 Welcome to our community presentation on the importance of water conservation in Pleasanton. I wanna thank the members of the Muslim Community Center for joining us today. We're so grateful that you've come and we're really excited to share what we've learned so far this summer with you today. So let's go ahead and get started. I'll turn it over to Divya and her team. So hi everyone, thank you for all joining us today. We are so grateful for you taking the time to hear our community presentation. Before we jump into the slides, you wanna first start off by taking a water footprint calculator quiz. Your water footprint is a measure of the amount of water you consume indoors, outdoors, and more passively through things like diet and shopping. We would love for everyone to visit this link and take the quiz now. You have the option to calculate your entire household or adjust your own personal footprint. If you would like to calculate your footprint only, just select that there's only one person in your household. Let's take about five minutes to complete this activity. All right, so I'll give everybody a few minutes or a couple of seconds to get over to this link. And once you get there, this should be the page that pops up. So I'm gonna go ahead and click find your footprint. And I'm gonna be taking this quiz alongside you guys just based on my lifestyle, but when you answer the questions, do it based on yours. So I'm gonna be doing it just for myself, just one person in my household. My average shower, if I'm being honest, probably more around five to 10 minutes. And I do have low flow shower heads. I'm gonna go ahead and keep running through this quiz and you guys can be doing this on your own screens. And we'll check back in at the end and look at the results. So about five minutes for this. So as you guys are taking it, you can see it goes pretty in-depth the asks about a lot of different aspects of your life. And it'll be really interesting to see the results at the end. And once you get to this end page, it'll show you your personal water footprint in gallons per day, as well as the average gallons per day. And if you scroll down, it really breaks it down each aspect for indoor water use, outdoor and water or virtual water use. And if I scroll down to the very bottom, I can see that a big part of my water footprint comes from my shopping habits. So 291 gallons is a lot of water per day. And the diet is the other really, really big portion that contributes to this. So we're gonna go a little bit more in-depth into each of these different components of the water footprint calculator in our presentation. So hopefully this gave you a good overview of how you use water and can kind of make you reflect back on that. So now that we've all completed the water calculator quiz, would anyone like to share their thoughts on the quiz? Did anything surprise you? Did anything surprise you compared to the national average? Would anyone like to share their thoughts? So with me, I noticed that I don't have a lot of low flow water heads around the house for like the kitchen and the bathrooms. I have two in the whole house. So that's something that maybe I should think about changing over to as a really good tip. Yeah, that's a really great observation. There's so many parts of our house that we can improve on. And those little faucets, it's sometimes easy to overlook, but it's very important in conserving water. Great, thank you for sharing. All right, so to move on, so far we've briefly explored how much water we all use in our daily lives. That being said, some questions might still stand. Is my individual water consumption that impactful? The hard truth is yes. Everyone here plays a powerful role. The sooner we take up this individual responsibility, the sooner that the few gallons we each save will add up to hundreds of thousands of gallons. But why save? Just six years ago, during the most intense days of the drought, the amount of water zone seven received from the state water project, California's main water storage and delivery system plummeted down to 5% of its typical allocation. This is significant because we get about 80% of our water from zone seven. And the majority of that supply is from the state water project, whose main source of water is a snowpack on the Sierras. Looking at all these components together, it makes sense that droughts severely limit the potential of the state water project, and ultimately zone seven's water allocation. Recently, zone seven state water project allocations for May increased from 5% to 20% of its typical allocations. Even now, during a seemingly drought-free period, this amount is substantially less compared to what we were lauded in the past. So let's talk a little bit about water's journey of how it gets from the Sierra Nevada's all the way to our taps. It's important that we know a little bit about the state water project, a statewide initiative that distributes water from the Sierra Nevada's through California. The melted snowpack from the Sierras takes an extensive journey from these mountains into the Feather River watershed and the Orbal Dam, down to the Sacramento River and through the San Joaquin Delta where it follows the South Bay Aqueduct right up to our front doors. In short, there are dozens of complex systems that are constantly hard at work to carry the water into the hands of our region's main supplier, the zone seven water agency. Finally, our city purchases water from zone seven and Pleasanton retailers supply this water to all of us. Today, two thirds of the state depends on the state water project, including Pleasanton. Changing climate impacts the amount of surface water that we get from the snowpack of the Sierra Mountains, a major source of water that zone seven obtains from the state water project. Based with fluctuations of the snowmelt, we must adapt. By utilizing water conservation strategies, we can remedy the lack of supply during seasons with less snowpack on the Sierra Mountains. We can't predict the future, so we know that we need to depend on our ability to adapt to highly variable climate changes in the future. Let's talk about the importance of conservation in relation to our community and our environment. When you think of Pleasanton, what comes to mind? Maybe you think of the great parks and schools, the beautiful hiking spots, the shops downtown, or the Meadowlark Dairy. Maybe you visited the museum on main or have gone paddle-boating at Chattel Cliffs. Believe it or not, none of the city's institutions from the Nature House to the Ken vs. Sport Spark will be able to exist without water. Constructing the buildings, making the ice cream, watering the lawns, all these actions require a tremendous amount of water. With less snowpack on the Sierra and thus less water supply on Pleasanton, the very core of our community depends on its citizens taking action. Pleasanton gets enough rainfall some years, but it is mainly a drought climate. To find out what our future might look like, we turn to the experts. We met with Olivia Sanwong, the Vice President of the Board of Directors for Zone 7, and she said it bluntly, if we're looking at the next 50 years, if we're left, we'll have half those years without drought. Clearly, when it comes to droughts in California, it is not a matter of if, but when. In other words, we might not be suffering a drought at this very moment, but that doesn't mean we're not approaching one. As you can see from this graph, drought periods are becoming longer and more severe. As we saw from 2014 and 2017, droughts can significantly impact our town. Shadow cliffs and Della Valley's water levels were at the lowest we've ever seen. Every other house had brown lawns. Though through that difficult time, it was incredible to see our entire community come together to reduce their water use. However, our efforts to conserve water shouldn't end when the drought does. As a matter of fact, even if we never suffer another drought, our water supply is not infinite. We spoke with another expert, Eric Cartwright, a retired water resource planning manager. We learned that we can minimize the impact of a drought by conserving water now. One example of this is storing water underground, which can be done for up to 10 to 15 years. This water will be essential during years of droughts or low rainfall. Saving water should not just be for yourself, but for your kids, grandkids, nieces, and nephews. For Pleasanton's future, saving water is an absolute must. Another reason for concern is how our water usage affects the environment around us. As dedicated citizens and inhabitants of this planet, it is our responsibility to protect the ecosystems which make our community thrive. One of the best parts of living in Pleasanton is that we have access to beautiful vista points. Sacramento River, Lake Del Val, and the San Francisco Bay are all just a short drive away. However, it seems we forget that each of these hotspots have ecosystems that are dependent on our water usage. For example, let's look at the Delta and our local arroyos, which has important wildlife estuaries. They are supplied by the Sacramento River and Del Val respectfully. When we run low on water, we start pumping from these estuaries. And if we over pump for our own use, we could potentially harm wildlife downstream, including endangered species, such as the Delta smeltfish, which is shown in the top left corner. When you take a shower, wash your hands, or run the dishwasher, do you ever wonder where that wastewater goes? Our treated wastewater ultimately ends up in the Bay. And although it does go through a highly regulated process, a study by the San Francisco Estuary Institute showed that on average Bay Area wastewater treatment plans released an estimated 7 million particles of microplastics per day to the San Francisco Bay, as their screens are not small enough to catch them. Microplastics absorb pollution and threaten wildlife that ingest them. Lowering our water consumption and wastewater production will help reduce these harmful microplastics in the Bay. Not only will conserving water help our community on a local level, but it will also reduce our impact on climate change. According to the California Energy Commission, as much as 19% of California's electricity consumption is for transporting and treating water and wastewater. So conserving water will reduce carbon dioxide emissions that are associated with energy production. As you can see, the simple act of conserving water can help by preparing us for future droughts, preserving our community, protecting our environment, and reducing our greenhouse gas emissions. Now that we know the importance of conserving water, let's talk about the tools we can use to look at a household's water usage and take action to conserve water. In Pleasanton, single family homes are responsible for 56% of the city's water usage, while commercial businesses only account for 12% of the city's usage. Conveniently, Pleasanton has a variety of resources you can choose from to help facilitate our water conservation on a day-to-day basis. The water footprint quiz we took at the beginning of this presentation is an important resource for us to understand and recognize how much water we use, where the majority of it comes from, and to explore several specific options for conservation, depending on our own water usage. Not only can we be more cognizant of our personal use, this quiz, which only takes about three to five minutes, can help us be mindful of water consumption wherever we are. Whether it be indoors in the shower and during laundry, outdoors in watering our garden or beyond the home, through driving, shopping, diet, and electricity. Once you are aware of what it takes, the most water in our households, it becomes simpler to implement strategies and simple actions to reduce our water usage in that respective avenue. For example, the multiple citizen app is one medium through which we can conserve water. This app allows residents to take action and report any place they see has a wastage of water. For example, a resident could spot a leaking pipe on Main Street and report it through the app. A city official will prioritize the report as soon as possible and make sure the water issue is resolved. This app can also be used to report other problems, like potholes or illegal dumping. To summarize, the multiple citizen app's supportive tool that you can use to conserve water and be a responsible citizen. Pleasanton residents can refer to the annual Pleasanton Water Quality Report on the city website to learn about the safety of a local community's water. The report not only includes the result of tests, but also provides information about where our water comes from and provides definitions to commonly used water terminology. Reading the annual report is a great way to stay informed about the status of Pleasanton's water quality. A useful resource that can assist you in regulating your water usage is the Smart Water Meter. Knowing how to read and understand a water meter will help you recognize water usage in your household. The layout of a water meter for those who don't have the time to fully examine it can be complex and a little off-putting. This is where the Smart Water Portal comes handy. By creating an account, you're able to understand whether you have a leak or not, sign up for notifications of suspected leaks and learn more tips on water conservation and report water waste, water leaks, and theft. You can also easily pay your water bills online through this portal. Lastly, there's a resource available for Pleasanton residents called the Controller Assistance Program to call a technician for a no-charge consultation and advice to help customers efficiently program their water irrigation controllers. The evaluation's take place over the phone or laptop and allow you to have a personalized walkthrough of your landscape with the technician. Information on how to sign up can be found on the City of Pleasanton website. As for other excess water use, ways to save money include running full and fewer loads of laundry and dishes, taking shorter showers, and replacing your high-maintenance lawns with a couple of drought tolerant landscaping. Looking at the amount of water we use in our everyday lives can be overwhelming. Where do you start? While everyone has different circumstances, there are always positive changes we can make when it comes to conserving water. By making changes that are tailored to your specific situation, water conservation will become a way of life rather than a tedious task, making it much easier to maintain. Regardless of where you start, just making sure to keep moving forward in your water conservation lifestyle is key. So here are some short-term changes you can make to conserve water. Conserving water at home is essential, not only because it cuts down on your water bill, but also because it helps preserve a vital resource. Using your smart water portal, Pleasanton residents will be able to save 14% of your water bill by finding and fixing leaks. These efforts are supported by the city of Pleasanton. In fact, free toilet die strips are available to ensure your toilet remains leak-free. Additionally, if you already have low-flow toilets, it is important to check that the flapper is working correctly. The flush valve seal, also known as the flapper, is rubber, so as it wears out, water begins to trickle out. With the tools that the city provides for our assistance, detecting and fixing costly leaks are quick and easy ways to begin conserving water. Another way to reduce your water footprint is to notice what you put into your body. While we often shop at the grocery store unaware of the large water footprint that comes with meat, the true amount of wasted water associated with popular food items is much greater than we think. When you break down how much water it takes to grow almonds or waste cattle that will eventually become food, it is obvious that there are many things we can cut back on. For some, going vegetarian or vegan may be the best option ethically and environmentally to do your part. However, subtle changes may be the best option and still are very beneficial ways on cutting back. When you simply reduce your red meat consumption to two to three times per week, you will reduce your water footprint by 35%. Furthermore, swapping out meat with fish, that percentage drops again, even lower to 55%. Fortunately, our diet makes up two thirds of our entire water footprint, which is why making these changes is so impactful. You can also conserve water by keeping track of our shopping habits. A majority of consumer goods require large amounts of water for production as well as distribution. We need to pause and think before we buy a product, which is a seemingly straightforward step. We need to really ask ourselves whether we need that new pair of shoes and upgraded phone or an extra pair of jeans. It's also worth noting that it takes nearly 1,800 gallons of water to produce the cotton in a single pair of jeans. Buying less and repurposing and reusing existing supplies is the most sustainable path. Recycling as much as possible and donating goods, which we no longer need, are also great ways to conserve water by regulating our shopping habits. One way to keep up to date about water and water conservation is to attend the city council's public hearings for water plans. You can also attend zone seven board meetings, which are open to the public, and you can sign up for their e-newsletters to get water updates delivered right to your inbox. Water conservation isn't just limited to adults and businesses. All age groups in our community can make an effort to conserve. Zone seven school programs offer several water science programs designed to help local teachers meet the California science standards while bringing environmental science to life. Although these have been paused during shelter in place, students can still take advantage of the resources and lesson plans available on their website. In addition, zone seven recommends looking at the Water Education Foundation, which is dedicated to resolving water resource problems or educational programs for adults. They regularly produce television shows regarding California's complex water systems. One of the most powerful tools Placentum citizens have is civic participation, which can be achieved through voting. Our civic duty is especially important when it comes to water conservation and your voices should be heard. While local and state elections are sometimes overlooked, their impact is as great, if not even more important than national elections. Voting for someone on the zone seven board has a significant impact on the management of your water. Just by understanding who was running and their qualifications, it's important to be aware of before you cast your ballot. By voting, you are taking big steps to help conserve water in an accessible way. To learn more about water important issues related to the upcoming election, Placentum Patch has a great overview of the different candidates running locally. We now know that there are many simple alterations we can make in our everyday lives to conserve water. It is also important to consider larger scale changes in order to have the greatest impact on protecting our water supply. Taking the first step towards making these changes will ultimately help make water conservation a way of life. These long-term changes include installing low flow faucets and shower heads, which save 2.5 gallons of water every five minutes. Other common utilities you can replace are old washing machines and dishwashers and changing to sustainable and energy store approved appliances. These are not only more efficient, but can save thousands of gallons of water each year. Another appliance that you might not realize uses large amounts of water is the toilet. High flow toilets can use five times as many gallons of water compared to their low flow counterparts. By replacing these simple household items, a family of four can save around 16,000 gallons of water per year. In terms of outdoor changes, switching from a traditional lawn to a more drought-tolerant landscape can drastically reduce the amount of water used for irrigation while still maintaining a pleasing aesthetic. Some examples of this include letting your grass dry and planting drought-resistant plants such as succulents or daffodils or adding less water-intensive grass like native grass lawns. It's also useful to follow the yearly calendar provided by the City of Pleasanton on their website for tips on when and how often to water your gardens. Incorporating drip irrigation and using recycled water are other impactful ways to conserve water and save on expensive irrigation costs. With the average Californian household consuming 200 gallons of water a day, water is a significant part of daily expenses. Conserving water is economically beneficial as it saves money on monthly water bills. Zone 7 offers freebies for customers who choose to buy certain water-efficient appliances such as high-efficiency washing machines and toilets. Make sure to look for the EPA water-sense label on washing machines to qualify for the Zone 7 rebates. Residents can save up to $75 on these washing machines and up to $1,000 on high-efficiency irrigation systems. Businesses can also save up to $5,500 on high-efficiency irrigation systems. Think of conserving water as an investment towards your future. It is also important to note that residents and businesses may be charged additional fees for excessive water use, especially during high-demand hours. To ensure that you are saving as much money as possible, make sure to use less water during high-demand times. Something that the City of Pleasanton is working on to save our water supply is the Purple Pipes Project, estimated to save 450 million gallons of potable water in Pleasanton by using recycled water from the Dublin-Zanhamone Services District to irrigate recreational areas like the Ken Mercer Sports Park. This project is the only the first of the necessary steps that we should take as a community to promote a water conscientious future. Businesses and homeowners have the capacity and responsibility to implement these important changes that have powerful impacts. Toilets and sinks and offices and residences are used by many people every day. By making the switch to water-efficient fixtures, you can save thousands of gallons every month. Additionally, as our economy transitions to renewable energy, businesses will acquire long-term benefits by investing in water conservation efforts as it cuts operating costs, improves company welfare, and helps build a better community. In conclusion, the diversity and accessibility of all Pleasanton community members to conserve water is immense. Our finite water resources are in need of effective conservation measures to ensure our businesses, residents, and towns can thrive. Thank you all so much for listening to our presentation today. If you have any questions, feel free to ask us now. Great job, team. And Claire, if you want to see anything to wrap us up, and we would love to get some questions and or feedback. Feel free to ask away and that's the end of our luxury part of the presentation, but any questions, any feedback, we would love to hear it. I was just telling Jill, I find this incredibly insightful and I've taken notes already for the MCC facility because I wasn't aware that you could actually work with the city on your outdoor sprinkler and get and actually work with them and figure out the best ways to run your landscaping, which we use an immense amount of water. We're five acres, so we use a lot of water. So that's something that we're looking at and make sure that we have EPA sense sprinkler heads out there too. Thank you for that. Yeah, that's great to hear. I see a couple of other guests with us. I was watching Daneesh in his room watching so intently and I'm not sure if he can hear us, but if he has any questions or a tea for Zaynab, do you guys have any questions that you want to ask or any comments for us? We're always looking to improve in every way we can. Hi, I really liked your presentation. Good job, everybody. I just graduated from high school actually and I'm trying to major in environmental sciences. So I really enjoyed this program, but I was wondering about your growth, go, oh my gosh, I can't speak, go green initiative. Like, do you mind telling us more about that? Sure, I will talk just a little bit about it from the organizational standpoint and I'd really like the interns to talk about how they interface with the go green initiative. I'm actually the founder and CEO of the go green initiative. I started it in 2002 and it's headquartered here in Pleasanton but we work with schools across the world. We have schools in all 50 US states and in 73 countries around the world who work with us and work to conserve energy and water and they look for sustainable food options and a number of different environmental topics that we cover. But I'm gonna invite any of the interns to talk about how they interface with the go green initiative. I would love to talk about it. So I'm on the same boat as you. I was a freshman in high school and I was noticing that our school only had recycle, I only had trash and didn't have recycling and composting and I was kind of a trash nerd, still kind of am. I was really interested in how, you know, as a student I could do something about it and I asked my biology teacher and she's like, you should really talk to Ms. Buck. She's like super into the stuff and she introduced me to local leaders of the 21st century which is what I'm gonna call the home base club for Amateur Valley, which is a part of go green initiative. And so through local leaders and through go green initiative, we've been doing several presentations. We're actually working on a documentary right now for the city of Pleasanton on water usage in the future. But yeah, that's just my story with go green initiative and I absolutely love it. Thanks for sharing, Sahana, anyone else? I'm looking at a porva and that is because she's in local leaders of the 21st century at Foothill. Sahana is at Amateur. What high school did you go to, you know? I went to, I don't actually live in Pleasanton, I just go to the mosque there. I live in Benville, so I go to Monavista High School or I went to Monavista High School. But yeah, when I was there towards the last semester, I was trying to work on some, I guess, green initiatives about trash and also like having your own food garden. But COVID came and everything kind of got disturbed so nothing really went through with that. But I was also wondering if you guys have more internship availabilities. I don't know if this is the place to ask it, but I'm sure some other people on this program would also like to know that as well. Well, that's a great question, actually. You know, we're kind of winding down this phase of the summer internships, but you know, we're thinking about, there's so many students, both high school and college, who, you know, will be local in the fall. You know, I don't know where you plan to attend school and if you'll actually be able to go there or if you're gonna be, you know, strictly online. But I'm looking at fundraising to support some additional internships even in the fall. And you know, sometimes we have unpaid internships as well, but you know, I'd love to pay as many as we can. But if you wanna send an email to me at JillBuck at gogreeninitiative.org, we can, I'll make sure that you know about any future opportunities. And I always think of Monavista, my kids ran cross-country and you guys have the most killer hill of any school where they ever host a cross-country meet. Monavista is a rough one. I don't know if you know which hill I'm talking about, but phew. I do not know. I didn't do cross-country, but I know we're surrounded by lots of hills and cows and all of that. So. And thank you for your email address as well. Sure, my pleasure. Well, thanks for your question. Any others or any other feedback? What else does your gogreeninitiative do here in Pleasanton? Do you guys just focus on water conservation or do you also have like a wildlife aspect or just wondering what more do you guys do? Or if you do. Yeah, absolutely. Aporva, you wanna speak to that a little bit about some of the other things that we've worked on before? Last year, we had an internship on energy. So we benchmarked all the energy usage for the city and for the Pleasanton school district. Yeah, and not only that, you guys, and you were one of the speakers, what did you do with that information? You took it to... To the city council and the school board. We presented them and we created an entire report for like all of the changes that they could implement. And they've started implementing some of them. So we are all about teen power over here, but we do other things. We talk about climate change. We talk about air quality, indoor air quality as well. There's a lot that we do. When I'm working with schools on the East Coast, a lot of them have lead in their water and things like that. So it really runs the gamut, Zana, but it really does. So if there's any environmental topic that you're interested in, there's a good chance that we work on it. One thing we're learning about in this internship especially is how there's all these different components of it, that they're also very closely linked together. Energy and water being very closely linked together and air quality. So it's interesting to really focus on one topic, each summer, but also have an understanding of, wow, these things really relate to each other and have an impact on each other. Yeah, do you wanna talk just a little bit more about that? Because you did a really cool presentation on the energy water nexus, just to explain to Zana what you mean. Yeah, definitely. So something we touched on very briefly in our presentation was the water energy nexus and how much energy goes into cleaning, transporting, distributing this water and wastewater. We use a lot of water, then it has to be processed before it can be pumped out to the bay. In the same way, water is used to create energy for hydropower, so we have these turbines spinning and it's a great source of renewable energy. And using renewable energy, of course, is gonna lower our carbon emissions, which help with the effects of climate change, help increase air quality if we're not burning fossil fuels and all that. So there's a lot of discussion, a lot of more research we'll be doing on that. So it's very exciting to look into. Mm-hmm. Thanks, Vivian. Anybody else wanna share? No problem. Any other questions or comments for us? All right, well, we wanna thank you guys so much for joining us. It's always great working with the MCC and we'll continue to do so. We thank you so much for supporting our interns and the work they're trying to do and as soon as this recording is available, I will send it to you so you can share it out and great job team, thank you so much and we'll end our presentation here. Y'all, thank you. Really good presentation, good job guys. Thank you, bye everybody. Bye.