 We're going to reorder the agenda. Vice Chair Arnone has to leave early. Potentially we want to make sure we get to our action items. So we're going to take 6.1 and 7.1. And then we'll do item number 11, the subcommittee reports. And from there we'll move back to the minutes approval and the staff briefing. So item 6.1 is a consent calendar item, waiver of competitive bidding for the water meter parts. Motion by Vice Chair Arnone, seconded by Board Member Bannister to approve item 6.1. All in favour say aye. Aye. Any opposed? Great. Item 7.1 is a report item on the biosolids program update in preparation of a request for proposals. Deputy Director Walton, good afternoon. Good afternoon Chair Galvan, members of the board. I'm Emma Walton, the Deputy Director of Engineering for the Water Department. We are here today to provide an overview and update of our biosolids program as well as request approval to issue an RFP for biosolids processing. It's not too typical that we come before the board requesting approval to issue an RFP, but given the unique circumstances of this project and the associated renewable Sonoma project and the large implications that this RFP could bring about, we thought it was important to have the board approval to move in this direction. So I'll go over an introduction to biosolids. It's been a while since we've talked biosolids at the board. We'll do an overview of our biosolids program, talk about some of the challenges that we're currently facing and talk about some of the opportunities that we see ahead of us, and then finally close out with some proposed next steps. So what are biosolids? They are the solids that come to the treatment plant through the sewage system to us. They go through a high degree of processing and are at the end of the process available for beneficial reuse. The picture you see on your left there is biosolids cake that has gone through anaerobic digestion as well as dewatering, and it's a very nutrient-rich product that can be used in a number of different matters. The degree to which it's treated dictates the allowable reuse. So all of our biosolids that come through our plant go through a minimum process of anaerobic digestion and they become Class B biosolids and they're available for reuse on farmland, for fodder crops, and those types of things. Additionally, some portion of our biosolids go through a further processing at the plant. We compost our biosolids. Once they go through composting process and are mixed with green material, they become Class A biosolids and are available for pretty much unlimited use and are marketed to landscapers and homeowners. We also spend a small portion of our biosolids to LISTech and that process and that facility produces a Class A product as well. The goals of our biosolids project program are first and foremost regulatory compliance. We need to be in compliance with our permit. We also look for operational reliability and flexibility. We want to provide a value to our ratepayers and process our biosolids in the most economically efficient manner as possible. And we need to embed resilience into any program that we support so that we have ongoing processing of our biosolids with changing regulations and changing environment. Our treatment plant produces 32,600 tons on average of biosolids per year. I believe this is around 1,500 truckloads of biosolids per year, so it's a good amount of biosolids. Our program to reuse these biosolids in a beneficial manner costs us about $2.16 million a year. It's a costly program, but it's a very important program and we need to be thoughtful about how we manage our biosolids. Most of our biosolids get land applied to farmland, both in South County and in North County. This is our least expensive option for biosolids processing on a unit cost basis. It's about $40 per ton. And it totals around $850,000 per year to administer our land application program. About a quarter of our biosolids get sent across the street from our treatment plant to our compost facility. This is our most expensive outlet for biosolids reuse, and it is on average costs us about $142 per ton, equating to about $1.1 million per year of our biosolids program. About 10% goes to landfill, where it's used as alternative daily cover. And then about a small percentage goes to LISTEC at $98 per ton, which is a very small portion of our current biosolids program. So I'm going to talk a little bit about each of our outlets for biosolids and our reuse opportunities. Land application, as I mentioned, is the largest portion of our program. We have the ability to land apply biosolids in South County as well as North County, and we do have biosolids storage near the treatment plant as well. South County properties, we have annual agreements with land owners, seven currently. And we own one property in South County called Twin House. We also dispose or reuse biosolids on North County properties on city-owned farms, Stone Farm, Brown Farm and Alpha Farm. Most of our biosolids are disposed of in South County, but we do dispose in North County properties as well. And then as I mentioned, storage, that's in addition to what we land apply on Alpha Farm. We have a barn on Alpha Farm that we store biosolids to allow us to maximize land application. So in winter months, we store biosolids so that we can land apply them during summer months. The next largest portion of our program consists of composting. This is a city-owned facility. It was commissioned in 1996. As I mentioned earlier, it produces a Class A marketed compost. This is compost that we sell to our community. It operates seasonally, October through May. It provides biosolids processing to our operation during winter months. And it is a weather-independent operation. And it's one of the most beneficial aspects of the program. 10% of our biosolids are sent to landfill and used as alternative daily cover at Redwood landfill. Prior to 1985, we landfilled 100% of our biosolids. We've slowly been reducing the amount of biosolids that we send to landfill and looking for opportunities to more beneficially reuse biosolids and view biosolids as a resource as opposed to a waste. By 1997, we were only landfilling about a third, and today we landfill about 10%, but it varies year to year. LizTech is a Canadian-based company. They have a semi-local facility located at the Fairfield Sassoon Sewer District. So this facility was basically a private-public partnership with the Fairfield Sassoon Sewer District and was constructed for the purpose of processing FSSDs, the Fairfield Sassoon District's biosolids. It's been in operation since 2016, has a processing capacity of about 150,000 tons a year, and interestingly, Santa Rosa was its first third-party customer to truck biosolids to this facility. So it was originally intended, originally constructed to assist Fairfield Sassoon Sewer District with their biosolids reuse program. The facility produces a Class A liquid bio-fertilizer that gets injected into the ground because it's a liquid product as opposed to more of a cakey product that can be applied directly on top of the land. So some of the challenges that we face with our program, I'm gonna go through each of the different outlets we have starting with land application. If we could, we would maximize our land application. It's a very beneficial reuse of the product. It's our least expensive option. However, there are seasonal restrictions on when we can apply biosolids to the land. We are restricted May through October, which provides challenges. Our South County properties, as I mentioned, also rely on annual agreements. So we have to go through the process of renewing these agreements each year, and property owners could opt out if they chose to. Our North County properties are somewhat constricted by California Tiger Salamander habitat. So we have a little more constraints on what we're allowed to apply to those properties. Historically, there have also been regulatory pressure on the land application of biosolids and not allowing class B biosolids to be applied to land. We're not currently in an environment or a situation where that's the case. But historically, there has been pushback around that issue and potentially in the future. We don't know. We don't anticipate that being the case, but it's something that we're thinking about. And then because land application is seasonally restricted and there's only so much land, there's always competition for available land. With respect to our compost facility, one of the biggest hurdles that we have with compost is the high unit cost of compost. It's a very well-maintained, very good operation, but it is expensive for us to operate the compost facility. It's also an aging facility. It's over 20 years old. It has been well-maintained, but it does need some capital investment in the near future. We're anticipating around $4 million in the next five years of investment and around $10 million over the next 20 years or so. Our landfill option will begin to phase out from State Bill 1383, which is a law that has stipulated that the amount of organic material going to landfill statewide needs to be reduced by 75% by the year 2025. So our option to send biosolids, which is an organic material, to the landfill, the landfill will be slowly decreased and more pressure will be put on phasing out biosolids application to landfills over the next few years. So kind of in summary, looking at our biosolids program total. Again, our foundation is land application. Our similarly compost has been a huge portion of our biosolids program for the last 20 years. Landfill, we've been slowly backing off on and we'll continue to back off on our landfill application. And LizTech, we send a small portion there, kind of as started as a pilot program to see if LizTech was able to process the biosolids we need, make sure that the relationship worked well. They were able to provide the services we need, which they have been able to do and we've been working very well with them since about 2016. So the benefits of land application are low unit cost, but it is restricted during the rainy season. Compost has provided us a weather independent class A product for about 20 years, but it comes at a high cost. Landfill low unit cost, but with increasing regulatory restrictions, we will be looking to phase our application out. And with LizTech, it is also weather independent and produces a class A product for reuse. However, it is a third party and there is just a little bit of discomfort turning over our processing to a third party, but not to say that that's a bad thing. So the opportunities we see ahead of us is really focusing around our compost facility. The fact that it's such a high unit cost, it is an aging facility, looking for opportunities to process our biosolids in a more cost effective manner than to compost them. We are aware of two entities who are interested in processing the biosolids that we currently compost. LizTech, the existing LizTech facility does have the ability to process the amount of biosolids that we currently compost. We would expect to save around $10.5 million over 20 years. This is about $350,000 per year savings in annual O&M. By closing the compost facility, we save about $350,000. We also avoid that for $4 million near term capital investment that's required. And we also open ourselves up for the potential to lease that property. And we do know that Renovable Sonoma, who is the entity who was selected to provide county-wide green material composting and processing, is interested in leasing our compost facility. Suez, which is a worldwide wastewater company and provide a large array of processes and equipment worldwide, is also interested in constructing a new facility in Santa Rosa because of the cost of constructing the facility. Our savings with that approach would be less, around $4.2 million over 20 years, but we still do realize the savings of the $350,000 per year if we choose to discontinue our composting operations. And that kind of brings us to the requests for proposals. These are two entities that we know of that are interested in processing our biosolids. We would like the opportunity to see if there are other entities interested in processing our biosolids and what other opportunities are out there. We expect that we will... We can realize savings while still meeting our program goals of resiliency and reliability and compliance. So, we would like to issue an RFP to identify these and evaluate these additional opportunities. If we are to issue an RFP, we would suggest including around 11,000 wet tons of biosolids. This is about the amount that we currently compost and landfill, since we do anticipate phasing that portion out, as well as the 1% that we send to LizTech. So, that's about the magnitude we're looking at. We would be interested mostly in processing seasonally during the wet months from October through May, and we would be looking for a midterm contract in the 10 to 15 year range. This midterm contract range allows us to realize immediate savings, but also allows us to participate in a conversation around bringing a regional facility, a regional biosolids processing facility into our community. So, this is what our RFP would stipulate. The proposed next steps would be that we get approval from the board today. We would be looking to advertise for an RFP within the next few months. We would convene a selection panel. We would make a recommendation to the City Council BPU liaison subcommittee, which is a little different than our normal process of the contract review subcommittee, but given the involvement of the City Council BPU liaison subcommittee with previous discussions around renewable Sonoma and around our biosolids processing, we thought that that board or that body would be the appropriate body to engage with first. Then we would bring a full recommendation back to the board. And this is given that we receive proposals that are beneficial to the City. If we get proposals back and nothing seems to be more beneficial than our current program of composting, then we would set those aside and continue down our path and continue to reevaluate our biosolids program and look for opportunities. And that's something we're going to be doing regardless of how we move forward with this particular item. We, as part of our biosolids program, we do continual evaluation of the program and look for efficiencies and effectiveness. Also, we are interested in participating in a region-wide conversation around the opportunities for biosolids processing in county. And with that, I bring us to our recommendation, which is, has come both before the, before staff and the City Council B.P. Liaison Subcommittee that the board approve issuing an RFP for the beneficial reuse of a portion of the city's biosolids. And I'd like to take any questions. Thank you. Unfortunately, I was unable to make that subcommittee meeting. Perhaps Vice Chair Arnone would like to make a few comments. I just thought it was a good presentation of very similar material. There was a fairly large audience, as I recall, participating in the initial discussion. And there seemed to be a pretty unanimous support for the process that was being recommended. And I intend to support this recommendation. So it was a well-put-together presentation and I think it's a logical sequence of events. Thank you. Any other board member questions or comments? Board Member Bannister. So how does this dovetail with the Renewable Sonoma proposal and our selection of them as the favored candidate to move forward, which I thought was with the composting? Maybe I'm wrong. So the process through which Renewable Sonoma was selected as the preferred entity to provide in-county composting and anaerobic digestion, so green waste processing, was already complete. So the zero-waste Sonoma put out an RFP. Subsequently, Santa Rosa to select an entity to provide composting services. Subsequently, Santa Rosa put out an RFP to offer up land to site a facility and then zero-waste Sonoma selected Renewable Sonoma as the preferred processor for composting and anaerobic digestion services. Subsequently, we both zero-waste Sonoma and the City of Santa Rosa entered into exclusive negotiating agreements with Renewable Sonoma to start the process to identify if this is going to work out. In Renewable Sonoma's original proposal, they proposed using land north of the treatment plant. That's Greenfield. There's no development, nothing on it as their facility location. After they were selected, they identified our existing compost facility as their preferred location. There's a lot of benefits to locating a facility for green waste or for green material composting at our existing facility both to Renewable Sonoma and to the City. There's benefits. So that conversation is still happening and it's kind of on hold until we decide what we want to do if anything with our compost facility. So the first step for Santa Rosa is to decide do we want to continue composting biosolids? If so, great. We'll continue doing that. Renewable Sonoma will negotiate with you on the northern properties where there's no operations. If we choose to find an alternative way to process the biosolids that we currently compost, that leaves open the opportunity to lease that property to Renewable Sonoma and that will be a separate and distinct decision. To find an alternative means for processing for the biosolids that we currently compost needs to make sense in and of itself and it does. We can realize cost savings from finding an alternative processing means. But it has to make sense as a standalone decision because if we choose to move in that direction and if things fall apart or fall through with Renewable Sonoma we're stuck with now not operating a compost facility which if that decision didn't make sense on its own would not be a position we would want to put ourselves in. But if we contract with someone to take it and get out of the composting business will we and then Renewable Sonoma you know finalizes negotiations whatever will we have product to send them? So Renewable Sonoma will not be composting biosolids they don't want to compost biosolids they want to compost the county's green material and food and food material if we ask them if they were interested in also processing our biosolids but they want to operate a certified organic operation and you cannot have a certified organic material if you process biosolids. Thank you. Other board member questions? Board member Grable? Yeah I just wanted to say thanks for looking at this I know that that's been kind of glaring spreadsheet you know surprise for a while in terms of whether that makes sense for us to keep doing or so so thank you for doing your due diligence there and explaining it because I know it's a complicated long-term endeavor one thing about the contract itself and how we put out the RFP the midterm contract 10 to 15 years just from the resilience perspective the flexibility perspective is that we want it to be that amount of time and not longer or not shorter I'm assuming you chose the 10 to 15 for a reason could you just give me a little feedback on that? That's exactly the point the reason we chose it is we wanted to find a good balance between stability for a good amount of time but also leaving ourselves open to the opportunities that may be presented in the future with changing technology or regional solutions but still having the foundation and the stability of a good like 10 to 15 years to make sure that we have a longer term solution so that's where that balance felt natural over 15 years it seems like we're committing to potentially constructing and operating an in-county facility now which I don't know really ready to do until we have a bigger conversation with our regional partners but still needing that good solid amount of time for stability for our program and that gives us a little bit of a buffer in terms of our burn rate too right in terms of you said 350,000 a year something like that right and then just for my for my own information the the amount then potentially could increase that we send to LISTEC right that's in the Richmond area right exactly LISTEC I imagine they will respond to the RFP they won't necessarily be selected but yes that is an option and they have expressed interest and then just so in terms of because this is coming up as an issue and I wish that I would explore a little bit more of these factors in their reporting but the the shipping of our right now of all the greenways since in the county for instance coming down to the East Bay essentially right just in terms of that you know from a regional climate perspective the shipping of our biosolids is that what is that going to look like in terms of increased you know trips or vehicle miles traveled or so our whole biosolids program is just under 1500 trips per year so this would be about a quarter of that that would potentially be shipped out of county not necessarily but potentially that balanced with assisting bringing green composting and green material processing back into the county gets outweighs substantially that's what I was getting at so it doesn't look like we're trading apples for apples like look what we saved all the diesel emissions on greenways by you know being a partner in this you know in this ENA with just renewable not sustainable renewable sonoma but then at the same time we're increasing but you're saying it far outweighs and that is an analysis we did and I believe presented to the either a negotiating team or the city council BP liaison subcommittee I just don't have those numbers often but it's definitely information we can provide just something that occurred to me that you know that I want to make sure we can show that you know the economy is a scale there that's the benefits far outweigh you know and especially for us the cost right now and our duty to our repairs well yeah thank you so much for putting this together and I think there long-term perspective is I mean it was not too long ago that I think it was president Reagan that ended the ocean dumping and there was like the sludge wars in congress in the early nineties where essentially most people were just dumping their biosolids and it went and tried biosolids into the ocean and it was all landfills and ocean and I think we've come a very long way so that's good thank you any other board member questions or comments Mr. Knutt thanks I'm just interested we talked a little bit you talked a little bit about LISTEC and the product that they produced based on the biosolids we're providing them you also mentioned a company called SUAZ not familiar with what their processing is but in the RFP I was just trying to see if that would give us sort of an idea of what different types of products the entities might be proposing on sorry I didn't mention that SUAZ has a number of different technologies the one that they would be interested in bringing to Sonoma County would be a drying facility so it's just thermal drying it's exactly how it sounds and it forms a pelletized product that is then marketed and sold as fertilizer one of the attractive aspects of a proposal that is they could potentially use waste heat from our treatment plant to help offset some of the energy costs associated with drying that's still an exercise that hasn't been finalized or fleshed out but that's the type of technology they would use and those are the types of benefits that these proposers are thinking about in providing us proposals and if I can add and I know this has been mentioned but I just thought I'd highlight that both SUAZ and the LISTEC processing would result in Class A product as opposed to Class B that's very helpful thank you Board Member Grable I just have one more question in terms of the timeline because I know currently the site across the street from Laguna that's where we're doing the biocell it's composting which is the line item that we're concerned with do you have an idea of the timeline from okay so we're going to move forward with this RFP and when do you anticipate us being able to make a decision and vote as a board on the respondents and then basically bring that facility offline as it currently stands it's pretty dependent on the types of proposals that we receive if we receive very straightforward proposals like for example a LISTEC provides a proposal we already know their process we would have to work towards an agreement and a language for an agreement that works for everyone the board would provide final approval for that and anticipate we could probably start hauling to LISTEC fairly quickly at least enter into an agreement with them in kind of the months time frame if proposers come in with something a little more complex or needs a new facility we're talking a much longer process sorry if I could just add we also recognize that there's staffing implications to this as well and so we're taking that into consideration and so some of that will be considered as part of the responses and sort of the time frame that we would switch over as well so we're kind of keeping all those pieces in consideration as we make this decision thank you for all the questions and comments if there's no further we're looking for a motion I'd like to move that the Board of Public Utilities approving an RFP for the beneficial reuse of a portion of the biosolids produced at the treatment plant motion by Board Member Bannister seconded by Board Member Grable all in favor say aye aye any opposed very good thank you for the presentation good luck with the RFP alright we are now going to move to item number 11 which is subcommittee reports Vice Chair Arnone thank you Mr. Chairman I just wanted a report on the ag ad hoc committees last meeting Board Members Grable and Badden Fort joined me in having a final meeting of the ag hoc sub ad hoc subcommittee meeting on September 12th staff updated the ad hoc on the process and outreach regarding the development of the Interruptible Recycled Agricultural Irrigation Template Agreement and proposed fee for agricultural recycled water the staff reviewed the outreach and the communications which consisted of six ag user meetings six BPU ad hoc subcommittee meetings and four BPU ad hoc subcommittee meetings of a website including presentations letters, draft agreements and fee proposals multiple email communications to users letters sent to all users with request for comments on the draft agreements and fee proposal presenting information at the annual agriculture operations meeting and holding a public evening meeting at the Sonoma County Farm Bureau I think almost three years ago in a very different climate and it seemed to me that perhaps the most significant accomplishment in that three-year period was to change the nature of the relationship between the city and the agricultural users there was a real effort to reach out and find out what the needs and interests were and what started off as a somewhat adversarial relationship being quite collaborative and I think that's due primarily to staff's great work on this and sustained effort to change the climate staff did note that no negative comments were received and a majority of the responses were specific property related questions relating to the draft agreement the staff presented a proposal and again just to put this in context what we were talking about is setting a fee at this point in time setting a fee is separate from the issue of creating contracts the contract part of this has already been resolved and the board has acted on approving a contract format and giving the director authority to sign those contracts but each of those contracts says that the fee applicable will be determined separately by the BPU and so this is the part of the process that remains to be performed and so prior to the ad hoc meeting the staff had put out a public notice that at this meeting we were going to be considering a proposal recommended by staff which provided for no fees for the remainder of 2019 and then an escalation over the next four years from 1250 per acre foot 37 per acre foot ending at the final $50 per acre foot in 2023 and going forward so after staff presented that recommendation there was an alternative proposed at the ad hoc meeting and on a two to one vote the subcommittee rejected the staff proposal and adopted an alternative proposal that alternative proposal was to provide for no fee for the remainder of 2019 and 20 and then to implement that escalating schedule over the following four years from 2021 to 2024 so that we'd end up at the final dollar figure in 2024 instead of 2023 because the subcommittee made this alternative recommendation we had to take the public notice hearing off for today and so a new notice will have to be posted the public hearing can be noticed and heard on October 3rd in front of the next BPU meeting if the board decides to move forward with the subcommittee's recommendation and I'll be happy to answer any questions that board members may have and board member Grable may wish to make any comments from you and is the question as far as I knew the recommendation is to be agendas on October 3rd correct so what would be the nature of my comments on that just as a clarification I'm just giving a subcommittee report I'm reporting out of the subcommittee and the report I'm making suggests that if the board adopts the subcommittee's recommendation the process will be that on October 3rd the public hearing that was previously scheduled for today but had to be moved because of the timing requirements that hearing would be set on October 3rd and the recommendation that's been proposed by the subcommittee is the alternative one to the staff recommendation so that's what would be set for hearing on October 3rd is the subcommittee's recommendation that was my understanding again a second if I try to know these comments about staff's work over the past three years on this it's been really remarkable to see just the shift in working relationships and attitudes for something that's been a contingent and relationship of mutual aid and really has benefited both the department and the users for many years so thank you for taking the time to really make it right but also make it better and figure out a path forward that is really going to work and my only comment now I'll save my comments for when the full board is here on October 3rd my only comment now is that I totally respect staff's recommendation and the one that came to the subcommittee the primary reason for the amendment or alternative proposal was just that it was communicated that the first year would be at zero and that subsequently the graduated rate fee structure would go up so myself and I can't speak for member Battenford but she did vote for the proposal my feeling was that we should honor that the first year and not just the last couple months of 2019 would be the start of that new fee schedule and that that would be more amenable both for our clarity and for the users moving forward so that could really start fresh and not have any confusion again so I'll reserve more of my comments and sort of background on that for the meeting on October 3rd so thank you again Vice Chair Arnone if we're going to describe the reasons for the actions taken I do want to point out that my view was that there was a balance reached during the course of this extensive procedure and there was give and take on both sides the proposal recommended by staff was not newly recommended at that date but was circulated months before circulated months before and not a single constituent had objected to that particular fee schedule so it was my view that the balance and the balance involves the fact that the city is going to lose revenue so you'll lose around $250,000 from revenue that would otherwise have been collected in 2020 and will not have that this recommendation is made so it's a shift in the balance that was negotiated over the course of the three-year process so that was why I supported staff's recommendation a different decision was made and that's the way the process works so that's the reason that I took the position I did at this subcommittee any other board member comments any other subcommittee reports all right thank you both for your comments item number 4 so the august 15th will be approved and we will move to our two staff briefings 5.1 on creek week so we're going to have Katie Robinson our research and program coordinator is going to talk about our creek week program welcome thank you director Burke good afternoon chair galvin and board members my name is Katie Robinson I'm a research and program coordinator with stormwater and creeks on september 10th city council proclaimed that creek week was creek week last month my colleague presented to you the streets to creeks campaign the objectives of that campaign are to build brand awareness change behavior and encourage people to take action creek week is a great opportunity for our citizens to take action last year through volunteer cleanups alone we removed 127 yards of trash from our city creeks this year we have several events planned for creek week on saturday september 21st we'll be kicking the week off with a creek cleanup at prince memorial greenway we'll provide gloves and tools for the creek cleanup we also have activities, snacks and raffle prizes on monday september 23rd we'll be conducting a tour of the downtown underground culvert we have had an overwhelming amount of interest for this event and all 75 spots have been filled if you are attending this tour we'd like you to keep in mind that closed-toed shoes are required and there is almost a 100% chance that they will get wet on thursday september 26th we'll be taking a nature walk along the picturesque roseland creek this will be a slow interactive walk led by our experienced environmental specialist on saturday september 28th we'll end the week with a tour of the laguna treatment plant this will be a chance for our citizens to learn about the differences between untreated stormwater and treated wastewater closed-toed shoes are also required for this event santa rosa has more than 100 miles of creeks that flow to the russian river and eventually out to the pacific ocean up to 80% of ocean debris originates from land-based sources it's up to us to keep those creeks clean and free of debris and i hope you have a chance to make it out to one of our events thank you thank you miss robinson any questions or comments from the board hope it's a successful week i'm sad to hear that all the spots are filled for the underground tour i'm sure we can make an exception if you wanted to come out well then i will encourage any board members who are interested to contact miss robinson and i will do that it may or may not be the case that there were some punk rock and rock and roll shows in those tunnels in the 90s i don't ask me how i know we might have to bring that back thank you very much all right item 5.2 is a staff briefing on the preparedness for public safety power shutoffs deputy director savone welcome good afternoon chair galvin members of the board here today to discuss public safety power shutoff or better known as psps just to explain a little bit about what a psps is for public safety it may be necessary for PG&E to proactively turn off electricity when gusty winds and dry conditions combined with height and fire risk are forecasted for this area and the surrounding area and this is called a public safety power shutoff or a psps so you may be wondering when do we anticipate this to happen the psps events will essentially happen when we are in a red flag fire conditions and we are also forecast to have high wind speeds along with the normal conditions that are required for a red flag event PG&E will only proactively turn off power when extreme fire conditions are forecast and not every red flag event will qualify for a shutdown as I mentioned they must be accompanied by the high speed winds before the psps will be activated customers in high fire threat areas are more likely to be affected but any electrical customer including city of Santa Rosa residents could have their power shut off if a line that supplies power to our community passes through a high fire threat area so PG&E is working with the city to help us understand how these psps events will impact our water systems and the water department along with other departments have been working with PG&E to gather as much information as possible on the anticipated impacts of any future outage the potential duration of these outages and the operational details on how power will be restored PG&E has informed us that we could be without power these are more depending on how long the weather event is and how long it takes for them to inspect their lines after power has been shut off PG&E is required to inspect their power lines before they re-energize their lines as a safety measure and although it's difficult to know exactly where the power will be turned off due to the many microclimates in our area we are trying to better understand which areas of the city will most likely lose power during one of these events PG&E is continually monitoring several weather stations and has agreed to notify us as much as 48 hours in advance we will remain in contact with them until the outage occurs and throughout the outage and then until power is restored designated members of water's team will participate in conference calls leading to the event to make sure we are well as well informed and ready as possible before power is cut the city has provided PG&E with 24-hour contact information for essential staff so we will be informed of a pending PSPS event before it happens we do anticipate these events will impact our region and the city as well as the city as well as the city as well as the city as well as the city as well as the city we do anticipate these events will impact our regional operations local operations and some of the private systems that are connected to our infrastructure to be better prepared for these events we are reviewing and drafting new standard procedures to ensure they match the needs of an extended power outage these procedures include developing procedures for our department operations center better known as our DOC for emergency operations center or EOC and identifying resources and the availability of additional resources knowing that others will be needing similar resources at the same time. We're preparing staff for the potential activation of an EOC or DOC which will impact their schedule and the length of time per day they'll be working and we have also developed several fueling plans to ensure our backup generators can be supplied with the necessary fuel needed to last the entire PSPS event. Our regional operations is the highest user of electrical power for the water department and but fortunately they also have a robust backup generator power supply. The Laguna treatment plant is supported by with several backup generators. The treatment facility has two two megawatt generators that automatically turn on when they sense the loss of power. These generators generators are supplied fuel from a 15,000 gallon fuel tank that should supply enough fuel for the treatment plant to operate for several days when combined with the use of our CHP generators. As I mentioned that the treatment facility can also support its power needs by operating one or all of its four 1.1 megawatt combined heat and power or the CHP generators. Although these generators do need the two megawatt generators to be operational for them to function properly. They actually must sense that there is a power supply before they before they can be used because they are they're essentially meant to supplement the facility's power supply not to be their sole provider of power for the facility. But it does allow us to use less fuel in the 2.2 megawatt system and supplement that with the other combined heat and power generators. These events will also impact our geysers and reclamation systems and in the event of a PSPS we will stop flow to the geysers. The pumps that operate the geysers pipeline are not supported with backup power generation. And during a loss of power the geyser the geyser system will essentially be shut down for the entire event. We will still be able to move water throughout our reclamation system so we can direct flows to different storage ponds but we will not be able to supply water to our ag users because the pump stations at the farms and ranches do not have backup power generators. We have started the process of informing our ag users by email and our outreach team will be sending them letters with additional details on this. We also anticipate impacts to our local operations water distribution and sewer collection systems. And because a majority of our water supply comes to us via the aqueduct system we needed to ensure that our supplier had a backup plan as well. We've been working with Sonoma water and they have assured us that their facilities are supported with backup generation and will be functioning normally during a PSPS event. We do have an operating procedure to operate our farmers lane wells with backup power although we wouldn't likely operate the wells or the treatment facility during a PSPS event. So you may notice that area in light blue in the slide above you. We refer to this area as the aqueduct zone or central city and we don't anticipate this portion of our distribution system will see an interruption in water service. The aqueduct zone consists of approximately 65% of our customers and we anticipate that the aqueduct zone will remain unchanged during these events because the water to the distribution system and pressure are provided by the aqueduct. And as I mentioned earlier Sonoma water will continue to operate on backup power as necessary. As far as our water reservoirs our tanks need very little power to operate really only enough to run our SCADA and monitoring equipment that are located at the reservoirs. And these systems have backup battery power that allow us to monitor tank levels and chlorine residuals remotely through our SCADA system. Our operations team has developed a procedure to rotate the batteries during an extended PSPS event. I should also mention that many of our reservoirs can and will be powered by the backup generators at the connecting pump station. So in many cases we have already run a power supply from the pump station to the reservoir to better handle a power outage but that does not exist at all at all reservoirs. Fortunately our water pump stations have backup all have backup generator power their onsite generators. These generators can operate for an extended period of time and will be supported by one of our many refueling procedures. We've already determined how long each generator can operate with its current fuel supply. And we can also operate our pump stations with portable pumpers that can connect to each station in the event of a generator failure. Our pump stations are already plumbed in a way that allows us to connect to these pumpers quickly if needed. Our local sewer collection system is supported by 17 sewer lift stations. All but three of these stations have stationary generators onsite. Of the three that don't have generators, one is pre-wired for a mobile generator and pre-plumbed for a portable pumper if needed. The two other stations are very small and have very low flow. And we will service these lift stations with our cleaning trucks very similar to what we did after the fire in Fountain Grove where we service the burn stations. All of our sewer lift stations including the three without generators have battery backup systems that will allow us to continue to power our programmable logic controllers which we refer to as PLCs that allow us to continuously monitor the wet well levels at these stations remotely through our SCADA system. We also want to consider facilities, especially our UFO facility, and the UFO can operate at normal capacity with the stationary generator that's onsite at the facility. The UFO is also the location of the City Emergency Operations Center as well as the Water Department Operations Center. This facility will also become a temporary workplace for other employees that may not normally work at a facility that doesn't have full backup generator power such as our MSC South location. We also recognize the need to inform our customers that they may be impacted if they have a water booster pump or a sewer grinder pump or a private lift station that is connected to our infrastructure. These are important pieces of private infrastructure that are operated and maintained by the private property owners and is important that our community be prepared to operate these systems with backup power during a PSPS. These are not systems that are supported by Central's water. Private wells are also private infrastructure that are operated and maintained by private property owners and if this is a resident or commercial properties only water source it is important that they be prepared to operate these systems by a backup generator during the event of a PSPS. To help inform our community that they will need to have a plan to operate these private systems we are using several methods of communication and outreach to spread the word. Specific information regarding these private systems is located on an srcity.org slash water news item that can be seen online. We are sending letters to the customers that we believe have these private systems to help better inform them and we will also be sending letters to the ag community in addition to the work that we've already done to inform them that they will be impacted by these events. It's estimated that over 5,000 people attended the Sonoma ready day on September 8th which was an effort to help prepare folks for a lengthy loss of power and the July August water bill information insert went out to over 50,000 customers. We want to spread the word that SoCo Alerts is the best way for residents to stay informed about the threats to themselves and their property but also remind them that they have to sign up at SoCoAlert.com to be notified. PG&E continues to update their website and have started showing maps of the areas that could be impacted. These maps show fairly wide areas may not be the easiest to read but they are getting better over time. The more we as a city and our customers understand about PG&E's plan to inform us on when power will be shut off, how long they anticipate we will be without power, and how power will be restored, the better we can be prepared as a community. I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you very much. Questions for the Deputy Director? It's interesting times that we're living in and I'm sure we'll manage if and when we have these outages but it's nice to see that staff is working on things that will get out to the public and keep our rate payers informed so thank you. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Very good. Thank you. Any public comments on non-agenda matters? Seeing no one rise. We have no referrals, no written communications. Any board member reports? Director's report. Thank you. A couple things to update the board on. First I wanted to just let the board know that as you may recall we are leasing currently leasing in a long-term lease for the Fulton Road Church property which will be the future site of our sewer lift station. We have been working on having a permanent perimeter fence installed around the church property and that fencing has been installed and the contractor is currently working on the automatic entry gates and we believe the entry gate should be on site Wednesday next week and then once the gates are installed and fully operational that project will be complete. So that's been something we've been looking to do since we acquired the property because we had temporary fencing but we were having a bit of attractive nuisance in the area so we believe that permanent fencing should help. I also wanted to give the board some good news. The Public Assistance FEMA project for our water contamination project has finally been obligated by FEMA. It's been a long-term long time coming and a lot of work by many many folks to get that project obligated so really good news. The total obligation is currently at five and a half million and staff has worked with FEMA staff to allow us to version the project which means we can add scope and increase the reimbursable value as working with FEMA. So we're looking at that but also because the project is now finally obligated we can start to submit requests for reimbursement which is really good news because we've done a lot of work on that particular project. On a related note this week was our final week of testing for all 65 hydrants and three sample stations in the advisory area. All results so far have come back non-detect which is really great news so that means going forward we will no longer need to be sampling all 65 hydrants and three sample stations but what we will drop down to is quarterly sampling of two sample stations in the area. So just really want to thank staff and the team it was a huge effort to work on that project and and resolve the contamination issue a never before experienced contamination issue in such a timely fashion as well as in a way where we didn't wind up having to completely replace five miles of pipe in the area and significantly less cost to our rate payers to resolve the issue so all good news in relation to the contamination project. And then I wanted to pass out some brochures some board members already have them if there's too many feel free to take what you want or leave what you don't. We have been as was noted earlier working with renewables number renewable Sonoma under an exclusive negotiation agreement to look at the opportunities to potentially site original organics processing facility. We recognized that we really needed to put together a strong communication plan because this is a very big project with a lot of different boards and committees that are going to be participating as well as two different sort of government agencies for lack of a better term zero waste Sonoma as well as the city of Santa Rosa and then a project applicant which is renewable Sonoma. So we have been working together to put together communication plan and information and that will all be going out hopefully either later today or tomorrow you'll be receiving an email. We'll send it out to both the board and the council with links to this material as well as a link to our dedicated website which is srcity.org slash organics facility. We also developed some talking points and we'll have those available and then have the trifold available at a number of different locations including city manager's office here at City Hall as well as a Laguna treatment plant our compost facility and at other water facilities as well. So a lot of work and information that's going into this communications and more to come on the project as it develops. And then last we're just recognizing that it's mid-September and we're starting to look at the rest of the year including holidays coming up. So we wanted to remind the board that if you are aware of any planned absences or holiday planning that you might be looking to have some time off. If you could please let Gina know and that'll help us with understanding what board meetings will be available through the rest of the year and if we need to cancel any. And that is my report and I'm happy to answer any questions. Any questions for the director? Very good. Thank you all for being here and we are adjourned.