 I would 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. Chairman galvin. Here. Vice chair anoni. Board member bennford. Here. Board member banister. Here. Board member dowd. Here. Board member grable. Here. Board member mollin. Here. Any statements of abstention by board members? Okay. We have no study session. The minutes for the September 6 meeting will be approved. We have a couple of staff, three staff briefings. First one on the biosolids update. Director hornstein. This is a high level update to share with the board some opportunities and challenges in front of us with our biosolids program. We aren't bringing a recommendation or asking for decisions of course and puts always welcome but the intent is really to just start the conversations as our long term planning starts to get underway on where we go with this program. Thanks. Including keeping doing what we're doing which is always a default option and we have a great program so I'm not suggesting otherwise. Good afternoon chairman galvin and members of the board. My name is Tasha right. I'm the energy and sustainability coordinator for Santa Rosa water and I'm here today to present to you a biosolids update. I'd like to acknowledge the staff that are here for support and Mike Prince who's walking in the door now and Zach K are here to assist with any questions at the end of the presentation as well. So just an overview here. I'm going to talk about our current biosolids operation. Some current challenges that we're facing and some that will be coming up in the future but then I also want to follow up with some great potential opportunities that we have. So just a quick overview. This is a picture of our biosolids value chain. We receive waste at the treatment plant from our industrial and residential customers. We start out with a primary and secondary clarification process where solids are separated through sedimentation and then next it goes through an activated sludge clarification process where solids are further separated using microorganisms. And then they go into the anaerobic digestion process where the primary and secondary clarification and high strength waste products are anaerotically digested. And then we go into the bio-press where all the rest of the water is removed using polymer. So here's a chart from our biosolids management system performance report. This is from 2017 and this basically gives you a breakdown of how we dispose of all of our biosolids. So I want to bring to your attention that as you can see by this chart we take a very long time to look at what we dispose of all of our microorganisms. But two of the most important ones I want to point out is one because it creates a weather-independent operation. So we apply during the dry season and we compost and store during the wet season. So land application typically happens from May through October and then we store the compost from November through October. So this is one of the reasons that we do this. So the second reason that's very important with our diversified approach is this decreases our risks in case one or another disposal option is temporarily unavailable. So according to our BMS performance report in 2017 the Laguna treatment plant produced about 30,000 wet fish lay reused. So the breakdown of the distribution as you see here in the chart is as follows. We did 28% of composting and that produces a class A product where pathogens must be reduced to virtually non-detect levels and the material must also comply with strict standards regarding materials orders and vector attraction reduction. So 34% was land applied or stored for later land application and this is a class B product. So class B biosolids are treated but they contain higher levels of detectable pathogens than the class A biosolids and they are limited to where they can be applied. So in terms of the nutritional value though, class B and class A biosolids are used to produce nutrients and organic matter. So the next thing we do with a small portion of our biosolids is we send it to Fairfield Sassoon and they create a class A exceptional quality liquid bio fertilizer product called LISTAC. So the class A is used to describe a biosolids product that's not only meat but for metals and vector attraction reduction requirements. And then last we have landfill and we tend to take as little to landfill as possible. Last year we took 6%. This goes to redwood landfill and they use it for alternative daily cover or direct burial. So some of our current challenges with our land application rates, we have South County and North County and in South County the land application rates can actually fluctuate every so often based on the request from our farmers. So for example, we were applying at about 20 wet tons per acre and we were requested to drop down to between 10 and 12 wet tons in order to improve quality of the farmer's crops. And this has affected about our land application area. So moving on to North County we have lost the ability to apply on some of our city-owned farms and that's due to the Endangered Species Act and the California Tiger Cell Mender Habitat that we have in the area. So again that limits us to how and where we can apply. So moving on to our compost facility, that facility is aging and we will need some capital improvement projects in the next few years. For the sake of this presentation I have broken that down over the next five years. Some of the things we're looking at is roof, a new roof and a ventilation system as well as walking floor and some paving around the facility. And then finally with landfill and this is there's going to be some changes and I'm going to get into that a little bit more later on in our presentation. But it will require that we start diverting from landfill. So there's going to be some constraints there. So this next slide is our biosolids estimated annual cost and this is all based upon 2017. So broken it down to landfill compost, lipstick and land application. You'll see the yearly cost there then the wet tons that were sent to each one of those and then it's broken down to the cost per wet ton. And this again is from our biosolids management all of our operations. So you'll see that very last total total BMS. That's what all of our operations cost in the year that's the total of the wet tons we produced and then it's broken down to about $95 per wet ton. So this slide shows that five-year comparison I was mentioning. So I put here on the very top line is our total biosolids operations program and then what you'll see is I've included our CIP costs which I mentioned for the roof ventilation, walking floor and paving and then that is we've applied a CPI multiplier so that you'll see each year those costs even though they were averaged out over the five years there's a little bit of an increasing cost so you have a grand total over five years of about $15.5 million. So now we're looking at those next two lines and those are additional operating opportunities for disposal. If we were to consider taking all 100% of our biosolids to LISTEC over a five-year period we would expect to see it at about $14.6 million. Alternatively if we were to go with 100% disposal with CineGro we would look at about $7.6 million. So then the next option that we could consider is a 50-50 and that total between the two doing LISTEC and CineGro that would bring us just over $11 million. So I would like to point out that this is based upon our current and projected costs in this current market. Once the regulatory requirements come into place this could really change things because we would be competing against other biosolids producers for the various disposal options that are out there and we would expect that with all these others competing in the market that's going to raise our prices. So this would likely make our current diversified disposal options look much more lucrative and it also may mean that this is an opportune time to lock in contracts for any other options that we may want to consider. So future challenges. So this brings us to primarily the regulatory requirements. So there is a bill SB605 short-lived climate pollutants in 2014 and it requires the development of a short-lived climate pollutant reduction strategy to achieve statewide GHG reduction targets and this is being done by the Air Resources Board. But out of this SB605 implementation is being done through SB1383 and this is the bill that will directly impact biosolids producers for disposal. SB2083 requires 50% diversion of organics from landfills by 2020 relative to 2014 levels and 75% diversion of organics by 2025. What I will tell you is that right now we already know there's work being done to divert completely from landfill and it will likely happen sooner by 2020. So this legislation has the potential to greatly increase the cost of all of our disposal options because again there's going to be a lot of agencies that are going to be looking for disposal options in the market and we're going to be competing with them. To send to landfill in Santa Rosa we'll have to compete with the other agencies if we decide to outsource any of our disposal options. So this is one of the AB 32 and from 2006 the Global Warming Solutions Act many of these new regulations are all based upon the continued requirements that came out of AB 32. I have one more on there and the very last point here is upcoming possible regulatory requirements and that's what we're going to do. So in North County the Lugano is impaired by nutrients and we're pretty certain of the regulatory requirements that may be imposed for land application in the future. We don't know exactly what that looks like but we anticipate that something will be coming about. We currently apply at an agronomic rate so we believe that all the plants are using up the nutrients from the soil. So now we have future opportunities and we have some good news. Not to be saddened by all the other things coming down the road here. You may recall that deputy director Emma Walton previously gave you a presentation on the organic materials processing facility. So we believe that this would provide us with a great opportunity for our biosolids to be able to provide us with a great opportunity. Sonoma County Waste Management Agency released an RFP for organic materials processing services in 2017 and then that was followed up by San Orozo releasing an RFP for a location of the organics processing facility. Sonoma County Waste Management Agency released an RFP for a facility owned site north of the Laguna treatment plant is being considered for the location of that facility. So what does that mean exactly for us? It looks like it could be some great potential opportunities. Partnership opportunities and one option that is being considered is the expansion from just one facility to another facility. So one of the things that makes this even bigger idea is that it could become a regional facility and take in biosolids from other biosolids producers. And with this option of this new facility, disposal of our biosolids could be done at a competitive price that they would work with us on and it would also mean that we would be able to provide a variety of solutions to these opportunities. Bay Area Biosolids Coalition is currently developing concepts for a regional facility. So they're looking at sites all over the Bay Area and surrounding and they're looking at various types of technology as well. Another consideration for us to explore would be that. We're also looking at solutions with someone like LISTEC doing the LISTEC process or with CINEGROW. So next steps. Staff would like you to consider that we continue with discussions with renewable Sonoma as this seems to be great opportunity right here in our community. We will continue to work with them and to discuss our options and we'll bring those options back to you. So we'll take a look at the other options. We'll take a little pan out. Don't materialize for any reason. We would come back to you a second time for direction and see if you would consider an RFP to look further into other options. So now time for some questions and I have some great experts in the room. So thank you very much. We're going to talk about the cost per wet ton of each of the various ways we have now of disposing of our biosolids. It's always been my understanding since I've been on this board at the water department has always looked to maintain various ways by which we can dispose of our biosolids not ever knowing what is going to happen. So the future ends up in regulations that might stop from doing one or two of these things. I've always been supportive of that program. The one thing that jumps off the page is the compost cost is 220 almost 224 dollars a ton. I presume that if we are able to negotiate a reasonable contract with a reasonable compost or whatever it was it's now called that that would directly reduce the amount of money that we're having to pay because there would be an offset to it and some kind of revenue coming from it. And I suspect that's the road we're going and it's probably premature to talk too much about it because you haven't gotten into the negotiations yet to talk about the cost of compost. Is that the strategy that we're looking at and so that we can balance the cost of the compost? I just would add a bit. The unit cost for compost does incorporate capital that's needed. That said the capital will have a life well beyond a year or five but just to be absolutely clear that that unit cost for compost is higher than it would look if we looked over a 20 year period. Another thing I just wanted to note and Director Prince and I have talked about potentially there would be ways to increase the throughput of our existing compost operation that would bring the unit cost down right by increasing the capacity denominator of dollars per ton. That said, directly answer your question. Yes, it does seem that renewable Sonoma has expanded their interest beyond just municipal organics and commercial organics and looking at biosolids well beyond at least in conceptual discussion so far what they had proposed initially through the process. At this point we don't really know how that's going to play out. It's a very big complicated project but we did want to inform the Board of this information so you appreciate the work we're doing with renewable Sonoma to evaluate is there an opportunity for the city, for Santa Rosa water as that moves forward. And back in history at one time one of the proposals that came to the Board of Public Utilities was to actually construct a bagging operation of our own that we would then commercially sell the compost. The Board and City Council at that time supported the Board's decision not to get into private enterprise but maintain the facilities and find possible solutions like you are now looking at to handle the marketing and all the other things that will go along with what they do with the compost. But it's still an option out there but it's not one that I necessarily really support do what we do well and let somebody else do what they do well it would be my response but I appreciate that the water department is looking at these things and finding ways to make our important biosolids program more cost effective. And again if I can I'd like to add to that reiterate what you said about the capital improvement costs that are bunched in there so we did cram them all into five years we could expand it to 10 and that number comes down quite significantly and if you pull it out it's actually just over $100 and give us like 117. So it kind of gives you an idea of how that can come down a little bit and if we extend it out longer over the life of our needs as well. Thank you I have several questions I'm trying to understand the cost and I'm still looking at this slide right here in front these are the $2.9 million total cost for all the options is the city cost. So of that cost is there any other cost sharing that we have with our partners in these scenarios? The yes it's a regional wastewater treatment plan if those are the partners you're referring to the city pays approximately 75% of the cost to run the sub-regional system and this amount of biosolids goes into that and is proportioned out based on flow coming into the treatment plan. I guess I didn't make myself clear when I was referring to partners I'm referring to like LISTEC and some of the other companies that we deal with under these scenarios are they a product that gets developed into something else and are those receivers sharing in any of these costs? I believe the only place now that occurs is our compost operation I don't know is the revenue baked into the cost structure here? No we do get revenue from it though. When we sell it and you know I think it certainly would not be a casual decision for the city to look at sending our biosolids to a regional program and lose the ownership of our current compost operation the high quality that's produced in all the other benefits we have a good set of customers that really like the material and issues locally we just felt compelled to share what the costs are we're looking at alternatives and the reason I raised a cost sharing is we're just in the process of developing an ag rate for our recycle water where in the past we gave it away so it is now over time evolved into a commodity and we're trying to recover some of our cost and reduce the impact it has on rate payers so that's the reason I raised that particular issue moving on there was a comment about if we I'm not quite sure how you phrased it but if we get tough in negotiations with some of these partners and they throw up their hands and say we're going to go somewhere else and get the product to do what we do and we get left literally holding the bag are those other utilities that are developing the same products do they give it to them or do they cost share with them that would be something of interest to me I'm guessing you're kind of referring to Liztech for instance they have their product they are and I want to make sure that I answer your question correctly they are actually increasing their production because the demand is there and they have the ability to grow like I want to say 200,000 wet tons and they're about think at 40-50% capacity so they've only been online for a couple of years and the demand is growing for the fertilizer and they also have the ability that they're looking at additional technology as well biochar list to grow another product to put into the anaerobic to make them produce better so there are other opportunities as well and so my question is from our impact is whether those other opportunities if they're giving their product to Liztech or if they are selling it to them so at this point they're charging us to take it and then they're selling their product for a profit they are again they're much newer that one thing that they have said to us is that as they're the demand for their products grow that they will do some cost sharing and provide back some of that revenue to the customers in time that's the intent of their long term business model is that they would then kick back to their suppliers we don't know what that looks like though that's what they've said sure I only have two other questions one is the comment about SP 1383 and the diversion requirement of 50% and then it moves up to 100 if is our measure or a bar going to be the citywide reduction or is it 50% reduction just what comes out of the treatment plan so this will be the way it will impact us this is actually a very big bill and it's got a lot of different things in it but where it impact us with our biosolid specifically is this diversion and it's actually it's the landfill that this is being imposed on and so we are therefore being impacted by it because we won't be able to take to landfill neither will any of the other producers so it's being imposed on them but we as a byproduct are being having to deal with this but if we're only diverting like on your pie chart only 6% it would seem we're already well into compliance but we have to be watchful I understand that so we will go down to zero because it won't be a disposal option anymore but the concern is how will that will impact our other disposal options if we were to go out in the market and get rid of our stuff so the landfill has the ability to decide what organic ways they will accept to meet the mandate that's now on them to drive down based on the baseline biosolids is never a favorite material for landfills it has water produces leachate it's hard to manage so the expectation we're already seeing it is no we don't want biosolids it's just an easier way for them to get down to their targets my final question is the issue of the constructing a facility north of the current treatment plant site on city owned land would it be our intent to partner or have we had discussions with the waste management agency since they're trying to do the same thing and have been for 10 years without success the idea is that we would all be collaborating together so that would include cost sharing because they have a bunch of money sitting in their pocket to build this exact facility larger scale and I would hope that if we're going to build something that would meet their needs and our needs collaboratively that there would be some cost sharing absolutely partnership any other board member questions or member banister on the five year cost comparison there was a previous explanation of what list stack is but I never saw one or heard one about what sinagro is so sinagro is a company that would take our land our biosolids and do land application with it so it would be kind of an out of sight out of mind thing that would apply in various spots so land application according to the previous slide was the cheapest and nothing and the sinagro estimate is like 10% more than that why isn't that being discussed more or I mean as maybe the primary disposal often so our land application is $42 and $14 their land application is showing at about $46.65 so it just depends on what we'd like to do with our biosolids the cost differential of our cost in theirs just deals with we essentially manage currently the land application process that may be a profit built in for sinagro if that's what you're asking that differential I guess more I'm asking the previous slide indicates the cost, compost, landfill LISTEC all higher than land application and if we're losing some of the lands that we would be applying the land application on but we have somebody else that we'll do it for us and that's the most cost effective solution why are we talking so much about the other options and the capital improvements and the luck so the wastewater industry for the last 2-3 decades have struggled with this issue where on one hand the most cost effective and arguably the best place to put this nutrient rich organic material is directly on the land and land application it has a lot of NIMBY and other issues associated with it part of it is how it looks if you're familiar with a look of biosolids it looks like it came out of a wastewater treatment plant maybe unprocessed even and a benefit of composting is you're fundamentally changing the look and nature of the material it's far more acceptable to the public and other and you're giving it extra treatment to reach class A and it has a reduction in pathogens so I'd say because of all these issues it's why you heard Board Member Dowd speak to and Tasha the diversification concept and that's many agencies over the years have held that as a principle of their biosolids there are a lot of programs because there are changing regulations changing expectations from customers and you can get county bans for a while in California county after county mostly in southern California where the big population is we're banning and then lawsuits and all kinds of stuff going on and it really just does deal with this national challenge of what to do with this residual diversity that's where I really appreciate the attention to diversification because although something might be more cost effective than another anticipating the rapid innovation and policy changes that are probably going to happen in the next decade it would really benefit us to continue that diversified approach despite the cost and obviously there's a lot of opportunity coming our way with the compost facility and all these things as well but in a holistic sort of analysis I think looking at the ways that biosolids is now being sort of put into the equation for land management and groundwater recharge and healthy soils, carbon capture all these things that are not only being legislated but also good for recharging our resources and mitigating climate change so I think from a policy perspective from a cost perspective long term, which is our purview here it inspires confidence in me to see that diversification is really being valued and continued so thank you Any other board member questions or comments? Board Member Batenford? Hi, thank you I'm going to ask kind of more of a general process question for Ben and for staff that obviously BPU we had an ad hoc to kind of consider the first phase of what might a facility look like for the city of Santa Rosa to go on city property we see other options and other diversion options before us what are our next steps as a city and how are we going to evaluate what the options are how are we going to look at the cost differentials between those options and how long are we going to have to be able to make decisions about that? Our thought is that because it's really in front of us now the regional organic processing facility and the opportunity for the city to be able to make decisions about the selection process we've gone through where we will soon be at the point where we'll reconvene the ad hoc BPU committee that we worked on the selection process and go through this and then be bringing that to the board and I would say we probably want to remain to provide the board with some kind of foundational understanding of these issues as we start to from a process standpoint zero in with renewable sonoma and try and understand and you know there'll be board decisions on okay now we have a good picture of renewable sonoma and they want all our biosolids do we really want to send it all to one location we want to maintain diversification do we want an RFP to understand competing opportunities how do we think about our existing operation of composting we've invested in facilities we have well skilled and trained staff that do a great job there so there's going to be a lot of issues for us to talk about with the ad hoc in the full board as this moves forward assuming that there's really something real in this renewable sonoma and they will be moving forward there's quite a lot I'm sure as many of you know complexities to hurt all the cats in the JPA in the same direction that will have a cost increase that has to be passed on to the ratepayers I'm talking about the garbage side but it will to some extent determine the viability of their overall project any other questions or comments very good thank you for the report item 5.2 is the water supply update deputy director Burke welcome good afternoon chairman galvin members of the board it's been a while since I've been here and given a water supply update and we are actually in a new water system you may or may not know but there is a water year and it starts October 1st and it runs through September 30th and so we've just started a new water year with having a few new board members since I've been here giving a water supply update thought I'd just give a little bit of overview of the water agency's Russian river system just so that everyone's kind of on the same page and understanding some of the numbers so you may be aware the city of Santa Rosa purchases roughly 90 to 95% of our water supply from the Sonoma County water agency depending upon demands we supplement that with some groundwater that we have two wells in the city as well as some minimal recycle water and then we're always very focused on water use sufficiency to keep our demand down the water agency has the right to divert store release water in the Russian river system they operate they co-own and operate two different dams one at Lake Comandesino and one at Lake Sonoma and that water is affected by and their ability to operate that system is actually affected by water that comes from the Eel River watershed that is stored behind Lake Pillsbury and goes through PG&E's Potter Valley project so when we're looking at it water from Lake Pillsbury and that particular reservoir is managed by PG&E they release water they divert water through the Potter Valley project and then that becomes basically the headwaters of the east fork of the Russian river which then flows down into Lake Mendocino Lake Mendocino is a much smaller reservoir than Lake Sonoma basically Lake Mendocino is considered a fill and dump reservoir and that it provides basically one year of water supply whereas Lake Sonoma typically has between three to four years of water supply and Lake Sonoma is where our main supply of water comes from as I mentioned it's co-operated between the Sonoma County water agency and the Army Corps of Engineers the Army Corps operates it during the winter months for flood protection purposes and then depending upon the levels in the lake sometimes it's turned over sometimes it's not it really depends but typically the Army Corps is operating it in the winter months and the water agency is operating it in more like the spring summer fall months for water supply purposes there are a number of constraints and conditions on this particular system in particular there are three endangered fish species in the Russian river and those are because of those fish species the water agency actually has a biological opinion that they're implementing that has a number of requirements on releases that they can make from both Lake Mendocino and Lake Sonoma it affects the flows in the upper lower Russian river as well as on Dry Creek so a little bit of background of information I'm happy to answer any questions if I went a little too fast on that but just wanted to kind of give that big picture overview so now we'll talk about where we are currently with our supply so in Lake Mendocino you'll see there's a number of lines up on this graph in front of you and this is a graph that we gather from Sonoma County water agency they produce it and you'll see a couple things on this graph so first there's that dotted line and that is actually the difference between the water supply pool and the flood pool so it grows the water supply pool grows during the summer months so they're actually able to store more water because it's less likely that we'll have rain and then you'll see that it'll start dropping down in the fall and so you'll see right now we're starting on that downward curve and then eventually it will get to just below 2,000 acre feet and change that can be stored behind there that is the rule curve that is federally mandated and the Army Corp engineer operates by and so when they are actually over that rule curve it does mandate the Army Corp to release water that has been problematic in particular for Lake Mendocino in past years in particular in 2013 we had a lot of water in the winter months and they had about 20,000 acre feet above the flood pool there were 20,000 acre feet into the flood pool and they had to release all that water and then rain completely stopped and we never sort of recovered from that and so that's been a big issue and the water agency has been working with a number of agencies to really look at real time ways that they can manage the flood pool and really look at different ways that they can operate the reservoir in relation to flood management so that's that gray dotted line on there and then you'll see an orange dotted line I think that's orange and that's the target water supply storage curve and that is the curve that the water agency uses to store that they can get sort of maximum storage and operate the reservoir efficiently and so that's a curve that they've developed and that's really what they try to mimic to the best of their ability allows them to keep as much water supply as possible and release it when needed and then currently right now the black line is the start of this water year so you'll see there's the water year that black line is just a little bit into October and now it's looking really good for Lake Mendocino we're at 58,254 acre feet which is 97.3% of the water supply storage curve and the water agency is making releases we are currently in a dry year right now so that's the index and that different hydrologic index whether it's a normal year, a dry year or a very dry year determines how much water they have to release not only to meet demands but also for flow in the river and there's three different requirements and the upper Russian river versus the lower Russian river versus dry creek and so right now we are in a dry year and the water agency is required to maintain 75 cubic feet per second in the upper Russian river 85 cubic feet per second in the lower Russian river and 25 cubic feet per second in the dry creek and they are making releases from Lake Mendocino at 128 cubic feet per second to ensure that they're meeting those requirements in the upper and lower river the other thing we do pay attention to which we don't have a graph for is the amount of water that's in Lake Pillsbury so the currently the way the water agencies water rights work is cumulative inflow determines the type of year that we have that restarts every October first and so they're paying attention to the cumulative inflow into Lake Pillsbury because that used to have a much greater effect on the amount of water that was diverted through the Potter Valley project into Lake Mendocino Potter Valley project I think has been in place since about 1906 or 08 and over the years even most recently the amount of water that goes through the Potter Valley project is significantly less it's about a third of what it used to be historically so though we pay attention still to Lake Pillsbury because it's required in the water agencies water rights to sort of measure and determines the hydrologic index it is not a good indicator anymore so one of the things the water agency is looking at with the biological opinion is to sort of change that index and really base it on Lake Mendocino because there can be years when good snowpack up in Lake Pillsbury and we have a really large cumulative inflow and we're in a normal year whereas if you looked at the state of Lake Mendocino it would probably want us to be in like a dry or very dry here so it is a concern and something the water agency looks at because that does have an effect on releases we do pay attention also to Pillsbury so currently right now Lake Pillsbury has 39,066 acre feet which is 52.1% of the water supply pool capacity and currently the diversion that's occurring through Potter Valley project is 45 cubic feet per second moving on to Lake Sonoma Lake Sonoma as I mentioned is the majority of the water supply for Santa Rosa as well as the other contractors and Lake Sonoma looks pretty decent again you'll see there's the flood pool line which is that gray line beneath that is the water supply pool and then you'll see the black line is the current water year that started this year and right now we're at 192,303 acre feet which is 78.5% of the water supply pool and the water agency is making releases for agricultural needs as well as for water demands but is well in excess of the requirement for 25 cubic feet per second for a dry year and dry creek so I know I just threw a lot of information at you and I'm happy to answer any questions you have general synopsis as we're looking pretty good right now we can use rain as always and so hopefully that'll continue and we'll continue to follow the water supply storage throughout the year so I'll have any answer any questions any board member questions, board member Dowd recently I read an article in the west democrat about the potential for raising the dam Coyote Valley Dam Coyote Valley Dam for Lake Mendocino and I think in that article I don't remember in mentioning how much it would increase the capacity but I do remember reading that it was going to take 15 to 20 years maybe to get the approval to do it and when you look at the way Sonoma and Northern Marin County gets their water supply raising Lake Mendocino to increase its capacity would directly positively impact Yuccaia and the Culverdale and Heelsburg but I think if that was sized appropriately it also could increase our water supply distribution so that we could increase the capacity of Central Sonoma County and Northern Marin and my point about that is I would hope that Santa Rosa Water Department will continue to look and advocate for something like that being done and our rate payers would share in a reasonable amount for so doing based on what they get out of it and how they get back back I do know that when Coyote Valley Dam and Lake Mendocino was envisioned it was bigger than what they actually built and so there was always sort of a second phase that was supposed to happen with the dam the majority of the storage and water supply behind Lake Mendocino is actually with Sonoma County water district in that there's a lot of importance for cities like Ukiah and Culverdale and Heelsburg as well as the Potter Valley irrigation district and others that take water off of the up of the Russian River and they have been actively pursuing trying to see if that second phase or some type of raising of Coyote Valley Dam could occur but we will continue to follow this and I think it's a great opportunity to appreciate the members from the board of seeing how that could potentially affect the water supply for our city as well Board Member Benford Thank you for your report my question kind of dovetails a little bit with Board Member Dowd's with the kind of unknowns happening with the Potter Valley project the conversations that are happening around the auction and kind of the future of the world might look like up north So the answer is yes in that we are following it very closely we're paying attention we are trying our best to work with Sonoma County water agency as well as others this is vitally important to the region that some kind of solution occur for the Potter Valley project and it's also a little difficult in that it is a private facility that's owned by PG&E and it's a little hard to get information we have been participating and paying attention to different technical working groups that are working on the re-licensing I was actually just on a webinar call the other day just kind of hearing where they are and the status and everything that I understand is PG&E is continuing down the re-licensing and that the Sonoma County water agency and their technical staff are very involved and are actually leaving a couple technical working groups that have been formed under Representative Huffman is actually formed in ad hoc to really look at solutions for Potter Valley project and so there's this ad hoc committee which we are not a part of specifically and the contractors to try to have a seat but we don't have one but the water agency and the board of supervisors and board of directors of the water agency are there as well as water agency staff so we're continuing to get information from that perspective and there's been continuous updates at the water advisory committee and there is also a desire to sort of look at potentially an ad hoc or some type of group to really make sure that we have more input, more information and closely following what is happening with the Potter Valley project. I think Dr. Hornstein mentioned maybe the last BPU update BPU meeting that there is a group that is interested the Mendocino County inland water and power that has is interested in potentially and they've indicated their intent and may have already submitted sort of their intent to potentially participate in the BPU meeting. I'm going to take quite some time to know if the option they're anticipating I think somewhere in the neighborhood of 18 months to two years before they would potentially even come to agreement and that may even be just narrowing it down to one or two interests depending upon if they have a lot of interest but a lot of that gets into very private discussions that it's going to be I think a little bit hard trying to keep as up to speed on that as we can. Board Member Mullen. I support the previous comments from the board members about looking at the dam as a possibility to extend water supply because of a few years back the water agency withdrew their application to increase diversion in the river to meet the growing demand not just for residential but for industrial and business uses as well and there's this battle I think it's still going on between the other pending permits for water allocations out of the river with ag and with some other municipalities and so forth and so it would seem to me if we help move things along towards exploring increasing the capacity of an existing facility by raising the dam that that's a win-win for everyone to be able to meet this increasing demand and maybe bring some peace to all these parties that are trying to dip their straw in the river so I support the city helping in that effort to try to advocate for that and try to get some of the other partners who have a stake in this to advocate for that as well because I think it's a win-win for all of us thank you for that comment again we'll bring that back we'll definitely look at that one thing I do want to mention you are correct the water agency did have a pending application for a water rate for an additional 26,000 acre feet currently under all their four water rate permits they have the ability to divert up to 75,000 acre feet per year and I will say with all of the water use efficiency measures and implementation that has been occurring the good news is we're seeing demands are significantly less than were anticipated before so I think with their sort of rescinding the 26,000 acre feet application it wasn't as much of a huge concern as it had been in the previous years because we have seen those demands come down that said there is still no need for additional water rights in the future and so continuing to work with them look at other opportunities look at other water supply solutions is key and I think Coyote Valley Dam is one of those things that needs to be part of that mix very good thank you for the report as we'll move on now to the recycled water supply update Deputy Director Prins good afternoon Chair Galvin members of the board I'm going back one slide to Jennifer's last slide and put the recycled water storage picture in the perspective the Laguna Tree and Plant produces about 7 billion gallons of water a year on average recycled water different flavor of water that is depicted on the graphs in front of you but to put that into context that's about 11,000 acre feet of water so if I were to show the recycled water storage trends on this scale it would be basically a line at the bottom of this chart just to put the next chart into perspective so this is a completely different scale on the left hand side this is in terms of millions of gallons and I think some of the board members are already familiar with this chart but I'm going to start with the square one for the benefit of the newer board members this scale the horizontal scale on this chart is the same as the prior charts that Jennifer Burke just showed water year it's basically the water year happy new water year by the way Jennifer is very much on target with this being a new water year and I'll go into how that plays out here but the plant the Laguna Tree and Plant produces about 7 billion gallons of water a year Santa Rosa owns and operates several large recycle water storage ponds which in aggregate volume equals about 20% of our annual production and that 20% figure being roughly 1.4 billion gallons that's our maximum storage capacity at the top of this chart so that's the sum total of all of the ponds volume that we store recycle water in so we balance we do a balance on that water just operationally every year because we have the plant producing water and then we have the geysers projects taking on over the course of the year two thirds of the water that we produce so there's a difference there is about a third of our water we store water during the winter months we typically do not discharge water we're typically a 100% reuse system in the winter months basically October up to about May we have the ability to discharge but we often don't and we store water that exceeds the demand of the geysers system during that time frame and so what you're seeing on these this chart in front of you are some squiggly lines which represent a number of aspects of our storage system we try to operate our storage curve within an upper limit an upper operating limit of an operational envelope which is looks like a brown line I think it's orange on my screen but and then we have a lower limit which is the lower limit of what we try to stay within there are a pair of lines one is this lower one and the one above that is the maximum storage in any given week or I think it's actually daily so that shows over the course of in the years 2004 to 2018 what the minima and maxima have been at any given time so that is the best way to show you the end result of all of our water storage trends without having a complete mix of spaghetti noodles on the chart so to speak it's just too much information so a little while back we switched to just showing the minima and maxima the black line the heavy bold black line is last water years which just wrapped up at the end of September and so we've just started over here on the left hand side our current water year so if you look at the level there at the left hand axis it's the same as the right hand axis it's just time wrapping around over the course of the water year so we are over here in our current storage trends I want to talk a little bit about some of the anomalies of that storage year but I want to put it in the context of the prior year which is the 2016-17 year which was a big year we actually did discharge quite a bit of water in that year unlike this past water year we discharged a little over 1.2 billion gallons of water that year and to put that into context the amount that we discharged was equal to in some years the same amount that we would store the maximum storage so that was a big year the discharge events occurred around this time frame January through March and that's represented by these sawtooth pattern on the chart there similar to some of the discharge trends that were shown on Jennifer's chart that showed the sawtooth pattern when the discharges from the reservoirs had to occur on the other end of the water supply picture but nonetheless moving forward last year the fires occurred in the beginning of October we we did notice a reduction in the production from the plant due to the loss and flow to the plant it was minor we did not know what effect that would have on our ability to meet the geysers contract obligations so we did declare a force mature as a result of that we did not experience a lot of rain at the beginning of that water year and we needed to ramp up geysers production which started around February and that's why the water storage trends started to come down it was dry year and we were realizing that the force was only going to apply to the potential effect on our flow which was relatively small prior to that time we had been delivering below geysers contract deliveries but the storage curve was in I guess what you could say at the normal range because we weren't seeing much rain at the time and geysers flow were reduced I should point out that there is a gray a faint gray line in the background that's covered up by a portion of the black line and the other trend as well and that's the average of all of the years we produced the maxima and minimum limits that I mentioned earlier so that's sort of a middle of the road target that we shoot for just on average for our storage trends nonetheless getting back to this last water year we had a decline in storage here between February and March when the geysers flow rate was ramped up to normal flow rates and then the effect of precipitation and our normal geysers contract delivery throughout the year produced a storage trend that you can see there where the storage levels did climb and they peaked out in just over 1.2 billion gallons so to do a little reality check on that that's the effect of flow produced by the plant minus flow going to Calpine there was no discharge that year so we basically had a supply from the plant the geysers and the difference given that there was no discharge and no irrigation occurring between that time frame essentially end of October middle of October and May very little irrigation around the time the storage would have peaked so no discharge we peaked out a little over 1.2 billion gallons and in the summer supply from the plant is exceeded by demand by geysers and our irrigation customer base which is why the storage trend declines in the summer months so it's a fairly well balanced system in large part because of our storage bonds that we operate the 1.4 billion gallons and then the geysers demand throughout the course of the year now I want to talk about an anomaly on the right hand side of the chart which is started out as our normal annual geysers shut down for maintenance we do a lot of preventive maintenance sometimes corrective maintenance but it's usually preventative system checks there's some pre-sophisticated equipments and large horsepower motors and some clean up work that we do similar to what we actually do in our compost facility different type of work but we have an annual shutdown that usually lasts about two weeks so the system is offline for two weeks during the system shutdown this year we detected a pressure loss in the pipeline between two pump stations up on Pine Flat Road and I think this was discussed in a director's report in a prior BPU meeting the effect of that in total was our shutdown lasted about twice the normal length of time it's normally about two weeks it turned out to be about a month and I'll go through a timeline with you that is our storage trend started to climb despite the irrigation demand that was occurring at that time and the geysers went online in September and the storage curve started to come down we had actually increased to the extent that we could our irrigation during that timeframe to help correct the curve as well but so again to go back to where I was earlier on the left-hand side the fresh data shows that we're just under 500 million gallons of storage and we have a pretty simplistic spreadsheet model that we use to project storage based on flow and precipitation assumptions and so we predict that we'll be in the vicinity of 300 million gallons roughly around the beginning of November that subject to change depending on precipitation things like that but that's where we are right now and where we think we'll be in November so to get into a little bit more about the geysers pipeline leak we did actually have discovered that an expansion joint on Pine Flat Road was leaking during the shutdown detected a pressure loss found some saturations in soil adjacent to the road and determined that it was an expansion joint that was leaking you can see on the pipeline alignment on the upper side of the map the Laguna Treatment Plant is over on the right-hand side north is to the left and Pine Flat Road is up here on the left it's where if you look at the profile on the bottom it's where the higher pressure section of the pipeline is and we did detect the leak between the lowest pump station which is the Barricanian pump station and the Maya Cama pump station so the normal operating pressure at that location in the vicinity of 300 psi discharge pressure on each of the pump stations is pretty high it's over 550 psi so we had to it turned out to be about a 2 gallon a minute leak which is a pretty small leak considering those pressures nonetheless we had to figure out the best way to repair that leak because it was occurring in a force balanced expansion joint I have few photos to show you that Pine Flat Road as many of you probably know is a pretty narrow road owned by the county the pipeline does not exist in the road all the way up the hill so to speak there are sections where the pipeline deviates from the road just because of construction and geological issues it wasn't aligning the pipeline entering the road the whole way but it's a narrow road that's our on-call contractor piazza constructions trucks there that were used during the repair work just on the other side of this truck there's an excavation and that is an expansion joint in the pipeline the pipeline of that location I believe is 30 inches in diameter and that expansion joint is basically just a big steel nested pipe type feature that allows for geologic motion to cause it to displace without causing a problem in the pipeline we monitor sections of the road where there's geologic instability and there is some geologic instability in this section of the pipeline alignment the expansion joint itself has a gauge on it that will reveal when you expose it as it is in this photo any degree of displacement that has occurred since it was installed and I'm happy to report that the gauge on that expansion joint showed that it has not displaced at all for that reason and the fact that the expansion joint is considered at the end of its useful life the best repair approach was to seal welded closed which would render its ability to expand null and void but the manufacturer said that they didn't expect that it would function normally due to its age anyway so we figured that was the best way to go about it we used GHD to do some structural evaluation and analysis to determine the right size welds and actually you can see in this photo there's the edge of a large steel gusset that was welded and four on that end to keep that end from moving the reason that was necessary was to seal weld the expansion joint closed would allow the internal parts of it that weren't normally pressurized to become pressurized and it wasn't designed to be operated in that configuration so we had to structurally reinforce it so it could withstand system pressure when we reactivated the system it's not easy to get to these things and that's just a picture of the welder also contracted through the on-call contractor to do some welding on that expansion joint and just another close-up view of it during the repair work not a fun job by any stretch when you look at that photo so I want to go over a quick timeline as I mentioned we did discover it during the normal maintenance shutdown we have a regularly recurring meeting with CalPine staff to coordinate operations sometimes CalPine has issues that it causes us to adjust our flow rate they have projects we also have projects that can affect operations and we communicate through a recurring meeting with the joint operations committee which is referred to the JOC under the contract that we have with CalPine the JOC has the authority to designate a suspension of contractual obligations to deliver water for emergency repair purposes this fell under an emergency repair category and so during the repair work the volumetric obligation that we have to deliver water to CalPine was suspended normal shutdown started on the 13th we immediately detected a very low pressure loss which was indicative of a leak that was the most logical assumption to make we located it it wasn't easy to locate but we did locate it in a few days and started dewatering the pipeline to reduce pressure on the pipeline at that point and to get ready to do repair work on it we notified our agricultural customers who are operating under allotments because generally speaking the use of recycled water supply is greater than our supply is less than our demand and so we have customers doing the best they can to conserve their usage of recycled water by having them on allotments but due to the disruption in the storage curve by taking geysers offline we notified our customers of the leak and we encouraged them to irrigate despite the allotments because we were getting towards the irrigation season anyway and at that time we didn't know how long it might take to get the pipeline repaired the on-call contractors started repair work on the 27th you may ask why did it take so long for them to get and started on the repair work there was quite amount of staff time required to coordinate with the manufacture of the expansion joint and GHD to come up with the best repair strategy with the imports of the geysers pipeline the linear asset with no redundancy there's no parallel pipeline and the fact that it takes two-thirds of our flow and in this case in this section of the pipeline is operated at very high pressure we had to make sure we were dotting LRIs and crossing LRTs when it came to designing the repair of that expansion joint so it took a little bit of time there we re-notified our agricultural customers when we started to really understand the amount of time that this was going to take that allotments were no longer going to apply for the irrigation season and we put the repair into effect and tested it and brought the geysers back on to normal operation by about the 18th so that's a little over twice the normal amount of time that a normal shutdown would occur the leak was estimated to be a total of about 40,000 gallons and that's based on two gallons a minute which was the observed leak and the expansion joint that leaked as I think was mentioned in a recent prior BP meeting was only one of five in the pine flat section of the geysers pipeline they're all the same vintage and they are all considered at the end of their useful life and so there is a lot of thought going into how we're going to approach replacing those expansion joints the repair cost was about $60,000 so I would be happy to entertain any questions about the water storage supply curve, the recycle water storage supply curve or any aspects of the geysers pipeline leak repair. Thank you Board Member Grable. Yeah actually that was going to be my question that last point on the expansion joints I know since they're all at the end of their recommended lifespan in terms of urgency ordinance on the CIP sort of strategic plan for that where are we at with replacing the other four? Well we haven't really gotten anywhere yet but we are figuring out where that's going to fit into the budget and I believe we're going to be targeting the next construction season in order to do that. It's possible that we may need to tap into CIP, sub regional CIP project reserves to get that project started it is considered an urgent project due to the exhaustion of the life of those expansion joints. The other reason I bring it up two reasons, one is if it's no longer functioning as an expansion joint this is also something that concerns me but if it's something that can actually be planned for as opposed to an emergency not only could it possibly be cheaper but also give some predictability to the ag customers who I know were a little confused about what it meant that the allotment was suspended but some of them would still be charged for that water even though they became our contingency so if we were able to plan for that I think it would be appreciated by those customers as well. One of the things and it's duly noted we're looking at potentially doing our maintenance set down earlier in the season and actually looking at whether or not that might make sense on an ongoing basis for a couple of reasons one of which we would hope to get the repair started the replacement of those expansion joints during that time frame and do our normal maintenance while the repair work would be going on and also if we were to detect a problem similar to this earlier in the irrigation season when the water has more value ultimately to the irrigation customers it would be better to have an extended system shut down at that time of year than later in the season when irrigation would be tapering off so we are looking at that from irrigation supply standpoint as well Board Member Douda I think it's I know you know this Director Prince but it's sometimes hard to imagine that the geysers pipeline is 15 years old since it went operational and so it's more of this is going to happen I suspect as we go forward and so I appreciate you and your team looking at means of how can we prepare for these things that are going to happen over time thank you there's a pretty involved preventative maintenance program that the geysers has always been operated with and I'm quite sure that without that we could have been having more unexpected shutdowns so even though something like this basically came out of nowhere I think there are a lot of things that aren't coming out of nowhere because we do have a pretty exhaustive preventative maintenance program I can say that it was kind of a large surprise to everyone involved that the manufacturer only thought those expansion joints in the last 15 years and no one currently on staff were aware that they had such a short lifespan so we're on the lookout for anything else that might have a surprisingly short lifespan as well thank you any other board member questions or comments director hornstein just wanted to share a brief comment you know you look at this schedule that my director prince laid out I just want to know that it's pretty remarkable that even at the very beginning we found a problem it just goes into you know the operators are out there doing preventative maintenance noticed a drop in the pressure and then to find where the leak was to excavate it diagnose a problem get a contractor out there get the repair work all done within four weeks is really on top of it so congratulations to you and your staff for doing that it was really a fine repair job thank you for that and one thing I would like to emphasize is the on-call contractor that we have available for things that come up that that contract mechanism has really saved the day on more than just this occasion and had we not been able to do that I think the schedule we're looking at would have gone out further and probably had more of an impact on our storage curve so I appreciate the fact that we've been able to have that type of processing mechanism available as well great thank you for your report we have two items on the consent calendar Mr. Chair I'd request to remove item 6.1 and 6.2 from the consent calendar so that we could have some discussion about the recommended actions very well we'll go ahead and do that and we'll now take item 6.1 which is the contract award on the amendment plan digester gas conditioning improvements good afternoon Chairman Galvin members of the board my name is Tanya Mokovitz I'm with the Capital Improvement Projects I'm here to answer your questions about the digester gas conditioning project Board Member Mullen thank you in reading the staff materials and the recommended action it's hard to ignore the fact that we got one bid for a project that's quite a bit of money and that it's 70% over the engineer's estimate and I read the explanation that it's the trend because of all the construction going on here and so forth but I have several questions the first one being did we get any feedback as to I understood that two potential bidders showed up for the walkthrough and only one submitted a bid did we get any feedback as to why there was such little interest for a pretty sizeable contract I'm not aware of any feedback I just have some numbers to put in perspective of how this project was bid and how the bids were solicited so this project was publicly advertised at Planet Bids which is a wide outreach electronic platform and locally and press democrat 209 vendors in general signed up to be notified about this type of work out of those 209 vendors only 23 downloaded plans and specs and out of 23 only four listed as a prime contractor which means the rest were either subcontractors or suppliers and out of those four only one submitted the bid thank you for that the my last question well two questions first one is is there any time sensitivity to the action we're proposing to take for instance if we didn't do it and waited until next season is what's the downfall? yes so this project is time sensitive because it is subsequent and to the microgrid demonstration project and microgrid demonstration project is supposed to be expected to be completed in fall of 2018 pretty soon and this project is supposed to continue improve and be completed in next spring of 2019 so it is pretty time sensitive so if we don't do it as you're recommending is there a danger that the plant would be in non-compliance yes so if the project is not approved and awarded then we would not be able to fully use the digestive gas in the selective catalytic reduction units and that would result in digestive gas flaring and potential air permit violations last question and this might be a question for our attorney is we only got one bid if the board decided to reject the one bid do we have the ability to negotiate with that one bidder on a secondary basis you know I haven't researched that specific question I would obviously would not the answer would be no if we had more than one bidder but I haven't looked at it specific to just having one bidder I do have concerns about it given our charter does require us to award to the low bidder so I don't know what flexibility we would have to do something different I think that it's not standard practice to reject bids and then negotiate with the bidder for various reasons some of them policy maybe not legal and I'm also concerned about what the restrictions in the public contracts code would have with respect to our ability to do that I'd have to do further research to get you a definitive answer but at this point conservatively I would say no okay thank you board member Dowd well I want to compliment board member mullen because he hit the three questions that I had on my my list as well that's very hard for me to support a project that's had such a lack of response by the bidders also the cost of it in comparison to our estimate and is there an urgency all the same questions that board member mullen asked I really if the answers are as you have suggested and staff and you director horenstein are supportive of this because of those answers I would really like to hear from you and say yes that is the case and I can say alright let's go ahead with this what I'm not willing to do is to see this pattern repeated over and over and over again and use the fire as an excuse as to why we're not getting any participation from the bidding community so that's where I'm coming from I just need corroboration that this is in fact the situation we're in for this one particular project and it's needed for the various reasons and then I just for moving forward with it in my view there is time sensitivity associated with this project most specifically as it relates to the micro grid project that you know is a very significant project we had a meeting on it earlier today starting to develop the kind of startup testing plan and this is an array of possible benefits that come from the micro grid project and being able to leverage our assets into the energy grid and the energy markets and the like it's very exciting that said we don't want to be blinded by that and make a bad decision here in terms of the one bid and the engineers estimate over years it takes time to calibrate the engineering estimation with the market and you don't want to push your estimators to jump too quickly to increase their estimate because you believe you really want to be confident so often you do find yourself where we are now of kind of lagging behind the market and our estimates and affecting to see is that gap starts to close of course as soon as it does the market slows down and we have a gap the other way but that is kind of how it works often when there's volatility in the market so I also just want to say that staff is really in a very similar position that you're finding yourselves in and that even bringing this to you we do have limited resources we did deliberate and we do have do we want to move this forward and it really did tilt on the micro grid project and the market too with the sense of if we weren't going to go we wouldn't just go out immediately for bid we'd hold off and let the market cool down but that would be a significant impact we believe I believe in context of the micro grid project so yeah I'd like to sort of reinforce board member Dowd's second point which is just in terms of the future and having a pattern it does seem to me sort of across our RFPs, RFQs, NOFAs at the city of Santa Rosa that we there's a pattern of low low response the response rates for bids and it does seem to me to be coming back continuously as a concern for many board members and council members and others and I wonder if there's a way to internally evaluate and compare I'm sure you guys do this on a continual basis but just in terms of the bigger picture regionally statewide whatever it is what are we doing you know that is making that a pattern and is there something we can do to make our RFPs more appealing to bidders regardless of the engineering estimates I do feel like the broader climate is obviously very low employment a lot of work not that much incentive and competition between contractors however I feel like there has to be some way to improve when we get one bidder and then typically on other projects that have come to us there's been two bidders or three but the notification is to thousands it does seem to me to be something again I'm on the outside here but that immediately jumps out to me too that it is a pattern and something maybe we should start to try to improve our appeal I don't know one thing we could do is come to a BPU meeting with some information we could contact some contractors that we had expected to bid in recent contracts and ask them why they haven't and bring that that could be rich information for the board and for staff we could also talk to local communities that are putting out projects and understand where they are relative to where we are in terms of number of bidders and percent over estimates and I think that body of information would be very informative and maybe a good starting point for some next ideas if we see some systemic issues there if that makes sense to you yeah absolutely that would be helpful thank you any other board member questions or comments alright this will require a motion I'm going to go back to the comment that director horenstein just made were you suggesting is it your recommendation that we should consider moving this one forward and then look at the information that's out there in the marketplace for future contracts or are you saying you would be willing to take the time to do that with the investigation prior to this board approving the contract where is the department at on this my intention and my comments for the former and again the reasoning behind that is really because we're getting close to the micro grid project and as you may recall these SCRs these converters are going to be installed as part of that project which would allow us to use natural gas and create tremendous numbers of potential opportunities and benefits for the plant I don't know precisely what a two week or four week delay would be in terms of being able to get the work done during this construction season maybe you can answer that yes we do have contractual requirements in the specifications that we award within 60 days I believe that we have the time to come back in two weeks with additional information for the board we could take into consideration the last six months of projects that we've put out there is a lot of variability that I have seen in the last six months that we've been able to see both the packages that come before you and the packages for award before council and in my experience this particular type of project out at the treatment plant which is very specific and somewhat considered a small project when you think of the world of a treatment plant we have seen higher bids but in many years in the past this one was significantly higher 70% is considerable and it caught my attention which is as director there was a lot of discussion on whether to move forward with this project but to answer your question I do think we could come back with more information for the board if that would be helpful we can do that what's the board's pleasure we have the time to do that without impacting the ability of the treatment plant to operate correctly I would say I would like to have that report come to us before we take an action on this item and I certainly would suggest our very next board meeting so to clarify we would just in my understanding that there would be then a motion to continue this item to the next BPU meeting for reconsideration that would be my motion we have a motion and a second to postpone action on item 6.1 until our next board meeting which I believe is on November 1 and that staff is being directed to come back to us on that day with whatever information you can give us to thank you chair all in favor of the motion say aye any opposed motion carries I hope everyone understands that this is not meant as criticism to the staff it's just a matter of us having a responsibility to protect the interests of our repairs I think that is understood item 6.2 is waiver of competitive bidding and the decision to approve the system parts any board members have any questions on that matter? I do are we going to have a presentation or should I just ask my questions go ahead and ask your question I think so it's a sole source contract and I understand that my experience with a sole source contract is that it's a property but you can never get divorced because it's very expensive to break that relationship so when we the biggest issue with sole source is price control in my mind you know you're getting a good product because you've chosen that and you've chosen that and it fits in with what we're trying to do the issue is then do we negotiate a fair and reasonable price for that product knowing that they're the only vendor we're dealing with so have we ever with the way the plan has grown over the last couple of decades when we go with the sole source contractor have we ever had to break that relationship and move over and what have we learned from that experience and I should say started off by saying I'm not suggesting that we should break our relationship with this sole source vendor I'm just trying to understand how we deal with the sole source vendors to my knowledge we haven't broken relationships where we've needed a specific vendor we only go with contracts like this when we deem it appropriate and necessary we have a Trojan system and aging Trojan UV-4000 disinfection system and we use Trojan parts in it I'm not even sure if there are aftermarket parts available but we would question the efficacy of those the reliability and the quality control the system is getting older and is presenting other problems and so expecting that using Trojan parts through a sole source contract is going to be the best way to maintain reliability in the system and not add in aftermarket variability is another potential source of the system not functioning correctly so it has our experience been that the Trojan brand has been the most widespread use for this type for UV disinfection in plants like ours Trojan is one of a few manufacturers I don't know how many UV equipment manufacturers there were when we installed this back in the mid 90s I suspect there weren't very many I don't know maybe three there are more now but you can't necessarily interchange parts between manufacturers especially with the system that old so I'm not actually even sure the availability of aftermarket parts that would function correctly in that system so my last question is relative to the price negotiations that goes on for these sole source parts do we have an agreement in our contract with them that says their markup is this percent or so how do we negotiate that so that we know we're getting the best deal and what it does force but on the price side bidding is what always gives you an insight into what you're paying for your product but how do we negotiate with somebody like this I can't answer that question I think it would take purchasing staff to answer that question I don't get involved in negotiations on parts like that the purchasing division would I don't know if we have anyone from purchasing here today I did want to note in the analysis it does indicate not directly responsive to your question but the price through these parts is a 2% increase what they had been charging in the last contract but that your question is perhaps more the last contract was that fair but this was a modest increase from that additionally I don't want to speak for purchasing but I will say that the purchasing department does make an effort regardless of whether and I think in particular maybe in soul source contracts to assure that there's still value to the city and to negotiate the price where they can so that concludes my questions but just a comment is as the soul source contracts come forward in the future this board member would appreciate getting that information so that we know that when we get a bid we get a list of what the bids were and the recommend low bid so we know what the dollars are I for one would appreciate getting that information going forward so that we know we've negotiated the best price for the product and for our ratepayers thank you thank you any other board member doubt I'm prepared to make a motion on the resolution before us and I appreciate board member Mullins comments about that as we move forward to bring in some additional back up information but I would move the resolution of the Board of Public Utilities authorizing a waiver of competitive process and award of the soul source blanket purchase order for violet disinfection system parts to DC frost association California and waive the reading of the remainder of the text motion by board member doubt seconded by board member grable to approve item 6.2 on favor say aye any opposed passes unanimously thank you item 7.1 is a report item update on the 2017 wastewater and recycled water standards and specifications sorry the laptop got turned off good afternoon chairman Galvin and members of the board I'm Karen Lozada development review coordinator from water engineering services and I'm here today to present the update to the 2017 water wastewater and recycled water standard and specifications Santa Rosa waters design and construction standards are used as a framework for private development to design and build new infrastructure into our system under city staff inspection our local operations staff and capital improvement projects adhere to the same standards in the repair and replacement of our existing infrastructure in 2017 in September the city council adopted the current version of our standards the last time the previous update had been approved was in 2009 the 2007 update incorporated updated regulation changes new construction methods and material changes the majority of the 2017 update was for clarification and corrections also with the 2017 adoption the city council delegated authority to the board of public utilities to approve all future updates to these standards proposed changes before you today are for corrections due to typographical errors that have been bound since 2017 the corrections are noted in the various attachments in your package there are various typographical errors in the water and sewer design and construction standards and the specification sections probably the largest one was attachment number seven in the sewer specifications there was a paragraph that had half the paragraph missing so it had to be inserted back in standard 875 had a mislabeled note in the detail that was corrected the sewage peak flow graph had a typographical error that was verified and corrected by a staff engineer and there were two fire line backflow standards that were mislabeled and had the standard numbers switched these were standard numbers 879 and 888 to avoid future confusion for the installation of the new devices and to the database that water quality uses to keep track of these devices the standards had the numbers corrected to reflect as what they were in the previous adoption and then the master lists for both the water and recycled water standards to be updated to reflect those changes back in addition to the corrections standard 875 the F is being presented for adoption due to the tubs adobe fire that devastated our community last October over 3,000 homes are being rebuilt current state law requires that the rebuilt homes include the installation of fire sprinklers Santa Rosa water requires a backflow device on any metered connection that has a fire suppression system on site these parcels are utilizing their existing infrastructure and are not up sizing them from the street to the properties as would normally be required and this is saving the homeowners thousands of dollars the inline dual backflow device not only costs less than the typical double check backflow device that we require it can improve the flow calculations that they need for the fire sprinkler calculations it doesn't require an annual test like a double check or a reduced test that gets installed every five years if our AMI device detects an issue with the water coming back through the meter we ask them to replace that device immediately and not wait for the five years Santa Rosa water has been allowing properties in the fire affected areas the option to install this device over other devices normally approved to assist in the rebuilding efforts the standard is only being allowed as an option in the building and as of today of the 353 properties that have reestablished water service in the rebuild area 173 of them have opted to install the inline backflow 156 have installed the double check and 25 have needed to install a reduced pressure backflow device due to their sewer grinder pumps on site it is recommended by the water department that the board of public water is able to replace the water repair system as well as the water cycle water design and construction standards I would be happy to take any questions you might have. Thank you Ms. Lozada any questions from the board? Thank you. Just for my own clarification when we do code upgrades like these or at any time do we do outreach to our major standards if we do bring them out but due to the nature of this addition for the fire we did not bring this out to the community although they've been using it since December. Well the fact that there's nobody in the audience that looks like there's going to come up and speak I guess that answers the question. Thank you. Any other board member questions or comments? If not we have a motion recommending that the board of public utilities approve the update to the water waste water recycle water and construction standards. A second. Motion by board member Mullen seconded by board member Baden-Fort all in favor say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Motion passes unanimously thank you. Any other questions? Seeing no one rise. We have no referrals. Excuse me. Come on down. Be careful. Who can't hear me thank you to construct the next lift station at 1225 Fulton . You're purchasing it from the Thanksgiving Lutheran church and they have allowed a community garden to be existent there for many many years and there's a lot of love. I could talk for a long time I don't need to you guys have a lot to do but we want to keep our garden alive I don't have any power point or statistics I brought you some flowers I left the tomatoes and the water but if there's someone here that we can work with or contact somehow to keep our community garden alive on Fulton we want to do it and that's why I'm here the city for the water department has purchased the property the church is leaving we can't pack up our garden and go and we want to stay I could give you tons of reasons why it matters but global warming solutions can be a big part of it for you I'll give some information maybe to Gina and if someone could help sure that somebody from staff can talk to you not sure exactly where the garden is in relation to where we're potentially going to be putting our lift station but I'm sure that okay all right thank you we appreciate your comments I'm going to leave this in your spirits I'll take it home when we go thank you okay no referrals no written communications any subcommittee reports any board member reports directors report Chair Galvin board members I do have a few items today for you is I noted on an earlier agenda item that things are moving forward with the microgrid project and as we start to develop the testing plan we'll likely at the next board meeting or two to out bring an update on the project of where we stand and what we're going to be looking at and testing as part of the plan to bring you into it it feels like it's going to be a fascinating right to understand all of these opportunities and how to extract maximum value now from this additional tool we have and minimize the operational impact so that'll be I believe interesting for you we're starting to prep early for this budget cycle just wanted to note that we're really trying to kind of build on last year and tighten belts and have a budget that's reflective of what we believe needs to be spent on the lean side and we're also doing work on the CIP cleaning up some old projects to really be able to bring to you what today looks like you're aware of the great news that last Thursday we lifted the advisory incidentally you know in close to the year anniversary but really we just pushed that to get that done as soon as we could in working with the regulators and our experts of course and a broad communication plan to ensure that folks understood that and we aren't done with a rigorous effort so everyone understands that the water is safe as it's always been I've probably mentioned it once or twice but now that the advisory's lifted I just wanted to acknowledge that sometimes at work people go above and beyond sometimes they really push it well in this instance I really don't believe we'd be where we are what was it not for work who led this effort we'd probably get there at some point but really in a way that was a personal sacrifice the level of commitment the work, the diligence endless evening meetings, press I mean I could just go on and on but it really was remarkable watching that commitment from the department into the community and it was very clear as she managed this and of course every time I say it to her she says well it was a big great team and it was but the leader was exceptional so I did want to note that everything else is kind of a low after that but I'll go through it I should have left that for the end we're in partnership with daily acts we're hosting a greywater reuse system workshop that is you're probably aware that's kind of the next generation of water conservation and water use efficiency and that will be tonight from 6 to 8 at UFO facilities we wanted to share that last week we met with the regional water board staff to further discussions on the item we've been sharing with you and I think it progresses the exploring alternatives for our LTP discharge permit from the no net loading in the framework around that to something different and I don't want to be Pollyannish or jinxed myself even though I typically don't say that or think it but I think we're going to be working on those and we'll get back to them and then of course keep the board updated as anything really starts to take shape but pretty positive direction also wanted to share that as you're aware we have a large well equipped laboratory for both wastewater and drinking water and we have state accreditation and we have to do annual proficiency testing so the lab staff is rightly very proud that they collectively had a passing score of 97.89 and that is not just feels high but if you're above 96 you're rated as high as you can which is excellent so congratulations to the lab staff I wanted to finally local operation staff will be starting up our farmer lane well treatment plan as you're aware just went through and we finished a pretty extensive rehabilitation effort for that so it's now back in service and we'll bring it up to full capacity over a short time frame lastly and you may have seen some of this I'm sure you have in some of these outlets of PG&E's power shut off program that now during red flag warnings where there's a combination of low humidity and high winds and likely other factors they alert customers that will be shutting off your power and for us for our operation what we do when we hear that could be coming of course off our backup generators we have crews on standby on call ready to go were that to happen so in this case this just was earlier this week they landed not turning off within the cities any power I believe if that's right but anyway I just wanted to give you confidence we're in the loop and we have a game plan for during red flags if power gets turned off we can respond accordingly that concludes my comments any questions for the director hearing none thank you for the report thank you all for being here and we're adjourned