 Good morning. Roberta, can you see and hear me okay? Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Hi Heather, do you want to try a sound check so we can make sure your mic works? Can you say a little bit more? Yes, can you hear me? It's a little low. Can you say a little bit more so we can see if it's. I'll use the other one. Okay, it sounded okay right when you said I'll use another one, but before that, I guess if I talk a little louder. Yeah, that seems to be okay. Okay. Loud. Yeah, that seems to be okay. If you want to. Well, I guess I won't be able to see you, but if you stop being able to hear me very well. Somebody will interrupt you and tell you. Okay. Good morning, everyone. We will wait for board member Grable to join us. And then we will get started. Thank you. All right. It looks like we have board member Grable. So we will go ahead and get started. Good morning, everyone. I'd like to call the water conservation subcommittee. To order at nine oh one. Secretary. Can we do a roll call? Share lots. Here. One number wash. Great. So just a reminder to the subcommittee members, if you can mute your phones or microphones when you're not speaking. And then we will open up for public comment item two. This is public comment on non-agenda items. So if you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary. Do we have any live email or voicemail public comments? We received no comments. All right. Thank you. So now we will open up the, the. For any public comments on the minutes before we accept the minutes. So if you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. And if you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary. Do we have any comments about the minutes from last meeting? We're no public comments. All right. Great. Well, then I'd like to ask chair, ask a deputy director, Martin, if he could introduce item 4.1. Yeah. Good morning, chair Watts. Item 4.1 is our water use efficiency awards. Heather Aviles, sustainability representative for the water department. We presenting. Good morning, chair Watts. Members of the committee. I'm. As Peter said, I'm Heather Avila. The sustainability representative for our water use efficiency. Our water efficiency. Efficiency. Team. I'm here today speaking to the committee's approval of this year's water use efficiency award nominations. We've provided a handout with a detailed description of the nominees. But I'll also reuse them right now. Our first nominee. Is our water efficiency program champion. We're nominating park landscape maintenance. Park landscape maintenance has replaced over 30,000 square feet of water. They've gone above and beyond. To save water by performing irrigation systems checks, responding quickly to leaks. And using meter data to manage. Commercial sites to a budget. They serve both our residential and commercial sectors. And promote our programs and rebates. Our multi-family award nominee. It's going to Dan Wiley. Dan owns a 20 unit complex in Santa Rosa. And one of the main reasons we're nominating him. Is because he's using our water smart portal. To observe water use trends and set thresholds for a leak alert. By doing this in 2021, he was able to notice a. Water use increase. And when he did, he conducted inspections and gathered information from his tennis and was able to figure out that. Is recirculating hot water pumps on a water heater. Had broken. He repaired the pump and was quickly. Able to. Save thousands of gallons of water. Without the pump working the tenants were having to run the water. A lot longer to get hot water for the showers. In addition to having very, very efficient fixtures. In addition to having very, very efficient fixtures. That is complex. He has an onsite maintenance manager. Who conducts inspections. And tests the toilet for weeks at least twice a year. And he also responds very quickly to any water use concerns. That's the reason. Our commercial award nominee. Is going to Cottingtown center. Cottingtown center was extremely supportive of our drought efforts this last year. And we've had a lot of events or drought drop by. Where we gave away thousands of our water smart kits. Where customers. In addition, they've taken on a large scale irrigation. Project where they're converting over 4,000. To an efficient drip system. Lastly. They Cottingtown has a very large and very complex. Plumbing setup. And it's been extremely responsive. To concerns of weeks. And finding and fixing them. Our single family award nominee. Goes to Richard Lane. Richard is our coffee strong block captain. And he continues to promote. Sustainable features within the coffee park rebuild. This last year he installed. A little bit. Or 5,000 gallons of rainwater storage. That has a rainwater garden for all the. Overflow. He also installed a gray water system. That uses water from his clothes washer. Bathroom sink. Hubs and showers. Irrigate his little water. We now like to ask the committee's approval. Move forward with these nominations. Thank you so much for your presentation. Are there any board member questions or comments? Thank you for the presentation. And the nominees look great. I love the rainwater captation. I have one of those. 5,000 gallon tanks in my backyard myself that collects rainwater. And especially right now it's like. Just seems like everybody's going to need one pretty soon. So I'm glad that that folks are out there and leading the charge and helping us. You know, with early adoption and some of these things that are happening right now, I think we're going to be able to do that. And that will probably become the norm. So thank you so much. I also really enjoy seeing the multi-family award this year. I know that it's really difficult. A lot of the times for us to reach the tenants who are not necessarily on the account folder or not the account holders on the water bill. So it's really exciting to see landlords participating in some conservation efforts. And I hope that we can, they can encourage them to do that across, you know, in the community that we just don't get to reach those, those participants as easily. So, so thank you guys for that. Really excited for this year. This is always probably the best meeting of the year when we get to do the award. So. With that, I will open it up for public comment. If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary. Do we have any public or voicemail comments at this time? There are no comments. So I guess we will do a roll call vote. I think you actually need to only do like a moment a second. Oh, thank you. Even though it's just the two of you. I would move to approve the, the nominations set forth in the presentation for water conservation efforts and. Thank you. Board member Grable. I will second. So chair Watts. Aye. And board member Grable. Aye. Thank you. Thank you so much. That we will move to item 4.2 deputy director. It's decided. Yes. We have staff update for 2022. Water awareness month. Once again, Heather Aviles will be providing that presentation. Thank you committee members. Both of you, like we know, water awareness month. Is a statewide effort celebrated in the month of May. On May 10th this year, we will be going to city council for the proclamation of water awareness month as well as. For these water use efficiency. Or just a nomination. As usual, we will be advertising water awareness month through our social media. Radio. The proclamation. It helps bring awareness to Santa Rosa water. The efficiency program and recognizes our efforts by our staff and our community. Some of the. 2022 water awareness events include. The Earth Day event. We will be having on April 23rd. This event. Promote environmental protection. Within our community and we hope to see thousands of people this year. Water efficiency will be there handing out water smart kits and informing our customers about our rebates and programs. On May 14th. The. Virtual eco-friendly garden tour will begin. The tour highlights Russian river. Really landscaping best practices and support work. Completed by qualified water efficient. There will be 12 gardens. Throughout snowmen Marin County. And three of them will be in Santa Rosa. We expect over 2000 people to sign up and participate. Each of the gardens will have a professionally shop video to inspire and educate. Our community. Also on May 14th. We are. Co-hosting a workshop information with daily act. At their farm. This workshop. Will be. A bilingual workshop in Spanish and English. On insect investigation. Studies are showing them proving biodiversity in our soils. We select runoff and much greater water retention. As part of water awareness awareness month. We also. Send out. Letters to our customers. Updates and on water supply issues. Water use restriction rebates and free devices. As well as our. Events. And promote our water smart portal. Due to COVID we've had to cancel our water smart. Expo for the last two years that we're finally. Excited to be hosting it again this year. This year it'll be held on June 29th. Our focus will be on. Drought outreach and promoting our water smart portal. We expect to have. About 12 booths that highlight indoor and outdoor water. Efficiency. And we'd love to see the members of the board there. As always. And ours a water to help. Thank you so much for your presentation. You guys have a lot of busy events coming up. Excited to see some of them coming back in person. Any board member questions or comments. All right. Well, thank you so much for your presentation. We'll open it up for public comment. I am 4.2. If you wish to raise your, if you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary, any public comments for this item? We have no public comments. Great. We will move to item 4.3. Deputy director, if you could introduce item 4.3. Yes. Thank you, chair Watts. Item 4.3 is a staff update on. Department of Water Use Efficiency Activity. If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please raise your hand. If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. Department of Water Use Efficiency activities and the spring and summer drought campaign. Presenting will be Claire Norley, Water Use Efficiency Coordinator for the Water Department. Good morning chair Watts and members of the board. All right. So I'm going to be presenting a water. from drought is here to drought is still here, kind of adding that still here to make sure that our customers are aware that a drought continues, but still complimenting our existing outreach materials. On the bottom left-hand side is a picture of the campaign that we're gonna be rolling out. This is just a draft image, but it's really to highlight sort of a before and an after and provide information to our customers about specific actions that they can take with their property to save water. So in this example, we have grass on the left-hand side and then on the right-hand side we have a dry creek bed with some plantings. So it's really going from a resource-intensive, water-intensive landscaping to a beautiful low-water use landscaping. And so again, all of the images will highlight sort of the before and after and suggest ways that customers can undertake water-saving actions at their own home. In addition to the events that Heather described earlier for April and May, we have a very full summer and fall coming up with a lot of in-person events. And we're really excited to be able to work again with our customers in-person. So we've got a farmer's market booth that's coming up in June. Of course, we have our Water Smart Expo also in June. We've also got a tree care workshop that's coming up in July, really emphasizing to our customers the importance of taking care of their trees during drought. We're also gonna be hosting a hands-on drip irrigation workshop in July. We have a gray water reuse workshop that's coming up in August. We'll be going back again to the Wednesday market in August. We're hosting a lawn-gone workshop in September. And then two rainwater harvesting workshops, one in English and one in Spanish, later on in November. So we're really excited to get back out there and work with our customers again in-person. We're also continuing always to work with our commercial customers. So on the left-hand side, you'll see a water-saving tip sheet that we're trying to distribute out to our commercial customers through our chamber relationships. That's been really successful last year, and we hope to continue those relationships moving forward. We also have outreach that's required because we are in drought restrictions that need to go into hotels and lodging as well as restaurants. So we have free cards that are pictured here on the right-hand side of the screen. We can provide those cards for free to any of our commercial customers who may like them. They can also put out their own cards, and we have editable electronic copies on our website for customers to be able to customize them and add their logo, for example. So some of the key messaging that we're gonna really be highlighting in the next couple of months, this spring and summer, are encouraging our customers to do an irrigation checkup, reviewing their irrigation before they turn it on, make sure that there aren't any leaks and breaks. We're also always encouraging appropriate scheduling. We offer free water, free weekly watering recommendations on our website, and we hope that customers take advantage of those. We also always encourage customers to select low-water use plants, and we have great resources on our website to encourage that selection. Always advocating that customers find out about and utilize our rebates, including our new rebates, which are the pool removal rebate and our pool cover rebate. We're also emphasize tree care during drought, especially our trees and our mature plantings don't bounce back as easily after a drought, and so it's really important that we ensure our customers continue to water those and let their grass die, which could be brought back really easily after a drought. And then lastly, we're always encouraging our customers to register for the WaterSmart portal. We think this is a really helpful tool for customers to be able to understand their water usage really easily. It provides annual, monthly, weekly, and even hourly water use data. So one project that I wanted to highlight that staff has just completed is to develop a list of climate-ready trees. This was a list of trees that thrive not only in Santa Rosa's current climate, but also in our projected climate out through 2050. So this list of trees, I think will be useful for numerous reasons. One of them, of course, for our cash for grass long removal rebate program for our required plantings. We also get questions from customers about what kinds of plants to plant just in general, even if they're not participating in our cash for grass program. So I think it'll be helpful for them as well. We were also recently awarded a grant to expand our cash for grass program for commercial customers and increase that rebate amount. And it requires that customers install trees. So again, this list will be really helpful for that. And then lastly, I think this list will be helpful for our required street trees list that is maintained by our parks department. So this list was developed in concert in partnership with our master gardeners or local master gardeners. They actually reviewed climate projections for Sonoma County and specifically Santa Rosa out through 2100. And they reviewed climate projections from numerous sources. Sonoma County Climate Protection Authority, CalAdapt, Western Regional Climate Center, and California Irrigation Management Information System. So they analyzed quite a bit of research about how trees are going to be adapting in our changing climate. And they identified key elements to plant selection. And then they developed a scoring tool to select trees. What their research found was that Paso Robles' temperature and climate as it is today is how Santa Rosa's will be in 2015. So based on that information, they were able to rank over 100 trees and to develop a list of 28 trees total that scored the highest on the scoring tool, which is based on eight different characteristics, including drought tolerance. So all of the trees on this list are either low or very low water use requirements, temperature tolerance, pest resistance, damage resilience, whether the tree is native to California or not, the nuisance factor, so how much leaf drop is occurring, for example, throughout the year, the maintenance requirements, and whether the tree provides habitat. So this list of 28 trees is now available on our website. We've also integrated it into Sonoma Waters plant picker tools. So it's also available regionally for anyone in Sonoma County to take advantage of this. And lastly, I wanna highlight the success that the Sonoma-Morin Saving Water Partnership has had over the last fiscal year. Santa Rosa is obviously part of this partnership and we've contributed to these successful totals. So in this last fiscal year, nine over 945 irrigation systems were retrofitted with smart controllers, over 150,000 square feet of lawn was removed, over 31,000 gallons of rainwater harvesting capacity was added to our County, almost enforced 1,500 water waste enforcements, 2,100 water smart home evaluations, which is pretty impressive considering we weren't going into homes for part of this year due to COVID. So that's really exciting to see that we are still able to participate in over 2,000 home evaluations. And then really excitingly, we've distributed over 10,000 drought kits this last year, 3,000 of which were contributed by Santa Rosa alone during our last drought-dropped by events. So as always, Santa Rosa is here to help and for the latest information on drought and what are you sufficiency, folks can visit srcity.org slash save water. Thank you so much for your presentation. Are there any board member questions or comments at this time? Board member Grable? Yeah, thank you so much for that presentation. Just a lot of expertise there that I think we benefit from and certainly the public does. Just a specific question. You mentioned, I was hoping the slide would come up and I could screenshot it, but the list of climate ready trees that you narrowed down to 28, you said it was available on which website and just how can I access that? Cause that's actually something that I think I can use in my work right away. That's great. Yes, it is available on our Santa Rosa Water Smart Yard page. So that's the srcity.org slash Water Smart Yard and it's also available on Sonoma Waters website. That would actually be the suggested location because there's nice pictures and they have more of a description on their website cause they have a great tool. Awesome. And just out of curiosity is that the language there on the website, does it describe it both in terms of water savings and climate adaptation? The climate ready trees title is there too. Yes, it does talk a little bit about the climate benefits to trees. That's fantastic. I've been hoping there'd be more of a synergy and I saw in the last presentation from Ms. Avilis as well, recognizing that healthy soils and obviously native plants and vegetation and that carbon sequestration and water retention in healthy soils with native plants and biodiversity seem to be synergistic and symbiotic and definitely achieving multiple desired outcomes at once obviously as that becomes a more and more dire imperative. So thank you so much. Yeah, I just want to add to that over the past year or so Claire and her team have worked quite a bit with the partnership to develop a lot of plant list related items and ways that folks can kind of go shopping at different nurseries and things like that. So it should be utilized as a resource for folks, county wide. And so I think Claire's suggestion that that be the kind of the primary location is a good one. Cause we've also put a lot of time and equity into helping the partnership improve that as well. Is there any thought of making that in a physical handout that can be placed at some of these nurseries like at the checkout type of location, just speaking from my own experience, you're going to a nursery and then asking, oh, which ones are drought tolerant and all that. Those are usually kind of the questions that when I am looking for some flowers for the season, is there any possibility of getting that into something physical that can be displayed at those types of locations? That's a great idea. Yes, I can definitely look into that. I can also comment that Sonoma water through the partnership has a WaterSmart plant nursery plant tag that they've worked with specific local nurseries and I think they're always trying to expand it. So I think it's at 19 local Sonoma County nurseries and it's a specific plant tag that says this plant is WaterSmart. So that is also out there and of course they're always looking to expand that further. But I think that this tree list would be a really good compliment to a plant tag. Yeah, that's one number greatly. Well, I just wanted to second what Board Member Watts said what Chair Watts said in that also there's a lot of folks I think who shop at some of the local nurseries, specifically like Calflora and others that specialize in native plants. And there are folks from, it's certainly not a generalization but there are definitely folks who I know use the internet less from other generations and folks who are elders with more expertise in native plants and gardening and do go to Calflora but may not be aware of some of the online resources that compliment that and the incentive programs that obviously we've been really rolling out successfully but there might be some folks who are already doing this stuff that could benefit from that as Chair Watts said a hard copy form in those locations because they may not be looking for it online. Yeah, there's an extra cost associated with doing any sort of print material that might not be covered. However, I do know from my own experience when we go to the nursery it's kind of just the last minute. Oh, let's go to the nursery and it's an easy place to be outside with my little one. So it's definitely something where I don't necessarily plan and research ahead of time and usually go and ask them for ideas while I'm there. So something like that I think would be beneficial and this is really exciting that tree list I will definitely use as well as Bore-Bembre Grable. So we've been looking for a couple more for our yard while we remove our grass. So that's a exciting resource available. And just one more clarifying question that the website, the County Y website that both Peter and Claire that you referred to is the Sonoma Moraine Water Partnership website, not just the Santa Rosa Water Smart, but was that the distinction between the two online portals? Yeah, so Santa Rosa in our water department we have our own website pages which is the SRCITY one that I mentioned but I do recommend for this list to go to the Sonoma Moraine Saving Water Partnership list. It's called the Plant Picker and it's prominently displayed right on the homepage and it's got really nice photos and it's got a good description of each type of plant. So I think that's the best resource to be able to see what the plant looks like, for example. Yeah, and that webpage is savingwaterpartnership.org. Well, thank you so much. This was an engaging conversation. I think we're both very excited about these resources so I know the public will be as well. So we will open it up for public comments if there are any public comments on item 4.3. If you're a dialing in, please dial star nine. If you're doing through Zoom, please raise your hand. Secretary Atha, do we have any public comments for this item? Chair, once we have no public comments. All right, well, thank you so much for the information this morning. I think that actually concludes our meeting. So we will adjourn and we will see each other at the next BT meeting. Have a good day.