from the lack of rain. Okay. Thank you. Then my other question is relative to as we enter into the irrigation season, and it looks like we're going to be going in there with less than what we would like to have in storage as we sit here today. When we start to ration out or dole out that precious commodity, we have our urban users, we have our ag users. The urban users, is it primarily just city facilities or are there some private users in there? We have private users for our urban users. I'd have to defer to Deputy Director Martin for the specifics around that. But my understanding is that our urban users are mostly private users. Okay. So I don't need any more information on that, except for the fact that when we start to divide up the pie, so to speak, the urban users, because they pay for it, will have some sort of priority over other users. Is that usually the way we approach it? Right. So we first meet our contractual obligations, our non-interruptible obligations, which are the geysers and our urban users. And then whatever water would be left would go to our interruptible customers, which are our ag customers. Okay. Great. Thank you very much, and congratulations for the work that the staff has done so far. Thank you. I had a quick question for Deputy Director Martin. I'd really like the radio spot. Is that on multiple stations? I've not heard it yet, so... Yeah. I believe that there's a grouping of different radio stations that are part of that. I heard it for the first time on, I guess, what is it, the 101, maybe yesterday. So I think it just started its run. Good. Well, I'm very pleased with it. Other board member questions or comments for either of the presenters? Yeah, board member Wright. You know, just piggybacking on your comment about the radio spot, having kids that don't ever listen to the radio, what other outreach are we doing to reach those folks? Yeah. So we've, I know last year we did, we're able to, you know, obviously do a mix of multimedia. So that included some of the satellite radio, and also, you know, spots that would go on things like Spotify and, you know, other areas as well. But then also, you know, we can push those things out using some of the electronic media as well. So social media goes out, but also spots will pop up on different web pages. And then if you remember last year, we also used a mix of, I guess, well, the snowmomer and water saving partnership, I should say, did a mix with the press democrat, both in their run in the paper and also their electronic ads as well. So, and then there's also typically Spanish language outreach to that we've done in the past with snowmomer and water saving partnership. I'm fully assuming we'll mimic that again this year and try to get as broad a webcast as possible. Yeah, it seems that at least from my experience, these folks were getting older news from podcasts. And I don't know how we tie into that. But anyway, that's just my observation. I'll look into that. Thank you. Thank you. Any other board member questions or comments? Seeing none, I'll open it up for public comments on item 5.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, anybody? No public comments. Thank you. That'll take care of the staff briefings. Thanks to both of you deputy directors. We appreciate it. Let's pray for rain. Thank you. We'll move now to item 6.1. We have one item on the consent calendar. Are there any board member questions regarding that matter? If not, I'll entertain a motion. I'll move the consent calendar. All second. Second. Oh, I don't know who's first. I think we got Vice Chair Arnone making the motion and board member Wright making the second. At this time, we'll open it up for public comments on item 6.1. If you wish to make a public comment, please, via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? We have no public comment. Thank you. If you would do a roll call vote, please. Yes. Chairman Galvin. Aye. Vice Chair Arnone. Aye. Board member Baden-Port. Aye. Board member Grable. Aye. Board member Mullen. Aye. Board member Watts. Aye. Board member Wright. Aye. Okay. Passes unanimously. Thank you, everyone. We have no report items in number seven. We'll move to item eight, which is public comments. We'll now take public comments on item eight. If you wish to make a comment, via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? We have no public comments. Alrighty. Thank you. We will move then to item nine. We have no referrals. We have no written communications. Do we have any subcommittee reports? Board member Watts. Thank you. The budget subcommittee we met this past Tuesday and staff and consultants presented more information on the work that's been done to date as well as several items that are coming up this first half of 2021. We got a update on the proposed water shortage rates, which are required part of the urban water management plan. And that plan is due to the state by June 30th of 2021. And the water shortage rates will be incorporated in the Prop 218 process for notifying the public, along with the regular water and wastewater rates as scheduled that's currently in process. We also received preliminary results for the updates to the water and wastewater demand fee study. And the proposed demand fees will reflect updates in the water and wastewater systems valuation, including additions to assets, depreciation, changes in debt financing, and reserves designed for capital projects, as well as updates in water use and sewer flow factors based on data collected over the last four years. And then last, we did receive an update on the continued work of the water and wastewater rate schedule. And the rate increases are the same as we previously saw to the committee. However, staff did let us know that they're continuing to work for any more efficiencies or possibilities to make further reductions of the proposed schedule before they bring a full recommendation to the BPU and the city council in spring of next year. And we have another meeting scheduled for, I believe, the middle of January for 2021. Great. Thank you. Any questions for Board Member Watts? Thanks for the good work your subcommittee is doing. We'll now open it up for public comments on item number 11. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? We have no public comments. Thank you. Item 12, any Board Member reports? Seeing none. Item number 13 is the Director's Report. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. A couple quick things just to update the Board. One, I wanted to let the Board know about some new required sampling we have at the wastewater treatment plant for PFOS. Okay, I'm going to try. These are polyfluoroalkyl chemicals. And this is a family of chemicals that are also known as forever chemicals because they do not readily break down. You may have heard about these chemicals. They've been used in firefighting foam, food packaging, carpets, nonstick pans, and many other household consumer products. And so our staff has been working very diligently to get trained for PFOS sampling because these chemicals are used in personal care products, as well as waterproof clothing, staff needs to be very mindful of what products they are using and clothes they are wearing when they have to do these samples to prevent any contamination of the sample. So we have completed the testing for our Influent, Affluent, and BioSolids. And we're proud to report that there were no sample contamination from the collection process. So staff did a great job there. The instruments needed to measure PFOS are highly specialized. So we worked with an outside lab to analyze the samples. We don't have a good sense of the results at this point because there are no industry standards or previous sampling and wastewater plants to compare our sampling results to. But as other wastewater treatment plants begin to report their results, we'll be able to compare and see if the levels of PFOS in our Influent, Affluent, and BioSolids are average, above, below. We will also continue to work with all of our regulatory bodies as well as advocacy groups such as the California Association of Sanitation Agencies, or CASA, to help shape and develop reasonable regional programs to help address this contaminant and look at future regulations. And then, second, I just wanted to recognize as the last meeting of the year that 2020 has been quite challenging. And so just appreciative of the board's leadership and support through this very challenging year, your willingness to be adaptive and nimble and work with us as we've entered into new platforms and new ways of doing business. And also recognize that the staff really did amazing work this past year. We had a very challenging year starting with recycled water levels at the time were higher than anticipated, going into the third driest year on record, dealing with a pandemic, having a depth of an employee, just so many challenging things that through it all staff has been incredibly creative and adaptive and willing to figure out ways to continue to serve our community. We take great pride in ensuring that our water and wastewater systems run and run well, and that our wastewater is treated and recycled, and that we get the information out to our community and we provide the tools and resources that we can to help them continue to receive these services. So I thank you all for your work and your dedication and your leadership at the board. And I just want to wish you all a safe and happy holiday. And let's hope for a much better 2021. Thank you. Thank you, Director Burke. And you know, staff is only as good as its leadership. And so it starts at the top and you've done a phenomenal job in what you've already described as very difficult circumstances. And I think I can speak for the full board and say that we're pleased and happy to be able to work with you and your staff and do what we can to get through these multiple crises. But just keep up the good work and I'll open it up if any other board members have any comments. As well said. You know, all right, then we will now take public comments on item 13. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? There are no public comments. All right, our next item is item 14.1, which is a closed session item conference with legal counsel. Interim legal counsel, Mr. Maddow, if you would announce the closed session, please. Thank you, Chair Galvin. There is one closed session item today. It's concerning conference with council on existing litigation. We sue it to government code section 54956.9d1. The name of the case is in the matter of the city of Santa Rosa's petition to review action and failure to act by the California regional water quality control board for the north coast region when it adopted order number R1-2020-0012. And this petition is to the state water resources control board. It is a water quality petition that was filed with the board on September 18, 2020. Thank you. Before we go into closed session, we'll now take public comments on item 14.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. Thank you. Okay, I would ask all of you now then to disconnect from this. Reconnect through your code and pass code and meeting ID for the closed session. And we will see you shortly. Okay, it looks like we have everybody back. Secretary Aitha, if you could do a roll call, please. Yes, Chairman Galvin. Here. Vice Chair Anoni. Here. Board Member Badenport. Here. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Mullen. Here. Board Member Watts. Here. Board Member Wright. Here. Thank you all. At this point, I would ask our legal counsel, Mr. Maddow, to report out on the closed session item. Thank you, Chair Galvin. There were no reportable items from the closed session. Thank you very much. Thank you all. A reminder that we are not having a meeting on January 7th. So our first meeting will be the 21st of January. So I want to wish all of you and our citizens and our ratepayers a happy and healthy holiday season. Stay positive and test negative. See you in 2021. We are adjourned. Happy holidays. Thanks, everyone.