 All right, I'd like to call to order this October 5th, 2023 meeting of the Board of Public Utilities and ask for a roll call, please. Thank you. Board Member Wright. Here. Board Member Walsh. Here. Board Member Berthelot. Here. Board Member Batenfort. Vice Chair Noni. I'm here. Chair Galvin. Let the record reflect that all Board Members are present with the exception of Board Member Batenfort and Chair Galvin. Very well. Well, it's my distinct pleasure to start this meeting off with recognition of a retiring Board Member. It's my pleasure to recognize Mary Watts is in the room with us today, and she served for a very long time on the Board of Public Utilities, and she liked it so much she came back to it even after she was off of it, so that shows real dedication. And if you'd permit me, I'd like to read a few words from a proclamation that we would like to give to Mary in recognition of her service. So this is a proclamation from the City of Santa Rosa that says, whereas Mary Watts was originally appointed to the Board of Public Utilities by City Council Member Julie Coombs in September 2015 and reappointed in January 2017. And whereas Mary Watts was again appointed to the Board of Public Utilities by City Council Member Victoria Fleming in January 2019 and reappointed in February 23. And whereas Mary Watts has a strong history with Santa Rosa Water working as an intern for the Energy and Sustainability Team from April of 2014 through June of 2015 where she helped shape the City's Take It From the Tap program. And whereas Mary Watts, Mrs. Watts, has brought knowledge and experience working for Santa Rosa Water to the Board of Public Utilities. And whereas during Mary's nearly eight years of service with the Board of Public Utilities she has provided excellent and compassionate leadership, support, and guidance to Santa Rosa Water. And whereas Mrs. Watts has served on many subcommittees of the Board, including the Budget Review Subcommittee, Water Conservation Subcommittee, and various Ad Hoc Subcommittees. And whereas Mrs. Watts has chaired the Budget Review Subcommittee for numerous years, ensuring stable and sustainable water and sewer rates that balance operational need, ease of understanding, and customer affordability. And whereas Mary Watts chaired the Water Conservation Subcommittee during the recent record drought, facilitating numerous meetings, supporting increased incentives for water use efficiency programs, and providing invaluable feedback on our marketing and outreach efforts to ensure our communities saved water. And whereas Mrs. Watts recognized the Board's responsibility to make tough decisions regarding funding, infrastructure maintenance, repair, and replacement, so that Santa Rosa Water may continue to provide safe and reliable water distribution, wastewater collection, treatment, and reuse to its ratepayers. Now therefore, be it resolved that the Board of Public Utilities of the City of Santa Rosa does hereby recognize, command, and express our sincere and heartfelt appreciation to Mary Watts for her eight years of dedicated service to the community of Santa Rosa. Signed Chairman Dan Gallum. So, first I'd like to ask if any of the members would like to say a couple of words about Mary, and then I'd invite her to come down, but first board members, yes. Mary, you will be missed. I wasn't here very long with you, but the time I was, I really understood right away your deep commitment to social justice and equity, and there will be a hole on the board with you, gone. Thank you. Mary, thank you very much for helping us. I'm looking at just thinking about this. The public service benefits them a great public, and what a wonderful job you've done. I appreciate you setting the example through appropriate discourse and leading civil meetings. You're doing a great job, and that type of, that type of atmosphere that you bring helps everybody participate regardless of where they're coming from, so I appreciate you. Well, Mary will miss you. A note is when I first came to be on this board, you're the first person I sat next to, and you showed me how to use this machine, which I've never actually figured out yet. But anyway, thank you very much for your service, and I've enjoyed serving with you on various committees and on the board as well. So congratulations on your new promotion. To add one more thing to the many things I've already said, I'm so glad you took over the budget subcommittee. Thank you for doing that. It's a labor of love, and it's a lot of work, so it's a hard committee to chair, and you did a great job. So, Mary, would you like to come up and say a few words? Well, thank you very much for the recognition, and I don't think I can really take much credit for all the things that you said. We just have such a fantastic staff and department that have really been able to give my position on the board so much support, and just has made it so easy for the last eight years. And I've said this many times, but I think every single meeting we learn something new on this board. That is my daughter. She just turned three. So, first official public meeting, I think. Public comment. She can get public comment. But I, you know, it's, you guys have so much knowledge in this staff and on the board, and I think I've kind of grown up professionally among you guys. And I've been, yeah, I've been involved in the water department since I think I was 25. It's still the most intimidating interview I've ever had. I walked in, and there was like nine people on a panel, and I was like, what did I get myself into? And I actually did not have any interest in water. I applied because it was an educational position for low-income communities, and now I am working fully in the water industry at the federal level, and it's really thanks to so many people in the water department that gave me this interest and this niche. And happy to still be involved in this industry. Water is essential. It is the most important resource and value that we have, and everyone should have access to affordable and clean water. And we do such a fantastic job here at Santa Rosa Water. I've been able to, with my new position, meet water utilities all across the country, and it just makes me more and more impressed of the work that happens here. So just thank you all. And I think this will be my last goodbye from the board, at least for now. But I really have appreciated everything that I've learned here, and thank you. Thank you so much, Mary. I think somebody wants to take a picture of you receiving your, all right. That was fun. Next, we go to, oh, yes, thank you. Now we have a chance to hear from the public. If anybody in the room would like to say a few words about Mary, we'd love to hear from you, and if there are any emails that came in in advance, we should have them read now. But would anybody like to make any public comment? I'm not seeing anybody in chamber wishing to make public comment, and no emails were received. Okay, well, thank you, Mary. Bye-bye. Now I will ask for statements of abstention. Do any board members have to abstain from any items on the agenda? Looks like there's none. Next is a study session. We have no study session. But so that brings us to minutes approval. We are now taking public comments on minutes approval. If you'd like to make a comment, please move to the podium and wait for the timer to appear on the screen. Does anybody wish to make a public comment? Apparently not. Do we have any emails? No emails were received. Okay. Then the minutes will stand approved as submitted. So next we move to staff briefings. And first, Director Burke, would you like to introduce item 6.1? Thank you, Vice Chair Anoni and members of the board. Our first staff briefing will be the Maui 2023 Fire Response from Santa Rosa and Deputy Director of Water Operations, Joe Shavoni, will be making the presentation. Good afternoon, Vice Chair Anoni, members of the board. As mentioned, Joe Shavoni, Deputy Director of Water and Sewer Operations. Here today to share a little information on the assistance that Santa Rosa has been providing to Maui County after the recent August 2023 wildfires that had a significant impact on the town of Lahaina and the upcountry or Kula area on the island of Maui. The avenue that makes this mutual aid possible is called an EMAC or an Emergency Management Assistance Compact. This is a compact between all of the states and can be requested or is used as a tool to request additional resources by FEMA. In this case, those resources were requested or the EMAC request came from the FEMA Region 9 Director, Mr. Bob Fenton. Many of us here in Santa Rosa have worked with Mr. Fenton before after the 2017 fires and he's currently leading the FEMA recovery operation in Maui County at this point. And Mr. Fenton coordinated with the city manager, the city manager's office and several of the department directors to put together a team that was part of the initial response to Maui and they did have some specific requests. They were looking for a team that had experience in the debris removal process. We had a very large debris removal mission here in Santa Rosa and there were several things that came out of that including the work that Santa Rosa did to kind of pioneer the sewer lateral capping that goes along with that. They do have a wastewater treatment plant that was impacted by this event. And then as it is kind of common knowledge now when there is a large fire like this, the impact to the drinking water system including the contamination which was very similar to what we found here in Santa Rosa. Sewer collection systems, there was some damage to Maui sewer collection system as well as a great deal of effort went into the public outreach including what is now the Maui Wildfires or Maui Recovers website. Sorry, you'll notice it's quite similar to the website that was here in Santa Rosa after the tubs fire and there was a lot of help with technical staff as well as a member of the Marin Water Team that went on this initial deployment to kind of help put that in place and help the community really understand the steps that go along with the recovery effort after this including the debris mission and then the repopulation as well as issues with the water and sewer system along the way. You'll see in the slide above us there's a red placard on a building. There are about 2200 structures that were severely damaged or destroyed. Maui was looking for assistance in putting a team together that could go and assess those structures quickly and also wanted some help because they know it's right around the corner in the rebuild and permitting and code compliance portion of the recovery as well. So kind of an interesting photo here. If you look at the photo on the left side of this slide, it actually includes the meter that you see in the center photo. It had melted to the point that it was embedded in the gravel inside the meter box. I actually picked that meter up and set it up so I could get a better picture of it and how bad it was destroyed. We found out after the Tubbs Fire that this is a good sign that you really need to look for contamination in a drinking water system and which Maui had already started the process of doing before we got there. We did provide quite a bit of assistance in that regard. Maui has about 42,000 water service connections. That is mainly because they provide water to not only the large island of Maui but Lanai and Molokai as well. The heaviest impact that we saw on both water systems were at the upcountry Kula and in the town of Lahaina. So quite a bit of damage to the above ground portion of their sanitary sewer system. The picture that you see here is directly across the street from one of the destroyed sewer lift stations. This was actually a hotel that had burned and had sump pumps in their underground garage which is now full of water. This will ultimately become a project that will be completed and the remnants removed in conjunction with Maui and EPA. Santa Rosa staff did work closely with the wastewater division in Maui to develop methods to bring their sewer lift stations back online. In Maui all of their sewer drains down close to where the ocean frontage is and then is in lift stations that gets pushed to their wastewater treatment plant. Maui did a great job right after the fire of trying to get some level of flow through all of their lift stations. Unfortunately, that flow was significantly reduced. The flow to the plant was significantly reduced and the makeup of the flow was very different and caused an upset at their wastewater treatment plant. A fairly significant one at that. And so they made the decision to turn off those lift stations for the time being. Santa Rosa worked closely with them on a method to get those back up and running and operating similarly to the way that Santa Rosa water operated their destroyed sewer lift stations. But with a little bit more attention to the timing of when those would kick on and the flows that were going to the plant to not cause another disruption. Still quite a bit more work to do on the investigation side to really understand the impacts of all of the damage from these wildfires. The slide that you see the picture on the left includes the Kula or upcountry area. At one point the entire area in green there was under a water advisory along with most of the town of Lahaina through some historical data that they were able to review after the fire and then some testing and sampling that went on directly around the time that we were initially there and some follow-up testing they have been able to lift the advisory except for the small pink area that you see at the top portion of that slide. The GIS photo that you see on the right side actually depicts the town of Lahaina. Nearly all of that area is under a drinking water advisory at this point. There are some small sections that were not put under the advisory initially that are completely isolated from the rest of that area. But the important piece of that is the area depicted in red. That entire area is the sewer is not active there. We did get some good news yesterday that one of the main lift stations is back online and they have been metering the flow into the wastewater treatment plant so far that looks to be going well. They do anticipate over the next week bringing two more of those lift stations back online and this will become extremely important. They're working closely now to try to work on the repopulation effort so there are several structures within that red area that are still standing spread out similarly to what we saw in Santa Rosa but that will need sewer service when they return. They're also working diligently to get their water distribution system fully back online and secured and then they are very close to developing their final sampling plan and have been working on their flushing plan to make sure that they can secure that system and do some diligent testing to both understand what level of contamination may be there and the best path forward to removing that contamination. I also want to mention that the support that Santa Rosa is providing continues. That could include additional deployments although right now we are trying to focus on doing as much as we can virtually. We are also doing a lot of document sharing which has required the assistance of a lot of folks in several departments. After the Tubbs Fire Santa Rosa developed several key documents that make it much easier to move forward from an event like this and they have proved to be very helpful to other agencies and we're getting those into the hands of the folks in Maui right now and they have been working quite well. We continue to discuss items and meet with them on a regular basis and we're wishing them all the best. They're definitely doing a great job over there. And with that I would be happy to answer any questions that you may have and thank you for your time. I don't have a question I just have a comment. It sounds like kind of an equal, wonderful trip and sad trip seeing what happened to them after what we experienced as a community and when we experienced it there were so many horrible things that came from it. And now we're able to help others with what we have learned which is one of the few good things I think we can point to. So thank you for doing that and playing that part to help them get back online and get their lives back. Thanks very much for helping them out. I think it's a big deal with somebody else with experience and similar items coming to say it's okay you got this we got this it's going to be all right or here's our plan it's not all going to go as planned and you keep going through and adjusting it as needed. I think it's a big deal for somebody who's been through it done the work to show up and say this is similar to what we went through here's what you should do. So I appreciate you increasing their confidence while they recover. I just want to say when I first saw your picture in the paper about this mission I was extraordinarily proud to be part of the Santa Rosa water and that there was enough expertise and willingness to jump into the fray and provide assistance but I guess a question I have I understand that this may not be the first time we've gone to other jurisdictions to help out in similar situations is this something that happens more than just you know once a century with a fire like this? That's correct in some form or another several folks from water have been either on scene to some of the other events including the Paradise or the Fire and Butte County. We provided assistance in the Marshall Fire in Colorado. There have been several fires in Oregon that have had a very similar nature to what we saw here in Maui and what we experienced in Santa Rosa and it's very common for the folks in Santa Rosa to get a call and we try to provide whatever assistance we can to them and share our experience. I just think that's a wonderful wonderful you deserve accolades for this and it's a great thing to do and I appreciate the fact that the leadership is willing to share resources and and that everybody has the expertise that can actually provide help so thank you for that presentation and now I guess we're opening it for public comment would anybody like to make a comment in the chamber first? Okay I see no one in chamber wishing to make public comment and no emails were received. All right we'll now conclude the item thank you very much. Thank you. Yes you're here. Okay so that brings us to item 6.2. Director Burke would you like to introduce that item? Thank you Vice Chair Nonia members of the board. Our second staff briefing is Water Professionals Appreciation Week for 2023 and Elise Miller our communications coordinator will be making the presentation. All right start over. Thank you for the introduction I am Elise Miller. Communications coordinator for Santa Rosa water and good afternoon chair or vice chair Arnone and members of the board. So I'm here today to share that Santa Rosa water is celebrating California Water Professionals Appreciation Week it's going to take place October 7 through 15 of this year and this week was established back in 2017 by the California Legislature to celebrate the estimated 60,000 people that work in the water industry. So this week is not only a chance to celebrate our current water professionals but it's also an opportunity to encourage others to pursue a career in water you personally as somebody who's worked in the water industry for the last 18 years one of my favorite parts about my job is that I feel like I'm making a real difference in the community that I'm serving and we want others to know this. And there's a lot of opportunities and job varieties in fact at Santa Rosa water we have over 80 job classifications you know from customer service to engineers to scientists to budget analysts to operators we do it all and we're hiring so we want people to know that. So to celebrate our team of highly skilled water professionals Santa Rosa water is hosting a series of in-person events next week and we'll have Director Burke there and Vice Chair Arnone as well and they'll take place at our various work locations to appreciate all the work that our staff does throughout the year. So in addition to the appreciation events that we're hosting on September 26 Santa Rosa City Council honored our team with a proclamation for Water Professionals Appreciation Week and they were very complimentary of our team and we even got a snap a photo with them so it was a really great opportunity for our staff. So to continue to show our love for our team of water professionals during this week we'll be pushing out information across our outreach channels we'll be using a hashtag California Water Week and we are Santa Rosa water and we'll be sharing and you can view this content on our social media pages so on Facebook we're at Santa Rosa at SR water and on Instagram at Santa Rosa water and then in addition to the social campaign we'll also have an article in our City Connections newsletter highlighting our team and this reaches over a hundred thousand subscribers and then of course all this information will be available on our website SRCity.org So why are you advancing? As part of our outreach campaign for Water Professionals Week we've also created a short animated video and I just want to take a moment to thank my teammate Katie Osagira for putting this together so we'll be sharing images like this and graphics like this across our channels and it's important that we remind the community that we do more than just deliver water we deliver high quality drinking water that's tested over 200 times before it ever reaches a tap we serve 53,000 homes businesses schools hospitals and that's made a population of 175,000 and to deliver this water we work around the clock to monitor repair sorry I don't know why it's jumping forward to monitor repair and maintain over 1200 miles of water and sewer pipe and other critical water infrastructure and this includes 6000 fire hydrants 19 water pump stations 22 water tanks and 17 sewer pump stations our operators technicians scientists mechanics and more work at the Laguna treatment plant and throughout our regional water reuse system to beneficially reuse nearly 6 billion gallons of recycled water and 33,000 tons of biosolids each year our stormwater and creeks team is tasked with protecting over a hundred miles of creeks that run through our city working to restore our waterways and improve flood protection our engineering and asset management teams and our financial teams they all work together to prioritize projects and invest nearly 41 million each year into the resiliency and reliability of our water system and all of this is accomplished by the 278 employees that make up Santa Rosa water and as you can see this is a dynamic and talented team and this is an important story for us to tell and this is why we're celebrating water professionals appreciation week and I encourage everyone to think of water pro next week and you can even use the hashtag thank water pros if you want to share a story on social this is part of the statewide campaign that's happening next week and in closing I would just like to say thank you to Santa Rosa water team and the board of public utilities for your dedication and all that you do to protect our water resources infrastructure and the environment and with that I'm happy to take any questions thank you for the presentation any board members like to make a comment or question I appreciate you having that doing a great presentation and the first one of what last last one I saw you make I think we're at the geysers to taking a tour of the geysers treatment plants and you do a great job explaining why why what we do is important I really appreciate that the I don't I always it always takes on me that our waters tested 200 times go on the story go who tests this by bottled water and plastic and they can get a gallon of it for almost a couple of pennies from us so I appreciate the quality of it I think you're doing a great job the whole team and what you do is important so thank you all right well I guess we're now taking public comments on item 6.2 if you'd like to make a comment please move to the podium and wait for the timer to appear on the screen okay I see no one in chamber wishing to make public comments and no emails were received all right thank you very much that'll conclude this item thank you for your presentation that takes us to item 7.1 the consent items do any board members have any questions about the consent items okay if not we are opening this public comment then do you have oh yeah I do need a motion yes thank you I'll move the consent calendar thank you all second thank you very much now we're going to ask for public comment on this item if you'd like to make a comment please move to the podium I see no one in chamber wishing to make public comment and no emails were received all right secretary Montoya could you please do a roll call vote on the consent calendar yes board member right hi board member Walsh hi board member Bartholome I and vice chair and only hi okay that passes unanimously with board member badden for and chair galvin absent thank you that takes us to item 8.1 director Burke would you like to introduce this item thank you vice chair and only members of the board our report item for today is the water supply alternatives plan and Colin close as well as our consultant from watered and Kern will be making the presentation and if the board will just indulge me a moment I just want to take a moment to really thank the board for all of your work on this thank the team especially think the project manager Colin close as well as the stakeholders this was a really big effort that we envisioned a little over a year ago and I'm incredibly proud to see this come to fruition and just really appreciate all of your leadership for supporting us in this effort and all of the work that everyone's done so thank you for allowing me to say that and I'm going to turn this over to Colin thank you very much director Burke good afternoon vice chair Arnone and members of the board as director Burke said we are very proud to be here today to present this water supply alternatives plan to you it has been 14 months of effort and we're very proud of all of the stakeholder input and all of what you provided us at the last study session we hope that you'll see that you're very compelling questions and your insightful comments were taken to heart we sharpened our pencils went back and did a bit more work and so thank you so much for all of what you provided to us in August you'll see how we integrated that input through our presentation I'll move a little quickly through these initial slides and then I'll turn it over to Katie Cole the project manager from Woodard and Curran to bring you up to date but you've seen these initial slides before so I don't want to spend too much time on them but I think it is helpful to in case there's anybody from the public so that they have a little context so as you know the purpose of this effort is to enhance our own water supplies so that we're more resilient in the face of climate change and any potential catastrophic events that could occur and the approach was to study a wide range of water supply options assess which ones might be the most feasible for us at this time and develop a plan that would be adaptive so that if circumstances change in the future we can change course and continue to make sure that we're assisting our community with reliable resilient water supply so we started with the five questions how much water is enough what water supply should we study how should we study them that was the study results we presented to you last time how should we mix those different supplies together to remain adaptable that was the set of four portfolios you took a look at last time and today we'll talk to you about this approach of a resilient and and adaptive plan for implementing this the scope of work as you know included a lot of stakeholders I want to take a moment and just a slide or two to thank them at this point there's probably in over a hundred people who have contributed in some way to the success of this project so we're very grateful we first set the objectives with feedback and input from our wide range of stakeholders the study was conducted we got input on that the portfolios were developed we got input on that and then we have the plan for you to look at today so from the water team I want to thank director Burke for her extraordinary leadership and also the deputy directors and their key staff who spent quite a bit of time working on this effort there were five three-hour meetings plus there were was quite a bit of homework in between that they were responsible for so I really appreciate that we had an external stakeholder group that was dynamic engaged intelligent thoughtful critical and very helpful to this process so you can see the nineteen different organizations that were represented and just today director Burke signed thank you letters to each one of the individuals that participated in this effort and those will be going out in the mail this week to those folks to thank them personally for their dedication and time and all of the effort they put into helping us with the objectives the study the portfolios and the plan we also held community meetings interactive webinars where the community could show up via zoom ask questions make comments provide their own suggestions and those were recorded and put online so folks couldn't attend they could watch them later and we've seen that folks have returned to that site and there's been some folks watching those since those were posted so that's helpful so the webpage for this site for this project is srcity.org slash our water future the technical study that we presented to you last month was revised that has been posted and the draft plan is posted on that site as well of course with your help with your leadership with your support and again with your compelling questions and insightful comments we've been able to improve this project throughout the process as well and in addition there were other groups who asked us to come and present and take questions and answer those and to take suggestions and comments and so we did a number of presentations over the last year to other organizations the one thing I wanted to meant just before I turn this over to Katie Cole you'll see in your packet there was a letter of support from jolly Johnny Nolan executive director of cap Sonoma County who participated on her stakeholder group there was also an article written by Doug Beretta of dairy Beretta family dairy farms he participated in our stakeholder group and wrote an article published on the farm Bureau's webpage in addition we also received comments from an advisory board member from the groundwater sustainability agency encouraging us to do this work and make sure that we work well with the GSA and that we consider all of the resources and community input and then just this morning I got an email from Brenda Edelman from Russian River keep Russian River watershed protection committee and I wanted to just share with you a couple of her thoughts very quickly she was again a very thoughtful and really engaged participant very much appreciated what we were doing what she said was please share this with the BPU she was impressed with our process and the amount of information presented and she does support this particularly the variety of smaller lower cost and easier to implement options rather than the larger more complicated options and basically again just supporting the effort and the stakeholder input that we had so if that I'd like to turn it over to Katie Cole to bring you up to date and to share with you the plan super thank you Colin so we'll start first by talking about work that we've completed to date to get us to this point you've seen this before but to reorient you if we talk about our process we can kind of talk about it in these four phases we're currently in this last phase but we began our work by establishing this planning foundation as Colin mentioned the goals methodology criteria and supply options in phase two we really looked at the feasibility and started grouping those into portfolios actually drafting the plan and now bringing that plan to you in its draft form as Colin mentioned a lot of work went into this process by both the water team that's the internal city group the community through the four community webinars the stakeholder group with their four sessions each of those sessions were three hours long and then the work that Colin and I did around that stakeholder engagement and preparing these deliverables including the draft plan to remind you the last time that we presented on this topic to you you reviewed the study results in the portfolios that happened in the third week of August and part of that discussion revolved around requesting more information about the desalination and stormwater options that did not advance to the final feasibility analysis so we'll talk about that here in the next few slides so as a result of that discussion that we had with you in August the study now includes updated equity scoring to address some comments it now also includes an appendix that has analysis and discussion further discussion of the desalination water supply options that captures what we talked about in August the draft plan also clarifies that the city intends to achieve not exceed its water supply goals as you all noted in our August meeting many of the portfolios kind of give us more water than is needed and so we're just making clear that it's not the city's intention to to get more water than is actually needed to meet goals so while those three portfolios have that potential the city's goal did not change the plan also clarifies that any expansion of current groundwater use would align with sustainability metrics in the GSP the plan also includes more discussion about the challenges of using stormwater as a supply option something else that we all discussed in August and finally portfolio four has been updated to identify when and why the city might reconsider desalination as a potential supply source in the future that was something else we talked extensively about in August specifically related to the surfwater and stormwater capture and use two of the three stormwater options did not advance to detailed analysis sw2 it was determined that lake ralfine did not have adequate storage to make that option cost effective sw3 was not advanced because regional efforts are already ongoing and are part of the city's commitment outside of this process related to cost stormwater options you can't just use the water that's flowing down the street you need to build treatment so the costs associated with doing so are pretty astronomical in order to meet regulatory requirements for storage in an aquifer and for drinking water standards scalability is also another issue that was identified for the stormwater options the amount of available stormwater while there's assumptions made for the purposes of this plan that number is pretty variable and there's should be additional studies to confirm that number before really moving forward and committing resources to that as a supply option specifically related to the desalination appendix as I mentioned there's more information that's provided about why the two desalination options did not advance so in addition to cost these are some items that we discussed in August significant permitting and environmental challenges those are pretty well documented for desalination turn down capacity is not ideal for Santa Rosa's use case the regional brackish facility does not reduce reliance on Sonoma water so it doesn't really address some of the core goals that the city is looking to achieve and finally ocean desalination requires extensive infrastructure particularly related to constructing a pipeline and then maintaining that pipeline through the topography based on comments we received from you all last time we did complete scoring for those two options both scored a 13 which were below the scores of the seven options that were included in the portfolios those scores ranged from 19 to 32 but we also in that appendix looked at what triggers what sorts of things would need to exist if the city were to reconsider reconsider desalination in the future so these are things like technology that may reduce baseline operating costs if that improves turn down capacity that would be something that might trigger the city to reconsider less expensive energy prices which would further reduce operating costs certainly project configuration that would yield direct water to Santa Rosa so that's particularly related to the regional brackish facility and then technology that improves water recovery so you get more water per each gallon of salt water treated so now I'm going to step you through the chapters of the draft water supply alternatives plan much of what you will see in the plan is straight from the technical memorandum that we presented to you at the last meeting so some new material chapters one chapters five and chapters six are all new material chapters two three and four are really synthesized from that technical memorandum there's no new information presented in those chapters so chapter one goes over the background purpose and plan organization essentially summarizing the presentation that Colin started us off with this afternoon that Santa Rosa received 93% of its annual portable water supply from Sonoma water kind of setting up the issue and why we're tackling this plan chapter 2 talks about the approach to developing the water supply alternatives plan looking at the goals and methodology for assessing the supply options just reiterating these are kind of our three guiding goals for Santa Rosa as it embarks on this plan mitigating droughts mitigating natural disasters and catastrophic events and mitigating peak day demand these are where we get our 7500 acre feet per year and our 9 million gallons per day but also summarizes the analysis methodology and the three stages that we went through this pre-screening to eliminate infeasible options or those that were substantially similar to other options second step being the screening analysis based on the cost effectiveness and scalability criteria and then that third the detailed feasibility analysis to evaluate and score those options as of the 7 that made it through to that process chapter 3 summarizes the water supply options the 18 that we considered you'll see those here in this table the five ground water options six purified recycled water one purple pipe recycled water to desal three storm water and one expanded efficiency program chapter 4 looks at the actual analysis this is again the bulk of the technical memorandum that we spoke to you about in August the pre-screening outcomes the five options that did not advance and the rationale for their removal the screening analysis results summarizing the six options that did not advance past this stage and finally the seven options that underwent the further analysis so the three ground water to purified one storm water and the efficiency programs this chapter also summarizes the feasibility analysis results looking at higher scores being better scores you'll recall from our August meeting the two rows at the bottom the first light blue row the total unweighted represents just a summing of the raw scores for each criterion the weighted score applies the weights that were discussed and approved by the water team and stakeholder groups that's where you start to see a bit more differentiation between each option as I mentioned chapter 5 is new material and it gets into the portfolios summarizes the the narrative around each portfolio so questions like what is in the portfolio what supply options why build a portfolio like this what's the rationale for presenting a portfolio built like that is the cost in yield performance so how does that portfolio perform financially and against the city's water supply goals it also presents an implementation timeline so how might the city actually implement this portfolio when and what order would those portfolio elements be completed as a reminder these are the four portfolios that are included in the plan you'll see as a result of our discussion in August we have included gw3 aquifer storage and recovery wells pr4 that regional direct portable reuse and then desalination also not technically part of the portfolio but given that we have included the appendix with triggers that the city might use to reconsider we've included that as well chapter 6 outlines next steps so if you look at example if the city were to implement for example portfolio 4 which you'll see represented its implementation schematic on the right there's really six actions that the city could begin to take by identifying funding grants and loans bonds looking at connection fees and water rates lots of creative ways to finance projects begin by planning for phase one of expanded efficiency programs beginning hydrogeologic studies for the groundwater option that's included and determine a sequel an environmental permitting pathway for that option prepare a siting study for dw1 plus that's converting that's looking at new groundwater wells action 5 is tracking direct portable reuse regulations and initiating planning studies to further that option and finally to conduct modeling and siting studies for the stormwater option to see if that is a viable source of water for asr wells I'll now turn it over to Colin who will walk us through timeline and milestones thank you very much Katie so this chart I think is familiar to you this is our timeline with those key deliverables I did want to mention that we met with city council in September and had a study session on the revised technical memorandum with the the attachment the desalination explanation appendix there and we went through the the study session with them they had one question wanting to make sure that there was a discussion of portable reuse and that that was being considered in the portfolio so we reiterated how that was being implemented and then comments about support for the approach for the stakeholder group interaction and for this idea of how we might move forward so it was very uneventful but very wonderful to have city council come up to speed on this and be very supportive of the work that's been done today so we're meeting with you today to ask if you would consider recommending council adopt the plan and then we will go to council on October 24th and ask if they would in fact adopt this plan so those are the next steps and then we would start to look at how to develop secret processes and studies to get this thing moving forward to give it legs and actually keep the plan on the desk and not on the shelf we want to collecting dust and not from the shelf but from turning dirt over and getting things moving so so it is with that that we recommend that the Board of Public Utilities by motion recommend that the city council accept the water supply alternatives plan thank you so much and we're happy to take any questions and comments that you may have. Thank you both for that presentation questions or comments from board members. Glenn. Yeah thank you for the presentation. I can't say that there's any surprises that came out of this presentation out of the study of the report. The one comment I have really is that we're going to have to restudy again in two or three or four years because I'm hoping that technology and things are going to change and and although I don't think the water supply portfolio is going to change is just going to change in positions on your on your list. So with that I'm ready to support this and send this on to the city council. Thank you. Thank you. I too am ready to support it and I just want to say that the appendix about desalinization was so well done and it it I learned a lot just like Mary said you learn something every time you come to these meetings and there was a lot there I didn't know I knew desalinization seemed like a great idea when you live near an ocean but there's a lot that goes into it that I hadn't thought of so thank you very much for that work. Thank you Vice Chair Arnani. I want to thank the project management team Katie Cole from Woodard and Colin Close from Santa Rosa Water. This could be an example of how how a big project has complicated in topic and also complex because all the disparate benefit third party beneficiaries. So I appreciate the way you ran it. You kept the scope live the whole time explain what's in and out of scope when you had to. The timing is feasible in the actionable plan that you can get get something done by the staging and phasing and looking at the resources we have at hand and then you're doing it within viable resources. So I really appreciate that's a well run plan. You can take this topic shift it out and if you had the input from the users like the community action partnership that wrote in agriculture the Mr. Brett of the president of the Farm Bureau Association writing in and Johnny writing in from the community action partnership and I think you made this viable for everybody so they can look at it. It's sort of the base model and we'll revise it every three or four years or something so thank you for doing a great project. Appreciate it. Thank you very much. I have a couple of questions and comments more comments than anything else but it's just from a macro level. I just think this is a poster child for how to study a big important thing. You know and there's not much more big important than water. Water rights in water in general in California. So this is a really good example of bringing a big group of data sets together and doing an actual analysis on it. That's useful and getting a little micro now. I was so appreciative of seeing the responsiveness to the comments that were made at the last BPU meeting. I for one stated a great interest in desalination and like like you I learned a lot reading the appendix and and I and I was pleased to read it not simply because it I think it justifies the conclusions that are made but I think I was even more pleased to read it because it laid out a path in the future for coming back to an important option that whose importance I think will increase over time for some of the same reasons Glenn mentioned because I think you know technology is going to massively change things as it has for some time. So I really appreciated that responsiveness. It justifies the choices made and and so I'm also ready to report it and then take it to a really micro part of it. On slide 22 of the presentation there are three boxes that talk about the amount of water that will be produced and two of those boxes measure it in terms of nine million gallons per day by 2045 nine million dollars per day by the other one talks about acre feet and so the the thing is that I appreciate the fact that it forced me to do some math so I can now transpose those acre feet into and I believe it is six point seven million gallons per day if you want to use the same metric in that box just for your consideration up to you. Yes thank you so much and if it's at all helpful the acre foot is when we're in drought we're looking at our supply over a year. We may or may not need a specific amount day to day in an emergency if we have nine million gallons per day that we can produce maybe it's a week or two weeks or a month long emergency we can provide about half of our domestic water supply plus have fire and enough water for businesses to keep moving so that's the 9MGD and then in terms of shaving off the peak we looked at not wanting to do more than we would need in an emergency there's simply no reason to develop more than that so that nine million if we needed it could be used to shave peak off in the summer so that's why there are two different metrics but I'm good on you for doing the math. I also if I could just take one moment I deeply appreciate the Woodard and Corinth team. Katie Cole, Christy Kennedy and Xavier Arias who was with us last time and all of the staff that they worked with it's the best team I've ever worked with I've worked with many many consultants on many many projects this is obviously one of the best projects I've ever had a chance to participate in but this is the best team I've ever worked with in terms of responsiveness and conscientiousness and the level of expertise and the ability to communicate deliver on time and high quality so really a pleasure thank you. Well said well said so I guess it's time for a motion. I will move that we recommend that the City Council accept the water supply alternatives plan. I will second that motion. Thank you for that. Now is the time for public comment. If anybody would like to make public comment please move to the podium. I see no one in chamber wishing to make public comment and no emails were received. All right thank you could you please conduct a roll call vote then. Yes board member Wright. Aye. Board member Walsh. Aye. Board member Barthelot. Aye. And vice chair Anoni. Aye. That passes unanimously with board member Baden-Fort and chair Galvin absent. Thank you very much please give our whole hearted support to City Council. Okay I think that takes us out of report items and now we're at item nine in the agenda that is public comment so we're taking public comments on public comments of non-agendized items. If you'd like to make a comment please move to the podium. Okay I see no one in chamber wishing to make public comment and no emails were received. All right thank you. So next we have referrals there are no referrals no written communications are there any subcommittee reports seeing none. Board member reports anybody okay I'll just state that I'm looking forward to joining some water professionals at Water Professional Day and appreciated the invite to attend one of those recognition events so I'm looking forward to that. Director's report do you have a direct report for us? Yes I do thank you vice chair Anoni and members of the board I have a few things to share with you today. First I wanted to let the board know that the State Water Resources Control Board is preparing to release a second round of funding for overdue water and sewer bills. We anticipate that this new round of funding the application will open sometime this month as you may recall we originally applied for funding and the original round of funding covered charges that incurred from March of 2020 through June of 2021 and through that process we received $365,391 for overdue water accounts and $650,074 for overdue sewer accounts. So the new round of funding will allow us to cover anything from July 1st of 2021 through December 31st of 2022. However the parameters are a little bit different this funding is only available for residential and some commercial customers but this time excludes irrigation only industrial uses process water, fire lines and delinquent fees. So in re-looking at where we are with our delinquencies for that period we now have close to two million dollars in unpaid charges through December of 2022 on a little over 2,000 customer accounts. Water billing staff has begun reviewing all 2,000 of those customer accounts to determine what if any charges are eligible for the funding and then any charges that are eligible for funding we will apply those to the customer's a re-erage account. So we're happy to see that that's open again I will acknowledge and thank the water billing team because of all the parameters are put in place it is a very time intensive and complicated process to go through all these bills and figure out what applies what doesn't remove delinquent fees remove other things and provide the application and and then once we get any funding we found out from the last time we did this that if any of the customers pay in between we have to deduct that out and give that money back to the state so it is a very cumbersome process but it is we are grateful that they're opening this up again so that we can try and assist with some of those past due re-erages. I also wanted to let the board know that we had a very successful creek week we had 230 people participate in our various creek week activities we had a really amazing article in the press democrat showing the underground piece and the tours that we do we got a lot of great feedback from citizens that participated in the underground tour we had 33 staff participate in the dash for trash employee event collecting 418 pounds of trash I contributed four pounds so I wasn't wasn't as successful as some others but taking credit for my four pounds and then we had 53 people participate in the creek to coast cleanup and collected 275 pounds of trash so it was a great week a big huge thank you to the creek team the stormwater and creeks team it's a huge effort every year but it's a very rewarding one and a great way for us to educate the community also wanted to let the board know that we recently found out that the Sonoma Marin water-saving partnership which is 13 utilities in Sonoma and Marin counties that focus on regional water conservation activities won the water sense the EPA water sense partner of the year as well as the sustained excellence award for the qualified water efficient landscaper program in particular I bring this up because this the qualified water efficient landscaper program was actually started by the Santa Rosa water team and we brought it out to the regional partnership so it's it's great to see that award that program continue to be awarded and then also for the partner of the year it really focused on the drought outreach and again much of that outreach originated from Santa Rosa water with the water use efficiency team and the communications team and just really appreciate their efforts because of that work we were able to provide that to the regional partners and then work together and it shows by these great awards so that's exciting and then the last thing I wanted to let you know and this is late breaking from yesterday is that in relation to the Potter Valley project as you might recall the Sonoma water round Valley Indian tribes and Mendocino County inland water and power had submitted a project proposal defined or they called it the new eel Russian facility proposal to PG&E asking them to consider including that proposal in their license surrender application and we received news yesterday from Sonoma water that PG&E sent them the following information quote PG&E has made a non-binding acceptance in concept of the Sonoma County water agency Mendocino County inland water and power commission and round Valley Indian tribes proposal and agrees to include it in our November 15th 2023 initial draft surrender application and decommissioning plan so I will be bringing additional information to you all in the future I do recognize that there's little that I can talk about now because we do have some conflict with one of our board members but I did want to let you know in broad terms that there this is moving forward and that is good news and that concludes my report and I am happy to answer any questions you might have thank you any questions from board members glenn glenn sorry one question on the Potter Valley thing by having PG&E include the the tribes and the agency's plan will that make it easier expedite the process or what is it what is it does it actually do anything or not thank you for the question and I need to be a little careful here but just and I will be bringing a presentation a staff briefing back to the board at a future meeting but in essence this keeps the ability to continue potentially continue diverting water from the eel river to the Russian river in play as they go through their process for the license to render thank you any other questions any public comment on the director's report anybody would like to make a public comment please move to the podium okay there's no one in chamber wishing to make public comment and no emails were received very good then that concludes our business today and I will adjourn the meeting thank you vice-chair Arnani