 Hi, good morning. We have an attendee showing his valley of the moon. Is that Mr. Fulner? We'll allow you to speak. Yep, that's me. Thank you. I'll rename you and we'll make you a panelist. Thank you very much. Morning, everyone. Okay, I have 902 Roberta and Easter from your end. Are you okay if we get started? I think we're good to go. Okay, first thing on the agenda just is to call to order and make sure we have a quorum here. Remember, just when Secretary Athe is doing the roll call, please, or Secretary Ledezma, please state your full name and the agency that you work for. So Secretary Athe, can you please do a roll call for calling the meeting? Yes, City of Cattadi. Yeah, Craig Scott, City of Cattadi. City of Petaluma. Michael Marini, City of Petaluma. City of Rohnert Park. Mary Gates-Pawson, City of Iro Park. City of Santa Rosa. Jennifer Burke, Santa Rosa Water. City of Sonoma. Matt Workulia, City of Sonoma. North Moran Water District. Broom-Akinshire, North Moran Water District. Town of Windsor. Christina Aguilar, Town of Windsor. Valley of the Moonwater District. Matt Pullner, Valley of the Moon. Moran Municipal Water District. And Paul Sellier, Moran Municipal Water District. And also in attendance, we have Bob Anderson, Brad Sherwood, Brenda Adelman, Chelsea Thompson, Christopher Boldt, Claire Nordley, Elise Miller, Jake Spalding, Jay Jaspers, Joan Holtberg, Margaret DiGenova, Kimberly Zunino, Monty Schmidt, Pat Eccles, Peter Martin, Shannon Coutoula, Tony Williams, also Grant Davis, Lynn Rosselli, Pam Jean, John Seymour, Paul Piazza, Barry Dugan. And we also have a phone-in caller ending in 1575. Okay, thank you, Roberta. Welcome, everybody. Welcome, TAC. We have all the TAC members present, and welcome to all the public and associated staff as well. We'll continue to just go down through the agenda items, and the next thing is just a continuation to authorize having our remote meetings. So there's a resolution for the TAC to approve. It's similar to previous resolutions. Any questions or comments from the TAC before you take any action to approve? And we're going to take any public comments as well on this item. Again, this is agenda item number two. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand or dial star nine by phone. We do not have any raised hands. Okay, so there's no comments from the TAC, no comments or questions from the public, so it's now time to ask for a motion and a second. I'll move to approve the resolution. I'll second. This is Jennifer Burke with Santa Rosa Water. Okay, it's been moved by Matt Fulmer, seconded by Jennifer Burke to approve the resolution to continue to have virtual meetings for another 30 days. Secretary Ledesma, could you do a roll call vote, please? Actually, it'd be Secretary Atha. Here we go. City of Cattati. Thanks, Scott. Cattati, yes. City of Petaluma. Mike Elmarini, City of Petaluma, yes. City of Rohnert Park. Mary Grace Possum, City of Rohnert Park, yes. City of Santa Rosa. Jennifer Burke, Santa Rosa Water, yes. City of Sonoma. Matt Roguelas, City of Sonoma, yes. North Marin Water District. Peru Mackinsire, North Marin Water District, yes. Town of Windsor. Christina Gouart, Town of Windsor, yes. Valley of the Moonwater District. Matt Fulner, the Moonwater District, yes. And that passes. Okay, thank you. We're going to move to agenda item number three, public comments. This is an opportunity for anybody from the public who would like to make a comment on anything that is not on the agenda. So again, if you'd like to make any comments, please raise your hand via Zoom or dial star nine by phone for non-agenda items. We do have a raised hand from Brenda Edelman, and I will allow you to unmute. Good morning, Brenda. Good morning. I just have a bunch of questions I've written down, and I'll just read them off to you. I don't necessarily expect you to answer them right now, but I hope at some point you or your staff would respond. I'm wondering why North Marin was allowed to buy what I believe is 1,000 acre feet to put in their reservoir in December. And I'm wondering if any other contractors are buying water to have in reserve for when and if there was a crisis like we're in right now. And also why is North Marin getting purchasing water that is supposedly surplus water from Marin Municipal on top of that? And is Marin Municipal getting so-called surplus water now? It seems like we don't have any surplus water now or recently. And I'm wondering if the contractors can fill up reservoirs, the ones that have them, before knowing what the drop conditions are. How does this impact summer supplies? I also have concerns about the temporary urgency change petition that put the lower river into a critical listing. We've been running around 250 CFS at Hacienda. It's been going down very rapidly, as you probably know. And I'm very, very concerned about how this will impact water quality in the lower river. And I know you keep track of some of the key parameters, but I'm wondering if you could do some kind of reporting on the situation, especially in terms of fish migration and temperatures and water levels for human health effects. And I'm wondering if you're keeping track of the various fish migration counts. And if you can report on that, I don't think I've seen any numbers for quite a while. And finally, there's been enormous new growth. And in fact, even more growth is starting to be required by the state. And I'm just wondering what kinds of analyses are made in order to justify whether there's water available under these dire circumstances for expansive new growth. As of a year ago, Santa Rosa, for instance, had 4,000 approved permits approved for over 4,000 units with about another 2,000 or 3,000 pending that had not been approved at that point in time. I haven't seen the data for the last year, but it just seems like this is an issue that needs to be addressed. And I'll leave it at that for now. Thank you. Okay. Thank you, Brenda. We might even be able to answer some of these questions that you have during some future reports, but I did make a note of them and we'll get them in the meeting minutes as well. Any other questions from the comment? Again, this is agenda item number three, open time. Public comment. I did not see any more raised hands. Okay. Let's move to agenda item number four. This is going to be a report. Kimberly Zunino with City of Santa Rosa will provide that summary. Again, this is an action item for the TAC to recommend the budget to the WAC for approval. Kimberly? Good morning. I believe is Lynn also going to be presenting? Yes. Is that correct? Okay. Great. Just making sure that you were there. Okay. Perfect. Okay. So good morning, Chairman and members of the TAC. I'm just going to provide you with a brief update of the budget subcommittee work before Ms. Roselli presents the proposed Sonoma Water Transmission Budget for Fiscal Year 2022-23. The technical advisory or the technical advisory budget subcommittee with representatives from Sonoma Water, Town of Windsor, City of Patati, and City of Santa Rosa, and North Marin Water District review the proposed budget for fiscal year 2022-23. With the first proposal from Sonoma Water, the wholesale rate increases were at 9.99% for Santa Rosa and Petaluma Aqueducts and 9.18% for the Sonoma Aqueduct. First of all, I would like to thank the subcommittee members for their work and also acknowledge the work that Sonoma Water did considering multiple solutions to reduce budget. So after the first meeting of the subcommittee, Sonoma Water worked to reduce the rate, and then in addition, those that are served by the Santa Rosa and Petaluma Aqueducts chose to reduce their discretionary capital charge, which Lynn will provide a little more detail on. This resulted in a proposed wholesale rate increase at 6.06 for the Santa Rosa Aqueduct, 6.16 for the Petaluma Aqueduct, and 6.52% for the Sonoma Aqueduct. And then on March 1st, the committee unanimously recommended the proposed budget and rate increase to the TACC. And with that, I will hand it over to Ms. Rizelli to provide the details on the proposed Water Transmission Budget and rate increase, unless there are any questions for me. Hold on a second, Lynn. Just before we turn it over to Lynn, I just want to make sure the TACC didn't have any initial questions for Kimberly. I don't see any hands being raised. Okay, great. Lynn, it's all yours, floor is yours. I don't have the ability to share here. I'll make you a co-host right now, Ms. Rizelli. Okay, thank you. Everybody see my screen? Yes. Great. Okay, so good morning, TACC members. I am Lynn Rizelli, Administrative Services Division Manager with Sonoma Water, Jake Spalding, Finance Manager, and I prepare this brief presentation to you on the 2223 proposed budget and rate for the Water Transmission System that once adopted would become effective July 1st. For those of you that are not familiar with all of Sonoma Water's enterprises, we provide services in these five areas listed here. I want to make clear that today we are only talking about the Water Transmission System and that the Water Transmission System budget and rates are separate and apart from all of these other enterprises, and the funds are not commingled or shared in any way with these other services that we provide. The budget is set up on three aqueducts, as Kimberly mentioned. There's the Santa Rosa aqueduct, which you see in the northwest part of the screen, and purple, the Petaluma aqueduct, which is shown in the blue to the south, and then the Sonoma aqueduct to the east. In green, these are the three primary aqueducts. The water contractors are on one of those three aqueducts and pay the budget and rates associated with that specific aqueduct. The process that we engaged in, as Kimberly mentioned, we met with the budget subcommittee. We reviewed their input. We responded to questions. We reduced the budget and rates to accommodate comments that we received. Today, we are requesting that the technical advisory committee vote on the budget, and then we will make presentations as requested to town councils and water districts. And then the water advisory committee will vote on April 4th, and then it will be adopted by our board on April 19th. And I want to thank the budget subcommittee and others for all of the work that they put into this budget and review for us from the budget subcommittee side. So the water transmission budget is made up of these elements, the operations and maintenance, sub funds, which are shown here that have the functions that are described by their titles. Just a note that the biological opinion work is all under the watershed planning and restoration fund. We have five capital funds, one on each aqueduct, storage facilities, and then common facilities that are common to all the water contractors. And then we have four revenue bonds and one state revolving loan. And these are the elements that make up the entire budget. We're going to go ahead and start with talking about the capital projects. We have the six hazard mitigation capital projects shown on this slide. Five of them are seismic hazard mitigation. One is primarily a flood mitigation project. The top three are under construction and will be under construction next year. And the bottom three are in design in the design phase and progressing. The budget for hazard mitigation project capital projects is 3.2 million for next fiscal year. Other capital projects include design work on guanaralfine, two drought related projects, the sabbatical accidental wells, their rehab and the aquifer storage and recovery work, the Todd road well, research automation and disposal project. And then we have the warm springs dam hydro turbine retrofit project. And these projects, both on the previous slide, Eli, Mark West and Russian River all have grant funding offsetting as it shows there on the slide. And the sabbatical and accidental well project also has offsetting grant revenue. But the total project cost for these ones shown on this slide is 10.1. So when you add the hazard mitigation projects with these projects, you end up with a total capital project of 13.3 million, which will be completely funded by bonds that we will be issuing. And so on the operations and maintenance budgets, we have most importantly the cathodic protection and tank recode programs. These projects have been deferred for a number of years. They are critical. They are past due. They need to be done. And they are in the budget and they're taking up anywhere from nine to 12 million dollars of the operations and maintenance budget over the next three years, at least for including the cathodic protection and then nine million going forward for the tank recode program per year. We've included emergency inventory procurement, part of the grand jury report. This is phase one of number of phases of procurement of emergency inventory. And then we have some well field rehabilitations, which we're hoping will help with water supply during the drought. And then we have a number of studies that are listed here that are described in the budget packet on PDF page 21, I believe. And so your ONM budget is 38.7 million. Let's see if I can get to go. There we go. So comparing the budget for next fiscal year with this current fiscal year, you can see that we have a total budget of 71.83 million. That is driven by increases in operations and maintenance for the tank maintenance, cathodic protection projects, as well as other operations and maintenance projects. We have capital projects that are in construction, and that is driving the increase in the capital projects, plus the drought related projects for the wells, which do have offsetting grant revenue. But the project cost is shown here. The grant revenue is shown at the bottom of the screen here. Then we have the biological opinion compliance. Water supply planning and water conservation is showing an increase that is largely due to water conservation efforts, as well as lower deliveries needing and water conservation efforts and Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement mile four going to construction. And then debt service is increasing because we are issuing $15 million in bonds this fiscal year. And then you can see that we have a grant's use of fund balance and bond proceeds offsetting these costs to the tune of 15.31 million. So that brings down the overall budget to 56.5 million, roughly. And so that is our overall budget and the change in budget compared to this year. And then this is a pie chart that shows what the budget, how it looks in terms of functions, operations and maintenance make up 54 percent. They are funded by rates and it makes up the largest portion of the budget. Capital projects are funded by both bonds and grant revenue. And then we have the water conservation and Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement. Water conservation does have some grants funds offsetting those costs and then debt service makes up 8 percent of the remaining part of the budget and with 15.31 million in offsetting grants, bond proceeds and use of fund balance. So now we take, go from the budget and costs of proposed for next year and we start to work on developing the rate in order to fund those budget. And the rate setting example that is given here is from the restructured agreement for water supply that requires that we take the cost of operations and maintenance divided by the quantity of water sold and we get a cost of water per in dollars per acre foot. The water sold is the lesser of the average of the last three year annual average water deliveries or the last 12 months of water deliveries. You can see here that they are very close, but we have to go with the three year annual average. And when you do the math, you can see that you end up with the cost of water per acre foot. This example is to show that this is a uniform rate and it is fully volumetric. So as water deliveries are lower, your rate increase is going to rate and rate increase are going to be higher and vice versa. So here are the proposed rates. As Kimberly mentioned, the overall rate increase on the Santa Rosa aqueduct is 6.06 percent, Petaluma is 6.16 percent and Sonoma is 6.52 percent. You can see here in the middle of the screen we have this discretionary charge that Kimberly mentioned after we made our reductions to the budget to get it down to 6.84 percent. The Santa Rosa aqueduct dropped their discretionary charge to build fund balance for future capital projects from $12 to 11. Petaluma dropped theirs from $20 to $12 and Sonoma maintained their aqueduct capital charge at $38. And here are the budget and rate reduction measures that we engaged and took action on. Excuse me. We reduced the rate increase from 9.99 percent to 6.84 percent. Then Santa Rosa and Petaluma further reduced theirs through cutting the aqueduct capital charge. We decreased O&M project cost by $1.47 million. And we increased the use of fund balance by $2.5 million to $7.2 million overall. And we're issuing $15 million in revenue bonds, which will significantly help offset the costs of the capital projects in addition to the grant revenue. And given that we're in a drought, we're not getting rain. There's pressure on water deliveries. There may be water restrictions going forward. It's going to be a tight year. It's really going to be tough if we don't get some rain in March and April, which we're just keeping our fingers crossed. And as I showed there on the last slide, the total cost per gallon is $0.003, which is significantly lower than anything else you can buy in the store right now. And in comparison to wholesale water rates of other wholesale water contractors in the Bay Area, you can see that we continue to be on the far left there, the lowest of the five shown. And San Francisco, as some of them are experiencing rate increases of about 7 percent or higher. And so we continue to be on the lower end of that scale. And it makes it challenging for us to keep up, but we are going to try to do the best we can with the 6.84 percent rate increase that we have negotiated with the water contractors. So next steps are we will be presenting, well, we have the vote of the tact today, we'll be presenting to City and Town Councils and Water District Boards in March as requested. Water Advisory Committee vote on April 4th, and then our board will adopt it on April 19th. And with that, I am available for any questions you might have. Okay, thanks, Lynn. Any questions from the TAC on Lynn's presentation or the budget in general? I would like to, again, just acknowledge the good work that was done by everybody working on getting a final agreed upon budget, not only from Sonoma County Water Agency staff, but Kimberly is a budget subcommittee chair and everybody that volunteered to be on the subcommittee. So kudos to everybody. I want to, again, acknowledge the agency's good work in getting the recent state grants on the well rehabilitation and aquifer storage and recovery that was multi-millions of dollars and that had a direct impact on helping to minimize rate increases. So as I know I speak for all the contractors, we really appreciate the opportunity when funds come in from state or federal to help offset these costs. Any other questions, comments from the TAC before I open it up to the public? Jennifer. Yeah, I just want to echo Drew your comments and just really thank the subcommittee and also Sonoma Water. I think we all recognize that times continue to be challenging and so we really appreciate the work that you did so that we can bring this forward and recommend it to our policymakers. So thank you so much. Thanks, Jennifer. Okay, we're now moving to public comments. Again, this is agenda item number four on the Draft Sonoma County Water Agency Water Transmission System budget. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand or dial star nine via phone. I do not see anybody's hands. Thank you, Easter. Okay, and just for the recording of the meeting minutes, just for all the agenda, Easter and Roberta, if you can just let the let it be known. I did not receive any comments by phone or email on any of the items prior to the five p.m. cutoff yesterday on Sunday. Okay, so again, this is to approve recommending the budget to the WAC. So this is an action item and so I'm looking for a motion in a second before we do a roll call vote. Jennifer Berkway, Santa Rosa Water on the approval of the fiscal year 2022-23 budget. This is Greg Scott, City of Cotadiel second that motion. Okay, thank you. We have a motion from Jennifer Berk, seconded by Greg Scott, Secretary Aff. I think I got that right now. Would you please do a roll call? Yes, City of Cotadiel. Greg Scott, City of Cotadiel, yes. City of Petaluma. Michael Marini, City of Petaluma, yes. City of Roanart Park. Mary Grace Possum, City of Santa Rosa. Jennifer Berk, Santa Rosa Water, yes. City of Sonoma. Aragula, City of Sonoma, yes. Northmore and Water District. Drew McIntyre, Northmore and Water District, yes. Town of Windsor. Christina Goulart, Town of Windsor, yes. Valley of the Moonwater District. Matt Fuller, Valley of the Moonwater District, yes. That passes unanimously. Okay, thank you, everyone. Grant, did you want to make a comment before you move on? Yeah, if I might. I wanted to wait until we had the vote. I appreciate the unanimous approval going to the WAC. I do want to also echo what Drew and Jennifer had to say. It's true that I was hoping that we would have the ability to get rates a little bit higher this time, given the amount of maintenance that needs to be done on our system and a number of the projects that are being recommended by our O&M staff. But I recognize the convergence of potentially a third year very dry and limited sales. But Lynn did, again, flash up on the screen that we have the lowest wholesale water rates in the entire Bay Area, and it makes it very difficult to keep up. So I just am going on record to say that we've made this long-term commitment. We've all managed to live by that with the long-term water supply, and I appreciate all the work that went in. The folks that volunteered on the subcommittee, they know that we went in with an initial amount that we thought was needed. I think Lynn and her staff did a remarkable job of looking at bonding that enabled us to get down into an area that the contractors needed to be. But we even explored taxable bonding that was going to be another possibility, that it had its own limitations. But I am very appreciative of all the folks that went into this, but particularly the innovative going back and back to find a way to chop the projects and to be as efficient as we possibly can. So you can go back to your leadership and fully recommend this budget and know that it's been a cooperative process, which I think they need to hear. So it's always easier to go to our board ultimately in April when the water contractors are recommending support and approval. And so I'm just acknowledging the heavy work, the lift, and the fact that we got a lot of work to do. And one of the things I will make sure that you hear directly from us at Sonoma Water and our leadership is that there's a long list of projects that we intend to undertake and carry out. And we know that that's been an issue. And Lynn and her team have gone back and forth and checked in with the project managers on if these are manageable, we think that they are. And we make every effort to get underway. Hopefully we'll prove correct that we can take these on. But it's a long year and things come up along the way we all know that we that are not envisioned. And so I reserve the right to say there could be state and post mandates or things that come on that we haven't encountered going into the budget year, but really along wind and say, thank you, appreciate the unanimous support and we'll take that to the board. Okay, thanks, Grant. Okay, that closes off agenda item number four. We're going to move to agenda item five now, water supply conditions, temp or urgency change or update. And we're going to kick this off with Don Seymour from the agency. Don? Yeah, good morning, Drew and members of the tech. So starting with the part of Valley Project, Lake Pillsbury is currently at about 55,000 acre feet. This is not as low as last year, which was about 42,000 at this time, but it's pretty low. And it's slightly losing, you know, without some significant change in storage, I think it's a very strong possibility. PG&E will file a variance again this year, which will impact transfers this summer into the Russian River watershed. So I think stay tuned for that. Lake Mendocino is currently at about 40, just under 43,000 acre feet. This is actually about 10,000 acre feet greater than last year. And the reservoir is increasing by about 45 to 58 feet a day. So slightly improved water supply conditions on the upper Russian River this year, but still still very low levels. Lake Sonoma is currently at about 148,400 acre feet. This is approximately 7,000 acre feet less than last year. So and it's also losing about 110 to 120 acre feet per day. So I think we can expect the less with some really significant storms that are going to come in the later part of the month, early April, which I think are fairly unlikely. We're going to be facing a pretty similar water supply conditions last year, meaning, you know, we'll probably be facing similar diversion reductions from the Russian River this year. The temperature change petition or order that we're managing the system under right now on March 1st put the Russian River watershed in a critical water year type. So that reduced that was a change from dry in February. So that reduced the minimum stream flow requirements on the upper Russian River from 75 CFS to 25 CFS. And on the lower Russian River from 85 CFS to 35 CFS. I think it's similar water at this time is anticipating it's going to file another temperature change petition late April early May, because the order we're managing the system under right now expires in early June on June 7th. And as I kind of mentioned, I think it will be requesting something very, very similar to last year in the petition we filed last May. So keeping the system in a critical water year, water year classification through for another 180 days or until almost early December. So that's all I have, Drew, unless there's any questions. Thanks, Don. Questions from the TAC on Don's report. Don, can you talk a little bit? Brenda raised a question that's come up before I believe about natural flows, excess natural Russian River flows in the wintertime. If contractors, if you know, if some contractors are using and actually tapping that excess natural flows during the wintertime, what impact, what impact is that having on the agency's ability to operate during the summer months? Well, I just point out that even under so under a normal water year type, the minimum stream flow requirement on the lower Russian River would be 125 cubic feet per second. And right now, as Brenda mentioned, it's flowing at almost 225 cubic feet per second. So the flow in the system is 100 CFS greater than the minimum stream flow requirement under a normal water year type, which would we would be in under D1610. And we really promoted the contractors trying to take water when it was in these flows well above the minimum stream flow requirements. So to leverage that water in the winter when it's in the summer, we're going to get really close to those minimum stream flow requirements and be able to bank on their local supplies to take the pressure off the river system this summer. So it's really an opportunity to try to improve our summertime flow conditions, reservoir storage levels that we'll be facing this summer. Okay, thanks, John. Any other questions, comments on the tack before I open up to public public? Okay, don't see anything. So we're again, we are on agenda item number five. We're going to open this up for public comments. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand or dial star nine on your phone. We do have some public comments. First will be David Keller. Good morning. Thank you. Don, I wanted to follow up on a question that came regarding D1610 minimum flows responsibilities that came up last week at the Russian River Drop Working session held by the State Board, which was it seemed like what Sam Bolin-Brain was saying was that the water agency was responsible under D1610 for all minimum flows in the upper middle Russian and that water rights holders or license holders or permit holders could use all of the natural flow and the minimum flows had to be maintained entirely from storage at Lake Mendocino. That was my understanding. I tried to talk to you or grantor Pam afterwards didn't get a response back. So I'd wonder if you had any clearer understanding of what was being said at the meeting. I think Sam brought that up that without doing the State Board doing a fair amount of research on that, that's one interpretation that could be made. I'm not sure Cinema Water agrees with that, that there shouldn't be a contribution from natural flow and Potter Valley project imports, but that's a fairly complicated legal question, David, that I think a few folks are going to be looking at. But I think that there's a possibility the interpretation could be made that and it wouldn't be D1610. It would be the minimum flows right now are under a temperature change order and we would anticipate continuing that order, a new order this summer. But I really can't answer that question. It's something I think we're going to be working with looking at with our outside Water Rights Council and I think the State Board is going to be taking a closer look at. Okay, yeah, no, I agree with you that I don't think it should be all the water agency's responsibility to maintain those flows. I was very surprised to hear the interpretation from Sam disturbed me that essentially the State Board is saying that existing water rights holders and permits and license holders on the main stem can use all of the natural flow there and fish flows and minimum flows are responsibility of the water agency that seems wrong. I'm looking forward to seeing your response, the agency's response to the State Board on that. Thank you, David. We also have Brenda Edelman and you should be able to speak now. Thank you. I just have one question. I'm not sure I followed all of what Don said and his logic, but in my head, if you take a thousand acre feet out of the reservoir in December, you're going to have a thousand acre feet less water in the reservoir in April or March. And that knowing that we went two months without any rain in January and February is likely to put more restraints and different water management requirements for the summer through the temporary urgency change petition than had everyone been asked to wait until we knew what our summer supply was going to be. And that's just the way I view it and why I'm concerned about these early drawdowns of the reservoir. And I'm also concerned about what I want to know what is meant by surplus supply in terms of Marin Municipal. If you could explain that, I'd really appreciate it. Absolutely, Brenda. So the water that was taken by Marin Municipal to offset their local reservoir so they could maintain storage in their reservoirs and then the water that was taken by North Marin to backfills like Stafford, that was natural flow that was in the system from those very large storm events we had in December. Those were not releases from the reservoir. We did not release water from Lake Sonoma or Lake Fujicino to be diverted and transferred to those agencies. That was natural, unimpaired runoff that was coming in from the tributaries. So that water, I'm not going to say it doesn't have other beneficial uses, but that water would have just ended up out the Pacific Ocean. That was not water that we were releasing from our reservoirs. And so that's why I was saying that it's a benefit for them to take that water now and take the pressure off the reservoirs and the reservoirs and the Russian River system in the summer when all that natural flow is going to disappear and we will be maintaining minimum stream flow is basically entirely from reservoir releases. So how do you sell water from the natural flow? I don't understand how that works. Well, it's flows. It's in the river that's coming out of the tributaries. It's runoff from those storm events. And under our water right permits, we can divert natural flow directly divert that natural flow into our transmission system. Brenda, I guess you had a lot of other questions too. It might be more efficient to just have a one-on-one call with Don Seymour if you have some additional questions. I'm willing to do that. Okay. But I'd still like to know what is meant by surplus water. So surplus water, I guess I'm not sure that's even the correct term. Maybe that's a term that came into use. But it's water that's above and beyond the minimum stream flow requirements in the system, Brenda. That's natural flow. Well, I'll make it part of my future questions if that's right. That'd be fine. Brenda, you and I could have a one-on-one. Thank you. Thank you, Brenda. Secretary Attha, any other questions from the public? We do not have any more raised hands. Okay. Thanks, Don, for that report. So we're going to move to agenda item number six. This is on a Sonoma Marin-State and Water Partnership. It's a two-part agenda item. The first one is just our regular tally of total water production relative to the 2013 benchmark year. So again, we tally this by calendar year. So this is the very first month of the 2022 year. I wouldn't put a lot of attention on one single month because of the variability on the meter reads, et cetera. But again, it just shows that overall the water contractors continued to use water efficiently and during the drought even continued to use less than what's used in the past. If you could scroll down some more. If you go down here at the bottom of the first page, it's just a bar chart showing overall water use trends. If you go on the second page, chart number two, again, this just shows over the last 25 years, the overall trends with population increasing and just with all the good work that the agency and the water contractors have done to just show that the actual water use per capita continues to decrease over that time. You can see that chart there in the orange color. So I guess any questions from the TAC? We'll do these for questions individually on agenda items 6a and 6p. So on 6a, any questions from the TAC on water production data for the first month of this calendar year? I don't see any questions or hands raised. We'll open this up for public comment. Again, this is item 6a. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand or dial star 9 via phone. We do not have any raised hands. Okay. Thank you, Easter. We'll move to agenda item 6b, which is a public outreach update. And that's going to be tag team with Paul Piazza and Barry Dugan. So I'm not sure who's starting first. I will start, Drew. Good morning, TAC members. Roberta, can I be allowed to share my screen? Yes, I just promoted you. Okay. Thank you. All right. As Drew said, I'll be joined by Paul Piazza this morning. So this is our regular public outreach update. And what we'll be presenting are some of the samples of the outreach materials that we have prepared for the next month or so. The main one being the fix a week, fix a leak week. I even transposed it on the PowerPoint. My apologies. I don't know what it is about that one. And we'll also be talking about our outreach of our language advertising through the various media. So I'll let Paul take over at this point. Thank you, Barry. And good morning, TAC members. So this is just a slide showing a couple of examples in English and Spanish of the job messaging around fix a leak week that's currently running on several regional publications. Next slide, please. Again, the fix a leak week campaign is an annual campaign that is run by the EPA WaterSense program and is picked up by utilities nationally. We participate in this event every year. It's March 14th through 24th. And we're encouraging everybody in the community to focus on a little bit of an inspection of their home to see if they have any dripping faucets or shower diverters that are leaking while the shower head is running and checking toilets and the like to make sure that water is not being wasted in your home. Next slide, please. In addition to the paid advertising and the social media campaign, we do have a couple of more traditional bill in search for some of the partners that still rely on those for their customers. Again, this is a bilingual campaign. And for the month of March and heading into the spring, it's certainly appropriate to make sure people are taking a look at both their indoor fixtures, but also their outdoor irrigation systems as we've been experiencing a little warmer weather. Want to make sure the public continues to maintain those systems as off for as long as possible. And to give consideration for minimally tuning them up, addressing any leaks or needs for repair that might have been lingering at the end of last irrigation season, checking your schedules as well to make sure that what scheduling you do have on your automated clock is appropriate for the seasonal time. Next slide. All right. Thank you, Paul. I also wanted to let everyone know if you're not aware of it that Sonoma Water is hosting a drought town hall this coming day from at 6 p.m. via Zoom. All the information is available on our website. It's available on the partnership website. And we've done quite a bit of outreach and enjoyed good support from the partners helping with that outreach. And on that note, I also want to again acknowledge the support from all the partners on our outreach campaign. But in particular, Santa Rosa Water, the staff has done a lot to help with the entire effort, and I always want to acknowledge that. And with that, Paul and I would be happy to answer any questions. Start off with Grant. You have your... Yeah, I just want to thank Barry for the work there, but also with regard to the drought town hall on the 10th, I want to make sure that Jennifer Burke from City of Santa Rosa will be part of that presentation to the community. So I appreciate her involvement on behalf of the WAC. Grant, could you go ahead and just summarize again who makes up some of the people that will be on that panel? No, I don't have the list in front of me, but I'll start with just obviously Director Rabbit, our WAC liaison is convening the town hall. And then Jay and I will be making brief presentations on the current water year and actions to date. You've got Janine Jones coming in from the Department of Water Resources to sort of look out in the horizon. She is a big proponent of the S2S, which is the sub-seasonal and seasonal forecasting to give us an idea of what lies ahead. Then you'll have representatives from the Fisheries Agency, state and federal. Jennifer will be talking much about what we're talking about today with the Silver and City Water Partnership, Santa Rosa's leadership and how the WAC's working. And Barry, if I missed anybody, feel free to chime in, but that's the lion's share of the effort. Yes, there'll also be a representative from Sonoma County Farm Bureau, Grant. Connie, right. Yes, but I think you covered, you covered it very well. Okay, great. The State Water Board too will be there. Yes, Sam, Sam Bowlin, Brian will be there. Okay, all right. Any other questions from the TAC on agenda item 6B? Public outreach messaging. We'll see any. We'll open this up now to public comment. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand or dial star 9 by phone. We do not have any raised hands. Okay, thank you, Easter. Thanks again for that update. Barry and Paul, we're going to move now to agenda item number 7, biological opinion status updates. And we're going to get that from AMG. Sam? Morning. Hopefully everybody received the update that you can see on the screen right now. Thank you to whoever just put that up. I'll start off with the fish flow project. There's a lot of new modeling underway with regards to the fish flow project environmental impact report. The modeling is being done for a couple of reasons. One of them being that we have a change in the Potter Valley project operation that needs to be covered in our work. And so we're making sure that that gets covered in terms of impact analysis. So that's really what's going on with regards to the fish flow project right now. On the Dry Creek Habitat Enhancement work, there is no construction activity going on currently. So there's nothing to report there. We do have a continuous, however, habitat monitoring going on. So monitoring going on in both constructed sites and sites that are being maintained regularly. So they're using all sorts of different tools to do this. You can see a list of those tools in the update here. I won't go through those. But I also did want to note that there was some maintenance done at one of our sites that had an issue with debris flow last year. And so that work is being done or has been done in order to sort of rectify what was going on at that site. On phases four through six, there's phase four specifically. The Army Corps of Engineers is getting ready to advertise this for construction this summer and next summer. They are conducting what's called a buildability, constructability, operability, environmental, and sustainability review. So we're helping to support this effort right now. And we did a tour out there in February in order for, as part of that review. They're doing, they're in the middle of the final stages of executing the right-of-way agreements for phase four of this project. And expect to have that done by the middle of this month. So on phases five and six, we have 99% design submittals on those two phases right now. They're working with phase five property owners on appraisables and compensation estimates for right-of-way. And they're starting that, to look at right-of-way, well not just starting, but they're looking at right-of-way for phase six also and working with property owners in terms of access and staging areas for that. So there's one other phase added here. It's called phase five, phase five and it's reach five B. This is sort of a smaller piece that is expected to be done upstream of one of a prior previously constructed project. They're at a 60% design phase for this and the next designs middle is due in April. They did receive some input from the resource agencies in January in terms of guidance on the design for the project. They're still having issues getting out there for an onsite meeting due to restrictions for the resource agencies and NEMS in particular being able to go onsite. So being able to go out in the field. So that is still hasn't happened but they're trying to plan that. As far as fish monitoring goes, I know Brenda asked about this a little bit earlier. And we can say that Steelhead are returning to the system right now. The numbers are very low. However, coho salmon season, spawning season is complete at this point. And actually they had a really good return, the highest number of coho spawning this year in the Russian River watershed than we've seen in many years that we've been doing this monitoring work. There's a couple of contributing factors you can see included in the update here, including the brood stock program, habitat enhancement work that's been done. However, there are, everybody needs to keep this in mind. There's an awful lot of things that can impact the fish that are completely outside of our control, including the ocean conditions. And so our recovery of coho will continue to be a challenge. Again, Steelhead returns have been very, very low and are not looking so great this year. Not just here but all up and down the coast. We're seeing this. So the Russian River Estuary Management Project, there's a note in here about a closure in February. We went out and did a mechanical breach to open up the estuary due to that closure last week on Thursday, the 3rd of March. But the estuary closed again yesterday. So currently the estuary is in a closed condition and I'm not sure what's going to happen in terms of a mechanical breach, but if the lagoon elevation, water surface elevation rises, we will have to schedule another breach and go out and do that probably relatively soon. And Dawn covered all of the interim flow change information that's here. So I won't go over that, but I'm happy to answer any questions there might be. Thanks Pam. Questions, comments from the TAC on Pam's report? We'll see. Pam, I had just one question on the narrative for phase four. It talks about the project being advertised in April for construction in 22 and 23. So is this a two-year project and will phase four be under construction at the same time as phase five then in 2023? That's my understanding and I know David Manning is on. If somebody wants to make him a panelist so he can correct me if I'm wrong, but that's my understanding there will be two phases going on at one time. I see David Manning. That's correct. Once you click on being a panelist, it takes a little while to refresh your screen. So yes, that's exactly right. David, is this the first time where the agency has had one of these enhancement projects be a two-year duration? No, it usually takes two years to build each of the projects. I think we've gotten some pieces done in a single year, but it usually takes a couple of seasons per mile. That's pretty simple. And then just related to Brenda's earlier question about fish monitoring and the tracking, is there any other document that's typically prepared by the agency each year that kind of summarizes all the fish monitoring from one year to the next? That could be a reference for Brenda if she wanted to read more? There is. We're actually finishing up a couple of those annual reports for the biological opinion, but that doesn't include everything. So we do a portion of that of the work under the biological opinion, but then there are other grants. There's a state grant called the Coastal Monitoring Program Grant that we've been implementing for about seven or eight years, and it has its own reporting. So that there are annual reports prepared for that. We could send those reports if she's curious to hear more about that. It's part of a statewide monitoring network. And then there's also the California Sea Grant Program. They produce their own report. David, do you think this would be a good opportunity to let the tech know the type of monitoring program that we're doing on behalf of California Proficient and Wildlife? I'm not sure everyone's aware of just how extensive that coho reach and the central unit is. And if you take a moment it would, I think, help them know what we're also doing. Sure. So the state has a system of monitoring the staffs and trends of co-salmon, steelhead, and Chinook salmon. It's called Fish Bullets in 180. It was produced about a decade ago. Folks that are interested in implementing that program in their watershed apply for a grant from the state. I've received three of these grants. The monitoring costs between, you know, five and six hundred thousand dollars a year. It's pretty expensive. But we get that money to extend to the reach of many of the surveys that we already do for the Biological Opinion Monitoring and that California Sea Grant, the University of California Sea Grant Program, does for monitoring the Russian River co-salmon broodstock program also as part of the Biological Opinion. It's an obligation for the core. The core contracts with Sea Grant Program. And then we also add in this money. We just we're getting another award here for an additional three years. It's a pretty big award. It's a two point three million dollar grant from the state. The costs go up every year to do this work. And we cover the lower Russian River pre extensively monitoring intensively a few streams there. And then also there's a sampling framework that allows us to move around the watershed and something called a rotating panel. We're able to really extend the geographic reach and measure these status and trends of fish that are returning to spawn, fish that are rearing in streams in the summertime. It's a very large effort. It involves about a thousand property owners. So there's a huge outreach component of this to get us the access to survey these places. Most of the work does focus on the lower portion of the Russian River for a few years. We had been monitoring steelhead populations in the upper part of the Russian River, but there's so much ground to cover there. And so the labor intensive, the state doesn't really have the resources to continue to fund that component. So we'll probably be shedding a lot of that upper Russian River steelhead work and focusing more on on the lower Russian River so we can monitor both coasts and steelhead simultaneously. So there's a lot that goes into the planning. My folks work a lot with the state and the federal government and trying to pull this work off. In this time of the year, on any given day, we'll have a dozen people or more walking these streams and measuring conditions and trying to find fish. So it's something we couldn't do without that external funding. Okay, thanks. Before I open it up for public comments, any other questions from the tack on this item? Okay, we'll open it up for public comments. Again, this is an agenda item seven, biological opinion updates. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand or dial star nine by phone. Do you have a public comment from Brenda Edelman? Hi, I just have a question. How can I find out the different kinds of reports you have for the last year or so and get on a list for getting any new reports? I'd like to learn more about this and I just haven't seen anything in a while. Brenda, you can contact me and I can send you. There isn't sort of a public list, if you will, that gets sent out with these reports. They're reported back to the agencies that do the work, so the state or the federal government that we can certainly send you what we have. Thank you. Any other public comments? We do not have any more public comments. Okay, thank you, Easter. We're going to now move to agenda item number eight, Potter Valley Project Update. Pam? Yeah, so on Potter Valley, let's see, do you want me to start off with the ad hoc meeting or just let me start off with just general updates. So I think everybody is aware that the two basin solution partners, which Snowmawater is one of, let FERC know that we will not be submitting a license application in April, which is when the FERC license expires for the Potter Valley Project. So that means that the project will, at some point, there'll be a notification that'll come out and the project will be going to what they call surrender. So that means eventually, and it's not going to happen anytime soon, but eventually there will not be a FERC license for that project. So we expect within, sometime within the month of April, FERC will send out a notice to PG&E, telling them to provide a plan and a schedule to get through the surrender process. That process is actually fairly similar to our relicensing process, but it ends in a, instead of a new license, no license. So that surrender process and plan and schedule is probably going to be at least one or two years long. And in that process, they will spell out what they will do in terms of decommissioning of the project. So that we expect again to come out in the April timeframe probably. We're not sure exactly when, but that's what we would expect. So that was based on a filing that we made that the fact that it's going to go to surrender means that no other party is going to be licensing the project at this point. And again, we filed a status update with FERC at the end of, end of January, that was required where we let them know that we would not be filing a license application. So we are currently working, however, and this kind of bleeds into the update on the ad hoc meeting. So Congressman Huffman has been convening an ad hoc for a couple of years now with regards to the eventual disposition of the Potter Valley project. And he held a meeting on the 14th of February. Several of us attended that meeting. The subject of the agenda for that meeting included the update that I just gave you about our filing. So the partners provided an update on the filing that we made on January 31st. And then we also provided an update on the Department of Water Resources grant that has been awarded. We don't have a contract yet with Department of Water Resources, but we're working on that. We're also working on solicitation for consultants as well as getting to our board to get some authority for grant to sign contracts with consultants once we've got the grant actual award in hand, the contract with DWR in hand. So the work being done under that grant includes putting together a Russian River Water Users Forum that we're hoping to get a number of stakeholders together so that we can understand exactly who's benefiting from Potter Valley project transfers, whether or not they're interested in seeing that transfer continue, as well as are they willing to pay for that? That's one of the tasks under the grant. Another task under the grant is looking at a change to the Potter Valley project facilities, diversion facilities themselves, what that might look like in order to operate as a non-power producing project for water supply purposes, what it might look like, what it would cost to turn it into that, and what it would cost to operate that. And then the last tasks under that grant include looking at water supply facilities and water use efficiency and other things in the Potter Valley itself, and also some modeling work on the Russian River in terms of water supply reliability. So that would provide that update to the ad hoc on the 14th, and then Cal Trout provided an update to the ad hoc on a Fish and Wildlife grant that they are working on, which is looking at putting together a basin-wide eel river fish restoration plan. So that was the last piece of update that the partners gave at the ad hoc meeting. After we were done speaking, Mike Schoner from PG&E spoke about the transformer issue that's occurring or has occurred up at the Potter Valley project. Hopefully people remember that we got notification that PG&E has a transformer bank that is not safe to operate, so it's been out of, they have not been producing power since last summer. He provided an update that they do intend to fix the transformer or replace the transformer. They expect it to take about two years to do this due to sort of the uniqueness of the transformer itself, I've heard it referred to as a unicorn. And anyways, so they expect, because of the timeframe that it'll take for a surrender process to happen, that it makes sense for them to go ahead and do this right now. And there were many questions about that, which I will not get into. And so that was an update from Mike Schoner at PG&E. And then the last item on the agenda for that ad hoc meeting was really about whether or not to continue doing the ad hoc, for the ad hoc to continue meeting, given the change and where the project is going. And there was a lot of folks who wanted to see the ad hoc continue. They saw an opportunity there for good dialogue and good sharing of information, as well as just, it was good. It's a good thing to have both sides of the project speaking. So it looks like that ad hoc will continue forward during this render process. And I think that's all I have, Drew. Hey, thank you. Any questions, comments from the TAC on Pams Report? Seeing none, we'll open this up for public comment. Again, this is agenda item number eight, Potter Valley Project update. If you are participating via Zoom, please raise your hand or dial star nine via phone. We do not have any public comments on the side. Okay. We're getting towards the end here. The agenda item number nine is just any items for the special WAC meeting on April 4th. That's primarily a budget approval meeting. We have had some discussions about bringing the agency's regional law supply resiliency TM on that same agenda as well. And that's the accelerated technical memorandum that focuses on drought management options. So anticipate that that could be another item for the agenda. Anything else? Okay. Any public comment on this item? Please raise your hand via Zoom or dial star nine. We do not have any public comments. Okay. Thank you, Easter. That brings us to the end of the meeting 1017 for adjournment. Again, I want to thank everybody, the TAC members and the public for participating. We've got about 40 participants this morning. Monday morning. I hope everybody has a good week. Take care. Thank you, Drew. Thanks, everybody. Bye, Drew. Thanks, Drew.