 Hi, I'm going to let Colin dial in from my desk. Okay. Okay, thank you. Hey, Roberta. I don't know if you are able to hear me. Okay. I just wanted to verify that my volume is all right. Yes. Here you just find, thank you. Okay. Terrific. I'm not going to use the headset then I'm in Peter's office. I couldn't get room two to work. Okay. So Peter had luck with it earlier today. So he's going to log in there, but I'll be able to do the presentation from here. Okay. Thank you. And we're live streaming. So, you know, Okay, great. Thank you so much. Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. John, we're not hearing you. Can you hear me now? This is this. I think there's something going on with my earbuds. You know, it doesn't always allow me to be heard. Oh, Hey, Jen. Good to see you calling me, Lisa. Hi, Karen. Council member Sawyer. We have. Two of the council members present and we have the board members who are able to attend this meeting. We have staff present. We are still waiting for council member tidbits. Okay. So it's up to you when you would like to start. Okay. So. Let's, uh, since we have two council members, um, we've got Eddie on myself, let's go ahead and get started. Are you, are you taking, are you, uh, This ship. Uh, actually council member Sawyer, um, we sent you a script. If you have that, I appreciate it. Okay. Hold on a second. I think I may have, oh, here we go. There was a second. I do have a question. Go ahead, Eddie. Uh, yes. I received an email saying that the second part of the presentation would be on my iPad. I also see that I have a final, uh, agenda. In my emails. Uh, if I am missing something on my iPad, could I have that information sent. To the email as I don't have my iPad currently. Well, it looks like it looks like the agenda has a full, uh, presentation for today. Roberta, can you send that directly to Eddie? Yes, I will. Okay. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. So, um, the end Roberta, could you take the, uh, role call for us, please? Yes. Do like five things at once. Council member Sawyer. Okay. Sorry. Yes. Here. Uh, council member Tidditt's. Council member Alvarez. Present. Chair Galvin. Here. Vice chair. Warden for bad and for. Here. Let's see. So we all know to keep, keep, keep yourselves on mute when you, when not necessary to speak. And. This is usually highlighted. Uh, so I'll just, uh, this is usually highlighted. So I'll open the public comment. We are now taking public comment on item two. Do we, why are we? Well, that was, the other was item one. Sorry. Um, if you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. You, if you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand council member. Sorry. I'll go and ask Roberta. If there are any raised hands, please be aware of that. So, if there are no comments, emails or voice mail, public comment received, um, at this time. We have no public comments. Okay. Thank you. So, um, If you could introduce item 3.1 for us, please, Jennifer. Thank you, council member, Sawyer and members of the sub committee. Our first item is the water demand offset policy and the the presentation he will be sharing his screen. Just a little bit of background as the council and board may recall the city's required to have a water shortage contingency plan. And as part of that, we look at all of the options we need to ensure that we can reduce water use to meet various water shortage emergencies. Demand offset has been included in our water shortage plan for many iterations. And we have been hoping to finalize a policy for many years now with the critical nature of the drop that we have in place right now. We have finally been able to put the staff resources towards developing this policy as outlined in the shortage plan. So with that, Colin's going to walk you through where we are with that. That's the initial introduction of the policy and fee to this body. And then we will taking it to a lot more public meetings and bodies as Colin will walk you through. So Colin. Excellent. Thank you so much, Director Burke. So we will go ahead and walk through this for you. And as Director Burke has mentioned, this is in fact an implementation of our water shortage plan. So I'll provide you a little bit of background and reminder about that document. As you recall, we do comply fully with the California Urban Water Management Planning Act. And in fact, this year we adopted, City Council adopted the 2020 Urban Water Management Plan and the 2020 Water Shortage Contingency Plan. These were the most recent updates for those documents. And this year, the Water Shortage Plan was adopted as a separate document per California law. So it is a standalone plan. And some of the key features are defining what a water shortage is by levels or stages by percent of water shortage and making sure that we have sufficient response actions that we can take so that when we are in water shortage emergencies, the demand for water doesn't exceed the supply we have to get us through that emergency. So there's a lot of detail in that plan and that water shortage plan about how to respond. It is updated every five years and it can be updated more frequently. And I'll talk a little bit about that in just a moment. The water shortage plan and the Urban Water Management Plan are CEQA exempt and also the offset policy as an implementation tool in the water shortage plan is also CEQA exempt. So it is not a CEQA project per se. As a reminder, here are the eight water shortage stages that were adopted in June with the water shortage plan. The orange bars to indicate a couple of things. One, historically, we've not had a drought worse than 25 percent since we adopted our first water shortage plan in 1992. And we know that anything over that is a severe shortage. And so for many, many years as Director Burk indicated, we have called for a particular response action in severe shortages that includes water allocations. That's water rationing. So when we get to a stage where we're over a 25 percent shortage, we have enough water to divide up amongst our existing customers with very restrictive limits on how much water they can use. So in addition, we do, as you know, considerable outreach and education. We offer an abundance of customer service and assistance. Our water use efficiency team is very busy during water shortages. We make operational changes. We put in place prohibitions and restrictions. And again, for severe droughts, we have this additional tool, which is water allocations or water rationing. And that's directly tied to this offset policy. So we wanted to cover that ground to make sure that that was a clear bit of information we provided to you. During water rationing or water allocations, our top priority is public health and safety. That's really what is critical. So when we develop those water allocations for residential customers, that's one of the key things that we have in mind, as well as for businesses and public safety and other kinds of accounts. We really want to make sure that public health and safety is our top priority. Every service receives a specific allotment to that individual service, and it's very restrictive, becomes more restrictive the more severe a drought or water shortage is. And violations are enforceable including excess use penalties. And there is no water available for new demand when we're in such a severe shortage and we're rationing existing water among our existing customers. And we're going to detail through all of the iterations of this allocation plan, but it does give you a sense of just how restrictive these rations are in order to achieve making sure demand does not exceed the supply we have during severe shortages. Of course, we also have a housing shortage crisis as well. And so California law does mandate that we build a certain amount of housing and have a certain amount of housing available. And so the city has a planning and economic development department at building division. They work very hard on policies, procedures, practices to ensure that we're removing barriers and we're complying with state mandates around the housing crisis. So here we have what would appear to be competing interests when we're in a severe drought. So how do we deal with a water shortage and a housing shortage crisis at the same time? And that's what the water shortage plan tackles. So the 2020 water shortage plan and the water shortage plans that preceded it included a requirement that when we're in a stage that's so severe that we're assigning water allocations to each individual account, that new construction would have to offset the new demand that would be put on the system when that new project is connected and occupied. The existing plan adopted in June called for increasing levels of offsets. However, as a team, we had an interdepartmental team with legal staff, planning, economic development, building division and a number of divisions from the water department working together, about 14 or 15 of us developing a water offset policy. When we looked at this in more fine detail, we determined that 100% offset was sufficient. We just need to make sure that new development fully offsets its demand and that would be sufficient to meet the needs of our water shortage plan. So we will be bringing under a separate item to the City Council and to the Board of Public Utilities separately, a recommendation to make a modification to the water shortage plan that flattens this structure to simply a 100% offset. And this also avoids some increasing costs in stages six, seven and eight. It would just be a flat offset. So the policy is built around this idea that we would have a flat offset required during any stage where we're having to ration water. So this proposed water demand offset policy that has been developed by this interdepartmental team is a mechanism for implementing the water shortage plan offset requirement when we're having to use water allocations. This is a way of balancing these needs that we have across the City for making sure we have adequate water supply for public health and safety even during severe shortages and that we also comply with state law and requirements around housing mandates. So rather than proposing a building moratorium, the offset is a mechanism or a tool that allows development to continue without having a negative impact on the City's water supply during severe drought shortages. Colin, my apologies for the interruption. Is there a way you can adjust your display settings? You're showing the presenter view. And so we're seeing two slides. Let me see what I can do here. I wonder if... It might be your display settings. Yeah, thank you. Again, apologies for the interruption. Yeah, completely understandable. Let me just see if I... Oh, here it is. There we go. Director Burke, is that better? Yes, thank you. Oh, terrific. And thanks for that feedback. I really appreciate it. So this policy would apply to projects that meet two conditions. The first condition would be they have not yet submitted a building permit application at the time the policy is adopted by City Council. We can't go back and add fees onto projects that have already submitted a building permit application. So this follows the same pattern we do whenever we change our fee structures for any reason throughout the City for development. The same rules would apply here. We would not retroactively apply this to projects that have already applied for a building permit. The other is they have to be creating new demand that's subject to new or increased connection fees. So for example, a project that this would not apply to if a warehouse was remodeling, but did not require additional water, there's no need for this policy to be implemented in that particular situation. Or if a restaurant was remodeling its kitchen, but in fact was not going to have an increase in water demand, there's no need for this policy to apply. So we wanted to make that a very clear distinction that this is directly tied to the impact on water demand. And that's where this fee is focused solely. In terms of the fees themselves, I'll get into the structure for the fees in a moment. But I wanted to mention that the fees would be due if and only if at the time where they're going for building permit final or for any kind of occupancy, temporary occupancy, permanent occupancy. If and only if we have a declared water shortage emergency that's in place. And that emergency declared by City Council includes water allocations or water rationing as one of the response actions that needs to be taken. Otherwise there's no need to collect fees. So this would only be during those periods of time when we have a severe water shortage and need to make sure during that severe water shortage, when we're rationing water that new demand doesn't take water away from the public health and safety concerns of our existing customers. The fees will be collected and tracked separately. We want to comply fully with the Mitigation Fee Act. The fees will be used by the City to implement projects and programs to achieve those offsets as quickly as possible. And implementation efforts would be tracked and reported separately from other programs and efforts so that there's a very clear distinction about how these funds are being used and what impact they're able to achieve. Colin, while you're on the slide, can I ask a quick question? Yes, please. You mentioned the warehouse situation and a restaurant that's either redoing their restaurant and they're not going to be using any additional water based on their gallons used in the past. How is that tracked? What is the red flag that goes? Let's say they thought they were going to be potentially using even less water in that kitchen, that brand new kitchen. And hopefully that would be the case with new technology, etc. But let's say it didn't work and they're actually using more. How do we know? Well, the way that our demand fee structure is set up for connection fees, there's a whole process that every new application for building permits goes through. So it's not something I work on day to day, but we are including in our team that engineering services team of experts and they've assured me that it's a really clear distinction for them. It's very easy for them to identify projects that would in fact increase the demand and would require that additional fees be paid for the demand part of that connection fee. So I don't have the expertise at my fingertips to address it further than that, but I'm certain we can get back to you with more information if needed. Well, not necessary. That actually answers my question. I'm not surprised that we don't, I'm not surprised at all that we have a way to track that because it's, because that's how Santa Rosa water does business. You guys, everybody does a good job of being able to work together to get the job done. So I appreciate it. I'm sure that all the, all everything necessary is in place. Terrific. Yeah. And again, if more questions come up about that, we'd be happy to have that subject matter expert help us out. So again, fees will be collected separately and track separately, making sure we comply with the mitigation fee act. So just to give you a sense of the overall process, if I were a developer coming in requesting a building permit, I would need to fill out a water demand offset application. I would estimate what I think my demand is going to be and use a lookup table to see what my fee would be. Staff will review that. If we agree, certainly we move right to getting a water demand offset agreement in place. If we feel there needs to be some corrections, we would make those. If the applicant agrees with the fees and the structure that's put in place in that agreement, they sign it, send it back to us. We process it on our side. They get their building permit and on they go to building that project. If there were a hitch, they disagreed, we do have an appellate process built in. So applicants can appeal the staff decision to the BPU. And if they're still not satisfied, they can appeal a decision to council as this is a city council policy. So we made sure to put in place an appellate process as needed. So then once the agreement's in place, they move forward. And when it comes time when they'd like to occupy that building either on a temporary or permanent basis, then those fees would be due if and only if we're in a severe water shortage that requires water rationing, water allocations, which triggers the need for water offsets. We did have a water demand offset fee study conducted and we will be coming back to the Board of Public Utilities and the city council to do study sessions on this topic. And that subject matter expert will be with us. The consultant will be with us at that time. But I can tell you from the staff perspective, what was done was that we looked at three programs that we had confidence that we could implement quickly and attract quite a bit of participation in. So enhancing a couple of existing rebates, which is a very cost effective way of generating offsets, and then offering a direct install toilet program, which also is very cost effective compared to the other programs. So we looked at three programs we felt we could quickly and cost effectively put in place to create offsets and what the costs would be. We did a deep analysis of the water use of our existing customers. We've done these studies for decades. And what we've seen is that single family residents have a particular water use sort of footprint, if you will, smaller parcels use less, larger parcels use more because of the size of the landscapes. And we've also seen in the multifamily sector that there are particular breaks in water use history. And so we've divided those up into categories as well, so that we can fine tune this to more most accurately represent what the impact would be that needs to be offset. The table I'm going to show you is a little bit outdated. We've updated it to add another category and expand a couple of categories so that it more effectively reflects a parallel process that we use for our connection fees. But generally speaking, this is the fee structure. These fees haven't changed. However, we've added another category, as I said, for duplexes and triplexes because they have a distinct water use history that differs from other kinds of multifamily units. And then to the ADUs and senior housing units, we have added a small high intensity apartment complex category and the single room occupancy category. So the study session agenda packets include an updated table here. And then what we did was we looked at the weighted average cost and that is what we would propose to use for the schedule for fees. We have reached out to the development community. We reached out directly to the North Coast Builders Exchange and a North Coast Engineering Contractors Association. We sent almost 60 letters to development, the development community, developers, contractors, interested parties, letting them know this was moving forward, provided the draft table that I just showed you and a meeting schedule when all study sessions are occurring and when action items would occur on this. We've offered to make presentation at association meetings. We've also done a short presentation to the Santa Rosa Metro Chamber. And so we're doing everything we can to make sure that the word is getting out to the development community to make sure that they're aware that this change is coming and when they have opportunities to have their voice heard if they have concerns or questions about this. Our next steps are to go to the Board of Public Utilities this week on Thursday for a study session. We'll go the following week to the Planning Commission and do a report item that is essentially a study session asking for their review and comments. October 26th we'll come to the City Council for a study session. And then on November 4th we'll ask the Board of Public Utilities to take an action. We'll ask them to consider making a recommendation to Council to adopt the policy and fee structure. I want to mention we're also going to be taking a separate item on that same date asking them to make a recommendation for minor changes to the water shortage plan including the change I mentioned where we would ask for one offset 100% offset in all severe shortage stages 5, 6, 7, and 8. So changing that structure is one of those changes we would ask for a recommendation on. On November 30th City Council will have a public hearing and we will ask them to consider adopting the water demand offset policy and the fee structure. And again we will also have a public hearing just prior to that asking them to adopt minor changes to the water shortage plan including the offset requirement percentage. And at this point I'm happy to take any questions and I think what I'll do is stop sharing the moment just so that it's a little easier for everyone to see each other. Committee members any questions for Colin on the presentation? Yes Council Member. Sure. Eddie go ahead and then Dan. In regards to page number nine and with the policy change it states that we want to move to the 100%. Could you explain the difference between 100% and what a 500 or 400% reduction looks like? Yeah it's a terrific question. So in the currently adopted plan if somebody I'm just going to use very very simple numbers to make it easy. If a project needed say one million gallons of water per year then we would look at what it would take for to offset that one million gallons in a stage five. The current plan says in stage six they would need to offset two million gallons even though their demand was one million and in a stage seven it would be three million gallons in a stage eight it would be four million gallons. And again when staff looked at this more closely we determined that really what we need to achieve is simply a 100% offset. If their impact on our water demand is a net zero impact that's sufficient and that avoids having an accelerated fee structure that would go up considerably in stages six seven and eight and it still achieves what we need to achieve which is a net zero impact. In regards to the tools that developers are using what are some of the policies with strategies that are being introduced to reduce the water in these developments? New development is required to be considerably more efficient than development prior to a number of laws that were adopted in California. So for example there are very restrictive requirements on landscapes in California. Very restrictive requirements on faucet flow rates, on toilet flush rates, on also appliances such as your dishwasher or your clothes washer. So all projects now have to comply with CalGreen plumbing code and building code requirements. So the city has really been an early adopter of those. We adopted even early versions of CalGreen plumbing codes before they even became mandatory. So we've been a leader in this area for probably I think close to two or three decades now. So new development is considerably more efficient than development was say in the 90s. So we're really promoting and really incentivizing our developers to take advantage of the new technology that's out there is what it's really sounding like. Would that be a correct statement? Yeah definitely so. Thank you sir. Thanks Abby. Dan? I wanted to follow up Colin on council member Sawyer's question earlier when you were using the example of a warehouse. So if we determine at the time that they're going to do their improvements that they don't qualify and they don't have to pay any kind of a fee. I know we can monitor them after they've completed it to determine whether or not they are staying within those guidelines. But what happens if in your hypothetical after they've done their build out all of a sudden that warehouse is using twice as much water as what was anticipated. How do we deal with that? Well we don't have a way to go back and I guess in terms of the demand for the connection fees they don't I don't think they monitor those in the way you're thinking. However what we do is we do monitor sites based on their water use and when when a site's use goes up noticeably the billing department has an automated report that flags those accounts and sends a letter to them saying hey you might not realize it but you're using a lot more water than you normally do. Please take a look at how you're using water see if there's something if you need some customer service and assistance please contact the water conservation folks they're happy to help you. In addition water conservation has a series of reports that they run to look for things that are anomalies or unusual patterns of water use and they reach out proactively to customers as well including having the ability to look at AMI data that automated meter infrastructure data and if a site is perhaps using twice as much because they have a leak that they're not aware of that'll show up on reports and our water use efficiency team contacts folks regularly letting them know you have a leak that's a violation of our water waste ordinance you're going to need to fix that. If it were just simply a way a standard way of doing business you know I'll have to actually talk to our experts over in the engineering services and see how that would be what would happen if their ongoing business were simply doubling the water use and it was well beyond the demand fees that had been paid at the time of connection I'll have to get more information unless Director Burke may have something that she can add but that's a little bit outside of my area of expertise. So Chair Galvin it is a great question what how we set demand fees is based on the peak month so we are looking at the highest water use that they're going to have based on what they're estimated to do. We if they're you know going to make changes in the future we look at that capacity that they currently purchased and then we compare that to what their use has been if they're proposing changes if there's a differential and we need to charge additional capacity fees or demand fees. On a day to day we are not comparing their usage to the actual demand fee capacity that they paid for but we do as Colin mentioned have a lot of tools to identify if there's someone that usage has crept up significantly. We also have a very conservation-based rate structure so both on the water and the sewer side that are encouraging folks to be as efficient as possible with their water use. Thanks Dan thanks Jennifer Lisa. Thank you it's actually just dovetailing on the last couple of questions. So just for clarification that kind of next trigger point on the use as compared to what was incorporated into that first building permit would be in the event that they applied for a new building permit but not necessarily a monitoring in between. And I guess a question on there is also is it customary? I'm not a rates expert in so or a fee expert in that way and so is it customary especially in significant droughts for any kind of structure to be built in into into water demand fees? Thank you very much. Great presentation Colin by the way. Thank you so much. I'm not completely sure I fully understand the question but I think what you may be asking is are we doing something that's sort of a standard business practice? Are we kind of doing a best management practice for drought response? Is that kind of in the neighborhood of what you're? Yes and particularly on on new construction whether it's I guess it would be particularly in commercial but if the next trigger point for reevaluation wouldn't be in the until in the event that they came in for a new building permit is there anything that's customarily built in in between? Well certainly you know for for our drought response when we get to the point where we are rationing water we look at the water use history of each site and particularly for commercial and we look at whether or not they are their businesses directly tied or their institutional use whatever the case may be directly tied to public health and safety. If it's not directly tied to public health and safety they have to cut back a little bit more but hospitals of course were pretty generous in their allocations they do have to cut back but it's a very slight amount because hospitals are going to have to be able to respond and be able to serve the public right so we want to make sure that we have reasonable allocation set based on public health and safety but a typical business would have to cut back their water use based on their water use history and they have to abide by that and so if they exceed that allocation their subject to first we reach out it's progressive enforcement hey you're out of out of step with the water allocation what can we do to help you you've got to come back into compliance we don't have any water any extra water there's there's no room everybody's on a strict ration if they continue to violate their penalties and worst case scenario because it is considered a water waste it's a prohibition when we get to that point we could technically shut them off if it were severe enough and they were recalcitrant clearly that's not what we would like to do as a first step of course obviously we always want to work with our customers we want them to be successful so that we can be successful but it's pretty it's pretty strict when we get into water rationing we really have to be very proactive and careful about our water at that point so yes regardless of whether there's a new building permit involved or not there are strict water allocations that folks will have to abide by should we get into a severe shortage thank you very much that's really helpful appreciate it thanks Lisa thanks Colin any other questions from the committee members at this point okay seeing none um we're now taking public comments on item 3.1 if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you are dialing via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand um Roberta do we have any live public comment you're not no public comments and do we have any voicemail but any any any comments of other types no public comments all right thank you very much um well then we will thank you for that presentation as very interesting i'm glad to see that we i think the 100 percent uh makes perfect sense uh it seems fair uh and effective as well so um i would hate to think what i mean the the concept of having a future demand pay more because they're new um you know i'm glad you're able to avoid that because there's it's uh they need to carry their own weight but and that's i think that 100 policy does just that so good job on coming up with something that was fair and reasonable so um if uh director work would you like to introduce item 3.2 is that is imma going to be bringing that to us yes uh thank you council members so i remember some of the committee so item 3.2 is an update regarding a potential regional organics processing facility um and preparation of a request for proposals related to our compost site and emma walton our deputy director of water reuse operations will be making the presentation thank you welcome emma thank you for having me good afternoon uh council member soya and members of the subcommittee thank you um director berck for the introduction am i sharing the correct view of my presentation okay perfect so i'm going to give just a pretty brief um overview um and presentation on what we have going on with respect to the potential regional organics processing facility uh that we've been kind of working towards for the last uh five years or so um and bring a recommendation um for preparation of another rfp uh for the potential use of our biosolids compost facility um now that we are no longer in negotiations with uh renewable sonoma so a quick background um as i think all of you are aware in october of 2015 our in county organics processing facility located the central landfill closed due to stormwater runoff issues since then zero waste sonoma the joint powers authority whose mission it is to um address waste aversion in the county has been looking for an in county uh solution to process our organics that we create here and in may of 2017 they released an rfp soliciting interest from outside vendors who wanted to own and operate and build a facility in county in exchange for flow of commitment or a commitment of flow excuse me uh in august of 2018 zero waste sonoma selected renewable sonoma um as the preferred vendor renewable sonoma as part of their proposal had identified uh the city of santa rosa's property adjacent to the treatment plant as the facility location or the site location for the proposed project um and in february of 2019 the vpu authorized an exclusive negotiation agreement with renewable sonoma for the lease of that property we've gone been in negotiations with renewable sonoma since february of 2019 as they've as they continue to refine their project and further developed their develop their proposed project um and we got to a point where uh in december of 2020 we took um both to the bpu and to the city council an item enclosed session um to review potential um uh lease term and price for the um for the for the lease of that property so just as a reminder the property that we were negotiating regarding was uh to the west of the treatment plant the original location actually was um greenfield property to the north of the plant but through some negotiations uh we identified that the preferred location would be to the west of the plant um on the property that is that was at the time currently the home of our biosolids composting facility um that facility closed in may of 2020 um as the water department identified more cost-effective and efficient way to process the biosolids that we had previously composted at that facility so that opened up the opportunity to negotiate for the use of this property with renewable sonoma uh just an aerial view to give you a sense of what the property looks like and where it is you can see in the foreground there um our uh our facility the the compost facility can you see my cursor yeah okay so here's the compost facility itself um this is um a storage pond um that we used for various um purposes operational purposes and then right here is just a bio filter uh that we used to filter the air inside that building so um this is the facility that we're talking about uh today so recently um we have had some unfortunate um outcomes of our negotiations with renewable sonoma uh in may of 2021 renewable sonoma decided to end negotiations with zero waste sonoma uh for the commitment of green waste and and negotiations with the city for lease of the property uh they were unable to secure financing to support the project and decided to remove themselves from negotiations um in zero waste sonoma uh since since renewable sonoma ended negotiations zero waste sonoma has been considering its options in how to move forward um with bringing um uh in county uh an in county solution back for um green waste composting and um they anticipated that a release of a draft EIR for a proposed project upon stage gulch would be coming out in september and i do not believe that has been released yet i have not seen a um a copy of it so i could be mistaken on that but i have not heard that it has been released but last i heard from zero waste sonoma they were anticipating um that to be released in the very um near term uh they are hoping that this project will um meet the needs of uh the joint powers authority and will be able to take um green material from in the county and have it processed at that facility uh they don't know if at this point if they're going to go back out for another rfp to try and cite another facility um i think right now they're just kind of in a wait and see um a point since negotiations have ended with renewable sonoma for the city we have been left to contemplate how we're going to use this previous biosolids composting facility um into the future um we have identified some immediate near term needs for the facility and are also interested in exploring future operational needs for the use of the facility for the water department and that's why we're here today so kind of what has changed since we were previously in negotiations we learned a lot through the process and and going through the negotiations with renewable sonoma one of the main things we learned was that the benefits that we had originally anticipated from co-locating the two facilities the green waste composting facility adjacent to a wastewater treatment plant really just didn't come to fruition we had we were open to a lot of different synergistic um exchanges and at the end of negotiations we just really didn't have a whole lot of interaction between the two operations that were beneficial to the city or beneficial to the water department and the other things that have been going on with respect to our biosolids program and our bio in particular our land application program is that the san francisco regional board is reconsidering how they are permitting land application sites in south county in particular in the valend area we all of our south county land application sites are within the san francisco regional boards jurisdiction and are within the san francisco valend area they've recently become re-engaged in our in our application and are very interested in our program and have a lot of questions about how we're undertaking our program so one of the things that we have historically done for our land application sites in south county is we fall under federal regulations because historically san francisco did not want to permit our our sites they just wanted us to fall under the 503 regulations and so we have historically done that and been in compliance there is a statewide general order that they could apply to us and on those lands and if they were to do that we would have to modify how we currently operate our program and in particular there are requirements around storage of biosolids on land and if we were if if san francisco regional board were to decide that they want us to go under the statewide general order we do have an immediate need for our existing biosolids compost facility to stage biosolids so that we would be able to store biosolids and then truck them to south county consistent with the time frames that are part of the statewide general order so that's kind of the the near-term need that we have for that facility and it's going to be absolutely critical to making sure that we are in compliance with that statewide general order the other thing that's going on in the biosolids world is SB 1383 which is diversion of organics from land bill we are anticipating that with the passage of this bill that the demand on land application sites is going to increase as you may be aware we rely on lease agreements in south county for our land application and we have concern about if there's more wastewater treatment plants in the area looking to land apply biosolids because they can no longer go to landfill that could potentially impact the lease agreements that we have with landowners in south county so we really want to start thinking proactively about that that circumstance and then lastly we when we closed our biosolids compost facility we entered into an agreement with lis tech which is a biosolids processing facility in fairfields we structured that agreement such that it was a shorter term agreement with the sole intent of bringing our biosolids and treating our biosolids and processing our biosolids in county for the long term we we we saw and understood that our biosolids composting facility was not a cost-effective solution we recognized that we could truck biosolids to lis tech in the near term to gain some savings while we look for a long-term solution and a more cost-effective solution to biosolids processing and we believe that the biosolids composting facility could potentially help us bring our biosolids back to in county and construct and establish a long-term solution to our biosolids so with that our recommendation and really the reason we're here today is to get solicit input and feedback on how to move forward with this but at this point our recommendation is that we would issue an RFP or a request for proposals to evaluate potential opportunities for Santa Rosa water to utilize the closed biosolids compost facility for our own operational purposes and forgo offering up the site as a potential regional organics processing facility our recommended next steps would be that we would work with the board of utilities to develop an issue and evaluate an RFP and evaluate the potential long-term options that would come out of of that effort we would suggest keeping the council informed through written communication and updates on potential future use of the site for our operational purposes and the fact that we're considering not offering up the site for zero-way Sonoma to utilize as an in-county organics processing facility so with that I'll open it up for questions and I'll stop sharing so we can all see each other Emma I'm curious do we have first of all how normally would we be storing biosolids if we needed if we had to reduce our our spread and we had to store what do we what kind of vessel do we use to store and do we have enough space now that we have that area back under our control under our complete control do we have enough space currently to satisfy the needs of those vessels that would be holding these biosolids until they were either able to be spread or processed in some other way yes so how we currently do it right now is on our south county properties which are under the 503 regulations we are allowed to store on the land on on the on the farmed land itself so we truck it down we use a small portion of the acreage to store biosolids until it's ready to be spread and incorporated and and that's really highly dependent on each farmer and when they do their cuttings and how they do their cuttings and so we work very closely with our farmers to make sure that we are storing and spreading and incorporating biosolids that work with their operation if we were to go under the general order we would no longer be allowed to store biosolids on the land for more than 24 hours so as soon as you put it down you have to spread it and then within a certain amount of time you have to incorporate it that's very impactful for us our operations with regard to trucking and spreading and incorporating it's additionally very impactful to our farmers because they may or may not be ready to spread and incorporate biosolids at the time that we produce them so we would utilize the we will be utilizing the compost facility which has all the infrastructure we need already in place to store biosolids stage them there then when the farmers are ready to accept them we would truck them at that time spread and incorporate within the specific time frames required under the permit great thank you for that committee any questions for you ma van so i was on the the review committee when we did the original proposal reviews and i know we had several other what i'll call credible responses to the rfp has there been any thought given either at the city level or even with zero waste and going back to any of those original proposers to see if they have any interest whether it's to negotiate something to use our facility and we become the regional group or in conjunction with net zero yes there's always yeah that's a great question zero waste sonoma has considered that as an option it was one of the things that they were originally looking at when it was looking like renewable sonoma was going to end negotiations they have decided that they are not interested in reaching back at this point they're not interested in reaching back out it's been i want to say six years five years since those original proposals were submitted and so if they my understanding is if they were to entertain another project they would put out a new rfp and solicit for new proposals from the city's standpoint because we're part of the jpa right now our flow our our material is committed through the jpa and we would not um we're not currently in a position to solicit for just our material or for the on behalf of the jpa really that's the zero waste sonomas project and they're they're prerogative and another thing i did want to mention that through the lessons learned um and and you probably remember this as part of the original proposal or as part uh part of the original rfp we offered up the land north of the treatment plant um and through negotiations we we agreed to allow them to consider the property west of the plant after going through the process it really became apparent that our compost facility and what is currently paved out and what is currently improved is not large enough to support a regional facility the acreage is just too constrained to really support a project that would meet the entire needs of the jpa so if we were to participate in a project in the future the compost facility and that acreage really isn't the correct acreage to be uh negotiating around any other questions from the committee and thanks for the answer camera very nicely done no other questions so um we're going to move to public comment we're now taking public comment on 3.2 if you wish to make a comment do you zoom please raise your hand if you are dialing via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand um any public comment berbera no public comments any other types of comments received in any other from any in any other uh process or way no sir okay i appreciate you allowing me to use such technical language um well if there are no other um questions or comments from the committee we will and thank you all for being here um and for this update emma and jennifer um we will um adjourn the meeting council member soya if i could ask um on the staff recommendation uh is the committee's uh direction to support our recommendation the next steps let's um let's do a eddie are you ready to support the recommendation of staff i am okay thank you and dan absolutely looks like three yeses don't forget lisa oh lisa i'm sorry i've been here plenty of times don't take that as a slight you know you know that's not a slight agreed with with with enormous uh applaud and appreciation for how how phenomenally our staff worked through that entire process it was um yeah and and it continues and thank you thank you all it's uh well hope hope for good things in the future i'm looking forward to um not having to deal with um finding new sites to um to deal with our biosolids it's an issue that many cities that many any city that has a composting or that it has a has biosolids a water processing plant um anywhere in the bay area especially those under the san francisco um uh orders are um up against the same problem so it it does complicate things and we look forward to the next update hopefully it'll be good news so thank you all very much thank you thank you thank you everyone