 And the fact that the Nature Discovery Park is there too, it's just a great symbiotic relationship it really builds on. The two parts will really complement each other beautifully. But thank you. Thank you. Barbara Hansen been a member of this community since 1981. Redwood Mountain Fair is an amazing event. I've seen Bill Smallman there and enjoyed it. We all had fun. The line for the beater was one-third the size of the line for the water. Who was in line for the water? Women, children, babies. That is the most important thing we've got going for us at that fair. It gets hot and water is life. Please pay for that. Anybody out in Bath want to talk? Anybody out there? Jim Moser, I'm a resident of Felton. I've been living in the valleys since 1978 and in Santa Cruz County since 1965. And I've been very active in Felton in fact about ten years ago when we managed to work to join this district and we're very proud to be members of this district and to have gotten rid of the California Water Company which serves us so poorly. I just want to speak to what I consider to be the false economy of the idea that cutting environmental programs is where we need to go in order to make the district make the budget better. As Director Smallmans said in the last meeting, this will have little or no impact on race. These programs don't cost very much at all if they have a huge impact. And we need them for the reasons that other speakers have talked about. We need them in order to stay in the leadership role in environmental protection in the county and the region. By stepping back and saying, no, this is not part of what we want to do. We're risking in the long term more state regulation, more intervention that will be detrimental to the district, not only in terms of our environment but also in terms of our budget. I also want to speak to the fact that three of you new directors talk in the campaign about how you are environmentalists. We don't need to talk about the environmental issues because we're all environmentalists here. I believe that's virtually a direct quote from the meeting we had at the school of the candidates forum. You need to really prove that to us. And the budget decisions that at least preliminarily have been made have put that into a serious question. And also, Director Fultz, when you stated that you questioned whether or not habitat restoration and protection should be part of the SLB water district's mission, I just found that astounding because it's so important that we have a healthy watershed in order to have clean water. To me, it's clearly part of the agenda. It's one of the main reasons why those of us in Fulton worked so hard to join the district. And if you had made a statement like that during the campaign, it would have caused an uproar. So I think it would be really helpful to have you clarify that and perhaps step back from it and embrace this agenda that the district has because it is so important to the voters and to the ratepayers in the district. Thank you. Thank you. Bruce? Thanks. I'm Bruce Holloway from Boulder Creek. I just wanted to respond to Mr. Mosher. I guess he was talking in broad brush fashion about environmental programs because this is the oral communications time, which was really about a specific environmental program. But I just want to point out, I mean, he said this district has been a leader. I just want to remind everyone that Mr. Mosher wouldn't even have water out of this tap in Fulton except that this district violates its permit on property, which was, there's conditions were put in place specifically for the protection of salmones. And this district has ignored those permit conditions. Ever since it acquired the Fulton system more than 10 years ago. So rather than being a leader, this district is a violator, first of all, and secondly has missed a golden opportunity to lead by trying to change the conditions of the permit. So it's something that the district can actually comply with. Now Santa Cruz has taken the lead. So this district had a chance to take the lead and to be a leader in the county setting policy in this watershed. But we're letting the city of Santa Cruz do that and continuing to be a violator. And this district gives lip service to environmental house in the last 10 years. And then lip service rather than compliance, just lip service to raise awareness, public outreach, to raise awareness for all continuance of violate its own water permit. So I'm really waiting for the district to straighten up and comply with its permit and work to change the conditions of the permit so that you can do that. Anyone else want to comment? Anyone out there in the back? No? We'll move on to new business item A. There's vacancy in the elected office of the board of directors. And let me tell you how we're going to do this tonight. We're going to call on the applicants one at a time at the beginning and we're going to go alphabetical. So it's not a question of somebody getting to talk first or somebody getting to talk last. We're going to ask them to introduce themselves. They can make a brief statement if they want or not. I'm going to ask, so this isn't a surprise to any of the people coming up here. I'm going to ask a few questions. Why do they want to be on the board? What they perceive as the biggest problem facing the district? If they understand the time commitment and if they know about the Santa Margarita Ground Water Agency that we're involved in, what they might know about that. Now, any other board members think there's going to be questions they want to ask? I would appreciate it if you would ask them right now so everybody has an idea of what. I know you, you know, you. Sounds like a good list. Okay, sounds like a good list to you. What do you think, Bob? I mean, sorry. Steve, okay, and Bill, how do you feel about it? That sounds fine. Okay, okay, so we don't want any, sorry, don't want anybody to not know what's going on here. Obviously it seems, I didn't know. So, after we go through the six people that have applied, we're going to conduct public oral communications. You'll be able to speak. It depends on how many of you want to talk. I might say you only get two minutes instead of three minutes so I will be asking for a show of hands. After all of you have your say, then we're going to have a board discussion here and we'll allow each director to speak at least once before any motions are entertained. That's clear, does that clear to everybody? Okay, all right, so where are our six applicants? They're running down the street now. Okay, so Virgil would be the first one. Hi. Can you hear me out there? Too bad. My name is William Campbell and I live in Brookdale. What's the mic got on you? Oh, thank you. I live in Brookdale and since 1984 and I think I said why I wanted to do this in my application. But everybody might not have seen your application so could you repeat it please? I'm all about good governance. I've heard a lot of hyperbole tonight and very little fact. It's about being involved in the discussion. It's about being involved in aligning the basic strategy of the water district with what 17,000 voters want. The people in this room are a very small part of that and you have to keep the bigger picture in mind. And sometimes, you know, that's hard. It's really hard and I don't really want to do it. But I found that by saying that I'm pretty much a hypocrite and I was born to be in the peanut gallery and I could sit here at the last two years almost every meeting and give my opinion, my criticism and stuff like that. But they have a really hard job balancing all of the various issues that they have to deal with. And so, you know, I had to do this. So, you've told us why. What do you see as the biggest problem facing the district? Sorry, you were first. Yeah, I would have liked to have been able to copy somebody else. Okay, I have three basic concerns and I think they were part of the campaign. And that is reserves. I don't think that's well attended. Infrastructure, I always hear complaints about infrastructure and I agree. You know, when you have things that have a life expectancy of 30 years and you're pushing 50 or 60, you've got to expect things to break. And also finance. You can't go to the rate payers every time you want to balance the budget. Sometimes that's true, but it's not always true. And so, I consider a good balance. Engineering is all about balancing competing issues. And I think those are kind of competing issues and I see that. As balancing those three competing issues, that's the important thing. And don't get me wrong. I think the current board is doing a very good job. A little slow, but you know, that's okay. I've got a lot of time. Another year or two. Okay, what about time commitment? Because we have two board meetings a month. Of course, sometimes we might only have one depending on what's coming up. There are committee meetings. Board members need to be on it, not as a member of the public, but as a board member on a committee. There's a vacancy on San Margarita right now. So, it takes time. It takes a lot of time and a lot of reading and asking questions. So, what about your time? Have you got plenty of time? Well, it will interfere with some of my reading. The one thing, when I retired, the one thing that I discovered was, now for the first time in my life, I actually set my own reading agenda. And I've gotten quite used to that. You know, okay, that's not an eight hour day. Yes, sadly I have a lot of time. So, San Margarita, what about that? Well, I'm confused by it. I went to the three-day seminar that they had in Felton, and I thought that was wonderful. I was really impressed by the facilitator. I mean, he was really good. Good sense of humor. Learned a lot. I'm concerned that we need to cooperate. It's a bigger problem from Scott's Valley and Santa Cruz than it is us. We need to make sure that our interests are exposed. Because, I mean, like over half of our water, I think it comes from surface water. So, that's not true for the San Margarita aquifer. And so, I think that we're a participant. We need to be judicious about that, but skeptical. Thank you very much. Can I go now? Yes, if you could ask Lou to come in. Lou's right here. Oh, Lou, I'm sorry you were hiding behind James. I was. Chris from Felton. I was heartened to see that so many qualified individuals applied for this board position. I think that's important to try to be involved in your community. And this is a good example of that. I'm also looking forward to seating this position so that we can have a full board again and get on with more important matters. As far as general comments, that's all I have. If you'd like to ask your questions, go for it. And why would you like to be on the board? Back in 2014, I served for a year on the Citizens Action Committee, along with several people in the audience today. Since that time, I have spent an inordinate amount of hours coming to board meetings. I think I've missed very few. Committee meetings, not so much, but I've been to most of the board meetings. And I've done a lot of reading and a lot of analysis and tried to offer some help and opinions along the way. To me, this is just a natural extension of that. Okay. And what do you see as the biggest problem facing the district? The biggest fault problem facing the district is very clearly infrastructure. I think I have been very consistent on that bandwagon. Every time something has come up about infrastructure, I have voted for it because I think that we're running out of time. There is going to be a major natural disaster like happened to Scotts Valley two years ago. But we're not going to be in the same position to react to it that they were. Unfortunately, they were able to take $3 million out of the bank, a Russian engineering job, drill 24-7, and then expedite the validation of the well. And they were back in business actually at greater capacity. So they took a problem and made it into a strength. I'm really worried that we will not be able to react as well because our expenses have ramped right up with our revenue over the last 12 years. And that's not a good situation. So I think we need to find and spend a lot more money fixing our crumbling infrastructure, please. Okay. Time commitment. I think you already spend a lot of time here. That's right. I think that's a problem because it hasn't been solved in the past. In fact, if anything, I probably bug Rick too much. Right, Rick? No. No, I do that. How about Santa Margarita? I have to admit, I do not know a lot about Santa Margarita. I did go to the first meeting of the Santa Margarita Joint Powers Agency. I have done very little sense because I have focused my time on why I think is the more important issue, which is those pricing issues with the Santa Rosa Valley Water District like infrastructure. But that's something I would need to come up to speed up. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Okay. Elaine. Hi. I'm Elaine Fresco. I live in Felton also. And I recently was, my application was accepted to work on the environmental community. And so I've begun to get involved in the water district. I want to express my appreciation to the board for accepting my application because I think, I think you folks knew that I didn't completely agree with all your positions. And you appointed me anyway. And I think that says something for your belief in accepting or endlessly doubting people's opinions. And I thank you for that. I also want to make sure that, you know, where I stand, I try to express that in my application. I think basically the, I agree that the infrastructure really needs help and it's been neglected for many years, way before even Cal Am. But I don't believe in indiscriminate cost cutting. And I think the main problem is coming up with the money to pay for the infrastructure. I really like Director Swan's suggestion that we look for other sources of revenue. I think you said that at the last meeting, Peter. And I, but I think that just as important as repairing infrastructure is protecting and preserving our watershed. And I agree with many of the speakers this morning that that can't be neglected and we should be stewards of the watershed. My husband and I actually own two properties in Felton. And that means that we pay over a thousand dollars of about a thousand dollars of extra taxes every year to pay off the bond that was required to buy the Felton watershed from Cal Am. And I don't begrudge the money. I am so grateful that our district is publicly owned. And I think it's very important that we are not being run by a corporation that answers to shareholders and is focusing on profits. And one last thing I want to say before I answer your other questions is I just want to give a shout out to the staff of the Water District. Every single interaction that I've had with them, both on the boards and personally as a rate payer, they have been completely professional and just very impressive. And I think, and no one has said this to me, but I think the turnover to a new board could be somewhat destabilizing and demoralizing. And I think it's very important that we support and appreciate the staff. Well, I thank you for that because I really support the staff and all of them. All of them. And I don't want them to dispute. I said at last meeting, I'll say it again. I'm glad to hear that. They're going to have to lock me up to get me to vote to get rid of staff. That's not my turn to talk. So why do you want to be on the board? Well, basically, I feel like there has to be a different viewpoint on the board and I'm very environmentally committed and that's why. Okay. And what do you see as the biggest problem? Well, I think it is finding the money to pay for the infrastructure. Okay. And I really don't think that we should be making some of the cuts that have been made. And what about time commitment if you were on the board? It's a horrible time commitment. I would be willing to do it, but I think, oh my God, what a thankless job. And you ought to have my job. I have more meetings than anybody except staff, of course. What about San Margarita groundwater agency? Do you know anything about that? I know very little about it. I would need to get up to speed. I haven't been to any of the meetings. I've heard discussion during the campaign and during other meetings. And I know it has to do with our cooperation with other water districts. And it's predicting, protecting the aquifer, what it is, not overdrafting. Well, how could anyone oppose that? I know. It's just a complicated issue. Right. Okay. All right. Thank you, Elaine. Okay. Beth? Sorry, a little slow. I slipped up in Montana Glacier Park last month and broke my ankle. But it was a beautiful view as I was lying there. Just recovering now. So I'm Beth Hollenbeck and I appreciate you having me speak and accepting my application. I just wanted to talk a little bit about my background. I was born in Felton in 1963. So I was born and raised here. And I have a lot of community commitment. I love my valley. I feel like it's polarized in many ways. And I would like to be somebody that could help me be, get it not to be so polarized too. I think I'm a pretty good negotiator. I've done that in my two teaching jobs when at San Rizzo Valley. And now at Scott's Valley High and Middle School. I get zero money for all my music programs. So I'm really good at building programs with zero money. I'm a fixer. That's what I've done. I also worked in Los Angeles back in the day for IMAGNAN for $3 million companies for the fragrance company by IMAGNAN. And I was charged in the buying office of consolidating and fixing the budget for the fragrance department there. And I did it. So that's what I do. I like to come in. I'm a big spatial thinker. I can see things. I helped organize and co-found San Rizzo Valley citizens organized for responsible ecology, SOV core. And after I graduated from leadership Santa Cruz in 2007, I partnered with Laura Casa from Save Our Shores and brought the river cleanup to Felton at the Covered Bridge and did that for eight years or so and then turned it over by the women's club graciously to get over at that point. But the rivers mean everything to me. This is where I grew up. This is the water we drink. I live on Fall Creek. I watch the water go past our house every day. So I just wanted to be a part of this board to help make decisions both both fiscally. Employment I think is great here. I know people that have worked here and you know, this is a wonderful water company. I'm also an educator. I have a master's in teaching. So I would like to actually see how we can help partner with educational, environmental things that go on in the San Lorenzo Valley. And it doesn't necessarily all have to be money. That's what I do. I find partnerships and work together or we find money somewhere else. Somebody mentioned that already. I'm really good at finding money somewhere else. I found $35,000 in a month last year when the Scotts Valley school district's budget got cut. So all my programs are still in place this year. So that comes with growing up in this community, having connections. I know a lot of people in Scotts Valley, San Lorenzo Valley. And so I'd like to be able to utilize that. So why would you like to be on the board? I think you just said. I think I just said all that. Well, again, I like to serve. I love my community. I've been involved with the chambers. Many people know I've been vice president of our San Lorenzo Valley chambers of commerce for seven years. I've done job fairs in our community. I know what it means to do things for our community and not get paid anything. But we do it because we love our community and we want our community to thrive. And we have an amazing community. So that's one reason why I'd love to serve on this board. What do you see as the biggest challenge or issue facing this? Well, I think one thing that this the San Lorenzo Valley Water District faces is just, again, that polarization that's been going on in the last 10 years. I've been in a few board meetings myself where I was shut down or nobody would shake my hand. I mean, we live together. This is our community. And we're trying to have conversations and they need to be civil and they need to be... I'll just address the elephant in the room. I did the commercial for Calan at the time because when I did vote for flow, I just moved back to the area and it was kind of presented to me of our water's going to be outsourced and the rates are going to go up. They're going to skyrocket and, you know, so the water wants to acquire it and that's all sounded good to me. It was afterwards that it kind of hit me that it wasn't really for sale and it went to that huge lawsuit and then the money got bigger and bigger and we ended up paying a lot more and then the rates started going up and up and up and when Calan called me from Monterey, it was at a time where all that was kind of coming to fruition and at first I said, no, no way, I'm not doing it. And then I read an article about a judge in Monterey that ruled that water now at the time in Monterey was making false accusations and statements about Calan. And it's one thing to have a fight but have a fair fight, you know, don't make false accusations, don't say things and to have a judge have to come in and rule that, you know, they were basically lying about the company. I thought, okay, that's not fair. The people of Monterey can make a fair decision with the truth based in facts and not just a bunch of demonization and hype and, you know, let's keep it clean. Let's keep it with dignity and let's keep it factual and I felt that that was something that they needed to hear. About time commitment. So, I'm going, yes, it's a big time commitment but I am going part-time in teaching next year so I've cut back to 60% and I actually have, I just work like an hour Thursday morning so that's nice that the meetings will be. I do have a commitment to go to Montana in June and so that I could do meetings from Montana but, you know, being at May right now it was just too hard to cancel all that so that is something that I wanted the board to be aware of and I'm absolutely willing to do by call or whatever you need me to do. So... What about San Margo Reed or Grand Margo Reed? So being involved in Scotts Valley and, you know, driving up and down Scotts Valley drive every day to go to work. I'm being on the chamber. I've been involved with conversations between our water district and the Scotts Valley water district so I realize Santa Margarita isn't, it's a countywide mandate that everybody's trying to work together on to make sure that we are recharging the groundwater basin but also, to my understanding, it's stabilized but what I would really like to be careful with Santa Margarita is to make sure that we don't get too comfortable and start, you know, getting... ...drying too much water out or not keeping vigilant in other words about what we're already doing. Let's not just fix it and move on. Let's stay the course and let's make these changes go into perpetuity because we're only growing more and more in our area and we've got to make sure that our water is protected. Okay. Brian? Hi, thanks for letting me speak to the director of staff, neighbors, friends. I'm Brian Largay. I live in Felton and it's an honor to be here. I have great respect for other folks applying for this position, Beth, in particular and Lee. I've worked with both of them for a long time and it's really exciting to see enthusiastic expressions of support for service. The... Just to describe a little bit about my experience and background, the reason I'm here is because water is life and if we don't take care of it, we put ourselves and our communities in great jeopardy. Because of that, I chose to dedicate my professional career to it. I got my master's in hydrologic sciences at Davis and that's spent my career working for private entities, non-profits and for-profits and special districts on water resources. These include the RCD of Santa Cruz County, the Elkhorn Slough National National Research Reserve, my own consulting firm, and the land trust of Santa Cruz County where I've been most recently. Direct application of water resource management, some examples of that is I oversee a ranch in Watsonville where we just put in 1,000 gallons per minute well and implemented water savings practices that are used by 100 million gallons a year. We run a number of Manitoc for recharge projects, make trade remediation projects. I've done road and erosion control projects in the Santa Cruz Mountains and other parts of the county. I'm responsible for 16,000 acres of land, including management for endangered species, forests where we use sustainable logging, recreational trails and as part of my work I am a big fan of ruthless prioritization to make sure that we have the resources to stick to our mission and get what we need to get done. I'm a big fan of our community here in the Valley. I'm on board of the San Lorenzo Valley Foundation for Education and advocate a lot for pedestrian safety along Highway 9. And I think that some things that I would want to work towards would be a transparency on the board. I was on the committee that personally made the recommendation that the district enroll in the Certificated Transparency Program. I forget what it's called exactly, but I think that's important. I think that rates are very important. The cost of living here is astronomical and it puts in enormous strain on all members of our community. And if we can do things that leave dollars in people's pockets that makes our community stronger and healthier. I also think good wages are very important for staff. I would expect people to work very hard at their jobs and be highly productive, which means their job would be stressful and it's important that they not carry that stress home and be able to stay employed at the district. So I would encourage good wages for staff. Okay, so you've told us a lot about yourself. Why do you want to be on the support? Service to a community is very important to me and I think that the district needs good leadership, has good leadership and we all got to do our part. Okay, what do you see as the biggest challenge to this district? I think if you look at rainfall maps of our region there is a bullseye on the Santa Cruz Mountains with a lot of rain here and millions of people and tens of thousands of acres of farmland surrounding us with very little water. And I think we need to keep an eye on what we've got and do our best to protect it because it's valuable. Time commitment? I am extraordinarily concerned about the time commitment. I have a full-time job and kids in local schools and I'm very relieved that there are other people here tonight also. And about Santa Margarita groundwater. I think that the Santa Margarita aquifer is then the coordinated management of our neighboring districts is essential to good resource stewardship of both our groundwater and our surface water. I think that the conjunctive use which is the co-management of resources where in some years you use, in wet years you use your creeks and in dry years you use your groundwater and try to manage aquifer recharge and coordinate with other agencies to share water will be very important. I think getting the agreements written in a robust manner that prevents our water from getting stolen is also very important. Thank you. You are. I didn't see you back there in the corner. There's a lot of great stories and a great background. It's been very interesting listening to other ones on their presentation. My name is Julie and I've opened up my notes here and I'm sure I'll get to everything. I've been living in Boulder Creek for about 17 years in the Santa Rosa Valley for 23 and I recently retired a couple of years ago and was working mostly for parks. So last 16 years at Guelph-Hollow Ranch County Park prior to that for many years was the California State Parks. And basically what I was doing is kind of two problems. One was working with volunteers and networking with a lot of community organizations and environmental organizations to improve the environmental and historic integrity of Guelph-Hollow Ranch. So that was looking at the California Native Plant Society to pull out brown, working with the Santa Cruz Bird Club to install nest boxes to attract back in species like the blister moob bird to nest in the sound of the valley again. They hadn't been here for a long time. So I did a lot of that kind of work. And then also I was doing a lot of interpretive programs. So basically education. And so there's this environmental educational background that I have for 35 years. I also had the challenge of working on a shoestream budget. As many of you know for a number of years the county park system got folded into public works. Our budget kind of evaporated. We lost a lot of staffing. And we had to just make do with, literally for half of our fiscal year we were operating out of a donation jar. So you have to do in order to cover the bases. So from that standpoint I have an appreciation for, I'm moderate politically really. So in certain respects when it comes to social issues, especially number one the environment, number two education, I'm very liberal. We really got to work on that. But on the other hand I'm a fiscal conservative because I've had to be with my jobs. And personally I live a pretty simple lifestyle. I can retire here in Santa Cruz very comfortably because I live pretty simply. So there's this two prong side that I think is something that comes up a lot. And I think especially in today's climate, political climate there's this tendency to pull apart in the two sides. And I don't think that's really necessary. I think that at the middle ground there's a lot of value to finding that middle ground. That there are a lot of environmental programs that we need to fund. We at the same time we do need to make sure that we have a lean financial budget in order to accomplish, in order to keep rates from going up too high and also in order to have enough money to fund the programs that we really need to do. So it's about I think having priorities and keeping true to those priorities. So why do you want to be on this board? Why do you want to be on the board? I do a lot of volunteer work. I'm a volunteer coordinator and there's been periods in my life where I just dove in headlong into significant volunteer opportunities. I was a Peace Corps volunteer for two years in the early 90s. In the early 2000s I was a CASA volunteer which meant working with a couple of kids in foster care but also attending a lot. I wrote more reports than I care to account. I did that for about six years and so it's been a while since I've dove in again and it's an opportunity to do something that's really important in our community to address the water. So it's time. So what do you see as our biggest challenge in the district? I've heard this said over and over again and I have to agree in construction. To me I look at the mission statement. The mission statement has these four parts to it there's high quality water, there's outstanding service which means efficient systems to get the water to customers, there's environmental health and there's fiscal vitality. And so when I look at that the one that seems to be the most lacking is that one that has to do with the infrastructure to get the efficient system to get water to the customers and that would be the number one priority in my eyes. What about time commitment? As I mentioned before, I'm retired so I periodically do a lot of volunteer work. I'm already volunteering in various places and county parks and state parks and that would probably reduce and make time for this but I have plenty of time. And the Santa Margarita groundwater agency? Yes, I went to all three meetings and I think it was a great idea and it's something that with my background in networking with a lot of various organizations to work on various issues that will follow it's something that I feel that there's some overlap with that and it's something that I think is a valuable asset and something that this district needs to be part of. Thank you very much. How's Virginia? I feel honored to be part of all the people that have been speaking to you tonight. It's impressive to hear everyone's stories, like you said, and it's impressive to see you working low so thank you for being a good chairperson at such a valuable scale. I've spent my professional life working in fundraising and executive management. I've worked with cities and counties on plans. I have an MBA from Santa Clara University with a focus on marketing and communications and I have raised millions of dollars primarily in Santa Cruz County for a number of kinds of activities. In my work with counties and cities I have brought people together in order for them to do things together primarily in the arts but also in other kinds of activities. I'm also, when I'm sitting in this room and I'm thinking about who I am and why I want to be involved is that this is where my heart is. I love this place. My great-grandfather came to Boulder Creek to start the first high school year. My family moved away but then my parents and sisters and brother they all moved back. My parents' ashes are scattered up on Bear Creek Road. In 1982 I was a teenager living in Boulder Creek when I walked out Highway 9 and it was a mud flat road and I walked into Felton Grove and I dug mud out of homes so people could hopefully move back in. Then later, when I was red tagged for my property on Alba Road my husband and I moved in to Felton Grove and so I had a very close relationship with the river. I stood in that room in my garage. So I'm very committed to the community and I have a lot of skills. I recently left my position of Development Director for Community Bridges which operates Mountain Community Resources in Felton. I recently left there to work as a consultant so I'm working out of my home office in Felton now and I have a lot of skills not about water but about community engagement and about participation and about marketing and communications and listening and budgets and planning and strategic planning and so that's my background. We're the impressors. Why do you want to be a misbord? Well, that's why. I want to make a contribution. I don't want to make a contribution to my community. So I will ask you what use is the biggest issue here for the Water District? With my background it's about pulling everyone together and fundraising and advocacy. When you bring people together you can do and there's real skills to that. People know about water well I know about how to do that. You have to listen and you have to communicate and then there's ways that you can bring people together so that more can get done I've heard that a few times I don't know the details of raising money for Water District so I don't know exactly but I know the library in Felton is a great example. Sure there's public money for libraries but what's the vision of the community? How do we draw people together and how do we raise more money for things we want to do? I believe in that. I've worked in many cities where a lot more was done and things were moved forward when people were working together and so the biggest thing I think that's what I was working on is how to work together as a community to get the things that we need done for the Water District. I'm committed then. Yes so I'm still working so there's that but I'm working now at home I'm on four volunteer projects right now so I suppose if I got this one I might step back from one of the others because I believe it so I have time to do it. And what about Santa Margarita groundwater agency? I don't know much about it other than that it's a joint agreement I have worked on joint agreements in other places and the closest place I guess is Watsonville where I worked at the city of Watsonville and the theater there in high school and I worked with them and they negotiated their agreement so it worked better for all three parties and I know water is complicated but theaters and high schools are really complicated. So I don't know about this Santa Margarita but I get the larger picture working together. Thank you very much. I am just absolutely overwhelmed at all the fantastic people who applied to be on this board. It's going to be a tough decision but let's hear from the public now and I would like to know how many of you think you want to talk about the applicants for the Water District? How about out there in the back? So you can have three minutes and see that. Those of you in the back got to come inside. There's a whole chair in here. Does anybody have any? Yeah, you're not even having me. I'll just line up next to John. I wouldn't want your job but I am so proud to be here on behalf of Beth Hallenbeck. I've known her since she was 12 and in my later years as a recruiter I would say she was my ideal candidate and why? Because she has an incredible work ethic she's good for the word tireless and dedicated and she loves this San Lorenzo Valley it's an honor just to speak on her behalf. Usually I'm not out and about at the cellar but I made the effort to say it means a lot to have someone like Beth in your sights. I would say anyone would be lucky to have her join the team. She is a natural leader but she gets along with everybody and knows how to raise money to bring people together has learned how to be open to people's thoughts and opinions and value everybody equally. I admire her tremendously and you certainly do have typical of our wonderful valley some wonderful candidates so good luck folks. I'm voting for Beth. Thank you. I have to say that having worked on the citizens who have made it both Lou and Brian I admire both of them for their ongoing commitment to the water district. They've been involved for years and they've been coming to meetings on a regular basis so I think that demonstrates real commitment. However, I understand that a lot of other people have recently gotten interested so I'm not going to say just because they haven't been coming to meetings for years on the board because that's not fair. One candidate was a real standout because the core mission going back to this is water and Brian Largue he really focused on water it's not just because his professional background it's because that's what obviously in Helsinki concerned about this. Water is our primary mission we're a resource agency we provide water. Infrastructure is important with current rate structure. We can replace infrastructure but that's not cogent relevant at the moment. What's important is infrastructure won't help if your water sheds in bad shape. If your groundwater agreement is unfair if there are threats to your water supply from outside players. Protecting the water is the number one job of directors through policies, through financial planning, through other things that are in the purview of the directors. His work as a hydrologist or a hydro engineer is not relevant to his role as director. The knowledge of the regional water situation is very very important. The groundwater legislation the most important piece of water legislation in the last 100 years in California really critical. Infrastructure seems important but it's been in the water game for a couple of years and you realize that the big 400 pound gorilla is the groundwater legislation. That's really critical. I admired other people's commitment to community service and I agree that's a huge commitment of time but again, Ryan expressed concern having served on citizen advisory with him. We had a meeting and he came back the next time with this multi two page bullet pointed extremely cogent summary of an action plan. The rest of us like scribbling on yellow legal so he may not have a tremendous amount of time but he's really effective and that's the only time I've worked with him was on the citizen advisory committee but he clearly was very focused extremely productive and very efficient. He didn't waste a lot of time you know fiddled battling around. He really seemed and I think that's often the case with busy people it sounds like many of the people here would be willing to sacrifice and prioritize serving on the board and I've talked about this in the past when there were problems with directors being able to attend meetings and so forth it should be a priority public service is a priority. Thank you. Thank you. Jim Moses he felt it. I want to echo what you said Lois it's just a really impressive group of people who replied I'm very pleased all of the applications and that we have such interest and such passion and expertise being offered for you all and making a very difficult choice and that includes that Hamedek's application in the sense that she has been a very valuable contributor to the valley and I honor that but I don't believe she is qualified for this board because of the stance she has taken on the private ownership of water now she did talk about the ad I was I can't speak to what the judge did in Monterey but I can tell you the most deceptive part of Cal Am's campaign in Monterey was the ad that she did because the ad first of all reported at least implicitly to be speaking for many many people in Felton and that what we had learned and felt in according to the ad was that going into a public water system was worse than being owned by California American this is a company that grossly mismanaged the Felton watershed it imposed huge rate increases we went repeatedly we spent literally thousands of volunteer hours taking this company on we had to go to San Francisco to the public utilities commission which we called the private utilities commission because they were controlled by the companies and got nowhere their rates increases were astronomical every year they had no interest in the watershed they had no interest in collaborating with other agencies in the area and they had no customer service they had a key our guys in Sacramento came in two or three days a week Beth did not reach out to any of us who were tirelessly to join this district and then went ahead with this ad that may have been motivated by the fact that the judge corrected some things that the public water advocates had made CalAM by the way sued us using a similar strategy of going after our ad which is hyperbole we all know that in these ads they lost in our case but they are a really really bad company and the idea that this company would be better for Felton in the San Lorenzo Valley Water District was just it was insulting to those of us who worked so tirelessly to join this district so that we could have meetings like this because we didn't have those opportunities with CalAM to speak to our neighbors to speak to you board members who are our neighbors and to let you know what our concerns are just as in the campaign as heated as it was we had the opportunity to make a local decision that's what we fought for in Felton I don't believe you should put someone on the board who would be an advocate for private companies owning the district thank you Hello gentlemen for souls to talk again I would really like to see a point Brian I know he's he has a passion and a quality to water and to the aquifer qualifications he has a lot of experience working so hard to defend water and to make sure that people have enough of it and conserving water and I really really like to see a point him I think he's the best qualified thank you very much Hello I'm April Felder I live in Felton I moved there in 2004 right around the time that the struggle to turn this into a public agency was really heating up so I was very excited when it worked I don't mind paying extra tax as far as the candidates I mean it's impressive how many really well qualified candidates you've attracted for this opening and I just want to say that as a former scientist I have a doctorate in my biology it's important to me to make sure there's still some science background on this board and so I particularly was interested in Brian Larget Lee Summers with her background Luc Ferris with his chemistry degree and biotech industry background in water and even Elaine Fresco had to take a bunch of science to have her career as a nurse so I feel like any of those candidates would be great I'm going to ask for Virginia Wright with all of her local government management and fundraising experience so yeah there's those two sites there's the background in science side and then there's the experience with collaborative work between agencies and communities and human engagement that's also very important so good luck making your decision thank you anyone out there in the back who wants to talk my friend this is Julie in embarrassment of riches I think we should increase the board by seven members I'm sorry Deborah Lohan there is a lot of partisanship that's been going on in this district that's very unfortunate and I agree with all the speakers that we need to work on collaborative we need to work through this and work together and so I don't know what would be the least polarization person to a point and I'll leave that to you but my personal opinion is only one person that I know the best and that's Lou Ferriss I know he's been attending meetings for quite a while I know he's on the engineering committee and I've talked to him in meetings and afterwards and I'm really impressed by what he knows and what's most impressive to me is he's not part of the polarization at all separate of it he does have a science background and the focus is on infrastructure and what I see is this district is moving in that direction and it's a whole new direction and so to me the benefit of having Lou Ferriss is someone who's already he's already hit the ground running he's worked with Rick Rogers he has a really full idea of what he's getting into and he has a full idea of what the infrastructure is and the other part of my comment is I hope everybody stays for the presentation by James because this is the hardest district if his department in treatment and in operations is working smoothly and has enough funding everything else is going to fall into place as well so please encourage you to stay and listen to that it's really important you know I was going to suggest that to people I didn't put her up to doing it because it's really important you hear what what he has to say okay how about out there in the hinderlands any more talkers no? no? yeah alright I guess it's now time for board members to have their say what they think and this is going to be hard Billy would you like to start? yeah I'm really far away it gets 7 you know like Lou said this is going to be a very tough decision but however I've reviewed you know I've reviewed all your applications and with the words you spoke I was I actually kind of changed because some of the people that spoke here really hit some notes from me so I'm not sure if this is appropriate but you can say who you like you don't get to make a motion no no no I'm going to just say my top two top two I'll mention the three important though I'll let you say three okay so my top pick is Lou basically because and I just know I feel that he's he will you know he's been involved here the thing I voted he applied once before when we had another position before and I voted for him because just because a lot of things but he's also a chemist water quality is really quite complicated and he is a chemist so I think that would be a benefit but I think he's gotten kind of from what Debbie said he's just sort of concerned about the infrastructure really where my focus is for this district and anyway so anything second Virgil Virgil also has been here and one thing that he said that really hit home with me is he he makes decisions and tries to figure out what the majority of the community wants and this is a hard job it's a thankless job and that's what I try to do I try to think about what the public wants and so that to me for him saying that I think that he would be a very quality person and the other people Lee and Virginia, wow I mean I was Lee towards you after what you spoke tonight and then there's the other three people I put it at the bottom of my it's not personal I think there's a couple of issues there that I think we had a couple of differences or whatever you're super hero people but it's a tough decision for me to make that decision so anyway I've gone a little number one virtual number two Steve, would you like this? Sure I do appreciate everybody's application and it does look like seven really good candidates for the opening I do agree that there's a big time commitment that a lot of people might have issues with I certainly discovered that there's more time commitment than I was actually expecting in this position and so you do have to make other sacrifices as well and I don't know if that can be done I do think there's a lot of advantages though with as Bill mentions Lou's got some great opportunities and advantages I think virtual wrote the best application but being familiar with the district being familiar with the staff knowing the existing challenges that are already involved within the district the availability of the time existing commitments to be at all the board directors meetings and participating in the engineering committee and even being Santa Cruz's volunteer of the year last year I think Lou is a phenomenal candidate and would be lucky to have him that being said though all of the candidates I think are extremely would be extremely valuable members of the board so I'd be happy to support virtually all of them but personally I think that Lou brings the most opportunity as Debbie said to hit the ground running and be able to contribute at a very high level so that's my thoughts on this let's see do I want to let you go next or am I going to go well wow it's a hard one isn't it I I would love to see another woman on the board but I get along okay with these guys you know I can beat them at a submission if I must I think well Virgil was so funny he would be the life of the board but I think I have to go with Bill and Steve and say that I think it should be Lou he's been to all these meetings he's on the engineering committee he's gone taken a tour of the treatment plant which I haven't been able to get yet sorry he has a I can't ask staff to do anything I can only ask yeah well ignore so I guess I this is a tough decision because I really like so many of you so many of you women you all sounded so fabulous I dealt with the community bridges when Longpico got a grant from the state I was down there community bridges signing my name 40 million times but they were helping me they at least dated so I didn't have to do the date just signing my name I love Quail Hollow Ranch I love the state parks I've lived in this valley since 71 and it isn't easy for a widow to live in Longpico for almost 50 years but so I appreciate all the women Beth don't let me forget somebody here Oh Elaine so they're Lee and Virginia you're great but I guess I'm going to go with the I give you an opportunity say what you think well what I would like to do is take all seven people and put all the skill sets in the the oh there's four seven sorry the diversity of skill sets has been shown in the applicants it's just phenomenal and I think that speaks a lot to how the community views the importance of this locally owned district owned by the people and I think a real commitment on the part of the community to serve that district so to all of you that applied and for those that might have been on the fence go ahead and do it next time we will have other openings for committees and ad hoc committees or citizen committees coming up I'm sure so your opportunities to serve will continue to be there when I look at what I think the district needs the most right now I think it does have to do with creating partnerships and working through some of the issues that we face today by having those conversations which are going to be tough conversations there's no question about it but by having those conversations and by having people who are part of the fabric of the community who've been here a long time is really important and I also think that toward means to also have a little diversity on it as well I actually have three people that I would support though I could vote for anybody and those three people would be Lee Summers, Beth Hollenbeck and Elaine Fresco and it's not necessarily that all three of these folks are going to agree with me on everything but I think they bring to the board a different sort of skills that are really essential at this point however given that that is a minority view with what everybody else has said it doesn't look like any of those three people would necessarily be able to make the board for which I'm sorry to say but there will be other times and other opportunities so I know Elaine will hopefully continue to serve on the environmental committee we had some great conversations and Lee I look forward to getting to know you better hopefully we'll be able to work together as well and Beth as you know we've worked together on a lot of things over a lot of years and I would like to be able to work with you here I don't think that's going to happen one thing I would like to say maybe these seven people are talking about what we're going to do with the buildings what are we going to do for our staff and maybe those seven people are maybe they're people that can help us with that well I think so and we also have some people that applied for committees that didn't get on committees that we might want to go back and take the other people as well so can I ask for a motion here I'd like to make a motion to appoint Lou Ferriss to fill the vacancy okay no second okay I'm sorry did I hear a second yes Director Smallman Director Swan President Henry Director Falls yes fantastic thank you we'd love for you to stick around and listen he's he's very he's very bashful so can we take a little break for a second okay that guy well where is everybody sacrifice did everybody else if everybody come in for the swearing in of our new board member we appreciate it do solemnly swear or affirm that I will support and defend that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies foreign and domestic against all enemies foreign and domestic that I will bear true faith that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California. And that I take this obligation freely. Without any mental reservation. For purpose of evasion. And that I will well and faithfully discharge. The duties upon which I am about to enter. Congratulations. So, now that we got that business. Ah, sorry. We're going to pass out some question cards. So if you have questions for James, you can put the question on the card. And hopefully he will be up to answering them. When it gets done, yes. I was just going to mention the question cards are in a cup outside, just outside the door on the table that we usually have the agenda on. Okay, could somebody grab them? Good. Thank you for that. He might answer a few, might not answer all questions, but he'll answer some. He will essentially answer all of them. Eventually, but maybe not tonight. We'll be here for a minute or two. Okay. Are you ready? No. Alright, from the beginning of this is the most exciting part of this presentation. Is it in color? Okay, watch out for this. I'll just stand and get it so far. This is a quick rundown and overview of our operations department here at the San Jose Valley Water District. So, we start off with the operations organizational chart. It consists of 20 personnel, director of operations, which would be me. Then you have my network specialist, our network specialist. It takes care of all our IT, computer stuff, SCADA software stuff, all of our software stuff and all that good computer stuff. Then you go over to the field assistant coordinator. He runs all of our projects that are going on out in the field. He does all of our inspections of our infrastructure, being our booster stations, storage tanks, district facilities, and he keeps all tools and maintenance items all together and running on a schedule. Then you have our water treatment and system supervisor, which he is our most analytical person here at the district when it comes to the operations department. And under him you will have the senior water treatment and system operator. And he is pretty much the lead for the other five water treatment and system operators that we have on our team. The water treatment and system operators, they take care of all of our disinfection, the treatment of our water, they run our wells, they run our surface water sources, and they do all of our sampling, and that's our water treatment system operator. I'm really bad at public speaking, you know. Then under the water treatment and system supervisor also is our electricians, and we have two electricians here. One of them is the electrician instrumentation tech too, and then you have an electrician instrumentation tech. Both of those guys, they run all of our skatey equipment out in the field, all of our electrical panels out in the field, and the treatment plants all have big sub panels and everything else that they have to take care of as well. We have a lot of equipment out in the field and that treatment plants that do analyzing of chlorine and turbidities and all that out in the field, and they do that as well. They also coordinate with well projects when we're doing well projects out in the field because there's a lot of power that goes to our wells for pumping, and they take care of all the pumps out in the field as well. Then you go over to the field services supervisor, and under the field services supervisor, they have two lead field service workers. Those two guys lead the other five field service workers out in the field. So when we're out in the field on projects, we have a crew of three or four, sometimes just two, but three or four normally, and so the two leads will be the guys that are running the other two or the three guys underneath them out in the field and make sure everything's going smoothly and as it should out in the field, make sure everybody's being safe out there and all that. The field services supervisor himself takes care of all the district service orders, district work orders, and runs the projects that are internal. He's not really as involved with the projects that are outside where we get contractors involved and stuff like that. That's the field that's at the coordinator job. So that's the organization chart for the operations department. So the operating budget for the operations department. We start with contract professional services. So this consists of outside contractors and professionals that come in to do things that are not as capital projects, but the things that are doing for maintenance and infrastructure, keep up not as much as capital projects where you'd be out for big or something like that. Those are capital projects that are out of a different budget. It's still in this budget, but it's not in this budget. And then outside water analysis. We have outside water analysis due to the sampling of our water, and that also pays for that. Then you have operating expenses. So the operating expenses does operating supplies, like non-inventory parts that we don't have an inventory we have to go to the store and get pays for that, hardware, and supplies. So anything that we don't have an inventory is operating supplies. Small tools. Every truck that we have here at the district, and every plant and building that we have here at the district has to have a tool supplied in order to do our jobs. And so the small tools budget pays for new and replacement tools. Tools don't last forever, so you have to replace tools at the same time. And then we also do the maintenance of existing tools out of that budget as well. Then you have rentals, leases, and permits. So there is jobs out there where we have to go out and rent things. I mean, you have to rent toilet, you have to rent saws, sometimes you have to rent back truck. We don't have a back truck at this time. A back truck is something that can go out and dig a hole in a much smaller area than going out with a backhoe or excavator to do so. So there's a lot of things that we have to pay for going rent and lease. Permits-wise is we have county-state permits that we have to abide by and have to have for most of our facilities. And so that also isn't that budget. Then you have chemicals and lab supplies. Now, when I say chemicals, I'm talking about polymer and polyphosphate, which are coagulants for the water system for treating water and for water coming out of the wells. And then you also have chlorine in that. And so all of our treatment plants have chlorine ejectors at them that disinfect the water pre-chlor and post-chlor coming out of our treatment plants. Then also out of our wells, they're all chlorinated. As they come into the system, they're chlorinated. That is the disinfection and treatment of our wells going into the system. They do not actually go through a treatment plant. Then you go on to the maintenance budget. And so this is maintenance of buildings and facilities, maintenance of our district vehicles, which you all know we have a lot of district vehicles. We have employees that have to get around. And it's maintenance of our safety equipment, which is very important here in order to stay up with OSHA standards and keep our guys safe and our people safe here at the district. Then you go to facilities. So facilities consist of the utilities, which is power and gas at all of our facilities. And then you have communications in that budget as well, which is telephone, internet, and radio. So telephone is obviously here at the operations across the street at Admin and at our treatment plants. We have telephones at all spots so we can all communicate. Internet is the same at all those facilities. Plus we have to have internet at some of our remote locations in order to get communications back on tank levels to be able to tell pumps to come on and off to fill our tanks. And that kind of thing. And at the same time that's radio equipment does that as well but we also have radios in our district trucks in order to communicate on the fly. We don't want people on the telephone to drive around on the road so we have a mobile radio in the trucks which makes it a lot easier to be able to drive around and talk to each other. Then you have the general administration. So that's office supplies. Office supplies consist of paper products, general office products, and cleaning supplies. Now this is not just for the two buildings that we have here in town. We have cleaning supplies and all this paper products and everything at our treatment plants as well. People work out of these treatment plants on a daily basis. And they are staff so we have to have this stuff at every place. Also that comes out of that is our printers and everything that goes along with our printing and being able to use our computers at our remote locations in our treatment plants. Then you have subscriptions, certifications, trainings, conferences, and meetings. Now all this stuff is very important for our operators and our field staff due to the fact that we have to keep certifications in order to be operators of the water district. And you have to get continuing education units and that is part of working here and so as a district employee we send people to classes and everything to get their CEUs to be able to keep up on their certificates. So they go to training, conferences, and meetings for all of this. Subscriptions is more along the lines of subscriptions for treatment stuff. That is more of the treatment system operators. They use a lot of subscriptions and magazines are huge in our department due to, I mean, upcoming and new rules and regulations that come out. And there's a lot of them out there. You've got off-flow and other ones that are all important and good to keep up on. I guess I didn't get to the screen very well. So this is just a little bit about the SLBWD North and South system. And it consists of Boulder Creek, Brookdale, Ben Lohman, Lompico, Zioni, Scott Valley, and Mangana Woods. It's a total of 6,506 connections. Then you have SLBWD Felton system, which consists of Felton. And the reason that the SLBWD Felton system is separate from the rest of the system is due to water rights issues. It's harder to get a permit to combine the systems. So that is in the works. We are working with our state and it will be done at one point, probably after the water rights issue is resolved, and that is all in the works. So that is a total of 7,865 service connections. 7,865 service connections that are read monthly. And they are read by the customer service department, which is under step. But that is a lot of meters read monthly. And we have one meter reader that does the whole thing. The district also has a total of 58 dedicated fire service connections. And so these are connections that are not regular domestic meters. They are connections that are either a double meter out of house, just dedicated to fire sprinklers or fire service, or they are out of business and they are a fire service backflow going to a business. And so that's a total of 58 of those. Now, we have surface water treatment plants here at the district. The district has nine surface water intakes. Six spread across the Ben Loma mountain on district watershed and three in Felton on the district watershed. The lion water service, the lion surface water treatment plant, located off Highway 9236 on Redwood Drive at 365 Madrone Avenue in Boulder Creek, treats water from Sweetwater Creek, Clear Creek, Foreman Creek, and Pevine Creek. This plant consists of three filters. Units one and two were constructed in 1994 with the building of the lion water treatment plant. Unit three was later constructed in 1999. Then you have the Kirby surface water treatment plant that came with annexation of Felton. And that is located off Highway 9 Kirby Street on 195 Kirby Street, Felton. This plant treats water from Bull Creek, Bennett Creek, and Fall Creek. There are two filters at this plant that were constructed in 1996. So all of our filters are pretty close to the same age. There is two of the filters at lion surface water treatment plant are in need of rehabilitation. And we are in the process of RFPing and getting out to bid for rehabilitation of these. And by rehabilitation, I mean they need paintings and coats. Over time, the posthumous enamel paint begins to chip and wear, and it is starting to happen, and that is definitely a costly endeavor. This here is a couple pictures of our Kirby water treatment plant. Those are our back wash basins, our clear well, and the two back building sheds there. And you can see also that we have a lot of solar panels that are Kirby water treatment plant on the roof and up to the side. These are the filters at the Kirby water treatment plant. As you can see on this first picture here, there is a lot of equipment that goes to treating water. Every one of those chart recorders and the panels that are there are red daily and there are many more of those at the treatment plant. And then the two filters, I know they are kind of hard pictures, they are hard to get, the filters are elevated, but on the middle picture, that is the inlet side of the filter. It flows over the top and then goes into the filtration system on the other side and then gets distributed into the system after a post flow on the backside. This is another picture of the front side of the Kirby water treatment plant and more of our solar panels down the side of the building. Here you have the line water treatment plant. And that is the picture of the building there and then you have our three, you can see the side clip of the three million gallon tank there. And we will talk more about the tanks and recodings and coatings of paintings and obviously we need some. This is the inside of the line water treatment plant. Up there, like I said, there are three filters. So on the picture on the right hand side over here, the far two are the two that are the older ones. They are the ones that were built in 1994. How do I got that? You're right. And then the one on the left side is one that was put in 1999. Now we will move on to fall creek intake. Fall creek intake has bypass requirements. Normal rainfall, fall creek intake bypass requirements. April 1st through October 31st is one cubic foot per second. One cubic foot of water is 7.48 gallons. And that's per second. So November 1st through March 31st is 1.5 cubic feet per second. In dry conditions fall creek intake bypass requirements April 1st through October 31st are 0.5 cubic feet per second. November 1st through March 31st is 0.75 cubic feet per second. Santa Rosa River USGS big trees flow requirements for fall creek are September, for the whole month of September is 11 cubic feet per second going over the big trees gauge. What does that mean? What does what mean? The intake bypass requirements. What is that? Well this is what that means is that we as Bruce Holloway has mentioned many a times. We violate that in the month of usually October and November and that is the fact that we have to, there has to be that much water going, so I'll start with the USGS gauge. There has to be that much water going over the USGS gauge at that time in order for us to take water out of all of them. This is the water that has to go before you take your water. Crick. And so then in October it goes to 26 cubic feet per second. November 1st through May 31st is 21 cubic feet per second. And June to August there's no requirements. So why does it have to be more in October? So we're going to hold questions. I was actually just going back to October anyway. Obviously in October it's very hard for the district to maintain and abide by this regulation. Usually the San Lorenzo Valley water does not get, the San Lorenzo Valley does not get rainfall before October. Every now and again we do. But very seldom. So the majority of the time that we are in violation is October. Now it does run into November and December at times because sometimes San Lorenzo Valley doesn't see rain until January. So but in order to keep felting in water we have to take water from Felton. We can't take water out of Felton and we don't have water to give to Felton from the North System at this time. One way around that is to eventually get the Lachloma water into the Felton water treatment part. So this is the Fall Creek Fish Lighter Intake. So down below are our bays that we have reconstructed and they're obviously very beautiful at this time of the year. And then right above this ladder structure here is our intake and that's where our two intake pumps are and that's what pumps the water over to Kirby Water Treatment Plant. So Fall Creek Intake days of violation. So for the Fall Creek bypass flow number of days in violation now that is the one CFS in the North, one CFS and 1.5 CFS in a normal rain year and then the 0.5 CFS and the 0.75 in a dry rain year. As you'll see during the drought years was when we had problems. That's when we violated it during our drought years. I mean it was very hard for us to do so. And this is in a total of 3,756 days that we have been operating Fall Creek Fish Lighter. The Felton system I should say. And then on the other side you see the big trees bypass flow number of days of violation. And there as well you'll see that the big years that we have violated are the years where we were in drought years. We have violated and we do violate in the years where we have water. I mean it's inevitable. It is happening 100% correct that we do need to work on our water rights and something that the district needs to be feed into. No one move on to district wells. All district wells are disinfected and treated at the well head. This means that they do not go through a treatment plan. They are chlorinated at the well head as they come out of the ground. Quail well field consists of quail well 4A which was constructed in 2001 and quail well 5A which was constructed in 2000. Quail well 4A has been pulled by the ground and the pump and motor has been changed on that once since it's been in the ground. Quail well 5A has been pulled once as well and pump and motor has been changed. Quail well 5A is in the works of being rehabilitated. And by rehabilitated I mean they are going to go in and pull the well out and they are going to go in and do some jetting and some swabbing and they may do some acid washing to the well in order to get iron and magnies off the well cold. The well has dropped in production and it has been assessed and that is the assessment and that is plugged by iron and magnies. Then you move on to the Olympia well field. Olympia well 2 was constructed in 1981. Olympia well 2 has had been pulled and pumps and motors have been changed on it at least twice that is to my knowledge. It has never been rehabilitated to my knowledge. Olympia well 3 was constructed in 1990. It has also been pulled once and pump and motor had to be changed. These things do wear out and they usually have about a 10 to 15 year lifespan. We've had ones that have gone to the ground and lasted a lot less. Olympia well 3 is along with Quail 5A in the works of being rehabilitated. There is a, for those of you that have been in the board meetings you've probably heard about the RP that's out and the contract with Martin Feeney to get that going and get an RP out and bid for rehabilitation of those two wells. The passive Tmple well field which is down off the Grand Dome Road. That's the Tmple well 5A was constructed in 2012. This last year in 2018 we had a problem down the column where the screens had opened up and was allowing gravel and sand to come through the screen as it be pumped up the column and into the system. So our Scotts Valley system was filled with rocks and sand. We immediately got calls dirty water out there. We immediately turned off the well and went to pumping surface water through our new IT3 pump station which is very convenient to the district to put surface water down there when we have it. So now passive well 5A is back in the ground and pumping back at full capacity. Passive Tmple well 7 was constructed in 1990. Passive well 7 was rehabilitated in 2018. It was acid washed, cleaned, discharged due to iron and manganese buildup. New pump and motor went in at the same time in 2018. Passive Tmple well 8 is in construction. The well has been drilled. This is a replacement well for Passive Tmple well 6 that split a casing and had to be destroyed. We could not get it back in line. We tried swaging it. There were many repairs attempted at this well. Now nothing worked. Nothing went well. So now we are still in construction on Passive well 8. The hole has been drilled. The column has been set. And we just got approval from the state on our well pad and our piping plan there. So we are out to get a contractor in for our concrete pad and our building there. And that is in full swing. So there's a couple of pictures of our wells. The newer one there that you see with the new pad and the piping that's exposed doesn't have the cage on it yet is our Passive Tmple well 5A. And that's when it was constructed in 2012. Those are pictures from then. The one in the lower left-hand corner is our Olympia well 2. This has been a pretty good well to us. I do believe that this well was an earthquake replacement well. And then over here to the right you have Passive Tmple well 7 and Quail Well 4 on the bottom. Moving on to district tanks. The district has 39 tank sites. Total of 52 tanks with 8.8 million gallons of storage. District has 20 steel tanks. 14 which are welded steel. Six which are bolted steel. We have 15 redwood tanks that are in dire need of replacement. District also has 15 polytanks out there. Polytanks have been great to the district and good replacements to redwood tanks that are small redwood tanks in small neighborhoods. We also have three concrete tanks. These are big reservoirs. Two of them reside in the Scotts Valley area and one of them resides in the Heen Road area in Benlone. So our deteriorating redwood tanks. Nine of the 15 tanks are in the process of being replaced. Five of these are in the Long Pico area and they're all in design. And that's replacing the Kasky tanks which is two there. One tank is two there and one at the Lewis site. And then we have two in the Felton area. And they're in the process of procuring easemates. One of these is from an annexation of the Felton Heights system. And that tank has been needing to be replaced. So we took over the system and we are in the process of getting easemates that's gone through legal I do believe. And it is now in our engineers' hands. Then we have two in the Benlone area that are in design. And everybody probably knows about the swim tanks. We don't swim on them. So they're up on the mountain off Scenic Drive sitting on a very steep parcel there. So it is in design. We went back to the table a little bit and we're talking about a few things on that and trying to figure out what we're going to do. It did go up a bit at one time. It came back at three times the engineer's estimate as it pulled off the table. So then we get down to the painting and coatings on steel tanks. The district should start painting and coating two tanks a year to get the 16 tanks in need done in the next eight years. This is a very costly end-over. It's about $200 to $250,000 of tank to paint and recode. The life expectancy of painting and coatings is 25 to 30 years. The majority of our steel tanks in the district are 30 plus years of age. All the way up to 60 years of age on some of our steel tanks in our system. And never been painted and recoded. So here's a few pictures of our redwood tanks that we have in our system. I could have put a lot more pictures of redwood tanks but I figured you see one, you see them all. So there on the left-hand side you've got the swim tank. There's actually another tank up the hill above that and that's that steep hillside where we have that one that's in design. But one in the middle is our three echo tanks. Those are actually three old wine making tanks that were bought by the, they're actually bought by the people that ran the district out there before and installed them. And then on the right-hand side you have the madrone tank. No you don't. You have the casky tank. And the long pecan. Here you have Hyland tank which Bob Bolts is very aware of. Zero water. Since he does live right across the street from the tank. And then over there you have the Felton Hikes tank and that is the one, that is a lined redwood tank and it's been lined since we owned that system. It's got a bit of a wing to it. Here you have a few of our steel tanks. So on the left-hand side you have McLeod tank, part of the salt system. In the middle there you have two of our newest tanks which are the Nina tanks up on Nina Terrace. And then there on the right-hand side you have Riverside Grove tank which is out north of town off Creek and Pine. These ones are in pretty good shape. The two on the ends are going to be due for our paintings and repotings at any time. Riverside Grove tank is an old tank and I'm not really sure of the age of McLeod tank. At least I'm getting some last ones. So now we'll move on to District Booster Pump station. The district has a total of 30 booster pump stations. Nine are block construction. 15 are wood construction. Five of these 15 wood construction are in dire need of replacement. Four have no structure around them. They're pumps on the ground or on a concrete path. Exposed to the elements and everything else. These all need structures. One will have a structure as part of the swim tank project. It is one of the ones that's up there. It has just a roof over it. It's on a concrete path with a roof over it. And then we have two pump stations that are also underground pit concrete walls. I'm pretty sure that says six of these booster stations have standby generators. The district also has three portable generators that are mobilized and shuffled around during power outages. The district is in need of more generators at multiple locations due to the new PG&E fire protection power shutdown and also to reduce mad hours of movie generators back and forth during storm season power outages. So there's a few of our block boost pump stations. The one on the left is the one there on Highway 9 at Scenic Drive. The one in the middle is out in Bear Creek Road on Ralston Ridge. And the one on the right is on Nina Terrace. That is our Nina Boost pump station. Here's a couple of our wood structures. These are the couple of our better looking wood structures pump stations. The one on the left is Mitchell Drive, north of town here in Boulder Creek. And the one on the right is out Bear Creek Road, Huckleberry Woods. So the operations department has a few different programs that they're involved in. And one of those starting is the meter changeout program We started this up again in 2016 with the annexation of Longfeau. First thing we did was went out there and changed all their meters over to a badger meter system. On average right now we've been on an average of 500 meters a year and this includes damaged and dead meters. Meters do die. They stop breeding out. We don't get reeds off them. They need to be changed out. Otherwise we're estimating reeds. And then meters also get damaged. We have heavy trucks out in our system. Garbage trucks are notorious for it. Running over meter boxes and crushing meters. Once the meters crushed, we don't get reed off anymore. So 500 a year is pretty much our average that we're changing out. And we are searching over to the badger meter system throughout the whole district. Then you have quarterly tank inspections. So every tank in the system, that's 52 tanks in the system is inspected quarterly by district staff. It takes two people to go out and inspect every tank quarterly. There's ladders that you have to climb and you have to have somebody watching out for somebody when they're on height. So that's why we sent two people as a safety issue. Then you have annual state system inspections which is a state requirement. Also quarterly tank inspections are state requirements. So each system which we have two and all of the facilities annually are inspected annually by a state inspector and usually myself and our treatment and system supervisor goes out on these tours. Each treatment plant is also annually inspected by a state inspector and these are not at the same time as a system inspection. The treatment plant inspections are very intense and they go through every little thing that we do. Write down the records and looking at our equipment, looking at our filters, checking everything out. It's a whole day process every time they go to each treatment plant. Then you have our laboratory inspection every two years by a state lab inspector. Sometimes this doesn't happen. They usually sometimes they'll just grant us in when we're doing good and we don't have any problems in our lab, they don't have a problem. They'll just grant us a new permit and we just keep on rolling. The state standard has a valve exercise program every time we get state inspected. This is the first question he asks is you guys start your valve exercise program. Well, we don't have the staff to do a valve exercise program. There is a lot of valves in a system with 190 miles of pipe in it. So the district exercises valves as needed which means when we have a leak. So we need personnel to have a scheduled program which at the same time there's a lot of talk about a construction crew here at the district and there's downtime for a construction crew in the winter time which would be a perfect time to have a valve exercise program. Then you have a flushing program here at the district. The district has a flushing program in the well field areas of the district. This takes three district personnel and three months to complete annually. This is a very tedious and long process. This last year in our flushing program it was very rough in the Scotts Valley area because we had so much sand and gravel out in that area. And a lot of that sand and gravel went and settled in the main lines. So then when we did high velocity flushing it all came out. And so we were at hydrants for extended period times this year so it may have taken a little bit longer this year than usual but we got it complete. So we got program continued and obviously our sampling program that our state requirements take up a lot of program. So you have weekly bacteriological samples in the systems and that's every system that has to have a bacteriological sample taken out in every pressure zone. And depending on the size of the pressure zone depends on how many samples have to be taken out of that system. Then you have monthly effluent treatment plants. Effluent means water leaving the treatment plant going to the system. So they have to take a monthly sample of that and send it to an outside water analysis. Then you have bimonthly influenced samples of the treatment plant which means raw water coming into the treatment plant gets tested before it gets into our filters. And that's all sent out. The majority of these, I won't just say that these get sent out, the majority of these get sent out to outside water analysis. Then you have monthly bacteriological samples that have surface water sources. You have monthly arsenic samples at the wells. You have quarterly iron magnies and bacteriological samples at all wells. You have annual nitrate samples at all wells. You have quarterly... You guys can all read that word for yourself. Substances. Samples at raw water samples from wells. So it has to be the raw water. This is before it gets coordinated at the well head. So there's a sample tap just below the actual infrastructure coming out and that's where they pull that sample from. Let it cover at customer taps over three years. This is a volunteer thing for customers and we reach out. It's not a volunteer thing for us. We have to get enough people to do so. And so our water treatment system supervisor reaches out to many people in the public, sends letters out and everything else. And your house has to be qualified for this as well. It can't just be like a new house. New houses are not qualified for this because they were never exposed to letting it cover. So this happens every three years and we usually get a pretty good turnout for this. We usually get enough people and we've never really struggled with that. Even when we had to go to Lompego we had more than enough volunteers to get it done. Then you have title 22 samples every three years at the wells. Then you have unregulated contaminants monitoring rule every three to five years system-wide. So now we're going to quantity of district leaks and USA 811 utility locates. District leaks, they didn't go back too far. I didn't want to make too many people compile too much information. So 2017 we had 266 leaks prepared. That's more than what there is working days in a working year. 2018, 279 leaks prepared. To date, 2019, 88 leaks. These do not include leaks on the customer side that crews respond to that get called in. We had calls that there's water leaking and a lot of times it will be on the customer side and leaking down off the hillside or end of the road and we have to respond. Water's running, we respond. Then you have district USA 811 utility locates. Now what these are, just a little information of what these are, this is a free, a free. It's not free, it's free to the consumer. It's free, I'm trying to get that part out. This is a free to the consumer to call USA 811 when you're dating. And our obligation is to respond when we get one of these tickets. And as you can see, we get a lot of these tickets. And it's not just a year picked out where we got a lot of tickets, it's every year we get a lot of tickets. And we have to respond to every one of these out in the field. Some of them don't take very long, some of them we write no district facility. But you have to respond and make sure there's no district facilities in the area. And district facilities goes as far as pipes in the ground and everything like that. So it's a lot of work for somebody to keep up with all these totally located. Water production. So surface water produced in 2017, 2018, and 2019 in the first quarter. They all stayed pretty, you know, we produced about the same amount of water every year. It doesn't really change much. It did drop from 2013. 2013 is when state ordinance for drought reduction came in. And from those numbers, they did drop a bit, but we usually create about the same amount of water. And after the first quarter of this year, we're right on track again. And miscellaneous. So environmental costs on district project. This is a very costly must to the district. Many of the areas of the Santa Cruz Mountains inhabit endangered species. The district must comply with federal state regulations. Every project and every job site are different. That is why environmental review is important. Now we have a system modeling and master plan that is in the works. The district is very excited about this to be able to see what our infrastructure really is and what our fire protection in the district is. The system modeling is in the works to tell us much needed information. Fire flow, undersized mainlines, hot spots for leaks, highly important improvements, and importance of infrastructure upgrades and replacements. Financial situation. The financial situation in the past has enabled the district to do upgrades and replacements to the system infrastructure. The rate structure now is great for the district and is allowing the district to move ahead with much needed infrastructure upgrades and replacements. Catching up on deferred maintenance that has been ongoing. The end. We might be able to answer a few but some will have to be answered later. Sure. How many? I'll fit one of the notes for you. Yeah, just do a few. And then we can... We have a couple questions here. Nancy, I do believe I answered the first question on the requirement in October pretty much. You talked about that you weren't eating it but I was wondering why the flow requirement was there. Right, I was going to get into your second question on that. You asked why maybe it's fish requirements. It is fish requirements and that's why they did set those standards back in the day. Nobody knows why they set them in October the way they did, but what is set and we do violated at this time. Most of our fish people that we do talk to are baffled by it as well. Okay, another question is what is the valve exercising program? The valve exercise program is where the state wants us to go out and exercise our important valves of our system in order to... exercising them means go out, full turn them and make sure they're working and working properly out the field. And not break them in the process. And not break them in the process, exactly. Which a lot of them do break. All those are blanks? Okay. How would SLVWD recharge the aquifer? Details. Our biggest thing that we do now is sending surface water to our well field system. That's keeping our wells offline and we feel that we do a good job of recharging our aquifers by doing so. Having the opportunity to be able to send surface water south to our well field is huge for the aquifers. Why is Fall Creek water so good? It's a great source. There's not that many organic... excellent watershed. We don't have any problems with water quality there and it makes it easy to treat and comes out of the treatment plan extraordinarily well. Are there any women working in the field? No. Actually, I'll take that back, yes. Do you have a cross connection control specialist on staff? We do not have a cross connection control specialist on staff. We do have a cross connection control program and we are working on a cross connection control specialist. We have an employee that is very eager to become our cross connection control specialist. Let's wrap that up. I have two more. Okay. I'll wrap it up, boss. Sorry. Boss said... We'll post them. We need to move ahead. So, next up... is Upper Zion and Streamwood and that's the project cooperative program. Yes, we have a program, environmental program manager, Mickelson here that will take that on. Three, and then I think one turn it over to the RCD to give a presentation. Briefly, we've talked about this recently, we've established the Valley Water District, the City of Santa Cruz, and the RCD and the County of Santa Cruz have been working together collaboratively on a restoration project in Upper Zioni watershed, which has been identified by the National Marine Fisheries Service as the highest priority screen in the San Lorenzo River for coho recovery and for steelhead recovery. And so the plan is to install large wood into the stream that has been denuded from large wood and would enhance the stream bed or habitat. And I think the presentation will get into more detail about that and so I'd like to introduce Lisa Lurie who's the Director of the, the Executive Director of the RCD, the Resource Conservation District of Santa Cruz County to do a presentation. And I will get that out of the room. Sorry. Oh, I didn't know you were doing a presentation. One moment. Well, good evening everyone. Again, I'm Lisa Lurie. I'm the Executive Director of the Resource Conservation District of Santa Cruz County. And I have with me Matt Weld, who's our project engineer from Waterways Consulting and Kelly Camara who's the Technical Director at the Resource Conservation District. And first, just by way of introduction, the RCD were a non-regulatory special district. We worked throughout the County of Santa Cruz with landowners, with public and private on implementation of collaborative conservation. And what that means is really approaching conservation from a standpoint of understanding and meeting the needs and the goals and the values of the landowners as well as understanding and meeting those values and goals of the common resources, whether it's water, air, soil, species, or habitat. And what we're here tonight to talk with you all about is one such project that we've been working on together with the Water District since about 2014, as well as a number of different partners. So we have the RCD, the Water District, City of Santa Cruz, the County of Santa Cruz, Milla Fisheries, California Department of Fish and Wildlife. We've had support from a number of consultants, including Waterways and others, and have received funding through this project through the California State Coastal Conservancy, as well as the EPA and the State Water Quality Control Board. So this is the upper Zianti large woody debris project. And overall, the purpose of the project as Jen described is to install habitat improvement structures along a one-mile stretch of Zianti Creek that spans property of both the Water District as well as the City of Santa Cruz. And the goal is to really retain and filter sediments for protection of water quality as well as improvement of habitat for a coho and steelhead recovery. Next slide. So there's a lot of information here and really it's meant to reflect the long background of history that we've had together on this project. As Jen mentioned, back in 2012, this particular stretch of Zianti was really identified by Fisheries Service as a top priority for coho recovery. Then in 2014, the County of Santa Cruz, together with the RCD and some watershed stewards did a survey of Zianti Creek to further identify opportunity sites for water quality and habitat improvement. And that's where the San Lorenzo Valley Water District property and the City properties really surface as potential restoration sites. This project has also been identified through a number of different collaborative efforts, including the San Lorenzo River 2025 initiative and the what's called the Integrated Watershed Restoration Program which brings together different resource agencies to really come together and identify the highest conservation priorities across the county in this project. It's been further identified through this group. So back in 2014, your board authorized this project to take place on San Lorenzo Valley. We then worked to secure funding through the California State Coastal Conservancy to fully fund the design and permitting of the project back in 2017. Your board and your district then submitted a letter of support and commitment as part of a grant application that the RCD submitted to the State Water Quality Control Board which we were then awarded in 2018. This is a grant through what's called the 319H program. It's money from the EPA that comes through the State Water Board and our Regional Water Quality Control Board for the purposes of projects to protect and enhance water quality. So with those funds, we have been able to work to advance through the next steps of the permitting process and are now on the doorstep of implementation. At your October meeting, the board executed an access agreement which initiated that permitting and implementation phase. And where are we headed? Currently, the RCD is working to finalize the acquisition of all the necessary permits for the project. This month or this past month, we and our council have worked really diligently with your staff and your council who I want to give a huge gratitude towards for working towards and usually agreed upon terms of our agreements. We're happy to have worked through that. And so the hope now is to enter into the cooperative agreement that's associated with the permitting and implementation of the project that we can describe in a little bit more detail to then be able to be an implementation of the project this summer. We have a contractor on board and I'm happy to report that their bid actually came in below. The budget for the project, so it's a pretty rare time occurrence. Once the project is implemented, this summer, then the RCD and our partners will be available and continue to assist in monitoring of the project for three to five years. Talk a little bit about the return on investment here and really the mutual benefits of this project. First, the project is, as I mentioned, 100% grant funded from the very concept through the implementation and monitoring. We've had a significant amount of public investment and commitment from the various partners to date. And really we are where we are because this project is of a mutual benefit both to the community and the natural resources as well as to the landowners, both the water district and the city of Santa Cruz as it really aligns with the mission of the water district to further advance your role so the mutual goals and benefits in terms of watershed stewardship habitat improvement for Coho and Steelhead as well as as I mentioned the water quality protection for the water resources so Matt, I'm going to turn it over to give a little bit more detail and background on some of the finer points of the engineering of the project. Is there a pointer available? I'm not sure. Really? I think it's a really good one. Alright, so my name is Matt Weld, Boulder Creek native. I'm a civil engineer. I specialize in ecological restoration of surface water environment. River streams in wetlands. I work with waterways consulting based out of Santa Cruz and Portland, Oregon. We do a whole lot of woody degree installation projects mostly out of my Portland office and they've got wood up there and they've got bigger rivers. On this particular project my partner John Dvorsty who's an expert in this type of project he's a fluvial geomorphologist and fisheries biologist was the lead on the design. Woody degree installation is as much an art as it is a science so the engineering side is dealing with structural stability considerations contracting plans and specifications and interactions of infrastructure. The geomorphologist-biologist role is making sure that these are each individually designed and cited to have the best geomorphic function and habitat enhancement characteristics. So again the project addresses a one mile reach the portion to occur on district properties is that orange box you can't see in the upper left there it's a half a mile maybe it's all within a fairly incised reach of the channel that has a watershed dominated by Redwood and Per let's jump ahead in the next slide hopefully resuming in a little bit wow purple it's not pretty yeah those were a couple of pictures within the study reach and that's my partner John there during the survey some of the characteristics of this reach it's less confined by the road relative to the downstream reach which is on the city property channel is very incised an inset within former flood plain surfaces meaning it's disconnected from those flood plain surfaces and it's very entrenched narrow high energy there's a very thin this is important to this project a very thin layer of alluvial materials sands, growls, cobbles over lined with bedrock and a lot of places on the banks you can see there and in some places on the bed the bedrock is exposed and there's no substrate the alluvial material the only places where you're finding pools right now where the stream takes a really tight turn and a butts up against the bedrock surface and has the energy and the ability to scour pools pools are very important the reason these pools are limited is because the channel cannot effectively scour through the bedrock it lacks sufficient depth to allow the physical formation of these pools let's move forward to the next slide so some of the reasons that the channel is experiencing is current morphology past road development which has narrowed the available width of the valley floor for the stream and combined it to a straighter alignment direct removal of large wood from the channel I think it's important when we say large wood a large wood placement project but this wood still isn't very large relative to the historic wood this channel would have seen you can imagine back hundreds of years ago you're going to have 8 foot diameter redwood and perler trees falling in here one of those could back up this stream for hundreds of yards and completely change its character those are absent now they're not available to the stream and if they were to have fallen in the stream they would be removed for flooding considerations just salvage for timber injuries past forage management practices have altered the stream not so long ago these hill sides were clear cut and they're still recovering from that and then again the loss of historic flood plain connectivity once they get straightened and once the watershed is altered and this incision process starts the channels get deeper and they get narrower and then that process feeds on itself the channel is deeper the water flows deeper it's got more energy in its ability to scour removes the substrate and it gets stuck in one place without that ability to use the flood plains to dissipate energy and deposit sediment as a result some of the key ecological functions that have been lost within this reach are its ability to store sediment its lost profile variability you don't see a lot of places where there's flat water and then a very deep pool and then a steep ripple and flat water is a very uniform channel bag which limits the variability type of habitat available to the fish there's diminished complexity the pools that do exist are infrequent and very shallow and there's a loss of hyphaeric function at the ripples meaning because there's sediment within the channel is so shallow you don't have a lot of water flowing through the sediment and that's very important to the ecological function it creates upwelling within pools and better temperature gradients and improved habitat for fish and bugs next slide so some of the limiting factors for cell monitors that have been identified in past studies any challenges to fish reaching their potential within this habitat include lack of deep pools lack of escape cover within the pools so again the only place pools happen out here typically are where there's a big smooth bedrock shelf that the channel is bumping up against and because of that right angle and all that energy the pools been able to scour but nothing grows on those steep vertical rock banks so there might be the water there for the fish but there's nothing for them to hide under to avoid predation there's nothing for them to hide under at high flows so young fish get flushed out in storms where they might otherwise have some shallow water on a flood plain to hide in or a log to hide underneath see secondary limiting factors which this project won't address include downstream passage barriers dams culverts crossings that challenge the ability of fish to get up here and then of course low flows within the creeks one critical thing that does exist there is spawning habitat that's very important so we can give the fish places to hang out rear in these pools it will fish will be able to spawn there to take advantage of those pools next slide so some of the things that we consider when we're developing these woody degree placements and I want to emphasize the fact these woody degree structures are really commonly accepted engineering practice now we've done several hundreds of them and they're just widely accepted it wasn't that long ago in fact lots of my clients started their careers paying consultants like me to remove wood from creeks and for the last 20 years we realized that mistake and we're putting them back in there's a lot of science behind it a lot of engineering and so the considerations of this particular site we consider downstream constrictions like bridges adjacent infrastructure roads utilities houses and have to be cognizant of any impacts that placing wood in the creek might have on those sites and some places we just drop trees this site we have too many constraints so we're being really careful with their placement other considerations or access within this upstream reach most of the sites have existing dirt access paths that we can utilize and we don't have those available to us we're using other techniques that don't require heavy equipment a challenge up there is that the trees are generally smaller so we're having to go off site to get some logs that are big enough to be stable some specific opportunities there is that there's one landowner makes contracting, permitting and coming to some agreement a lot easier than a lot of our sites we're dealing with 20 landowners getting everybody on the same page is top so that's a unique opportunity in a site like this we've got a great healthy riparian corridor so we can salvage trees without any significant impacts to the riparian areas on the other side of the creek these bedrock controls though they lack cover right now that you create scour which is a really good opportunity for us to take advantage of existing pools and enhance them with wood and again we are away from existing infrastructure so we're really low up here the availability of wood next slide I know I'm going really fast but it's late I'm sure everybody wants to see it through this so some details of the proposed enhancements you can see this slide a little better those purple, green and red dots represent the structures mountain charlie gulch is coming in on the upper right hand side of the page there and the creek flows from left to right and you can see ziany road sort of is that dashed black line and the two bridge crossings where the blue line which is the creek that crosses the black line so there's a total of 12 structures of three different types the green, purple and red eight of those are accessible with heavy equipment and four of them only with hand tools we've proposed three different structural details to be employed at these sites based on accessibility availability of local wood and opportunities for anchoring stable structures at the site they can be anchored using a lot of different techniques including bolting logs to each other wrapping logs around existing standing trees and bolting them burying what we call piling logs or vertical logs that are stuck down into the dirt and use frictional resistance we connect them to large boulders which are buried and then change the logs and we use combinations of all those and in addition sometimes we get really large trees that are just they have a significant portion of the wood up above the 100 year storm that counteracts the buoyant force on the trees so again three structures types proposed and I'll show you those but each of those structure types will be a little bit customized at each of the sites let's move ahead to the next slide this is type 2 type 2 structures are used where there are existing trees to anchor to and these ones are used to enhance existing pools so you can see some of the logs will have root logs others will not they'll be wrapped around trees on the upper bank and then bolted to make a triangular shaped structure with a pretty significant portion of the structure up above the water so the weight of the logs counteracts the buoyancy next the structure here is used where there is higher risk so you can see the boulders there that will be changed to logs and used to weight them down then in addition we would fall one large local tree with branches intact over the type of the structure let's see what do we say about this one a portion of it would be buried into the stream banks I think it's important to note that any place where we use boulders that's back up on the bank so the structure lasts 30 years when the logs rot and disintegrate you're not left with boulders sticking up above they're buried down under the sand or into the earth in the banks next slide habitat structure type 3 is used where we have large locally available trees that we can fall in place and again those will be a large portion of them up above the creek bed they'll be used in conjunction with some trees that are imported and bolted together next so type 4 finally type 4 is a combination of I'm sorry I jumped ahead type 4 is will be all trees are greater than 100 feet long so these trees will be using their weight of the log to be entirely and bolted to one another to be anchored in place there's no boulders or anything of that nature just the size of the tree itself is sufficient they're at least twice the active channel width so typically 100 feet or greater so they're basically considered too large for the creek to move they'll either be cut or pushed over depending on access availability when we can push them over with heavy equipment which is adds a whole lot of additional weight that's very data-sensitive the rubelands as big as they are their cross-sectional area really enhances the ability for river to scour against them and provide some good hiding opportunities for small fish next okay so the expected outcome of these structures they're really expected to pinch the channel off and cause coarse sediment to evaporate or build up upstream of them they will enhance pool scour to get deeper pools more hypereic flow add additional pools they will ideally they will accumulate naturally supplied wood so typically when we install these structures we might put four to six logs there after the first big event you're going to see all kinds of smaller sticks and little logs that are naturally mobilized through the stream rack up on them to get less porous and improve their effectiveness we think that they will increase habitat complexity and high flow refuge habitat again we expect them to last about 30 years there's going to be a lot of variability there based on the trees that are selected and the extent to which they wet and dry or are exposed to sun or other degrading factors but 30 years is a pretty reasonable estimate and then as they degrade like all wood in the creek they will start to soften and crumble and fall apart and the thinner portions break off first in small chunks and float away or rot right into the ground so basically there's no demolition or removal or repair or replacement you just let them degrade in place next slide this is going to be a little tough but these are some photos that are examples of past projects I just wanted to show you some of the effects the top right photo you can see in the center is a wood jam there and the river is floating left to right you can see the gradient there and all the stored sediment the cobble gravel in the foreground and then the cascade that's formed as the water goes around the structure at the bottom left you can see a structure that's pinching the creek a nice pool scour and this is a channel with a width of about 40 feet pretty similar to Zioni next slide sorry everything's so purple this is a channel width of 85 to 100 feet so top right you can see a place where we used two structures to pinch and narrow the channel and you can see the white water there what's basically happening is by pinching it at high flows we get nice pool scour and you can see a lot of different structures again this is I know that maintenance is a consideration for you guys so I want to highlight this was installed in 2012 to date no maintenance required same with the prior slide no maintenance required next slide please this one was installed in 2015 this is all of these are in Oregon which has had some really big winters and these are being constantly monitored and no maintenance top right is these are more aggressive structures they span the entire channel so they have a greater effect at high flow the more you pinch this channel off the more hydraulic effect they have the top right picture you can see pooled water above it and then you can see it's formed somewhat of a weird and again these are installed in places where the creeks were really boring and flat and straight and you can see the complexity and I'm not showing you the before picture but if you see Zionia right now it's pretty boring and what you get is this you get pools for the background and scour downstream of the structures and you get variability and habitat type next this is a creek that's 75 to 100 feet across and you can see the bottom left you sort of push the water over to the side it's built an entire jam that's forcing water out on the flood plains to provide rearing habitat for coho top right you can barely see it but you can see these vertical tiles they're an example of one of the anchoring techniques this one was installed in 2017 on a creek that's about 100 feet wide next Johnson Creek there's a very aggressive application there where we basically blocked the channel and you can see the calm water downstream of it which is indicative of a very deep I have a question about blocking the whole stream over the years that doesn't block up enough to where fish can't even get by it no these structures they provide lots of open space underneath and around basically there have been all kinds of studies that there is no upper limit the amount of wood you can add and derive additional fish habitat benefits there are very few instances where low flow, really low flow conditions if you block the whole stream it can plug up but they tend to ask with beaver dams the fish will find little interstices to get through next that was a common misconception not that 20 years ago people were going out blasting these things for fear of fish flap barriers so I was asked to discuss maintenance and I met with my partners and we talked about an example of where we've ever had to do any but we did find this NRCS standard practice here which provides some general recommendations from a similar project that was done locally most of the maintenance is the access roads that you use to get in and out was the erosion control affected so at this particular site our concerns there are really minimal there are existing roads we're going to clear them to get in and out and then we're going to treat them for erosion with standard construction practices inspect banks for sloughing so bank erosion these sites were all selected at locations where bank erosion not only is it not a problem bank erosion allows the creek to extend its length and to develop a spool shop bank erosion would be a benefit here you periodically inspect them for movement and consult with engineers if necessary we do not again inspect any of these particular structures removed because they're anchored they're engineered with high factors of safety against buoyancy and one thing that's important to point out is success criteria these types of structures just getting more wood in the creek is considered a success so lots of times we do these projects and they're federally or state funded and people build these really complex jams and they don't do any anchoring because they're in places where risk is allowable they fall apart and the people that pay for them still consider that a success because there's more wood in the creek and wherever it lands it provides benefit so it's not like if there's a movement or a log shifts it's broken and you need to fix it that's important to understand again it's kind of an art as much as it is a science and we take our best stab at what these things should look like sometimes we're wrong and sometimes they move and get better so conditions should be evaluated compared to desired conditions on a regular basis to be able to quickly adjust the conservation plant to ensure desired habitat conditions are met pretty vague stuff worst case scenario sometimes if you put them on a flatter creek we're flooding is a concern and they rack too much wood you might want to get out there and look at them and say we should cut a few of these logs into smaller pieces so if they break they don't cause any damage downstream here not a concern given that we're anchoring and the creek is so small relative to the size of the lake next that's you so a few questions would come up when we presented at the environmental committee just a few weeks ago so we want to be sure to address those and make sure that all those questions and concerns were addressed so again in terms of the maintenance what I also want to add as I described before our whole approach to conservation is a collaborative approach for landowners we've been around since 1942 and we've implemented hundreds of projects across the county all through partnerships with private and public landowners so we are partners in these projects we don't simply implement and walk away we are a continual resource in terms of ongoing discussions for any sort of problem solving that might come up down the road but as was discussed these are really designs to evolve naturally and not really require any sort of concerted effort so just to summarize and wrap up again I do really want to thank staff and council for working with us over the past month to respond to concerns you know I've heard also a really understandable and legitimate concern and interest in minimizing risk and liability of the district and I will just say as executive director of a small public agency myself I share and understand that concern and so at the RCD what we do to minimize our risk is we work with really highly qualified and trained and experienced engineers and contractors we use the best available science to bring all the expertise to bear on the project by a standard and really take into consideration those site-specific music constraints so that's something that I personally in our agency really value and bring to this type of work and together with your staff we've been able to make sure that the language and shared responsibility and are really kind of incorporated in a mutually acceptable way in our arguments so how we can work together on that we're here because this project is really broadly recognized as a high priority for habitat conservation as well as for water quality as I mentioned there's been a significant amount of investment and partner commitment and this is a really mutual project that aligns as well with the goals objective of your next year so with that we see this as a really high return on investment and I'm grateful for your partnership today and we'll leave it at that I'd like to thank you Rick and Gina to talk to there was several questions at the last meeting regarding the agreement and the agreement's gone back and forth through legal counsel and we'll try to address a lot of those concerns right up to we had some one of the board members had additional questions and Gina tried to make this afternoon and I think she's prepared to answer some of those questions as well I do believe legal counsel I won't speak for legal counsel but we have come to an agreement for the agreement and we believe that it is time to recommend executing this cooperating agreement in the board but I want to speak for Gina and I'll let her move ahead I think one of the things that I struggled with initially in looking at this agreement is that it includes some sort of vague language that carries over from the fact that it's a form agreement that doesn't fit incredibly well to these specific circumstances the main changes that were made working with the RCD were one to try to clarify and there's still some ambiguity in here I'll admit but to try to clarify the district's role and most importantly the fact that the district isn't involved in the construction of the project so I think we've succeeded in making that clear and on the indemnity front also there originally was a I believe it was an identification of by the district for others involved in the project and that has been modified in a way to make it much more appropriate to the type of arrangement that it is where because we're not involved in the construction we're fully indemnified for everything related to the construction and then there is a mutual indemnity for things that occur after construction apart from the construction where if the third party were to sue either any of the parties to this agreement they were there as a right of indemnity these would be each other for the other parties negligence negligence breach of contract I think real focus conduct etc so it's a pretty typical mutual indemnity and it's limited only to the issues that don't relate to the construction of the project since the district is not doing the construction there are a few other changes here and there but those were the most significant operations I think other concerns with maintenance speaking with the RCB on their past project maintenance is almost not on this so it's hard to just get the value out of that but I don't think there's much of any maintenance well sounds like a good deal to me I think I I think we talked about this before with the environmental committee I want this project to go forward the only issue has been about the cooperative agreement from my point of view and making sure that it reflects what we want to do so where I'm still confused is what is our responsibility with respect to the conservation plan and maintenance specifications what is it that we have to do specifically, specific performance in order to make sure that we're protected later on should something happen and that's not particularly spelled out here I don't think at least I couldn't find anything the conservation plan is mentioned twice once capitalized once not the maintenance specifications are mentioned here as well but I don't see anything for that so I don't know what we're signing up for yet other than something that's specified here can you help with that sure so the final two pages in that agreement include the practice standards from the NRCS Natural Resources Conservation Service that includes reference to the maintenance obligations which is what we put on the slide up here so that's I mean that is the greatest detail in terms of the maintenance obligations that are spelled out so it says here periodically check roads it says periodically check roads for erosion what's involved with that what do we have to do what money do we have to spend what's periodic mean is it every year every two years periodically expect banks for slipping what I'm trying to make sure we understand is what are we collectively signing up future boards to have to put in the budget that is an absolute requirement that they have to do on some periodic basis because in order for this to be a successful project we want to make sure we're doing what's needed to be done to make it successful and if we find something that is eroded or slept or moved what do we do how do we deal with that I don't know how to put my arms around it and if it's nothing more than put it in the water put it in the creek and just let it do its thing as I think we were talking about during the presentation then we should just spell that out that all we're doing is putting it in there basically it's going to do what it's going to do that's not what is said right Jen, monitoring erosion in roads and would be something that is just part of the district's ongoing operations we hire consultants to go out on all of our watershed lands on all the roads and do annual inspection and when necessary with water bars it's a minimal cost and it's something that we do as an ongoing annual effort for our just maintaining our land but this is different from that and the cooperated agreement is referring to our coordinated programs we as the RCB will be taking on monitoring for the three to five years required as part of our permit to ensure that the project is functioning as planned that the revegetation efforts that we have spelled out are functioning as they should and that no new invasive species have colonized the site which is one of our sequel mitigation requirements so we will be performing the inspection twice during the first rainy season and then Ann may be there after for the three to five years until we say yes and this performing as we have anticipated after that then I think it's a little bit more of just checking in and making sure that and I know you want to know if that's you or if that's us once we can walk away after the five years we're saying it's functioning with any site or project you want to keep an eye on it and have a new back of your mind that we do all this planning we implement we watch it and then we always need to say is there ever any adaptive management going to be needed in the future and I think that's what Jen is alluding to is in terms of like you're already managing and watching your lands and if we see something that's happening that is when this collaboration and mutual agreement of moving forward is coming into play and just working collaboratively and then determining what is the best course of action and what we're going to have to pay for has come up at some time in the future I would like to move forward on this I think we've talked it to Jen I have a couple of specific demands that you'd like to make to those to move forward to what are better clarified I don't know about that what do you think about that Jen? well that may be possible if the board were to give us a direction to request an amendment set I think there's some clarification so let me give you an example for the first page authorized participation of projects it says here if the cooperators or their agents do not carry out work consistent we're not really doing the work there the RCB is doing the work I'm not sure why I didn't say RCB SCC and then on the conservation plan I don't know what that conservation plan is there is nothing, there's a maintenance I guess which is what you talked about I don't know what the conservation plan is the conservation plan is the two pages referred to in the of the practice requirements which are for issue from the natural resource contribution I just have some comments because I know that if wood stays submerged it lasts a long time so anyway I think these things will last a lot longer and then I hope you use and stand with steel and then another thought I have is actually maybe have some fake concrete logs or something that might actually engineering wise actually last longer it's like again like you said that you would also get other logs that are going to fall into the creek I'm just interesting I'm maybe looking thinking out of the box of making these things so that they would serve the same purpose but actually last longer so in other words in 30 years we won't have to come back and do more work to that there might be some thought put into that but anyway I I don't have any problem with anything because I want to if you do concrete how the fish get through well I'm just thinking out of the box I'm thinking about having some fake trees that are concrete that are going to last 100 years and then you would still have some natural wood too that would collect in there too but it would still you know the fish should be able to that be up to the contractors well no we can't this is too late in the game I like to design but as much as you can stainless steel and then that wood you're still in there wood stays submerged I think they're going to last a little longer actually yeah the lifespan will vary depending on yeah that's submergence and drying a lot of them are up high some of them are buried so the portions that are exposed to that will deteriorate faster because you're going to be doing another one I just want to make a comment so so what I okay this is fully funded right with grants and everything and the but of the 12 sections that you've got here everything refers to is being paid by references section 15,000 but some of the other ones talk about you know there will be like for mobilization there will be a payment where the other one said no separate payment will be made it's covered under 15,000 so are there additional payments to be made for some of these other sections that are referred to or is that all covered under the plan? they're all covered under the same big schedule that the selected contractors will fill out super let's go what's avoiding the brick strength just a quick question after the wood install how long before you typically see the desired effect of scouring and pooling maximum yeah it's really going to be dependent on what type of storm events we get what's your experience but what would you guess it to be one season these are down in a place where they're going to interact with you know I would say five years if I had to guess so it's got to be a storm big enough to move large sediment smaller sediment, gravel, sands silt they're going to go right by this and not even notice it we have to sort of balance our occlusion of blocking of the channel for how does that benefit against the need for flood conveyance so we didn't completely block the channel so that means these things are really only going to work in very large events so the first time we had a nice nice gully washer in a season with some big changes happening but you said you're only going to be monitoring this for three years so if it takes five years for max effect don't we want to monitor it a little bit longer so our permit is that we'll monitor for three to five years or until our success criteria is met for most projects we do see it within that time period so I don't normally make emotions or I want to make one that we need to work on could I say something public comment yes can I say something Rick Moran from Ben alone I was on the Environmental Committee when this was brought up a number of years ago and I was glad to learn about it I visited the site up here and it's seemed like a great site for your program and I have a friend of mine Mike Henry who I've known for a long time and he's a fish biologist and I've talked to him about this ever since I was in the Environmental Committee and he's seen the success of these things and he highly recommends it as being an effective way to help repopulate fish and I fully support this program and would love to see co-hosts see them in that similar I'm sorry I'm sorry we've all benefited from Director Fultz's you know, thoroughness and we should thank him for that remember this needs a quorum not complete agreement by all directors and the quorum is in favor of this let's move on thank you anybody else want to say something okay alright so may I make a motion that we accept this contract to do the upper Zionist streamwood enhancement project co-operative what do we do now for clarification okay if you could re-work your motion to approve okay the motion and authorize the district manager to sign it on behalf of the district correct otherwise you would have to sign it is it in here would you say it for me Fultz yes motion to approve the co-operator agreement and authorize the district manager to sign on behalf of the district oh I didn't say for him to sign yeah oh second okay um Holly you want to call Director Smallman Director Swan yes sorry I forgot Director Ferris President Henry yes and Director Fultz you know it is so it is okay so late and we need and the grand jury we need to ask for an extension they want an answer on this why may 17 so could we just not deal with this tonight and ask for an extension yes we can ask for an extension um what I would request is that um I also can authorize to start drafting a response along the lines that I suggested in the memo but if they don't grant the extension I have something to show you what connects to the meeting okay we've done some of the I think we've done more than what has been what had been previously done charter makes it almost yeah so yeah the charter and they're working on the financial report hopefully will be out by June I think we have more people uh um yes there are a few things that are not in that right so I don't want to blanket statement that we have met everything and gone beyond because there are certainly things that are still in the process there is the intent that they have not been more can I speak on this grand jury thing please okay um thank you I have uh there's a recommendation 8 you've all read this and it's about uh the staff and managers and everybody should have trained the district should provide formal training to all board committee members and senior staff on how to communicate with public and contentious issues um I've stayed here at 10 o'clock to speak on this uh this needs to be done I've asked other director that's a director to speak on this before um it's changed its direction um the issue of dealing with contentious issues by all of us here needs to be addressed and needs to be addressed by professional people who will do a personal interactive training um I've been a school teacher I've been a lot of things and I've always needed to have trained all the training even had training so far you've had erratic training, war training some sensitivity training we all need training and we have brown out training so I recommended earlier um a lady that I know who does this kind of work Jen Davis Turner consultant and at a community chat with you and Rick brought up and um Mark Lee had a recommendation of some people that deal with contentious issue uh training um this needs to um I know it's late and stuff like that but this has gone on too long we've experienced in the last three months we've experienced contentious issues that could have saved some people some a lot of heartache but it's it's gotta be tackled now and not any longer thank you right um and I you know what I I don't want to do can we wait for the next meeting to do board and public member committee comment um nothing's pressed I don't believe it it's getting too late to be reasonable um and the minutes are on the consent agenda so if nobody pulls the minutes out to talk about them then we can just vote on right don't even have to vote on them okay we don't have to vote on check it I recommend checking to see if any board member remember you want a full minutes you okay okay so and there are written communications attached to the agenda you might want to make sure that you read them and yes sir on the board and committee member assignments on the uh people oversight committee we have recently had all the things in the budget and finance we have public member openings I'd like to get through the move ahead with advertising to fill those because it will be another couple weeks before we go back to the board and then it will be another three or four weeks before we can get back I'd like to at least get through the move ahead board consensus is there board consensus to do that on advertising all of the things we really require what all I was just going to say there's an additional public member now if we want to replace Mr. Ferris so that would be right so the board doesn't have to I think it's pretty obvious we're putting on the engineering we know there is that Lisa Lisa face the public member and advertise for all public members right I'm available just the clarification I think one of the reasons we discussed putting it on the agenda was because the process that the board has adopted that allows committee size to vary to accommodate public members could put us in a situation where maybe you get five applicants in January and you want to put them all on a committee and so it may gross to seven but then some people drop off you may want to think about when folks resign whether you automatically want to post to refill seven positions or at that time shrink the committee down to a smaller size so that's why we suggested coming back to you to check in about the size of the committees and whether to post for all the seats is that open or whether to change shrink the size of the committee? Well part of the problem with having seven on a committee is it takes what four or four we don't at this point we don't have another five and my opinion is at this point I think we need to advertise that we had previously okay alright I just wanted because we did end up addressing the agenda item I just wanted to check if there are public comments from this is there any public comment out there don't you dare say a word no if you really want to say something make it good did the sharks win? no okay alright can we adjourn do we cover everything okay we're going to adjourn okay wait that's a super good job