 all right so let's we're going to convene the meeting at this point in time welcome to the San Lorenzo Valley Board of Directors meeting for September 17th 2020 Holly would you please call the roll director Moran president director Henry here director Foles here director Ferris president president swan here thank you Holly uh so let's see do we have any additions or deletions to the closed session agenda um staff has none i i don't know about district council yeah none none from me okay thank you now hold on a second before we go any further we have a staff member who's in closed session this isn't closed session yet we still have to have oral communication okay thank you okay so next up is oral communication regarding the items on the closed session agenda do we have any any comments communications about anything on the closed session agenda attendees no hands are up so i'm assuming that both Cynthia and Joe don't have any questions about the closed session agenda so that being the case we're going to now adjourn to the closed session and then we will rejoin you when we've included so we are we are live on the meeting now we are we are convening to open session at what on my mickey mouse what says is something past 6 30 um and so are all the directors back on that's my question would you like me to call roll yeah let's do that because i don't see everybody on this and ctv has got a weird thing going on here director moran president director henry here director falls here director ferris president and president swan here thank you holly appreciate it okay so we're uh we've convened back to open session and we have nothing to report out of closed session so moving into the open session agenda rick are there any additions or deletions to the open session agenda rick you're muted excuse me chair font I have no additions or deletions to the agenda okay thank you rick at this time then we will entertain oral communications from any of the public that's called in and you can comment on any subject you wish you that's not on the agenda so can't see there we go we've got looks like we got 10 attendees do we have any questions or anything any comments from anybody on any items not on the agenda tonight it does not look like it okay we're coming back to the panel all right so moving on to rick take us into item eight unfinished business thank you thank you chair swan item eight is a cz you wildfire operational update this will be an oral update we did not yet our final engineering report stand in time for the agenda but i will give you an update i am pleased to tell the board as of today we have zero customers out of water staff has worked continuously since the fire to get all of our customers back in water and as of today we have zero customers out of water and we have about approximately i think 462 connections with a do not drink do not boil notice we have one area that we have detected benzene in and that is the riverside grove area north boulder creek and an ongoing sampling and flushing appears that we are the minimizing that contamination but much more sampling will be needed in that general area i do believe that affects 62 customers if i have my zones correct in front of me since we met last time we have found additional damage we had a registered professional forester come in and assess the trees and vegetation around the district's lion water treatment facility which encompasses the treatment plant lion tank little lion tank and big steel a significant amount of trees were were deemed necessary to remove due to either trunk or root damage there is fire underground that is burning roots and then there are some trunk damage that required a considerable amount of more trees to remove these trees were all in reach of either the treatment plant lion tank facilities or a danger to staff in replacing facilities in that area it was also found on sunday afternoon as staff was getting ready to bring another significant amount of connections in water inspection of the two tanks the lion treat or the lion water tank which is a three million gallon tank and the little lion water tank which is i do believe a 250,000 gallon water tank had contamination had boc contamination the piping from those tanks burned and the piping acted as a chimney and a draft was pulled all of the exhaust from the burning hdpe pipe up into the tanks coating the complete insides of the two tanks contaminated with boc's this was a discovery that most likely will require recoding the interior of these tanks we have an engineering firm sampling and evaluating our coatings inside but it appears that these two tanks will have to be recoded this will increase our damage by close to three quarters of a million dollars to a million dollars as this is hazmat and coatings are quite expensive and time-consuming to replace so with the contamination found of those tanks additional portable storage had to be brought in to put this zone back in water so staff brought in i do believe three 10,000 gallon tanks put in place if we put one in sunday night get the zone back in water and then they have installed they are installing the other two tanks to get up to 30,000 30,000 gallons with the discovery of the boc damage inside the tanks it was also discovered that that the overflow piping and additional piping was contaminated that will be required to be replaced we are moving forward on temporary repairs on the formant creek supply line which is in that general area and we have ran a considerable amount of above ground piping to put customers back in water why we are replacing piping between the three reservoirs a considerable amount more of funds need to be expended for tree removal we are putting estimates together to bring back to the board for amendment to construction contracts we are approaching most likely the 1.3 million dollars in in repairs to date we'll bring back contract amendments to the board at the next meeting with that i'll ask you the director of operations wants to add anything to the update on getting the system back from the fire i mean james do you have anything you want to add to that yeah so i'd let you go on with that so we did not get that one customer on madrone drive back in water today we i'm sorry i didn't report that back to you they were making that connection and when they made that connection that house did not come back and water this afternoon we'll be right back on that house tomorrow morning figuring out how to hook them up and then we are we do have 15 000 gallons of storage at the little line place right tank right now we have tanks being delivered tomorrow and we will be up to about 35 to 40 000 gallons on that site with temporary storage tomorrow and we are moving ahead with testing swap testing the lion tanks and then cleaning and probably going to recode the inside of those tanks we do have damage to the tanks plus the tanks are due at this time for this and they're empty at this point so we really think it's a good time to get in there and get it done either way with the whole thing but with the testing we do believe it's going to come back VOCs in the paint and we have an engineer on on contract that's been out there and has pretty much told us and they're getting us a letter saying that there is contamination to the coatings so hopefully everything goes pretty smooth on that and that's not all i got i just like to add to on the coatings of the tank we are putting together a a proposal to put out a request for proposal there will be a short bidding process for repairs replacement of of those coatings and we'll bring that back to the board for approval it is a high dollar item it'll be close to a million dollars for both of those tanks with hazmat disposal of the interior but we are going through a bidding process for for that replacement a lot of just i know this our board is always wants to see us higher locally a lot of our temporary crews and contractors are local in the San Lorenzo Valley and they're working very hard and been a great relationship moving ahead with a lot of the local contractors with that i'll turn it over to the board i know it's not a written report we just ran out of time i'll go back to the board for questions or comments yep thanks rick uh on the on the tanks where the vocs were detected what was the capacity storage capacity that's impacted by those those two tanks uh the big lion tank is three million gallons little lion is like 250 000 gallons it's close to 45 of the district's total storage it's pretty important um it definitely has uh impacted the district on on fire flow right now um and it's going to be a problem as we go into the winter months um with opera it'll be operational problems so we're going to want to move on getting those two tanks recoded to get them back online as soon as possible uh those tanks are also part of the treatment plant process right and what would the time take to recode the those two tanks um so that should be once we get the spec together that sandis engineering the contract engineer right now that we're working with they're putting the spec together it's probably going to take them about a week to put that together once they get into coatings we're figuring at least four to five weeks but at this point we have no surface water our surface water intakes are taken out our surface water piping is all taken out we have a very sensitive debris flow that's probably going to come off of these mountains um come winter time we are moving ahead we're putting the form and piping in and all that but we're really worried about this debris flow and what is going to actually happen before the rains hit us this year and so we're not too sure when we're going to be able to fire this treatment plant back up and actually get into those tanks so our timeline for recoding i feel is we got the time right now we have the time but we're going to move on it very very quickly right one of the big keys is going to be finding you know a tank coder that's availability and we will go out and and beat the bush to try to get somebody to respond very quickly we want to get these tanks coated even so we don't have surface water we can pump up well water to start getting some storage back we need to get some storage back so we'll if need be we'll move well water up to those tanks right thank you rick bob you have your hand up bubbles yes thanks and james thanks to you and your team for you know staying on on this so diligently it's greatly appreciated i see a lot of comments on social media about how appreciative people are for that so thank you for doing that um relative to the repair and coding of these tanks um how much of this could be covered by fema versus how much do they need to be covered by us one of the big things with that is the testing of these tanks and testing of everything so proven damage is what has to happen and that's why testing of everything is very important right now are the are the repairs that need to be done this also caused by i don't know trees hitting it or fire damage or something like that or the repairs that need to be done sort of the normal thing you do on a tank that's old and and and needs to be maintained in this fashion so none of the tanks are damaged by falling trees or anything like that our damage is from piping piping chimney the veal well i can't even say veal sees at this point we haven't tested them but they pipe and chimney the soot and black residue into these tanks and they are just fully covered in this black residue so now the testing is to begin you mentioned that there were repairs i think rick mentioned there are repairs that need to be done are those repairs different than just recoding the tank um yes we need to replace the piping going up to the tanks because they're okay piping but it's not a repair it's not a repair on the tank it's not a repair on the tank itself oh no sorry on the on the on the recoding there's two there's two approaches on this there's there's the fema approach which we feel pretty comfortable that we will have coverage but the district has also uh district council and myself has also had an extensive meeting with our sdr may our risk manager and the district does have pollution and contamination coverage that most likely where one left off the other one will pick up we haven't uh drilled down to the total coverage yet and with sdr may but we do have pollution and contamination coverage okay well of course but i i'm just getting a sense here of what we've got to cover this outside of our own reserve so thank you thank you for that clarification uh you had your hand up yes so james um do you blast the inside of the tank to take off the coating and all the junk that's got on it is is that how you get rid of it the first thing that'll happen from what i understand talking with the hazmat team that's getting ready to come in next week at some point after we get our swab testing from our engineering group first thing i understand they're going to do is they're going to pressure wash the whole thing to get rid of the hazmat of the of this soot and black grime that has collected in the tank and then from there you what i understand is they'll sandblast everything encapsulate and sandblast everything capture everything do a vacuum out in a clean out and then they'll recoat the inside of the tank okay and as for the debris coming down um and affecting surface water um does anybody i i mean i've heard we're gonna have a dry year then i've heard we're gonna have a wet year and nobody knows but this definitely affects um santa margarita groundwater agency and things we're talking about and do you think it'll be at least a year before all of that stuff gets washed away or what because we're going to be using groundwater and we're going to reduce the level of our groundwater yeah i have no timeline on how long that would take them for that to happen it's going to be a wait and see approach and we hope that as soon as the heavy rains are over it's the county of santa cruz will take the lead on debris flows uh from the watershed and as soon as the heavy rains are over early spring we'll have formant creek back online and formant creek can put out a significant amount of water um and from past uh winners we know and our plan is to get formant creek online as soon as the the heavy rains decide and we can get in there you know the first rains are going to have a lot of debris and pretty much we'll let that go by we will be using the fall creek intake because felton's only source of water in their system is surface water we can't pump water well water up to fall creek through the intertize but if it gets really critical you know we can always rely on the well field heavily and we can always go into a stricter conservation to get through those real heavy winter months so the so the restrictions on felton water is this considered an emergency that lifts some of those restrictions i'm sorry lo said again well we are i mean felton we aren't supposed to be using their water at certain times so does this is this an emergency that lifts those restrictions yes this is a federally declared emergency and this is emergency mode for the district we are more than fully allowed to use that emergency intertie at this point okay okay thank you thank you james and rick thank you miss lou you're uh next up rick i have a question for you you mentioned the harvesting of fire damaged trees are we looking at trying to convert some of those fire damaged trees into board feet and do some cost recovery there yes any idea on the magnitude i do not we're still uh we do have a forester and james that are working with the local mills to discuss uh possibly selling that timber but down timber that we have stacked at one of our storage yards right now but yes that's a question yes very good thank you thank you lou uh no other i don't see any other hands from the board how about look can i say something rick absolutely please thank you for that um so um is that tree removal is going to happen up around lion's tank that's what i'm understanding it's happening around lion plant big steel tank lion little lion tank and the um trail and access into form and intake from the plant to form and intake okay so my question is is this going to change so all that tree removal is it going to change the analysis of the lion's slide i'll let carly take that one yeah we just met with the environmental people we did we just had rincon come down they're going to bring in that information into their feasibility analysis so that'll be in the reports that we bring to the agencies the vegetation in that area wasn't as significantly damaged as rest of the upper areas of the treatment plant so um they are addressing that right now in the feasibility okay great thanks from thank we will be looking at that whole site for access now that whole site has changed before with this slide it was a heavily wooded site there wasn't really any act any other access that we could see or our geotech could see we'll revisit that again the see if there is another access in now that we change that whole that's a whole way of the land up there great thank you rick bob you have your hand up again thanks um so uh james i understand the the the lion plant is currently offline right it's not treating any water right is there any impacts to bringing that back up once it's been offline for a while because it sounds like it's going to be offline for a little while i mean there could be but at this time we do have all of our filters soaked with water that when we turned it off we left water in the filters to keep the nylon beads in the sand and the site and everything wet um we may need to at some point change that water out from stagnation we don't want to get too old in there that's for sure but um we're definitely we definitely we went in we closed the plant down to the tightest as we could we took all chemicals out we drained all chemical lines we took the tubings made sure all the tubings were drained so it's put to bed in a very clean way right now is the one thing that might have to happen though is changing out the water in those filters to keep that water on that media fresh okay great thank you thanks uh james were there any animal rights people that came in and cleaned your fish tank okay nevermind it looks much better than the last time i said yeah james you can get him out i agree and one last thing before you turn over to the public for comment is that we are still uh supplying bottled water at our operations facility in downtown boulder creek um that the majority of that water if not all of it is being donated by many different agencies and and vendors such as Budweiser and and so forth etc and we are supplying water through a five-gallon um filling station for refillable bottles and we just heard today that red cross is donating 500 more five-gallon bottles uh and 25 more pallets of bottled water and we are supplying water for folks up in the big basin water district brackenbray any of the areas around that you not have potable water and steve can i add to that sorry go ahead uh so uh lu and i participated in that uh giving people water and filling up their bottles and um in the history of our culture we often met at the watering hole and uh tales were told and uh people shared their life and that's really what happened just three hours that i was there the people that uh got water came from water were so appreciative of what the water district was doing and the people were doing to help them and um it was uh heartening to see the response that people had and in their grief uh they're all without water and um so it was really nice to see that community spirit about what was going on there and it's really successful and appreciative of what the water district is doing about giving out free water and making it easy for them in this hard time great to hear thank you rick for sharing that okay let's go to any of the public comments right so we've got um the public has an opportunity now to comment on anything we've just been discussing and i see uh larry four word you are recognized just feel free to share your thoughts and comments you're on mute there you go uh can you hear me now yes i i have two questions um i'm concerned about the the possibility of wintertime flooding mud flows landslides and debris flows and i'm wondering whether there's been any kind of preliminary assessment of of where those risks are and uh you said that the county was going to take the lead on that i know that um usgs has considerable capability for doing that kind of an assessment and i think cal fire does some related assessments if i can answer that chris one yes um the county of santa cruz is uh taking the lead agency with cal fire there are many high-level meetings our staff spent several hours today in discussion uh the director of operations has been out on the watershed with county watershed folks and public works folks the county is extremely concerned about debris flows on all of the streams and there is a usgs report out that kind of outlines a lot of that they're not saying potentially debris flows they are saying debris flows will be coming they are looking at additional evacuations along the streams and they are looking at a huge outreach program for people to be prepared to leave their homes before winter storms and they are installing a network of rain gauges and early warning devices to warn people but the county is taking this extremely serious and has thrown a lot of resources on it they have many concerns about people repopulating in trailers coming back into areas where there's no power no cell service um there's a lot being done it's just in the beginning stages but every agency in the county is working on this and including the water district so there'll be a lot more to follow on uh this winter great thank you thank you very much um i really appreciate all the work that everybody's doing on this related to that rick i'm worried about another fire we still have two months to go in the fire season as have your fire management consultants done any kind of assessment of the risks especially like on the you know the east side of the valley for another major wildfire that could develop there all right maybe carly could speak to that because i have been i have not been involved in any discussions uh on that right so panorama has switched their gears um to work on post fire with with us but they are still working on the entire management plan for the district i'm considering the east side as well if there were to be other fires we are still looking into hardening those areas and again it just comes down to funding and unfortunately with everything else going on there is just kind of this focus on the emergency response but we are keeping an eye on that and we will be doing some implementation here great thank you thanks very much thank you larry uh yes we have uh jesse kathan you're having an opportunity to share your thoughts hi um i just had a quick question uh to follow up from the previous question um rick you mentioned that uh though there is a report um and i don't know if you're referring to from usgs or from cal fire um about the threat of debris flows and i know cal fire had a preliminary report out but you know if uh either of those publications from cal fire or from usgs are accessible to the public you know they are accessible and i'll make sure we get them up on the website tomorrow if they're not already up they may be carly i'm not sure but if not i'll make sure they get up on our website tomorrow for people to uh to access right we can post the usgs debris flows map but the war report from cal fire won't be available to the public until uh september 29th is my answer thank you you uh let's see next we have uh gail mohoode all right gail gail you're on mute how about now no it was good okay thank you steve um i just wanted to follow up on that previous question and uh really encourage the district to put the usgs report um on the uh website and encourage all of our rate payers to take a look at it it's actually a very detailed report that allows you to look at every single watershed and the risk whether it's uh low medium of or high for the hazard for mud flows during high intensity rain events and these were developed um based on the degree to which areas were burned the slopes the soils that were there and the good news for the district is that actually the hazards in a relative sense are for the most part low because are uh in most of our drainages because the uh watersheds are small so the amount of debris that's there is not a lot but the foreman creek drainage is one that actually has a moderate hazard um and so people should really be aware of where their houses are with respect to downstream of the moderate uh hazard areas on these maps the the other thing i'd like to say is that um we know from previous fires um in these kinds of settings that the effects of debris flows uh in terms of recovery of the watersheds are on the order of one to two to three years so i i think we we can't hope that we'll be at um i was going to say out of the woods but that's not the right thing to say that that things will be fine in after next spring i think that we can expect to have um repeated debris flows uh obviously of smaller volume that will continue for at least another year and maybe two and i guess one question i would ask is are there ways to once we get the worst of this stuff on them off the mountain that we can construct things that catch some of that debris that that will come down if you rebuild the foreman creek facilities thank you we have not addressed that and i don't think we will we could talk with the county on that because the county's trying to to figure out how to keep you know debris from coming down to culverts the there's going to be a huge push for all the culvert systems um to try to keep them from plugging with these debris flows because there's already you know the where james that took the county i think yesterday they showed pictures of already logs sliding down the hill right into the stream into Harman Creek yeah and it's not only just logs all the root damage the surface root damage is horrible up there and you're talking about slopes that are so steep you could barely walk on them at this point with the with the debris that are falling down sliding already with the dry slide due to the root damage up there harley as well has been taking us going out with us and she's been getting a group of people to go out with from the county from environmental from our engineering group from geologists you know i mean the other day we went out with us out there and the stuff we walked through is just it's mind-blowing how steep the terrain is and what's actually going to come down out there and right now from what i mean being in these meetings with the county being these meetings on the higher end their game plan is to save the culverts down at the highways there's not much they're going to be able to do before rainy season up on these terrains these terrains are very steep hard to get to there's not a lot you can do at this point gail did you have any further questions or comments uh no i i don't really i mean what they're describing is kind of what i expected and actually in many ways the greatest hazards are down in the low lying areas below all the slopes and in terms of sort of santa the populated areas are the great concern so um yeah and so that that's that's that's actually from this standpoint of santa crew is probably the greater concern i mean for us it's for the district it's one thing but there's also that you know the potential for damage to homes lives and everything else like we had what 1982 when we had the floods that and that's like the city of Santa Cruz is down there cutting vegetation and digging silt and everything out of the rip mouth of the river down there and they're working up into town already cutting vegetation cleaning silt out because they know what's coming down there and they already have an evacuation plan that's going on for the low lying trailer park that's down there somewhere they were talking about you know i mean it's it's definitely not a good scenario at this point well it's very encouraging that they're already moving on that goes to show you that the the agree that this could be because i don't think most people will realize that how serious this is there is a lot of down timber and damage in the watershed okay thank you rick thank you gail okay next we have uh joe joe kuchiera feel free to ask a question or share a comment thank you mr president i have a question at the last uh online meeting um it was reported that there were 50 uh of the 90 samples had come in and i've been trying to check the site every day several times and i'm not seeing uh to use an example um for example in locations three four and five um the last samples were either like in location three was september third location four was september fourth uh location five was september seventh where where are the remaining sample data showing i know you when you've been making changes in lifting the unsafe water order you've been posting uh as best as i can see you've been posting the data related to where you've been lifting but i'm not seeing where the rest of the data is being posted maybe someone could say where i don't think that has been posted yet and correct me if i'm wrong jane is our meeting with state today we were posting tomorrow nate said that we haven't got that that that last sample results that we've got back we haven't got posted yet um again it takes a week after we take the sample to get all the information back and get it to be posted but usually joe as soon as we get it an approval from the state after they review we get it posted so i be patient and it's got to be coming out very shortly the full report is being compiled and we're getting all the data points in there right now the stuff that's been being posted is for lifting and for being able to get these neighborhoods back in water and get them off the dnd dmb and all the other data points are being put together and we aren't approved from the state yet to release those and that's in review by the state now and it should follow a map but we're trying to get a better mapping of each individual sample we're working on updating new mapping to try to get more information out because we do know that people want to see in the distribution system where these samples are being collected we had quite the discussion today with the state on updating uh public information because i was referring to at the last meeting or the last online session anyway um you said that you had posted the 50 of the 90 you had done and you were continuing to do more sampling and so i said that was back on september 9th so i was i thought you you would have the remainder of those by now right i'll double check with with our water quality staff uh first thing in the morning and i'll email you when that's going to be out okay i don't really have information around top my head and the the summary table that you did for september 9th is really helpful do you think when you're doing your your data entry you can it's oftentimes pretty common to show what the mcl levels are for each of the various tests you're doing and those are not showing up in any of your tables okay either the mcl's or what the action level is sometimes they're referred to as mcl sometimes they're referred to as action levels okay good points i'll talk with nate in the morning and that that would be great right see if we can make some updates and i'll i got your email address i'll get back to you on uh on the other sample results when we're gonna have posted then as i understood both the first zoom meeting and then the emergency meeting i had understood from both your comments and some of the others that that a lot of the system didn't lose pressure specifically when i asked about brookdale but the so is that correct that's correct i but you know we at you where you live in brookdale did not lose pressure it was on the other side of the main pump which is just outside of brookdale in the boulder creek that we started to have pressure issues there was definitely pressure breaks on the west side of highway nine in a couple in one little zone which is south zone and then on the ultavia road there was a pressure where the main line was burned up but there was pressure to where it burned up to when we turned off those valves at the burning pipe the the reason i asked for clarification because this might help you when you go to your to on your main website your slvwd website and you go to the czu fire water quality info page there's a background introductory there's two paragraphs in the first paragraph the the second to the last sentence says that the depressurize i'm reading it to you says the depressurized zones included all slvwd services north of alba road and the highway nine intersection so that says that everything was depressurized north of alba road which would include not just where i live but everything before brookdale and after that is definitely needs to be corrected that's bad information because that that's been in this this the these two introductory paragraphs have been on your page since you you know since you started the water quality section thank you for catching that and we'll correct that air um i don't have time to review everything with everything that's going on so yeah no i that's where that's why i asked the question because no i appreciate it too and we'll get that corrected thank you okay that's all for me okay any other uh public comments that uh people would like to make no okay nothing okay so um uh back to you general rogers next on the agenda did you believe our next item is emergency contracts status update um our next board meeting i will be bringing back the emergency contracts to you um like i said in the previous uh discussion uh that with additional damage of the two lion tanks and the additional piping additional pre-removal and all our expenses to date are this is not including the two lion tanks we're approaching the 1.2 million dollar response at that facility and those contracts need to be updated and need to be brought back to the board in addition we did receive funding for all categories of FEMA a through g i do believe the two the three categories uh for the district that are most important your category a and b which are emergency response and debris removal um debris removal would be trees and so forth and emergency response would be uh getting our customers back in water and then category f which is permanent repairs for public utilities so uh those uh categories have been uh funded by the uh by the president united states so that's good news for the district now there may be some additional funding we can obtain from FEMA um and we will be looking into that and we did have a meeting with our sd rma our risk management carrier uh district council and myself uh and the director of operations uh we met with our adjuster adjusters uh tour damage and brought a few uh hours out into the distribution system we went over coverage um and all the different ins and outs of uh of our risk management coverage i don't know jean do you want to add anything to that um about um no i have nothing to add i do know i can add to the whole thing with the emergency contracts um i have put a bug in the ear of our engineering company that we're working with right now sandis engineering um they realize that the things are going really quick right now i've had a lot of boots on the ground with this company um we've been out in the field a lot they are very well rounded and a good group that i'm working with they get it they understand what's going on out there um they're definitely taking a lot of pressure off my back at this point um finally feel like i'm getting my feet under me with them taking on some of the responsibilities for me of managing some of these projects designing these projects getting this stuff going as i still have a whole lot of system to keep running and a lot of employees keep running out there and keep that system running with these emergency projects that are now on my table on my plate so it's been a huge help and i just hope you all understand the help they give me great glad to hear that did rick you said that the FEMA funded a number of categories it was there a dollar amount associated with that uh no we do not have a dollar amount associated with that just getting the categories funded uh the dollar amounts will follow now with that okay and that has not been out to do something that sanders will be helping with and get the information for these projects and start going out to bid we'll start getting numbers we'll know what the final project's going to cost us i see okay so i was just curious because stephanie said we had about three million in cash when we started this whole thing and it sounds like we burnt through 1.2 so far right these are the initial response you know we haven't really developed you know i have some ballpark figures of costs that we submitted early on to fema and i my last including the lion and little lion we're about 12.8 million for final costs but we're a long ways away from that yet um we still have to talk about design and and what we're doing um on the immediate response you know we'll probably get close to the the two million dollar on the immediate response of getting people back in water when the dust settles um and maybe through the winter with operational and we may have additional damage that's developed from the winter rains as well and then i'm not sure how it works on the whole reimbursement from fema and stuff but rick i mean with the temporary once we get the temporary done we're allowed to submit that as that project's done for the temporary part of it right so we should be getting reimbursements back as we're finishing these things so once we get into the final projects some of these projects are going to go really quick and they're expensive but we should be able to get them done quick like the tank coating you know it's not going to take that long and it'll be a final product and so we should be able to submit for reimbursement right away and so hopefully we have funding coming in as we're moving into other projects well that sounds encouraging okay great thank you and Steve yeah um hang on rick we got lou's ahead of you in line lou go ahead you have uh your hand up okay speaking of funding i have a question for carly you mentioned that we're using panorama for post fire activities which i think is great um are we approaching that $60,000 limit that we had approved for panorama do you do we need to be proactive to raise that limit we are so actually the last call i have with panorama they're going to put together a updated scope and we'll bring that to the board once that's available including everything you think we're going to need for post fire activities exactly thank you that'll come back when we bring back the other contracts thank you uh lou okay rick you had a yeah my understanding is that with fema it's a their portion is 75 right that's correct okay thank you except for the category F right rick well category F too but there's the you know it's kind of early to say it's at 75 percent uh then there's a state chair in that and there's ways that we can petition it's tough to get the they get the 25 percent covered as well okay uh any other questions or comments from the board public here joe you've got your hand up good jara thank you mr president um has there been any progress or success with the state and federal representatives for petitioning the governor requesting the governor and the feds for a hundred percent participation in order to relieve the 25 state and local share right now low level there's been no high level discussion as of yet we just got the all categories approved so that'll be our next step i didn't hear the first thing you said jim i'm uh just low level discussion with staff i've had discussion with uh brisk mcpherson but not with uh state um and with county staff but we just got the the categories a through gf uh approved so now we can start you know going on to further funding under those categories and category because you're talking about category yep i do believe yeah i the you know the whole the whole game is you know because you're because the district is a separate entity and we've got you know we've got represent we've got state and federal representatives both assembly and senate on the state side and two congressional representatives um we you know we've also got a uh two federal senators the getting in their ear about the district needing a hundred percent assistance that ultimately you know that's a function of the governor making that request ultimately and the federal our federal representatives hearing that directly as well so that they petition fema and the administration who ultimately have to make that decision and given you know given the magnitude of the damage in the district and the cost are rising and i encourage you mention this evening another three quarters of a million for for the tank issue um the the 25 percent having that relieved that will you know that'll take a big burden off of the district and subsequently off of the you know the customers the the ratepayers understood agreed thank you joe any other public comment questions okay let's go back to the next item on the agenda rick uh as item eight c uh cz u wildfire customer relief i do believe finance manager has a memo i'll let her kick it off and then go to discussion Stephanie uh hello everyone so customer relief so we had a lot of unique situations happening we had customers that had either leaks that were in progress that they were in the middle of fixing when they had to evacuate valid leaks that they came home to that they didn't have an opportunity to deal with and then we have ones where they aren't able to substantiate the cause you know likely scenarios will be sprinklers were left on or something else was unknowingly left on the district does currently have a leak adjustment policy for when customers experience excessive water loss beyond their control right now it gives you 50 above your normal usage as a credit back to your account um in you know rick and i talked to one of the district managers down that dealt with the wildfire um you know they took an approach to where they made accommodations um during this time and gave customers more than what their their normal policy was we're still getting back a lot of the people's reading um to see how much extra water you know how many people were experiencing this so far we were able to get some of billing cycle to back um and and from that we were able to identify significant amounts of usage for some of these accounts um depending on what you want to consider significant is also going to be you know up for up for grab um but people we looked at people that use three or more units from what their July bills were it was about 442 of the 37 100 account account using nine or more units of water than in July it was 187 accounts um when you factor this into or what's the difference we're looking at around 85 to 100 thousand dollars in billing cycle one alone of people that i would probably consider looking to get some sort of release we then still have all of our billing cycle one that we're about to get all of that data back on my assumption is it's going to probably be roughly the same um so all in all we're probably looking at something around 200 thousand dollars in customers that experienced higher than normal usage for for one reason for the evidence um obviously there's a lot of you know it's involving a lot of people you know it's a lot of emotions involved with everything so you know staff are looking to see what the board's interests are in figuring out something that's going to work ideally something that's going to be able to be applied to the masses um you know some people may acknowledge that they had their sprinklers going and they're not going to request a leak adjustment some you know may may still go ahead and and do something like that so we're kind of looking to see what the board is looking to to do in this situation we can start to bounce some ideas around we were also discussing i think i should be able to quantify the full system by hopefully the end of next week as we get all of the different meter readings back to where we may be able to have if we wanted to push it to a budget and finance committee a special one at the end of september to possibly get a 10-1 board discussion going on it if the board doesn't have clear direction for what they want to do tonight so we're just trying to get the conversation going if there's any clear ideas as to how the board wants to proceed if we could implement that tonight great we do have a lot of people calling and asking about this or at least if we can let customers know when we plan on having answers for them we have suspended all past due late fees so no one's having to worry about paying a high bill and you know right now you know they are able to delay it a little bit without needing to worry about any late fees at this point if i could kind of interject a little bit yeah into this i have contacted two other water districts one being the paradise irrigation district that went through very similar circumstances and they had it turned into be a a huge problem with their customers and it turned out to be a real it was a public relations almost a nightmare for paradise and they just finally did a rollback to the same period last year treated all customers pretty much the same and not try to come up with hybrid you know adjustments for this customer that customer based on one thing or another it took a lot of their staff time and finally they just did a large-scale adjustment um there was a lot of motion with their customers and it turned out to be a real issue for their district um you know i i would kind of recommend that the board look at doing a large-scale adjustment and not try to get into a leak adjustment or this or whatever and treat pretty much everybody the same that was just what their inputs that i received from two other agencies that went through large-scale fire yeah i couldn't agree with you more rick i mean it's a situation like that i would either take a look at and just bill everybody at whatever their monthly averages right last two months and just say that's what your your month for august is or september whatever month we're talking about you know stephanie or the front office is getting calls now our customers would like some time some type of determination or answer from the district we could make a decision tonight or you know if you wish we could have a special meeting of the finance committee to talk more in depth i'm not sure that that's needed it's up to the board um but it would be good if we could move on it relatively quickly it is an issue with our customers and taking a lot of time absolutely i i think this is a good opportunity for the board to show its ability to respond you know quickly and effectively you know and recognizing the situation that everybody's are facing and if if the office is getting calls and i have no doubt that they are getting a ton of calls then give them something that they can say so let's see what the other directors have to say lou you got your hand up yes thank you destiny i for one would like to know what suggestions you might now in this regard i mean easy application and you know it's one of those things where some people may have opinions of you know if their neighbor left their sprinklers on that they shouldn't be getting a break you know i think if we're able to do some sort of uniform application that's definitely the easiest there's obviously financial ramifications of that but then also at least make it into an educational aspect as well so that you know explain why you know the sprinkler use i mean part of it i mean it was a ton of water when you run the numbers on just this billing cycle alone you know it was roughly somewhere around four five million gallons of water you know over over the period for what we saw as large spikes in consumption so something that's going to be universal without a doubt our valley went through a lot so if the district is able to show some empathy and give people you know what their normal bill like we would have been like you know an application like that i agree is is the most easy to implement as well my second question would be for Gina if we do use some sort of um forbearance in terms of forgiveness is there any legal ramifications around that in terms of gifting i i don't see a critical gift of public funds issue here where a policy gets applied uniformly in the wake of a emergency like this um you know i i don't think there are serious legal impediments but it may be good to get something formal you know some kind of a resolution or something to document the action and the reasons for it to help you know dot the i's and cross the t's so that it can be justified down the road thank you Gina and Stephanie and Steve Bob you're next okay yeah this is a this is a really hard one and i you know i can just imagine what the folks in paradise were going through because basically their town was completely destroyed unfortunately we didn't have that doomsday scenario here though we had an awful lot of people who lost their homes and in particular um i'm assuming that at least some of this excess water usage that you were calculating uh Stephanie probably came from homes that were destroyed where the meters basically broke and water just started running out um you know that that's another possibility so there's so many different scenarios here i i just kind of like things that are simple um but i do also along with that need to come in a couple other areas i noticed in social media before the evacuation started that there was a lot of people saying hey leave your sprinklers on um you know wetting your house down because that will protect your house and i'm sure a number of people did that in the good faith um assumption they're taking out an insurance policy basically to help protect their house um we ran into a situation where it wasn't exactly clear under what authority we had until we we asked the resolution to proactively turn water off um that people had left running um and made a choice to leave running uh in order to protect their house so in in addition to loose questions i have a question about is there anything we need to do with our policies jena and to be done under state law and regulations that will make anything like this happening in the future much clearer and much faster for us to respond to well i'm not aware of any law regulation that requires us to have um a policy in advance for this kind of an event um though um of course that's handy you know if we have it it makes it easier potentially to make decisions in the next circumstance like this one um and of course whatever we do here will be viewed as a type of precedent for any subsequent but yeah i don't know i don't have any requirement to do that but i think i think what i heard you say earlier is that we probably even if we gave uh staffs sort of a direction tonight so they can start communicating to the public we still probably need to bring something back that's formal that tidies us up a bit and i guess my question is do we need to bring something back that will also clarify what the district's policy is around water shutoffs in a time of a dire emergency like what we went through because we were going around and shutting off proactively shutting off sprinklers that people had left uh left running yeah in response to that bob i do think having um a policy related to emergency shutoff going forward would be helpful so we don't have to do like we did pastime and sort of create um the documentation related to the legal basis for that um but i see them as somewhat separate issues you know coming up with a policy for customer relief related to the supplier and implementing some policies that may be useful for a subsequent fire i i think they're i think they're separate in the sense that they don't have to be worked on at the same time though i think we do need to recognize that a large portion of our valley is still in in threat of um a wildfire going forward so we probably don't want to wait too long but to me these are related in the fact that i think with better clarity up front uh for folks around what may happen even if they did turn their water their sprinklers on and attempt to save their house that that may not ultimately be the case if there's a determination made that we need to the water elsewhere um you know the fight the fires that are really happening as was the case on the west side of 509 so um i wouldn't want this to be uh i wouldn't want a long period of time to go between the resolution around dealing with this extraordinary circumstance and getting a better policy in place around the emergency yeah i i think in the in the agenda minutes the staff made recommended or made reference to the fact that this this could be a teaching moment for the public as well with respect specifically to that leaving sprinklers running anything else that they think they're doing to protect their home but you know in fact isn't really benefiting everybody so well they're looking i i see it as an opportunity where we could get some mileage out of this through social media and through our website and through producing some you know public public awareness material right it's very possible i i don't necessarily like the the term teaching moment because i think our subscribers are well aware of the decisions that they made in in the moment of what they were trying to accomplish i think it is a opportunity for us to clarify what the district may do in a dire emergency in order to protect more of the system as opposed to an as opposed to the water going to your individual house and i think that clarity is absolutely essential for our our customers so that they know what may happen so if in the future they do decide to leave their sprinklers on some number of people are going to do that regardless of what we may say on our website that at least there's something that's very clear in place of what may happen around that and at that point in time i think that also would have implications for how future water usage may be handled as well right so an opportunity to educate thank you bob lois you have your hand up i mean rick i'll come to you after what okay uh am i up yeah okay uh while i sympathize with people who left their sprinklers on to try to protect their homes i really believe we need some education here because if there's a rip roaring fire sprinklers on the roof is not going to protect anybody's home a tree goes down crashes through the roof it's on fire it's not going to it it isn't going to work and i don't i kind of agree with what you were saying steve that there's some education needed here people have to people sometimes don't get what a forest fire is like and how it's just going to go through and burn everything it touches it doesn't matter how much water you're pouring on there in fact i saw one guy that was mentioning he spent six days soaking his house and his house burned to the ground people need better education um and it's not helpful for them to be turning water on on their roads um if if it isn't really going to save the house i i get where they're coming from i'm i'm not criticizing them they just need to understand and i'm i'm basically here for um just giving a general discount or or make it as easy as possible on staff we have staff that are working every single day and i i want this to be a teaching moment so to speak i'm sorry bobby are going to like that um but people have got to understand that this was a problem for the district with all the water that was being rained on roofs and houses went down anyway that's all thank you uh lois uh rick marina or it is your turn in the queue is do you not have a raise hand button on your no i do not all right but i have a hand okay thank you for noticing me you're all right you're up buddy so um i i agree that there's some education that needs to happen here and one of the things that i heard is we can learn from what happened in paradise so let's do that first and learn that if we try to get money out of people that are suffering a lot for water that's been spilled down the dam here all right word we're not doing anything for the community relations that we want to that we've shown compassion for throughout this whole thing so i think we should learn from what happened to paradise except their uh recommendations that as rick spoke about and used as well steve all right and i think later on we can come and talk more about the educational aspects about leading water on things like that but the the people in our valley will share their burden of the cost of this and they need to put as much of this behind them as possible and a water bill should not be something that adds to their stress thank you rick yep okay uh bob you're got another follow-up question or comment yeah i i think the um the thing that people do see is that that fire can be um regrettably arbitrary sometimes for the benefit of the homeowner and that we even have the situation you know in this fire where you know homes on one side of the street were were burned um homes next door to each other were burned and a home wasn't right next door um it's just it sometimes it's just unbelievably fickle um and you also hear the anecdotal stories about how people who have left sprinklers on their roof have been able to save their house for for one reason or another so i don't i don't know that we're um that a that a goal of trying to um you know sort of instruct folks on on what to do is necessarily the best way to do it that we're all adults we can make our own decisions about what we want to do i think though it is very important for us to clarify what we will do what our actions will be as a district through a policy in these kinds of dire emergencies so if there is no question about that relative to people's understandings of if they take action a there's what we will take if necessary to do so that's my only point and i don't think again this is anything other than a clarification of what is necessary at a district level to do in order to fight fire when it when it visits our area okay thank you bob let's go to the public we have uh do any of the uh participants attendees have any questions or comments to share on this topic gail mohood right ahead gail gail you're up i just wanted to have a clarification from Stephanie about when she was talking about sort of averaging over several months um would that also be for the people who were good citizens and turned their water off and who actually because they were gone for two weeks would have a lower bill and also came back to find their garden uh dead so i i'm just a little worried that we might have an issue um if we just say everybody gets their averaged bill um that those people may be grumbling i'll speak for Stephanie she was proposing something simple that would be easy to administer she wasn't being specifically recommending one particular method over another she was just highlighting the fact that she wanted to have something that would be simple easy to explain to people when they called in and and and fair there's with anything that you decide on there's going to be you know winners and losers to some extent and somebody might get a little advantage but uh by and large to minimize the stress on both the district staff and on the public that's calling in uh she was advocating for a global solution if you will a simplified global solution so whether that takes into consideration individual bills or not uh for people we'll see we'll see if the board ends up recommending anything tonight okay thank you Tina too your next step hi um i wanted to mention that my water was actually used by the firefighters so and i am my home was saved and i'm very grateful for that but um i i can't account for the excess in my water bill other than maybe that was the case um but i still i understand where the staff is coming from and i would even though my water bill is higher i would be willing to accept uh and we've already paid the higher bill um because i think that it would be valuable for the staff to have an easy solution to explain to the public and i think that um you know some people will just be willing to accept that that this was an emergency and and there will be winners and losers and i can sympathize with as well because we were considering turning off our water but the recommendation was to leave it on in case like firefighting staff needed to use it um i just wanted to say that make that comment that that even though i'm one of the losers i agree that that there should be a simpler solution so that everybody can be on the same page and just understand my only my only caveat to that is if someone has completely lost their home um you may want to have a different solution for that um and i don't know how you would go about doing that other than checking the assessment map and um and and discussing that with the the homeowner so that that was all my piece thanks thank you tina any other comments or thoughts from the public nothing okay back to the back to the board okay the lowest must be tap dancing because i see her all over my screen so yeah i don't know you've got control of the system loss okay so you know i i don't know what the the rest of you feel but i'd like to go ahead and and discuss making a motion right now that that the district and the staff can use going forward and i'd like to suggest something along the lines of of um you know changing modifying everybody's bill to be the average of the last two or three months whatever that is and changing all the bills uniformly to reflect something like that any other thoughts on that could we make it just their july bill the same amount as their july bill i i would actually recommend what it would be a lot easier for me to be able to take and reverse out whatever this high bill is for them because you know some some people will have it on this one some people will have it on their next one and and just make it be july and august are very similar consumption months to just make it be the same as their july i do agree though with the exception that i mean the people that were gone and did use less you know i think there should remain the same but anyone that had usage over their prior july bill just gets simply reset back to what their july consumption was comment on that wouldn't it be better to go back to what their august bill was last year instead of just taking july this year we're going to run into a lot of problems with i mean we have high turnover of homes so there's going to be a lot of people that don't yeah that aren't going to be apples for apples no that makes sense they just want the kiss principle keep it simple yeah we want to keep it very simple so we can explain it to our customers yeah right you know we don't want to complicate it and it's not like stephanie's got a good plan that she feels comfortable in implementing i think that's where we should go okay that's good okay so i don't see anybody else directors so i'm just wondering procedurally here do we need to make a motion or does stephanie have direction or do we need to make a motion i think really we're gonna need counsel's gonna want us to have a motion okay yeah so steve could you verbalize that motion and i'll second it okay sure sure okay so i'll propose a motion that we effectively change everybody's august billing to reflect their july billing unless their august billing is less than their july bill then they would get the the lower of the two that's the motion i will second that motion thank you very much okay holly would you like to record the vote for this momentous opportunity director moran steve steve before we do that sorry question yeah what sorry sorry holly but before we do that do we need to address the people that have lost their homes in this motion as well or is that already handled i i think we would i think we should i don't know i think we should do well right now isn't that isn't that already addressed in the stopping of connection fee and everything for those homes already if it is that's fine i just wanted to make sure that they were already addressed stephanie correct me if i'm wrong but there is something in implemented already for that sort of but yes the the district has taken care of the people that have had their homes their homes destroyed the motion on hand will be for any people that have active account great thank you thank you thanks holly back to you holly okay director moran yes director henry yes director falls yes director ferris hi president swan yes motion passes thank you holly okay rick back to you a new business item nine a surplus district property our resolution number three twenty dash twenty one uh as district council to present this item to the board okay can you hear me yes okay great i'm just flipping between screens um so um this item is one that's coming back to the board um after prior consideration it actually has three different pieces to it um i guess i'll start with the policy itself um what you have presented here tonight is a policy for the disposal of surplus real property um this was previously presented to the board for discussion on july 16th and at that time the plan was to bring this policy back to the board for approval along with kind of a package providing for um disposition or identifying various parcels for surplusing and putting them in kind of the buckets for disposal under the policy um i don't at this time have all of the various properties uh detailed out in a resolution for purposes of you know putting them in the pocket under the policy but would like to move forward with the policy itself um because that will help with the disposition of the manana woods well site so now i'm getting to kind of part two of this item the manana woods well site at zero king's village road in scott's valley um was previously designated as surplus by a resolution of the board back in march um and the reason this is coming back to you for redesignation is that it appears that um the property can be sold in a way that's mutually beneficial between the district and scott's valley water district and that qualifies it for exempt surplus treatment under the policy that that we've proposed and it would streamline the disposition process for that that parcel because it would allow if this parcel gets redesignated as exempt surplus the district could negotiate directly with scott's valley without going through um a process of offering it to other public agencies and housing developers and so on um so that's the second part of the item that's in front of you the third part is that we're recommending that the board appoint me to serve as a co-negotiator with the district manager in connection with the possible sale of the manana woods well site to the scott's valley water district um and you'll see the resolution that's proposed is attached to the agenda item that's resolution number three 2021 um it addresses the reasons for the policy and the redesignation of the manana woods well site um and then it attaches as an exhibit the policy that was previously presented to the board um so if you approve if you adopt choose to adopt the motion um it'll approve the policy and redesignate the manana woods site and then i would request if the board agrees with the recommendation a separate motion will point me as a co-negotiator with the district manager for the disposition of that parcel but those be two different numbers then uh while the resolution will will take care of the policy and the redesignation and then i would just request a motion uh no number just a motion okay you designate me as a co-negotiator thank you i make a motion that we approve resolution 320-21 let's hang on we we have the opportunity for discussion amongst the board oh sorry and then we got to let the public comment as well all right sorry no no problem i carried away i want to i want to wrap this thing up too so do we have any uh comments or questions from any of the board for um or jena or rick or anybody for lois since she's on camera i am yeah you are you're occupying my full screen right now lois i'm sorry i'm just lucky i guess no questions from anybody on the board that i yeah i'll i'll just make a statement here um i agree that we should try to sell this to uh our neighbor water district uh san lorenzo valley uh scott's valley excuse me and uh we share interest with them when the center margarita groundwater agency and we should work together as much as we can in a mutually agreeable and maybe profitable way for us yeah thanks for your input okay uh bob you have a question or comment yeah i i agree with what rick says and then typically in any kind of uh deal like this there's value for both parties and i believe that you know the parcel that we have had value for both parties and hopefully this will all work out right i think jena and rick have done a great job of putting this together and so i'm looking forward to uh moving this along thank you bob and uh any other comments from any director to the public do we have any thoughts or comments or questions for anybody on this issue i literally hear crickets okay yeah that's pretty good right back here come back to the panel they're jumping around your irises right okay so back to the panel again let's see i believe lois you were in the process of wanting to make a motion please go ahead okay i would like to make an emotion to approve um three dash 20 dash 21 as stated by our attorney i'll second it okay i'll second that lois it's been seconded uh holly would you record a vote on this motion director maran yes director henry yes director false yes director ferris you're muted hi president swan yes motion passes thank you holly and now uh i'd like to go ahead and make a motion i'll make the motion that uh that council be appointed co-negotiator along with the district manager i'll second that thank you holly would you like to record that vote director maran yes director henry yes director false yes director ferris hi president swan yes motion passes thank you very much holly and now we come to the uh item 10 and the agenda the consent agenda and um and once somebody wants something pulled out from the consent agenda we'll move along to district reports if anybody has any um rick thief yep oh sorry your hand up yeah i'm sorry i i don't have anything to pull out but i wanted to give holly some real big props here you know in the middle of all this evacuation and taking care of her husband who was seriously injured and all of that and she's still got all of these out in uh what i think is the record for the time so holly thank you very much for doing that great service to the community well put bob holly you've done a great job thank you very much for all of your efforts and all of this moving along to district reports is there anybody have a district report they want to share environmental finance or legal and i see no hands okay directors reports directors communication future board directors meeting agenda items anything no nothing okay communication i guess there is something from philips dated in there informational material rebuild Santa Clara is that no okay uh if you guys don't have anything else you want to bring up that i'm going to call this meeting is adjourned thank you all for your participation and we'll see you next uh i do as director operations apologize for not having my director's report ready for operations or engineering just want to say that you know i'm a lot on my table right now i will get you guys an update and i'll get your report on the next board meeting james for my perspective you already gave your report earlier thank you don't worry james yeah thank you we'll all buy you a beer too and everybody else on the staff hey joe's back open is it great sounds good all right everybody thanks for your participation we'll talk to you all later have a good week