 Good morning, everybody, it looks like we're still waiting for a couple more people to join us. So we'll get started in a little bit. Good morning, everybody. Director Burke, do we have all the staff in attendance? Yes, Chair Watts, we do have all the staff that are here for this meeting. So we're ready to go whenever you want. Great. Thank you so much. So I'd like to call the meeting to order at 1101. Secretary, if you could do a roll call. Yes, Chair Watts. Here. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Walsh. Here. Great. Thank you. I'd like to remind all the committee members to mute their phones, microphones when you're not speaking. Now we will move on to the minutes. We'll take public comments on the minutes approval. If you would like to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary, are there any live email or voicemail public comments at this time? No public comments. Great with that, then I will move to accept the minutes unless there is any board members that have any commentary on the minutes. Okay, great. Minutes accepted. We will, sorry, one second, trying to do multiple screens here. So it looks like we'll move to item three. This is public comments. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary, are there any live or email or voicemail public comments? No public comments. Great, thank you. So we will move to item 4.1. I'm director Burke, if you could introduce the item. Thank you chair Watson members of the subcommittee. Our first item item 4.1 is our 2020 urban water management plan and 2020 water shortage contingency plan. I want to note that this is a huge effort. It's a report that we update every five years and we've been working on for a little over I think a year and a half at this point. We really appreciate that we're going to be asking a lot of the subcommittee to go through this report and review all facets of it, but it's an incredibly important planning document for our department. So with that, we have calling close our senior water resources planner who we've been making the presentation. There we go. Everyone able to see my screen with the PowerPoint presentation okay. Oh terrific. Okay, wonderful. So, thank you, director Burke for that introduction and thank you to the subcommittee for your service we really appreciate it. As director Burke said, a pretty large effort there's a team of folks that works on this project so I want to thank all of them for all their efforts. What we'll cover today will be the second of three meetings that we'll have on this topic and today's meeting will focus again, mostly on some of the technical pieces of the water shortage contingency plan but we also want to make sure that you understand the basic contents that will be in the urban water management plan. You'll see a couple of slides that you saw at your last meeting, just because I want you to see some pieces of the water shortage plan in context with the rest of the water shortage plan. So if a couple of slides look familiar you're right you've seen them before so thanks for your patience with that. I'll jump right in. So, just to remind you, in 1983, the state adopted the Urban Water Management Planning Act, and that applies to all urban suppliers that have at least 3,000 connections or deliver at least 3,000 acre feet a year. Santa Rosa has about 54,000 connections and I'm so sorry to interrupt your microphone and sound is modulating quite a bit. Oh, I'm not sure if you have any options there if you can be closer to your mic. Let me try. Is this microphone working. No. Okay. Yes, that sounds a lot clearer to start. I think. Okay, excellent. Thank you for letting me know about the sound quality. So again just briefly 1983 Urban Water Management Planning Act adopted applies to urban water suppliers with at least 3,000 connections and or 3,000 acre feet of deliveries and Santa Rosa significantly larger than that. So we have about 54,000 connections and deliver about 18,000 acre feet. And just in case gallons maybe as more intuitive a 3000 acre feet is about a billion gallon, about 1 billion gallons so Santa Rosa delivers about 6 billion gallons a year. The second point is to assess our long term water supply reliability and to look out at least 20 years Santa Rosa looks out 25 years. Most of the water suppliers in our region do that as well, there are advantages to it and it doesn't take much more effort so it's worth it to add another five years, and the state allows that as an option. So, our water, Urban Water Water Management Act, I'm sorry, my, I'm stumbling over my words a little bit here sorry about that. Our urban water management plan will go out to 2045. We want to make sure we have plenty of water supply we take into account population growth land use development climate change. So when we look out over that 25 year horizon we are assuming things will be changing that there'll be more water demand that they'll be stressors on the water system and all of those things are taken into account. We do this every five years so the current effort is due July 1 to the state so we'll talk about a timeline near the end of this presentation that shows you where we're at and what our next steps are. We wanted to give you a high level level overview of what's in the urban water management plan. We'll come back to you. It's going to be April 5 to talk to you about the analysis and the findings and what we've determined about our water reliability. So today what I'm going to do for the Urban Water Management Plan is just talk generally about the contents you have a sense of how the documents laid out. The state recommends 10 chapters with content laid out in a particular way that we found useful. We actually do adopt what the state's recommendations are it's not required that it have 10 chapters or that it be laid out this way. But we found that it works it makes the document fairly intuitive for the reader and the pieces come together pretty well. So chapter one will be an introduction and there's a new requirement that the introduction or an executive summary or some element of our plan. So we'll include a really plain language lay description of what did we discover when we did all of the analyses, undertaking the urban water management plan so how reliable is our water. And when we look out over that 25 year horizon, what does that look like. So we'll be adding a lay description in the past we've had an executive summary that did some of that work but we're going to really fine tune that this time, make sure that it meets all of the regulatory requirements. Second chapter is talking about how we prepared it to make sure that we met the requirements to coordinate with our wholesaler and other water suppliers in the area, other cities and the county as well as the public so we'll document that in chapter two. In chapter three, we will describe our system and not just the facilities and the equipment and that sort of thing, but our service area how large is it, what is our climate like what's our land use like in this area, and our population. And this is where we'll share with the state our projections for a population out to 2045. And this is done with input from our planning department and the Association of Bay Area governments as well as a consultant that we work with, and also in consultation with other water suppliers in our area, so that we all did sort of a gut check and looking at population figures. In chapter four will document or water use will report the water use for the past five years for the year 2020 that's what's considered current in this plan. And then looking out to 2045 in five year increments. And then we also as a new requirement need to provide what we project our water use will be 2021 to 2025 for what's called a drought risk assessment and I'll talk a little more about that drought risk assessment in a moment. But essentially we're supposed to talk about what our unconstrained demands will be what we project normal water demand would be if we did not have a water shortage in the next five years. In chapter five. We'll talk about our compliance with the state's conservation target in 2009 the state required all water suppliers to develop a using one of four methodologies targets for 2020 to reduce their water use by 20%. So there were four different ways that folks could go about setting a baseline and analyzing that. And when we come back to you in a few weeks we'll talk more about that analysis and what the findings were but spoiler alert. We did a terrific job as a community and we have absolutely met that 20% reduction by 2020 so we're really good shape with that piece. Next we'll talk about our water supplies and we'll look back five years we'll talk about our water supplies in 2020 and we'll look out to the future. And in looking out to the future out to 2045 again we'll do five year increments and we have to tell the state, how much water we believe we'll have out to 2045, considering normal water years, considering the odd single very severely dry year that could occur. And to consider those in light of population growth and land use changes as well, and look out to see if we anticipate any water shortages, and if we anticipate will have water shortages in the future. We need to lay out what we will do to address those. And you're somewhat familiar with the urban water management plans requirement to have a water shortage plan. We'll talk more about that today. But that's our strategy to address any short shortages that we might find we have. And for the drought risk assessment for our water supplies, we have to assume that it's going to be similar to the five driest consecutive years on record so when we project the water supplies it's not going to be a projection of what we actually think we're going to have, but rather I think we would have, if the next five years were the driest on record, comparative to there's a period in the 1986, literally the driest five consecutive year hydrology so we'll be using that to model our water supplies. And again that's part of that drought risk assessment. Chapter seven is the heart and soul of the document that's where all of these pieces come together and we analyze whether our water service will be reliable. And we look at the demands out to 2045 and we look at the demands for the drought risk assessment, and we compare to the supplies under different scenarios. Do we anticipate having water shortages going out over those horizons. And if so, what will we do about those water shortages. So that's the piece. In particular, this chapter will be a real highlight when we come back to you in our next subcommittee meeting. In Chapter eight, we will talk about how we're meeting the water shortage and contingency planning requirements the new requirement is that that document stands alone. We'll talk in depth about the water shortage plan in just a moment here. So chapter eight will be very short about page it'll talk about the fact that there are requirements and that they're being met in a separate document that's being added as an appendix to the urban water management plan. In four chapter nine, we will discuss our demand management measures and that's another way of talking about water use efficiency programs. We hired our first water use efficiency coordinator 1991 and we've had programs ever since so we have a really rich robust history. Specifically about the past five years the regulation requires we outline what we've achieved in the last five years, what we're going to achieve in the next five years to manage demands with our water use efficiency programs. And specifically we have to talk about how we're going to meet new targets that the state will be working with us to set and how we'll meet water loss standards the state hasn't finalized the water loss standards yet. But we have to talk about what we would do to meet those standards and we're in very good shape by the way on both of these elements already but we'll definitely be talking about those in chapter nine. And again we'll give you some more highlights of this chapter when we come back to you in on April 5. Chapter 10 is a pretty short chapter talks about how we've met the regulations to adopt the plan with a public hearing and a public process. How we will submit the plan to the state by the deadline and how we will implement the plan, how we're going to make it publicly available to anybody who wants to read it in the future. So we'll document all those steps that were taken. And then we have about 20 appendices so of course one of those is the water shortage plan but quite a few other appendices as well. So it ends up being a relatively large document, another one of the new changes this year. We can attach appendices with a link instead of the full document in the past we had to attach very large documents. This year, if we can maintain a URL a location where documents are stored for five years until the next urban water management plan. We can simply attach those with a link and so I'm working with our communication staff to set up a page that will have links to large documents so that we can streamline our document a little bit more this year in terms of printing. When we make hard copies for the library and for our counters. So let me pause here and just see if there are any questions about the layout or the contents of the urban water management plan any questions before I start talking about the water shortage plan. Any board member questions. All right, I guess we can move forward. Thank you. Excellent. The water shortage contingency plan, as you probably recall from our last meeting is our operations manual for how we're going to respond to shortages whether they're very mild, or they're severe, whether they're long and drawn out due to drought or their sudden due to some kind of catastrophic event. We have to have a plan in place for what we would do we've had water shortage plans in place since 1992. It lays out a pretty extensive series of response actions that we can take and we'll go through some of those response actions by different categories of response. So you get a sense of the kinds of response actions that we have in our toolbox to help us address water shortages. The state expects that our shortage plan is going to set priorities, and I think you won't be surprised to see that our priorities start first and foremost with health and safety. So regardless of what our water supply is that is our top priority always. Second priority would be economic stability, we want to make sure that commerce industry businesses are able to stay in operation and that jobs are protected to the greatest extent possible during water shortages. Also value landscaping in particular during water shortages, mature trees and shrubs we want to do what we can to make sure that those are sustained they're very hard to replace they take years to become mature again. So that's another one of our priorities. And of course new demand is still a priority now maybe very difficult and severe water shortages to address that but we have some strategies in place. There are quite a few new requirements for the water shortage plan. The previous water shortage plans have been in the neighborhood of about 20 to 25 pages this one is already cresting over about 100 pages with the attachments so we expected to be a pretty robust document. It does have to stand alone. It has to define the water shortage levels. That's not new, but it does have to show how those align with the state's new standard shortage levels. And I'll provide a chart in a moment that shows how we align with that. There are a number of response actions that piece isn't new, but we also have to estimate how much water we believe each of those response actions in each stage will help us meet the gap between the water shortage and the demands that we have. We also need to describe the financial impacts you've heard about that already. We talked a little bit about it in our first subcommittee meeting on this topic. You also had study sessions about this in the contract committee and then also the BPU talking about the water shortage rates and the water shortage rate structure and the financial analysis behind that. And we'll include that financial analysis for the water shortages in our water shortage plan. We also have to discuss seismic risk assessment and mitigation. We do have a local hazard mitigation plan that we will be attaching that meets the bulk of the requirement, but we also need to include some narrative to describe and summarize some of that. We also need to provide procedures for new requirement. Every year starting in 2022, water suppliers will have to report to the state what condition they believe their water supply reliability is for that immediate year, and one more year, one subsequent year, assuming the subsequent year would be dry. In the urban water management plan, we have to lay out our procedures. We also need communication protocols and those are in the water code, those are tied to the annual water supply and demand assessment. The state wants to know how we're going to communicate to our customers and water users, our stakeholders, officials, regulators. If there is a water shortage that becomes evident during that analysis, then we need to have a way to communicate that. We've always had a communication plan in place for water shortage contingency planning, but we've made it more overt, more clear. We've laid it out in a way that ties directly to the water code and shows exactly how we'll be keeping everyone informed at each stage, regardless of where we are in a water shortage. We also need to lay out our compliance and enforcement steps. We'll talk about those today and I'll give you some more information about that. We need to provide monitoring and reporting procedures. One more in a shortage, we have to collect data and report to the state every month. How are we doing? Are we meeting our reduction targets? How is demand compared to supply? So we have to document that we do collect that data and we do already collect all the data necessary for that kind of reporting. And then if we find the plan isn't working, we need procedures to reevaluate it and improve it. So we have a narrative that discusses that as well as the legal authorities that we would use, such as council resolutions and ordinances to empower implementation of the plan. And then finally, we talk about how the plan's been adopted and submitted, made publicly available, how we're meeting all of the statutory requirements for those elements as well. So those are all of the new requirements. So what I'd like to do at this point is talk to you again about what our stages are and how those line up with the state's standard stages. Tell you more about our response actions and then get into the overall framework. And before I do that, I'll just pause again and see if there are any questions about the new requirements that we've just covered. Any member questions? All right, let's continue. Excellent. As I mentioned in our last subcommittee meeting, we do have proposed eight stages. Our previous water shortage plan had seven stages, and to better align with the state's standard stages we split stage seven into two. So now we have stage eight that is for over 50% water shortages. So here's how we align with the state's standard stages and I've already checked with the state and they're happy with this structure that we've developed. They think that if it's serving us and we can show how it maps to their stages, that sounds great to them. You'll see we've allowed ourselves additional flexibility to respond to water shortages. The state has stage two up to 20%. We've allowed ourselves stage two up to 15% and stage three up to 20%. And then we split the state's stage three into two steps as well. So we can have more refined responses to water shortages. We've had voluntary calls for water reductions, probably four or five times in the last 20 years. Most recently during the drought, the state mandated certain reductions that triggered our water shortage plan to have a mandated water shortage stage, but that was the only time we've ever had to do a mandatory storage stage so far in our history. But we do have lots of flexibility in the early stages because we've had these lesser kinds of water shortages in the past and we've seen the advantage to being able to be more nuanced in our responses. So to talk about response actions, there are quite a few categories. I won't go into tremendous detail, but I do want you to be aware that of the water response actions, probably the first two listed here outreach and education and customer service and assistance are our biggest points of leverage. That's really where most of the work occurs and it's really where I think most of the water shortage response is successful. We reach out to our customers and we keep them informed, we keep our stakeholders informed, water users informed, businesses, industries informed, so they know what the water shortage is, what the reduction target is, and how we can help them. And in terms of how we can help them, we have robust water use efficiency programs, we have highly trained staff, they can provide technical assistance, resources, do it yourself kits. For residential sector we have faucet aerators and shower heads that we can give away, we can do consultations and site visits. We can help folks make their way through our rebate program. So those first two pieces in terms of our response actions are again I think the really the pinnacle of the work that we do and that's really why we've been so successful in the past and water shortages. We're also required to have prohibitions and restrictions on end uses. What are we going to prohibit during water shortages. We focus those on eliminating water waste and minimizing non essential uses of water. So for example, in early stages we require that all hoses have an automatic shut off nozzle on them. That's to prevent water waste and to minimize non essential uses of water. And we have other sorts of prohibitions and we'll talk about those in a moment. We also make operational changes, we reduce water flushing we put out signs so that our customers understand when we are flushing our lines or our hydrants that that's for public health and safety so that we're communicating with our community and they understand that we can hire temporary staff to help us because typically our calls for service for what is efficiency increased significantly and so we can use temporary staff to take calls to help our customers migrate their way through our rebate programs to help set appointments to help process rebate applications a whole host of things. We also do water waste patrols those are early morning routes that we have staff drive around 430 to 630 in the morning looking to see if there are irrigation system problems that our customers would not otherwise be aware of. And then we can alert our customers and let them know if they have a problem with a broken sprinkler or misaligned sprinklers that are flooding the gutter instead of irrigating their landscape that sort of thing. So there's a whole host of operational changes we can make. In addition, we have our water shortage charge which encourages water conservation, this is the piece that went through the prop 218 progress currently undergoing the prop 218 process. And it partially helps us bridge the gap in our revenue shortfalls when we sell less water, we bring in less money and we have additional expenses during water shortages as well. So the water shortage charge helps with that it does require council action this is not an automatic element we go to council and we need to get an ordinance in place to implement this. And so just to remind you. This is the structure for the water shortage charges during stage one stage one is a 10% shortage and it's voluntary. So there is no water shortage charge. As you recall this is an inclining charge that goes all the way up to 45% of the user rate in really severe water shortages of more than 50%. But again, if you'll recall, if customers reduce their water use, according to whatever the water shortage target is their water bill shouldn't actually increase particularly in the residential sector we've done a very robust analysis. In residential sectors about 90% of our accounts and about 74% of our water use so we've analyzed that and if they meet the water shortage target reduction, they won't see an increase on their water bill. So this does help us recover some of our revenue, but it doesn't unduly burden our customers. Another one of our response actions is to have water allocations and just as a reminder that's a way of talking about water rationing. And so we have that for our more severe stages five through eight. We have water rations for every water service connection. This again requires council action. And this is a tool in our toolbox to help us make sure that we are achieving the water reductions that we need. We also have the excess use penalties you'll remember hearing a little bit about those in our last meeting as well as in the rate study. These excess use penalties are completely avoidable by all of our customers but we did mention them doing the prop 2018 process just as a matter of doing due diligence and making sure the public is aware of this structure. And again this requires council action. And when we talk about compliance and enforcement, I'll talk to you about the progressive enforcement so we envision this is not being an automatic penalty but actually a tool in our toolbox. But first we would work with our customers to help them before necessarily implementing an excess use penalty. So let me show you the structure for water allocations. So we had promised to go back to you and show you the formulas. So again just to remind you our top priorities health and safety. So all the accounts, there's very few of them that are have a code associated with them that is health and safety all of our accounts have codes. So residential codes or business codes, industrial codes so we know the kind of business or the kind of use that at that particular water service that our water is serving. So health and safety accounts have a very moderate reduction goal because they are so directly tied to health and safety. So for example hospitals and fire stations. So these are modest reduction goals and again they're very small portion of our water demand. But we do want them to contribute to reducing water use, while recognizing that health and safety is our top priority. So in mind when we look at the residential sector, we focus primarily on indoor water use. Now we won't know exactly how our customers are using their water whether they're using it indoors or whether they're using it for their landscape. But when we develop the allocations we focus on making sure there's adequate water supply for cleaning and cooking and sanitation, you know, for showers and for for their toilets and that sort of thing. We just want to really focus on that. So in stage five, we would have 40 gallons per person per day, and a small allocation for landscapes during the irrigation season. And then as we go through more severe stages of water shortage, those are cut back at stage seven there is no allotment for landscape irrigation landscape irrigation isn't yet prohibited in our water shortage plan and stage seven, but we do not allocate allotment for that for our residential customers again, it'll be up to them to choose how they use 32 gallons per person per day. And then by stage eight there is no irrigation allowed throughout the city, so that water use would obviously be very focused on the indoor use. We did a very robust analysis of how much water we believe our residential sector is using indoors currently, looking at our lowest water use months when it's rainiest and looked at 10 years worth of data in times of drought and in times of normal water years. And we're about 45 to 47 gallons per person per day indoors. So we feel that these targets are actually very achievable, and they also make sure that we achieve our water reduction targets for the commercial industrial and institutional sector again, maintaining our economic stability is very important. And so we do ask our CII sector to reduce their water use. The, this is a relatively small portion of our water demand about 13% of our overall water demand serves this sector. So we do ask them to do some reducing of their water use, but we don't want to make it impossible for them to continue doing business. For irrigation accounts, yes, definitely landscape irrigation is a priority, but as we get into more severe water shortages, really, it's health and safety is our number one priority and you can see that reflected here. These accounts, by the way, will be assigned their water use based on a water budget that's tied to the square footage of landscape they have, and the weather conditions that we're experiencing. These accounts are used to water budgeting they've been on water budgets for about, I'm going to say close to 20 years now. We've been billing them based on water budgets so this is not a new approach for these accounts they're used to that. This will be an adjustment for them, but we'll work with our customers as we move into these allocation stages and making sure all of our customers know what their allocations are and understand them, and we'll do our best to work with each of them to help make sure they stay within their allocations. I also want to mention that if any of our customers feels that their water allocation is unreasonable and they have some good documentation to help us understand why that is so they can request a reassessment. We have a process in our compliance and enforcement procedures that allows for folks to petition for reassessment and to ask the water department to consider additional factors so for example if a business has participated in our water use efficiency programs over the years, and significantly cut back on their water use already. We will certainly keep that in mind when we look at their request for reassessment, or if there are other public health and safety issues that we haven't considered, we'll absolutely consider those requests for reassessment. To help us enforce allocations we do have the excess use penalty but again we have a progressive enforcement structure proposed so we'll talk more about that as I said in a moment. Every customer can avoid these penalties, we hope they do. We do not count on this as a source of revenue. Our goal is to not have to collect any excess use penalties but rather to help all of our customers achieve their allocations and avoid these penalties entirely. But they are in place, they are a tool that we can use if we need to, if a customer is not responding, is not complying with the allocation, is not helping us achieve the much needed water use reduction targets that we have in these more severe shortages. We do have this as a tool in our toolbox and this also requires council action in order for us to have the authority to enforce it. You can see that in the early stages of 10% penalty for use in stage five for 100 and 1% to 150% of the allocation. It's a 20% penalty for over 150% use in stage five, and then you can see by stage eight the penalties are ratcheted up quite heavily to reflect how serious the water shortage is in those later stages. So let me just back up for a moment. I just wanted to see if there are any questions about the allocations, the methodology, the analysis behind it, or if there are any questions about the penalty structure that you'd like me to address at this point. Yes, thank you very much. I appreciate the opportunity to ask questions. You touched on a bit that somebody could ask to have an assessment of their allocation. And the question was so on a residential user if they have been a very good customer and they have conserved a lot in the past. Is there starting point with the residential customer has used in the past? Or is it based on the allocation, as you mentioned, the 47 gallons per person? That's a really excellent question. So I think what you're asking is, you know, if somebody's been very conservative, is this really a fair structure for them? And I would say yes. So some customers are already at 35 or 40 gallons per person per day. They're incredibly conservative. They've taken advantage of our programs. They have ultra low water need landscapes. Those folks will not find these allocations difficult to achieve. They're already achieving them. So for folks who have a long history of reduced water use, this will have very little impact on them. Customers who have not been very conservative with water use will feel this the most. So if somebody is already achieving 40 gallons per person per day, we're not asking them to do more. So if somebody was at 40 gallons per day now, and there's a 10% shortage mandate, and if 40 was good now, right? Do they have to hit 36? And the person that was at 47, you know, only has hit 42? That is a terrific question. What I want to take you back to is this for a moment. So stages one through four are what we call a community-wide target. So stages one through four, we're not looking at specific accounts because we're not in a water rationing stage. So stages one through four, we're saying to the whole community, can you please help us? And we're here to help you reduce your water use. But we're not yet looking at individual accounts for compliance on a percentage basis. When we get to stage five, that's when we're looking at the rationing, and then we're looking at account-by-account. Got it. Great. Thank you very much. Yeah, it was a great question. I'm glad you asked. I probably should have covered that. You covered it fine. I'm so new to this, and I really appreciate the help with it. And then on the stage five, again, if somebody is like a super low user, they could call and say, hey, I'm using almost no water at all, can you give me a break? Yeah, for example, with a single family, if they're already super low, it won't change their lifestyle. For like a business, we've worked with companies such as Amy's has done a tremendous job working with us to reduce a significant amount of water with their kitchen kettles. And they have a recycling water system now to cool their kettles. And it used to be a single pass through, now it's a recycled system. And so they have dramatically reduced their water use. So if they came to us and said, hey, you know, we're looking at this water assessment, it's going to make it impossible for us to do business. And you know, we've taken all of these steps already, we've worked with you. We significantly reduced our water use by X percent already. Absolutely take that to account. And so when that comes forward to the director with that kind of information, the director has the authority to look at that and consider those reassessments. And those are exactly the kind of customers we want to encourage rather than discourage. Thank you very much. And I just want to double check director Burke is there anything you wanted to add to what I've explained to director Walsh's question there. I'll cover everything. Great, Colin. Thank you. Okay, terrific. Thank you. I think that's all the questions for now we can move forward. Excellent. So as I mentioned to you before another one of our response actions is compliance and enforcement. This is not new to us. The water department has been enforcing our water waste ordinance since 1999. So we do have a long history of enforcing requirements and also during the last drought the state had mandated prohibitions and restrictions that we enforced. We have our own prohibitions and restrictions on in water use during water shortages that we enforce. So our approach is progressive. First and foremost, in our experience, if we let our customers know there's a violation or an issue if there's water waste, about 90% of our accounts are appreciative. They didn't know there was an issue. They're happy to hear about it. They appreciate we've taken the time to help analyze it, provide them with the information, and they resolve the issue. Again, compliance and enforcement for the most part we're really focused on compliance, helping our customers achieve whatever it is we need to achieve together. So it's very much a customer service based approach alerting the customer, offering assistance, answering their questions, providing them assistance and moving through rebate programs, providing them do it yourself kits. Sometimes we have workshops, pointing them to additional resources that could help them. During the last route we had a grant that we were able to get to help our customers change toilets out to ultra low flow so we do everything in our power to help our customers achieve the goals from the perspective of customer service and compliance. If a customer is motivated, if a customer is not responding to us. We've emailed them, we've called them, we might have driven by and left a door hanger on their door that says oops, we've noticed there's an issue. And there's been no response from our customers over a period of time. We can issue a warning letter. If they respond to that warning letter and start to take action and work with us, we work with them until they're back in compliance. If they don't comply if they're not responsive, we can issue a second warning letter. And very rarely, we will issue a third warning letter usually customers have worked with us and comply by them but we do have a third warning letter. And that is one where we have a date certain that if they don't comply by a date certain. We will take penalty action. The most severe action is to shut off the water service with the allocations. One of those penalties can be implementing that excess use penalty. And we could do both if there was a serious enough issue happening. But again, our goal is to work with our customers to help them and to assist them. So while we do have the authority for enforcement again we focus on customer assistance in compliance. What I wanted to do is just show you that you do have a handout that has a summary of the vast majority of what I've talked about today so that if you needed a handy one page two sided document to help remind you about what we're proposing. One side looks like this and I realize it may be difficult to read on the screen so you do have this as a separate PDF. I want to look for you to understand how it's set up. So the water shortage stage is in the first column. The reduction target is in the second column. The water shortage charge is in the third column. The water rationing or water allocations is in the fourth column. And on the other side of this chart the details of those allocations are laid out. The access use penalty has its column. There are two numbers. As you'll notice, for example in stage five it says 10% slash 20%. And there's a footnote that'll help remind you that what that refers to is 10% would be for 101% to 150% exceedance of you of the allocation. And the 20% would be for 150% exceedance going over that much of the allocation. And then our prohibitions and restrictions are listed. And for each stage, the previous prohibitions and restrictions stay in place and that we add to those as we move through this structure. So without all of this we are communicating with our customers, water users, stakeholders, the media, our local water supplier partners, our water wholesalers, normal water, the state regulators, other officials. So we're constantly implementing and expanding our outreach campaign to make sure everybody understands what the shortage stage is, what the targets are, how we can help them, and what the prohibitions and restrictions are. And on the other side of this handout, we have the formulas that will be used, the calculations that will be used to establish the proposed allocations should we need to get to that stage. Finally, I wanted to just let you know what our next steps are. We're going to meet with you again actually in April. And I think it's April 5, and we'll go into what the determinations are for the water management plan, what is our water supply reliability out to 2045. And what is our water supply reliability for the drought risk assessment for 2021 to 2025. And some additional information as well that will provide you our compliance with the SB X seven dash seven target and highlighting some of our water use efficiency accomplishments over the last five years. City Council had a study session on the rates that included information about the water shortage charges and the excess use penalties as well so City Council has been made aware of those in April. We'll have another meeting with you as I said, and then after that we'll go to the BPU as a full body and talk about the urban water management plan water shortage contingency plan. And then in May we publish a draft of both of those documents and we asked the public to comment and to review it and to provide their feedback. And also in May City Council will have a public hearing to consider the water rates. That's going to include again the water shortage charge structure, and it does have information as I said about the excess use penalties. BPU will also in May be asked to make a recommendation to council regarding the urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plan. June 8 we'll go to City Council for a public hearing. And we will ask City Council to adopt the urban water management plan and water shortage contingency plan. Our statutory deadline is July 1 to submit those and a significant number of other kinds of documents that go with that that the state requires. By July 1 have that submitted to the state and also made available to the public on our website, as well as the state's library website and some other places as well. So I wanted that's the end of my presentation so I'm happy to take questions on any part of the presentation whatsoever. Thank you so much for your hard member questions. Well, a huge thank you to staff I know this is a really big plan and I know that you guys have been working diligently on it and especially right now with our conditions more important than ever that this planning document be be done and be as thorough as possible. Thank you for all of your guys work on this and hopefully we we get some more rain and talk on what I know it's raining a little bit right now I think so hopefully we can not have to enact some of those really severe stages but but I really thank you guys for all your work. Thank you very much. I will now take public comments on item 4.1 if you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary, do we have any live or email or voicemail public comments. We have no public comments. Great. So we will move to item 4.2 director Burke if you could introduce that. Chair Watson members of the board. We are going to be using this subcommittee as chair watch mentioned. It's it's very dry out there and so we're going to be using the subcommittee to work with you all and keep you updated on our dry your response. So item 4.2 is going to be an update on our 2020 2021 dry your response and deputy director what are resources. Peter Martin will be making the presentation. All right, thank you director Burke moment here while I bring up the presentation. Yeah, as director Burke mentioned this committee tends to take on some increasing importance, perhaps once a decade or more often, as we kind of respond to dry conditions and drought. So it's been very dry. So far, we're kind of in a position right now where we have not seen the same amount of rain that we had even last year, which was the third driest year on record. The UKIA station right now is currently about five inches below the total cumulative rainfall for water year 1977, which is the second driest year on record. So it's been very dry. So far, we're kind of in a position right now where we have not seen the same amount of rain that we had even last year, which was the third driest year on record. The total cumulative rainfall for water year 1977, which is typically used sort of as a barometer for, you know, dry year in California, as it is the, and believe it may be actually the driest year on record for that rain gauge as well. So this is pretty concerning, you know, two years in a row. But, you know, again, thankfully, we do have Lake Sonoma with a multi year amount of storage. So we're looking to Sonoma water to help us to kind of frame up the response and I can cover a little bit about some of the efforts they're doing so far. So we continue to, while a drought has not necessarily been declared locally yet Sonoma water and as contractors are continuing to ask our community to continue and embrace conservation efforts throughout this winter. We've been running at Santa Rosa water our winter campaign since about November December, but Sonoma water has started to see kind of an uptick in their efforts, and are starting to more aggressive campaign to increase their visibility with the slogan it's a dry year save water with us. So I'm sure you've started to quite kind of see these things through various digital media, including some of the social media accounts for Sonoma water and its partners through the saving water partnership. Information has been running in our digital channels through our social media and city connections. We've also started to create some designer bill inserts and customer interaction interaction channels as well. And then of course we continue to leverage the Sonoma ran saving water partnership to direct customers back to Santa Rosa water programs as well. So I just kind of wanted to for the, for those including myself who are getting up to speed on what's been done historically, I just wanted to kind of go over some of the potential water supply shortage triggers. These aren't necessarily all encompassing there are, you know, several factors that can come into play, or when it drought is triggered. But, you know, a lot of it kind of centers around what's called the 2006 restructured agreement for water supply between Sonoma water and its partners. Part 3.5 that agreement includes several provisions that sort of Sonoma water as contractors kind of adhere to as far as apportionment and triggering drought. So in that section, it outlines sort of some triggers that could come about because of as we're in possibility on the cusp of drought various regulations that may be unforeseen or other environmental causes. There's also a section that highlights any changes to the Potter Valley project that may be necessary and the water supply shortages that may come with that. And then of course any temporary impairment from perhaps an emergency like an earthquake or other environmental disaster. The restructured agreement also includes a shortage allocation methodology. It's been in place since 2006 from time to time we do revisit that amongst all the contractors. We started to actually do that right now at a staff level. It also establishes sort of a priority of the customers in the individual allocations of those contractors as well. That allocation methodology is based upon what they call reasonable requirements and it's more focused on, you know, sort of the health and safety aspect of their customer bases. It also rewards and encourages water conservation historically by the contractors, meaning that contractors won't necessarily be penalized for having a lower gpcd for instance. And then it also so it takes into account those kind of considerations and also allows for a greater share of the allocation methodology based on that. These cutbacks as I mentioned on historic consumption and considers local supplies for instance Santa Rosa water has a few groundwater wells and also other contractors do as well. In addition to the restructured agreement. This is decision 1610, which governs and snow waters water rights. It includes a term specifically that has a sort of mandatory 30% efficiency in deliveries. We're the quantity of water at Lakes Noma drops below 100,000 acre feet before July 15 of any year. This is sort of a very hard and fast cutback that we would probably see long before it happened, but has not occurred often in history. You can see this graphic right here shows that line in comparison to where we are today. We're actively monitoring this along with some water to ensure that this doesn't occur. This likely won't occur based upon some of the projections that they've given to us so far at the tack. But it is something worth considering as far as where we can't return from as far as a 30% cutback that's mandatory for all the contractors. Now that you've heard a little bit about some of the triggers as far as when we would kick in a drought response. I did kind of want to highlight how we've historically approached our drought response. You heard a lot about the Water Shurch Continuity Plan. That's sort of our blueprint for how we respond in a given drought period or dry year. What we would occur is based upon those triggers and various factors and analysis, a stage would be chosen, and we would go through the implementation of that stage and the actions that go with that. As Colin mentioned earlier, outreach is sort of a linchpin of our response to drought. We get as much out of that as we possibly can. We work with a very good team here in the city to develop an outreach plan. And that plan has already been in development for several months and is continuing to be refined and changes as we continue to experience dry conditions. That focus also includes education. We try not to head directly into enforcement. As Colin mentioned earlier, we want to work with customers as much as possible to educate them and make sure that they're getting all the information and tools and resources needed to meet any conservation mandates. And then finally, for those that don't respond to that type of outreach and education, we do have enforcement available to us as a tool has outlined in the Water Shores Contingency Plan. I did want to highlight that historically the department has had to kind of shuffle around efforts and make operational changes to support things. As far as enforcement and education, that means more work on the customer service side. We utilize interns, temporary employees, over time, if necessary, on occasions to do waterways patrols and also to encourage additional customer participation in programs and all the effort that goes with that. So this is kind of a larger sort of holistic graphic that shows the Water Use Efficiency Team. That's part of the Water Resources Division. And just sort of all the efforts they touch upon in a drought. As I mentioned, communications and outreach are very important. They also participate in leveraging various internal and external stakeholder relationships. We utilize a lot of information going out to places like parks and things like that to make sure that we're, you know, leveraging those relationships we have internally in the city to to make sure that we're putting out the message that we're being water efficient as a city as well. But really it comes down to just ensuring that we have a robust customer service opportunity in any drought. And that includes, as I mentioned earlier, educating customers and then of course enforcing upon customers if they don't respond properly to that outreach and education. And then also in the past we've sort of utilized rebates and other water use efficiency measures and sweetened the pot and really tried to get a lot more participation during drought to try to reduce demand overall in the city. So I just kind of wanted to highlight some of the things that we're working on internally as a department as far as our drought readiness. We've got sort of an outreach plan that's been kind of continuing to be modified as time goes on. We've been knocking out certain things as part of our winter campaign, but we will continue to work and transition from that winter campaign to a much more robust summer campaign. And that will be in concert with whatever goes on at Sonoma Water, as far as their contractors, as far as what the expectation is for the water supply outlook in this year. We'll continue to revive previous outreach successes, you know, if it's not broken, don't fix it. So we've had things like drought drive-ups and other things that have had quite a bit of success. We're looking at ways we can do that and modify those to meet the county health orders criteria. And then of course, we'll continue to leverage regional partnerships. You know, we can talk with folks like business interest groups, hotels and other partnerships that we know that we already have restaurants as well, and leverage those partnerships to make sure that we're getting the message out to others about how they can save water. And then of course, on the other side, we're continuing to prepare for the potential for triggering the water shortage contingency plan. That includes understanding the triggers that I went through today, forecasting the conditions that are going to occur throughout the summer, and then we work through the various components of that water shortage contingency and plan for any public education in the rollout of that. And then of course, always looking at ways to improve customer interaction and also encourage rebate uptake. So rebates in the past have, during drought, we've sweetened the pot at times, I know, in the last drought, encouraging more uptake of those rebates and including, you know, just increasing the per-square foot rebate available to customers for turf replacement and things like that. So I just wanted to highlight just a few of those rebates. We do have quite a few rebates programs available, but I'll just kind of highlight a few of the ones that have been more popular in drought. We have our course green exchange program. It has a residential cap of, I think, actually that's $1,000 max per meter, and it is a 75 cent per-square foot rebate and has a, you know, obviously a thousand square foot max on that rebate, and then we've recently upped that to 10,000 square feet per year for our commercial customers as well. It requires a pre-inspection or a workshop working through some of the things as far as when a customer is ready to remove turf, and then of course it requires a post-inspection follow-up, which we've done in the past both virtually and in person at times. We could look at that given the situation right now with the county health order. And then that rebate is given to the customer upon the installation of the drought tolerant landscape. We also have the rainwater harvesting rebate. It's about a quarter per gallon of storage that's available to folks, and it's measured by the peak month, and the cost of materials are covered only. So, you know, obviously not covering sort of other components that may come along with that rainwater harvesting, just materials only not the design and other kind of permitting and things that are required as well. Some of these systems do require backflow. They can get very technical. Some folks have quite robust systems at their homes with pumps and pressurization, electrical power. Those obviously require additional inspections by the city and different permits that need to be pulled and a lot more planning. And then of course, those also are subject to pre and post inspection by water use efficiency staff, but we found in the past that one inch of rain over a thousand square foot roof could yield to 620 gallons of water. So, there is an opportunity there to offset some outdoor demand by some of these rainwater capture devices as well. Of course, we also have our grainwater reuse rebate. It is more based on a per fixture laundry to landscape workshops have been held in the past. We would give customers all the tools they need to understand how to put in a greywater system. Some of these systems can yield quite a bit of rebate dollars and so it's basically a $200 rebate for every 1000 gallons of monthly savings. These do, of course, from time to time require additional building permits and design plans. Some customers do need to work on these long in advance of their full implementation. With that, yeah, I think it did stop raining here, but I'm hoping that it does continue to rain and I'm happy to take any questions on how we're continuing to respond to this dry, dry your weather. Thank you very much. I'm board member questions. Board Member Walsh. Thank you, Chair Watts. And I'm sorry, I missed a point on how much water can we save. Direct Deputy Director Martin mentioned how much water can be harvested from a from a roof but I missed a metric on that. If you don't mind repeating that. Yeah, so an inch of rain over 1000 square foot roof area, for instance, can yield 620 gallons of water. Great. Thanks very much. Any other questions. Great. Well, thank you so much for the information and it's always great to be reminded of all the different services and programs that are Water Department authors, and you know during these times and I know that our community is taking great advantage of them and I'm sure that if we have to put these restrictions in that we will be able to comply as a community and still make efforts in our water use efficiency. So, thank you very much. I will open up for public comments on item 4.2. If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please dial star or please raise your hand and if you're dialing in through the telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary, do we have any live email or voicemail public comments at this time. No public comments. Thank you with that I will move to join the meeting and we will see each other again in the subcommittee in April. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair Watts.