 Robert, it looks like we have everyone. Yes, I believe Vice Chair Arnone won't be attending today. Correct. All right. Good afternoon, everyone. I think we're ready to start. I'll call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. We may have a roll call please. Yes, Chair Galvin. Here. Vice Chair Arnone. Board Member Badden-Ford. Here. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Walsh. Here. Board Member Watts. Here. Board Member Wright. Here. Thank you. Just a reminder to mute your phones or your microphones when you're not speaking. Put away your cell phones and personal computers and try and keep your video on at all times. All right. Any statements of abstention by Board Members? The minutes for May 20th will be approved and entered. And we will move now. Oh, actually, we're now taking public comments on the minutes approval. If you wish to make comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. That'll take care of the minutes. So we'll move to item 5.1, our first staff briefing. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. Our first staff briefing is an overview of our support services and safety and training teams. This is the last in our overview of the divisions throughout the department. And with us today is our administrative services officer, Cherie Skolton and our safety and training coordinator, Nellie Ergon, who are going to make the presentation. Good ladies. Cherie Sherron. Excuse me. Thank you very much. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. As Director Burke indicated, I am Cherie Skolton, Administrative Services Officer with the Water Department. And I'm very excited to be here today to highlight the amazing work of my teams who are often behind the scenes but provide essential services to the department. Next slide, please. I managed three programs within the Water Department, support services, which is comprised of 10 employees, spread over three locations, safety and training, which typically has two safety and training coordinators, but currently has one physician that is vacant with an applicant in the background process and Human Resource Services, which has one full-time employee, me, with part-time support from Administrative Analyst, Roberta Aitha. Next slide, please. As the Administrative Services Officer, I oversee all HR-related activity within the Water Department. I work closely with supervisors and the Human Resources Department at the city of Santa Rosa to coordinate recruitment activity, classification studies and administration of leaves. I coach management employees on challenging employee performance issues, investigate allegations of misconduct and educate staff to ensure compliance with city policies, procedures and personnel roles and regulations. This past year has been particularly challenging with all of the additional COVID-related personnel issues and I have been port person for the Water Department overseeing COVID-related leaves and reporting. I also oversee protected leaves notifications, workers' compensation and work accommodations. To talk about the safety and training program, I'd like to introduce Nellie Aragon, safety and training coordinator. Next slide, please. Thank you, Trail Gavin and members of the board for letting me join today. As you can imagine, safety and training has a lot of moving parts. So I'll start you off on the next slide, please. There's four mission areas that we're concentrating on at any given time, first and foremost, taking the job hazards that employees faced and trying to mitigate them, to protect them during their daily work, educating them on the right thing to do and really installing the intrinsic motivation to do the right thing every time, even if they feel pressured or hurried. And in terms of tools and technology, we're trying to find the safest tools to put in their hands, the appropriate protective equipment for them to use and teach them to use technology anywhere from software to power tools to commercial vehicles and tractors, so really a gamut of things. In between all those things, we're doing preparation for emergencies for anything from a spill to a major disaster and how to run an effective department operation center. And that really leads to more success at work for everybody because when they're feeling safe, they're allowed to be more productive and involved in what they're doing and feel more satisfaction. Next slide, please. So these are some annual averages for the safety and training section. We train about 260 employees per year from 88 different job classifications. It works out to anywhere from four to 19 different training topics per employee and that's just for safety. So that's outside of HR or any other training. About six of those we contract with vendors to do on site for us for specialized things like first aid and crane training. And it works out to a number of training instances per year over the last five years as averaged about 2,800 per year just for safety. We do offer a hundred different online training classes now as well, especially to help them with their renewal processes for their technical requirements for their certificates and their licenses. Next slide, please. So these are really some of the really dozens of hazards that could face a water employee during any given day. There's a couple of hundred possible chemicals that could be in the lab. There are fire hazards all around because of combustibles used around tools that spark or welding, a lot of machinery that's so noisy that it can cause hearing damage and fall hazards occur from slips and falls at ground level or from ladders and rooftops. And that's on top of the biohazards from the water treatment process going on around us at all times as well. Next slide, please. One of our duties is to do two or more monthly inspections. So we involve all the members of the safety committee in these and we're looking for trip hazards, Cal OSHA violations, supplies for first aid or emergencies on site at different locations. And we involve everybody so that they learn what to look for that needs to be reported or fixed before it becomes more of a hazard to someone at their individual work sites. Next slide, please. This is my favorite thing to talk about is training approaches. We do a lot of hands-on and classroom training but what sets us apart from other utilities is we do a lot of scenario and performance-based assessment training. So an example on the top is where we would teach an excavation class and then we would actually have them install hydraulic shoring and a trench to show us that they've learned what we've taught. The bottom shows where we would have a scenario where we put a harmless chemical out and tell them it's a chemical spill and then have them show us what personal protective equipment they would put on and how to properly do that, how to contain the spill, who would they notify, how to properly clean up the spill and they actually show us how it's done. Some of the more fun and competitive things we do are trivia wars. We have some educational board games we've come up with some 3D models to help show different concepts. And that gets really fun. I think that people forget that they're learning so much. And the next slide please. In terms of doing the department operation center, we've had a couple real disasters in the last few years so we've had more practice than usual but we also make sure that we do an annual drill. These folders on the top left are portfolios that we give to each role in the DOC so they have a list of objectives to focus on and that way everybody makes sure that their piece of the pie gets managed throughout the event when things get very chaotic. On the bottom left, if there was a power outage, this is a manual board we would use to track which employee works during which emergency shift, what equipment they're authorized to use and where the equipment travels to throughout the event. We just do that to make sure that there's the least amount of occurrences and no accidents or injuries while things are going very fast paced. Next slide please. So through a cycle of continuous improvement, we have tracked every single injury that gets reported even down to tripping on your shoelace or stabling your finger, not just the incidents that are tracked by Cal OSHA where someone goes to see a doctor for treatment. And we do that so that we can investigate every one of those to try to see if we can make it from not happen again. So over the last 10 years, we have cut the number of total annual injuries in half and the goal for safety and training over the next five years is to cut it in half again. So we just want to continue to show a commitment to safety at every level in the organization and continually improve in order to achieve that. Next slide please. So for support services, I'll hand it back to Cherise Bolton. Thank you, Nellie. Next slide please. The support services team is comprised of one management supervisor, Gina Perez, who supervises three administrative secretaries who in turn supervise six administrative, senior administrative assistants. The team provides centralized support to all divisions in the water department and is spread across MSCS, the Laguna Treatment Plant, and the Utilities Field Office. Support staff support the operational teams performing a variety of duties, such as preparing records for retention, contract management and process permits, payment requests and tests for backflow devices and requests for service. They are the primary point of contact for our ratepayers and receive and route on average about 2,000 calls a month from citizens reporting things such as water leaks, sewer backups, and water quality and water pressure concerns. They also help with industrial waste permits, construction hydrant meter rentals and water shutoffs for property side repairs. To perform these services, the team utilizes 23 different software programs and is extensively cross-trained. I cannot say enough about the amazing work the support services team provides to the water department. They are a dedicated group of employees who take a lot of pride in the work that they do and the service that they provide to our community. Next slide, please. I'd also like to say how grateful I am to Nellie Aragon for her commitment to keeping our employees trained and safe at work and to Roberta Atha for all of her support over the years with the administration of leaves and the intern program. With that, I'm happy to answer any questions that you might have. Thank you both. I'll open it up for any board member questions or comments. Board member Watts. Thank you very much for the presentation. You guys have your hands full. It seems really impressive to have a 1.5 HR staff for that entire department. So you guys are really busy. And I just also wanted to say, speaking from personal experience for my short time as an intern in the water department, the safety and training that I experienced was phenomenal and just really shows what a strong organization it is. And it was exciting to see you guys present and hear from you since we don't see you guys often. So thank you. Agreed. Other board member questions or comments? All right, well, thank you both for the presentation. Keep up the good work. I know that you guys are kind of the backbone of everything that goes on within the water department. So we're very pleased to have all of you on board. At this time, I'll take open it up for public comments on item 5.1. There was to comment via Zoom. Please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. Thank you. We'll move then to item 5.2. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 5.2 is our annual water quality report. And Tony Yamas, our water quality supervisor will be giving the presentation. You guys hear me okay? Tell me, okay. Good afternoon, Chairman Galvin, members of the board. Tony. We can hear you. Can you put on your video? Oh, it is. It's not allowing me to turn the video on. Unfortunately, my video works here, but it doesn't work there, I guess. Jennifer, are you okay proceeding with the presentation? Secretary Aitha, is it possible to, on the Zoom side, as with your host abilities, can you turn his camera on or is that not possible? I'm not saying I'll be able to do that. I'm saying, can I start video? Okay. Do you have to make him a panelist in order for him to be able to get on? He is a panelist, yeah. Okay. Chair Galvin, are you okay if we proceed? Sure, sure. I apologize. Good afternoon, Chairman Galvin, members of the board. My name is Tony Yamas, and I'm the water quality supervisor. Today I'll be presenting the 2020 Water Quality Report, which in turn has been made public on our website and other outlets earlier this month. Additionally, targeted outreach to our customers and the community was rolled out during the first week of the month as well. Normally we would provide you with a paper copy for this presentation, but an electronic version of the report was made available as an attachment to today's agenda for your reference. So first off, I would just like to say that, although I'm presenting the report today, this was a group effort consisting of our water quality team, our outreach team, Nicole Dorotinsky and Katie Oseguera. They assisted in gathering the information to put this together and made sure it was distributed properly and on time. Next slide, please. So we're required to monitor our system monthly and at the end of the year, we're required by the division of drinking water to provide a detailed report to our customers. We test the system weekly under the total cold front room as well as the byproducts rule on a quarterly basis. We also test for a lemon copper, which is required every three years and was recently completed back in 2019 and the results continue to be included in this 2020 report. Because of our production wells on farmers lane, we must also comply with the groundwater rule. Our cross-connection control program ensures the safety of our water supply as well. Next slide, please. So the water quality report provides information required by law, but we also use it as an outreach tool to educate our customers about where our water comes from, our water system and the numerous tests we conduct to ensure our water quality meets and exceeds all regulatory requirements. Next slide, please. So legislation allows us to use other outlets to advertise and share the water quality report. We no longer must supply a hard copy to every customer as in years past, but this year we used announcements on Facebook, emails and e-mails letters and we provide hard copies to any customers that do request them. This month the ad will run in the press Democrat from June 21st through the 27th. We also supply copies to various public services throughout the city and our sampling van also carries printed copies on hand for any customers who may request one. Next slide, please. So typically we receive about 95% of our water from Sonoma water and about 5% from our farmers lane production wells. Unfortunately in 2020 both wells did not run continuously throughout the season due to issues with one of the wells. But as a 10 year average is past 10 years, the water supply has been about 94% from Sonoma water and about 60% from our groundwater. Next slide, please. This is a picture of our water system here in Santa Rosa because of the extremes in hydraulic gradients due to the topography in Santa Rosa is broken up into many different pressure zones. So we make sure to have at minimum one sample station in each. Currently we have a total of 144 sample stations throughout the city to ensure we're getting an accurate representation of the drinking water in our system. Next slide, please. This is a picture of Sonoma water's infrastructure. It is complex as well with about over 90 miles of pipe. In the upper left-hand corner is where Sonoma water's six casings are located by Mirabil and Woller and the lower left-hand corner is the Contadi Intertai. And they do have standby wells located there that can supplement the system if need be. Next slide, please. Here are a couple pictures of our sample stations that you may notice throughout the city and these are used to test our water according to the total cold form rule as well as our quarterly and annual sampling. We currently have two different styles, the standard one on the left and the pedestal style on the right. We have upgraded many to the pedestal style wherever possible just to eliminate the sample from possible contamination. Next slide, please. This is our farmer's lane treatment plant. The picture above shows our green sand filtration system that we use to filter for iron and manganese. We also disinfect and then blend the water into the system. When in operation, we test for both iron and manganese weekly and also perform monthly and annual tests as well. Next slide, please. So because we receive almost all of our water from Sonoma water, they do test for over 100 constituents annually and then they provide us with this data. This is a basic example of one of the sheets they provide. In it includes the constituent and self, the maximum contaminant level as well as the detectable limits for reporting. They do provide this data from each of their six caissons as well as from all their production wells. Next slide, please. This is the actual water quality report sampling results page. We are required to include everything over the reporting limit in the report. So the top half of the report is the primary drinking water standards, which are those that have held concerns. And the bottom half are secondary standards, which are such as aesthetics like clarity, taste, and odor. And at the top right of the columns are separated between Sonoma water and water provided through our production wells. Again, a state recommends we include the results from our production wells on this report. Next slide, please. And this concludes my brief presentation. And with that, hopefully I can answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Lamas. Board member questions or comments. All right, I think you've given us all the information we probably need with regards to the water quality. And hopefully everyone will take the time to take a look at the report that should be attached to your agenda. If you haven't already. At this point, I'll open it up for any public comments on item 5.2. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, dial star nine. Secretary Etha. We have no public comments. Thank you again, Mr. Lamas. Thank you very much, sir. We'll move to item 5.3. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 5.3 is our Santa Rosa Water Customer Portal release update. And Deputy Director Administration, Kimberly Zanino will be making the briefing. Okay, good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. As Director Burke said, I will be giving you an update on the final piece of the meter upgrade project or AMI as you also know it. We just wanted to give you a quick overview of the portal and its functionality due to the current circumstances. This could not have come at a better time. Next slide, please. So the portal's main functionality is to provide customers with the ability to look at their water use down to the hour. They can also look at daily, weekly or monthly and they can also compare time periods. There's also the ability to set up notifications based on when customers want to be notified. I have set mine to show me or to notify me every time I reach 100 gallons in a day. I set my threshold low because that way I get an email every single day that tells me how much water my household is using. And I can look for any trends or anything that looks like it might be off. It's just been a great tool. And then in addition to that we can also have the ability to advertise our current programs. Next slide, please. When you first log into the portal you will land on your dashboard. This is also customizable so you can choose what you want on this page. This dashboard has the daily use with the last two weeks of use and it also provides you a look at this month's use compared to the previous month. It actually analyzes the use per day to let you know if you are on track to use more or less than the previous month. You can drill down from here to see more detail or go to the left side of the screen to choose where you would like to go within the portal functionality. They let you go to reports, notifications, the library that shows you all of the current information posted on the site and that's where you would also go to set up any notifications that you wanted to set up for yourself. Next slide, please. So there are a lot of great things about this tool but this is really what it comes down to. It's the ability to see what your household or business uses and when they're using it. It can help you identify how much water each of your various activities use. Next slide, please. So when you drill down from that page into one of the bars on the chart you get to this page which actually shows you how much water you've used in a 24 hour period and by the hour. So for this example, they have used, I think it says 109 gallons there in 24 hours. The blue ribbon or the blue line that is at the top is showing you the temperature curve for the day. And with this data, it becomes pretty easy to figure out actually how much water each of your various activities use. So once again, I'll use myself as an example at my households within the first two weeks I found two things that were going on. First was that our drip system was turned on and it was coming on at 4 p.m. in the afternoon which isn't what it was programmed for. So we checked it out and sure enough we found out that the battery went dead in our timer and the time was reset to 4 p.m. in the afternoon. I also questioned the amount of water that was being used. We did some investigating there and found a broken line. So you can really, really watch what your water use is doing and figure out if things are going on on your property that shouldn't be. You can also plan to look at how much water your appliances use as well. One day I ran the dishwasher at a specific time when we were using no other water just to see how much one cycle used. It's just really a great tool that after getting used for a brief time allows the customer to really drill down on various activities of water use. And as a utility, we have talked forever about finding ways to help customers understand water use and this is the perfect way to educate them. Next slide, please. From the dashboard, you can select the library and we have the ability to provide information on various programs. Right now everything that's showing is all for water use efficiency. However, we can really post anything that we want to here. Next slide, please. So we started with a stop launch of the tool. We were signing people up who were calling us with questions about use and quite a few staff members as well. There was at least one BPU member here who also signed up early and has been using the tool. We have since then started sending postcards to our customers as well as including the information in the letters that we have been sending out related to the drought. We're hoping that not only the information going out but word of mouth will really start increasing the participation. Next slide, please. Some of the other tools are the customization of the water use threshold. That's the notification I talked about earlier where mine said for that 100 gallons a day. You have the ability to customize your dashboard, as I said. One of the great tools though is that commercial businesses or customers that may have multiple residents or accounts are able to combine their various accounts on one login. We already have some commercial businesses using this function. Our staff does have to associate the accounts in the portal but once that is done the customer is able to look at all of their leaders and the uses from those meters. On the charts, there's the ability to flag specific use points and make notes. We have one commercial customer now that looks at the use every day, flags a specific hour, and then goes and investigates what actually happened during that hour. We also have the ability to set up links in the library so that when people are looking at some of those informational items they can press on a link and it will actually take them to the webpage that can give them more details on whatever program they're looking at. Next slide, please. As I mentioned, before we have businesses that are already using the tool, they're watching their use daily on all of their meters and they're tagging usages for follow up. We have already started receiving both phone calls and emails from customers telling us that they just love the tool. With that soft launch we had 33 customers that joined in just the first few days. So we're really excited and hoping that with the additional information that's going out now that we're really starting to advertise that we're gonna start getting a lot of customers signing up for this. Next slide, please. And that is the end of my presentation. I'm here for any questions that you may have. Thank you, Deputy Drifted Zanino. Board member questions, comments? Board member Wright. Yeah, I was the Phantom Board Member that beta tested this thing. And one thing as an engineer, I love data and this thing does provide it. And the other thing is it's very simple to use. I use it on my iPad and it gives you all sorts of easy to access data. Like Kimberly, when I used it, I could see I run an irrigation, I have six stations on irrigation. And one of my stations had phantomly started running for two hours every other day, which used like 400 gallons every other day, which was an incredible amount of water. And you could very clearly see it within seconds on this program. So I just really hope our customers actually use this thing. And especially now, this is perfect time to check it. The other thing that was phenomenal to me is you realize how insignificant your indoor water use, at least for me, is compared to your irrigation use. And I even get down, I'll change my drip system by two minutes and see that it saves like 60 gallons a day or something like that. It's phenomenal. So anyway, it's a lot of fun and I just really hope our customers embrace it and use it. Thank you. That's great. Hopefully, oh wait, Board Member Watts. Thank you. It's really exciting that this is up and running and this has been a long project for everyone. I was wondering what the language access is for the portal if it comes in any other languages besides English. So they have not developed any other languages yet. If we would be willing to pay for it, I'm sure they would be willing to start working on that, but they haven't gotten there yet. What I will say though is that it's pretty intuitive and because so much of it is graphic and their charts, you definitely could go in even though it's in English and be able to work your way around and figure out what you're looking at. We also will always be available if people wanted to call us and get them, you know, someone who speaks their language to help them through. Other Board Member questions or comments? Board Member Walsh? I just want to thank the staff for rolling this out. It's great. I thank Board Member Wright for being the BPU tester on that. And then the staff are bravery for letting an engineer test their software. But I think it's wonderful. I can't wait to do it. And great. Thank you. I agree. He is Board Member Batenford. Thank you. You know, until Board Member Wright mentioned it, it could have been any of us. So just a resounding congratulations and thank you. It's a big deal and a big project. It's something that is going to be infinitely helpful, especially right now. It may make something that's usually just not accessible and understandable thing for so many people. And so if there's anything that we as Board Members can do to help get the word out in any simple way, please let me know. And thank you so much for all of your work. Thank you. Thank you. Other Board Member questions or comments? All right. We'll now open it up for public comments on item 5.3. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha? We have no public comments. Great. Thank you, Deputy Director Zanino. Looking forward to getting on that program and seeing how much water I'm wasting. Hopefully not much, but we'll see. All right. We'll move now to item 5.4. Director Burke? Thank you, Chair Galvin. The members of the Board item 5.4 is going to be our Water and Recycle Water Supply Update. And presenting today, we have Deputy Director of Water Resources Peter Martin and we have our Reclamation Superintendent Andrew Romero. Thanks for that introduction. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. I'm happy to be here again with another timely Water Supply Update. Next slide, please. Sorry, I guess we're still waiting on the presentation. I shouldn't rush, so I'll wait for the presentation to come up before I start asking for slides to advance. Thank you so much. So what you'll see in these graphics today is that Lake Minasino and Lake Sonoma really sort of hit their peak storage last month or earlier and they continue to fall well below the storage levels this time of year as compared to the last drought in 2014 and 2016 as noted by that black line. So it is pretty critical right now, especially in the upper watershed and the upper Russian River. And Lake Minasino as of today has the reservoir has about 3,800 acre feet of storage or approximately 38% of Sonoma waters targeted storage for this time of year. Sonoma water is forecasting that with the measures taken by the State Water Resource Control Board to curtail various junior water right holders in the upper Russian River, combined with the measures requested in their temporary sea change petition that the storage will fall to about 20,000 acre feet by October 1st, which is getting pretty low. So next slide. So Lake Sonoma storage did decline pretty rapidly in the first two weeks of June. It is at about 133,689 acre feet of storage or approximately 55% of their target storage for this time of year. Sonoma water is forecasting that storage levels will not fall below that critical minimum storage threshold of 100,000 acre feet before this winter which is an important critical threshold as delineated in decision 1610 which governs their water rights. Next slide. So just a lot of things have occurred in the last few weeks here. Obviously, I think the last time I spoke with you Sonoma water had filed a temporary sea change petition with requests to allow them to modify their in-stream flow requirements in the upper and lower watershed. This change was granted on June 14th, so this week. And basically, the water. Did we lose him? I think so. It looks like he's frozen. Yeah, it looks like both he and Jennifer frozen. I'll send an email over to them. Yeah, I don't see Jennifer or Peter as participants right now. So. Yeah, I'm trying to track them down. I hope they don't have some outage over there. Since I'm in a different building than them, I'm suspecting that because I'm here and they're not, something might be going on over in their building. Chair Galvin and members of the board, I think that our building got disconnected from the internet. So both Peter and I got kicked off. We are reconnecting right now. So sorry for the interruption. That's okay. I hope Peter hasn't been talking to himself the whole time. My guess is he kept talking because I kept listening for a moment before I realized we were completely disconnected. Not sure what happened there. Here he comes. It's like we had an internet interruption here at the office. We're back. But let me just step back. I want to make sure that I don't know quite where we stopped, where I cut out actually. So I'll just go ahead and cover this entire slide over again, how's that? So last month, someone water did file a temporary sea change petition, allowing them asking the State Water Resource Control Board to allow them to reduce releases in the lower watershed from Lake Sonoma, as well as continue the operations that they've had occurring since February in the upper Russian River, allowing them to reduce their releases from Lake Mendocino. So what it counts to is under Decision 1610, it categorizes the water year type as critical and allows them to continue to maintain those 25 CFS flows at the confluence of the upper Russian River and Eastern Fork of the Russian River and the main stem, excuse me. And then the water year type in the lower watershed would also be classified as critical, meaning that they could basically reduce their existing minimum and stream flows from 85 CFS to 35 CFS. With that request, they also did put in a proposal to reduce their diversions and that they could be curtailed by 20% over 2020 usage, which of course means that contractors would receive allocations beginning on July 1st. Next slide. So that petition was granted on June 14th. And what we understand is that some water shows critical levels will be projected in Lake Mendocino by October 1st of 20,000 acre feet. About 930 junior water rights holders were curtailed on June 1st. And that includes places like to do Healdsburg and several areas up in Mendocino County as well. A good example you may have heard about in the newspaper is that Healdsburg instituted 40% cutbacks with no allocations for outdoor watering. Each household has been given a budget of 74 gallons per capita per day. So it is pretty dire in the upper watershed. In the lower watershed, as far as their management activities, the target storage for Lake Sonoma is expected to remain above that 100,000 acre foot critical threshold by October 1st, but allocations are going to be issued for contractors. And there's a whole variety of reporting and monitoring activities that are going to be required of the contractors and Sonoma water as well. Next slide. So I just wanted to highlight our drop by event last weekend. It was incredibly successful, probably due to the fact that we advertised it very well. We estimated that this is a very rough estimate too that we had over 1,500 drought kits delivered to individuals at this fairgrounds. It probably was more, we actually ended up kind of in the middle of an event going and trying to grab more supplies. So we did ask Sonoma Marin Savings Water Partnership staff to help us replenish. And we did get a lot of kits out to people. The Sonoma Marin Savings Water Partnership posted 16 locations in Mendocino, Sonoma and Marin counties, in addition to ours here in Santa Rosa. And more events are going to be planned in Santa Rosa in August and September. I just heard today that we'll be targeting yet another regional event on August 21st, of course to make sure that those who weren't able to make the first event are able to access these same drought tools. We obviously gave out buckets, shower timers, faucet aerators, hose-in nozzles and shower heads as part of this. So definitely doing everything we can to get tools out to the customers as rapidly as possible. And this is a great opportunity to do so. We've been successful utilizing this in the past too as well. Next slide. So I just wanted to highlight some of the ongoing outreach activities that you've probably already been hearing about. We are continuing to expand our radio and social media reach and have expanded into new media channels as well through the summer with some additional expenditures. Large banners have gone up around the city. You'll probably see drought messaging signage is being placed on city vehicles and buses. And we have been distributing window claims and yard signs with that drought is here, save water messaging and providing a link to our webpage where people can get resources. We continue to partner with our community leaders in the anticipation of the potential to move into additional stages of our water source contingency plan. We're starting to make those connections now and letting people know what the expectations are with going into further stages of our water shortage contingency plan. And then a letter went out to all customers last month signed by director Burke, learning folks about drought conditions and how they can help along with all the tools that we have to help them save water. This was really effective. We think that's probably one of the reasons why the drought drop by event was so successful. A lot of the folks had that letter in their hand when they drove up as well. And then of course our digital advertisements, diverting to the public, we know they've been successful utilizing Google tool AdBus does create a large reach. And we have some statistics to support that it is working. So you might see little buttons pop up when you're surfing the internet or perhaps watching a YouTube video. The little button will pop up and it'll have links to the srcity.org, the WaterSmart webpage. We also have been working with this number and saving water partnership to create a contest and a challenge that will ask our communities to tackle daily habits to help conserve water this summer. Look for that, that should be launching very shortly. And then of course one of our greatest tools is the bill inserts. We're gonna continue to focus on outdoor water conservation messaging. We know that's effective during the summer and of course matching to customers with additional rebates. So next slide please. So at this point over the next few days likely we're gonna refine the final contractor allocations. The order from the state water resource control board does cover July through December of 2021. If you'll remember we did, the WAC did decide on a temporary allocation methodology that covered basically July through October and their previous meetings. So what occurs in November and December will still need to be figured out. So we'll come back and let the BPU know BPU know where that lands as well. So what we're looking to do is institute mandatory stage of the water shortage contingency plan. That water shortage contingency plan was revised and adopted by the city council on June 8th. This is likely stage three. When I made this presentation I didn't have the order from the state water resource control board yet. So we will be triggering stage three of the water shortage contingency plan. And then we're continuing aggressive water use efficiency activities outreach and we'll continue to track metrics and see how we're doing making sure that we're meeting those allocations throughout the summer. I did wanna just kind of note a few things. Team Santa Rosa Water continues to work very hard to ensure that we continue to give our customers and communicate everything they need to say water and meet our targets this summer. The water efficiency team is incredibly busy. Their hotline is receiving about 150 calls per week. And of course similar volumes for the inbox of the email with customers requesting devices, various assistants or rebates. And then I just wanna highlight that water waste complaints have been coming in very rapidly. So folks are very aware. Last month there were more than 60 complaints that required follow-up. And also of course we're continuing to enforce our water waste ordinance with that as well. So, and then something else that doesn't always get highlighted I do talk a lot about about the water use efficiency team but our local operations staff are also responding to a substantial amount of service calls as well related to leaks. Last month they responded to repair 26 leaks which included service and distribution lines, hydrants and valves in our system which ultimately resulted in about 552 hours of work by our field teams. And I guess go to the last slide here. Of course folks can go to srcity.org, water smart and learn about rebates and incentives and the water use efficiency hotline number is there as well at five, four, three, three, nine, eight, five. That concludes my portion of the presentation and I'll hand it over to Andrew Romero. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin, members of the board. Yes, all right. My name is Andrew Romero, Reclamation Superintendent and I'll be providing you all with the recycled water supply update. Next slide, please. The first slide is our recycled water production graph. It's just a friendly reminder that the vertical access represents million gallons per day of water that is produced by the Lugano Waste Water Treatment Plant. Horizontal access represents the months of the year. The gray line on this graph represents the average plant flows from 1986 to 2019. The blue line represents last year's flows which were historically low at that time. The black line represents this year's plant flows. So as you can see on the graph, the plant flows are still, sorry, on the graph, the plant is experiencing historical low flows for this time of year due to another dry winter. In addition, the plant flows are still trending downward, therefore impacting our storage and recycled water availability for the 2021 irrigation season. Next slide, please. This next slide shows the recycled water storage curve. Also as just a reminder, the vertical access is the volume in storage of million gallons and the horizontal access represents the months of the year. I am going to briefly explain what each line on the graph represents. First, the solid black line represents our upper limit. The gray line represents our average storage volumes from 2004 to 2020. The black dotted line represents this year's storage volumes. As you can see, we are currently only about 50% of the water that we normally have for this time of year which again is due to the back to back dry winters. Next slide, please. We have continued to meet and keep our recycled water users informed on the low recycled water supply issue by sending out by monthly usage notifications, updating our Ag Smart page as well as emailing our storage curve to our users monthly. We have and will continue to work with our regional partners to continue to optimize the water that we do have available. For furthermore, we are still on track to meet all recycled water obligations. Also as of Tuesday, June 15th, we have taken geysers offline for the 30 days shutdown to start construction installing the expansion joints. So that concludes my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you to both of you. Board member questions or comments? Board member Baden-Fort? Thank you both for the presentations and the update. I don't know if it's a simple question or an overly simplified question, but along the way as we look at voluntary and then potential more stringent reduction mandates, how do we gauge success along the way? Is there a way that we plan to do that at certain intervals? Is it kind of at the end? I'm just not sure if there's a simple explanation for it for our users. Sure. Are we talking about recycled water or are we talking about photovoltaic? Photovoltaic, I realized my question came right after the recycled water update, so it might not be the best time, but I guess I can also dovetail on a recycled water question about the shutdown for the repairs. Does that change in any significant way any supply for ag users that we might not have expected? So I guess those are my two questions for the section. I can take the first one and then Andrew can fill in on the second one. So yeah, so we do have sort of a method that we can track how we're doing as we go along here. We've been in contact with Snowmawater specifically about trying to obtain more routine data at our delivery points in the aqueduct. So we can kind of track how we're doing even before the month ends, so we don't have to look back and say, oh, what happened last month? So the idea is to try to pair that with additional data that we can pull from our end users as well, our retail customers, and see how we're doing as, and kind of match those up. We, of course, also have a pretty routine data that comes from our production of our wells. So it's all just kind of matching all that up and then seeing how we're trending going along, but Director Burke has asked me to kind of create some routine metrics and standardized things that I can present to this board regularly to just communicate how we're doing as a system in responding and meeting those targets. Fantastic. Thank you very much. And for the recycled water, we created allotments for that community. So we monitor everyone's usage. We collect meter reads every two weeks. So we watch everyone's usage, usages throughout the irrigation season. As far as the shutdown, whatever waters available due to the shutdown, we've already factored that into the allocation. So that was part of the formula when we created the allotments at the beginning of the irrigation season. Great. Thank you very much. Sir. Remember, right? Just a comment or a clarification or a question or a variation of all three, but on the water supply side, at least in my view, when the council took action for the 20% reduction in water use, that was being measured more on a regional basis. Whereas now, if we go to this stage three, that will bring it now down to an individual basis of saving water. Is that the correct way to look at it? Actually, stage three is still a community-wide target. It is. There are additional prohibitions and restrictions on water use that we didn't have during the voluntary stages. So we'll be instituting things like water upon request only at restaurants. A lot more prohibitions on power washing of buildings and hard surfaces. We'll be doing some education and outreach with our hotel and lodging industry, as well as some other, I'm sure I'm missing something, but there's a variety of prohibitions and restrictions that will go into play, in addition to our water waste ordinance that we're already enforcing. And so, yeah, but it's still a community-wide target. We don't get into the allegations for individual customers until we get to stage five of the water shortage. Thank you. Other board member questions or comments? Okay, at this point, we will take public comments on item 5.4. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you dial in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. All right, thank you, Deputy Director Martin and Mr. Romero, we appreciate it. We'll move now to item 5.5. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 5.5 is testing for COVID-19 in wastewater at the Laguna Treatment Plant. We're pretty excited to bring this information forward to the board. We have been trying to get involved in studies for the past year and finally had one that was willing to take our wastewater. So with that, Deputy Director of Environmental Services, Sean McNeil is gonna make the presentation. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin. Members of the board, as Director Burke mentioned, we are very excited about this opportunity to participate in this study. So next slide, please. So one of the issues that we are familiar with through all the information we've been receiving is that COVID-19 tracking that the infections are under-reported. And that's because people who are asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic just aren't showing symptoms yet, but have the disease haven't been detected. And so looking at other ways of monitoring that seems important. We also know that people shed the virus in stool in three to four days after infection, whether or not you have symptoms. We also know from numerous studies that the virus does not survive in sewers, but that the dead viruses leave RNA traces, which is genetic material that can be detected and analyzed. Next slide, please. So the way a program like this works, and here's a little schematic where you could imagine the blue homes here being uninfected households, and the red homes being households or businesses with individuals who are infected, all of those providing sewer to the treatment plant. And then we can collect that wastewater just before entering the treatment plant and test it for what are called gene copies, number of copies of the virus per milliliter for the virus that causes COVID-19. And actually we can do this for other viruses as well. And then it's important to know that discharged water has been treated to remove viruses and bacteria. So even if they could survive in the wastewater through our UV system and our other processes, we ensure that any water discharged or used as recycled water is clean and safe for reuse. So even though they don't survive in the sewer, if it was a virus that did, we have a process to kill all viruses. So we're basically using this to detect dead viruses on our wastewater. Next slide, please. So we've joined a national study and what you have here is a graph of an example of an early pilot study in the dark bar is number of DNA or excuse me, viral genetic material per milliliter compared to the case load of a particular location, which is the lighter color bar. And what you can see is that the, you pick up the genetic material before you start seeing the symptoms in society. So it is a good indicator of what's to come to be able to identify these surges before they happen. So the process that we go through to participate is we collect a sample once per week and it's great because we're already sent, collect a sample every day. So we just pour a little bit off. We take that and we send that to a lab in Massachusetts. That lab will analyze the sample, send the results back to us usually in about a week. We'll receive that data and it comes as no cost to the city. Next slide, please. So here's just kind of a comparison that after we participate in this program, we will be able to be involved in. And I brought up Elko County, Nevada and Elko County is in the blue and the comparing it to the Western United States, which is the purple lines. So once again, I'm not sure if you can tell, but the darker blue line, which is peaks higher was the amount that they found in the wastewater. And you can see that it predicts when the population viral load will go higher, which is the lighter blue line. And Elko, Nevada had quite a bit higher infection rates in their population than the general population throughout the Western United States. So, we'll be able to compare our city to other locations or excuse me, our area to other locations as well. So, and I put on here the location where this data can be found, which is biobot.io's slash data. They have a lot of data that you could play with. I just chose Elko County, Nevada because I used to live not too far from there. So it just seemed interesting to me. Next slide, please. So the benefits of this, first is that we're gonna be able to share this information with the Sonoma County Health Services. Hopefully they will find this information useful, but also we will be able to detect the virus load in the community, including asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic cases so that we will know if we are really safe for changing our guidelines in our community and how to behave. Though we're not getting the data back from the consultant at this point, they will be able to detect the different strains in many cases so they can tell us if there are particular strains that are coming through our community. And it also is providing information to the Center for Disease Control and their overall understanding of how diseases can mutate and spread throughout a community by doing such a large study. This is something they've never been able to do in the past. And so participating in this with 320 other wastewater treatment plants across the United States, I think it's gonna really provide a much better understanding of disease transmission and mutation, which then can help us warn about potential outbreaks. And then next slide. Once again, I just wanna give a plug for this website. The consultant that's organizing this is called BioBot. And there is a lot of information already on their website from different communities who participated in their pilot program before they launched this one. And with that, I'll take any questions if you have any. Thank you, Deputy Director McNeil. It's amazing to me that they can not only find the remnants of the virus in the wastewater, but then predict how the virus may surge or not surge. It's just kind of mind-boggling to me. I don't profess to understand it, but they take the sample, they run their tests and everything. That doesn't tell us, I don't think that we're gonna have so many cases per thousand or whatever, is that right? Yeah, it doesn't tell us how many cases we'll have, but it tells us what they're able to do is create an index of, because each wastewater treatment plant is gonna have a different strength of wastewater because it comes in the fecal matter. So they have a way of calibrating it per unit of fecal matter. And so they give us this calibrated, because you could imagine, like in the East Coast, it's raining all summer and they have a much more diluted wastewater stream. Ours is currently not diluted because of the drought conditions that we just heard about. And so we have a pretty substantial viral load that's coming into the treatment plant. And so we can then attribute that to possibly what we're seeing in the county. So we got something like 42 replicants per milliliter of water and that corresponded to about 435 active cases in the county. We don't have the number of cases in our sewered area that we're collecting from, but we can reference it to the county. So it's not a perfect match as some of these other communities might be, but you can see that through the earlier studies, they've done a lot of the correlation data. This many replications is gonna be approximately this much infection in the community. And that we know sooner with us testing it in wastewater, than we would waiting for symptomatic people to show up and get tested. So how long is it taking to get results back once you set the sample back East? We're getting them in a week. Well, we got our first one back in a week. Great. Other board member questions or comments, board member right? Yeah, thank you, Sean. This is a very fascinating subject. One question I have is, are they testing for any other viruses? And hopefully this process won't just shut down and when COVID is under control and do you have a comment on that? Well, so they are testing another virus which is common in all of us to do that calibration for the fecal load and that's a cabbage virus that we all have that passes through us. So that virus is used as a proxy, but this is only a nine week study. They can do this for other diseases, but they have to know exactly which ones they're looking for. So basically when they don't just scan for any viral DNA, they basically filter out all the other viral DNA and just replicate or just quantify the viral DNA that they're looking for. But they've done this for hepatitis and other diseases as well. But if we're not part of a national program, it's pretty expensive this sampling. And so that's why we don't do it. Thank you. Other board member questions or comments? Okay, we'll now take public comments on item 5.5. It was to make a comment via Zoom. Please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. Great, thank you, Deputy Director McNeil. Thank you. Getting further updates as you get more results back. We have one item on the Consent Calendar. I move that we approve the Consent Calendar. I second that motion. Okay, we have a motion by board member Wright, seconded by board member Walsh. Any comments from the board before I open it up for public comments? Okay, we'll now take public comments with regards to item number 6.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. All right, may we do a roll call vote please? Yes, Chair Galvin. Aye. Board member Baden-Fort. Aye. Board member Grable. Aye. Board member Walsh. Aye. Board member Watts. Aye. Board member Wright. Aye. Great, thank you everyone. Good luck, Director Burke with your new position, assuming you get it, which I'm sure you will. We have no report items. We have item number eight is public comments. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand on item number eight. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. Thank you. We have no referrals, no written communications. I don't believe we have any subcommittee reports. Anybody have a subcommittee report? Okay. Board member reports of all any kind. Board member Wright. Just a report that I attended the drive-by last Saturday and Peter wasn't kidding. There was a lot of people there. Fortunately by the time I got there, it slowed down a little bit, but it was a very, we gave away a lot of things to our customers. And I now have a sign on my front porch or front yard, telling people to save their water. Thank you. Nice. Board member Watts. Thank you. I wanted to let the board know I have recently transitioned jobs and I have taken a position as a senior advisor through the US Department of Health and Human Services on the new low income household water assistance program. I'm excited for this opportunity and I have learned a lot of knowledge in my 10 year on the board and I'm applying that as I have been for the last nine days on the job. And I will be having a conversation with the city attorney's office as well for any potential conflicts that can arise. But I'm excited for the opportunity and it'll blend nicely to the work that you all do here. Congratulations on the new job. Thank you. Any other board member questions, comments? Board member reports. Okay, at this point, we will open it up for public comments on item 12. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha. We have no public comments. Thank you. Director's report. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. First, I'd like to say thank you for your support for my potential continued role with Aqua. I think it's a real benefit to the water department. So thank you for that. I do have a couple items to report out on. First, I wanted to let the board know that at their meeting on May 25th, the council unanimously adopted our four-year rate schedule, which is really great news. I would like to thank the budget subcommittee. I know we asked a lot of the budget subcommittee this past year for a number of different things. And also the board for your leadership. I think the work that you did really helped the council feel confident in our rate schedule. And we had very few protests. We had no public comments. So really was a great effort. And so I'd also just like to recognize that it was a two-year effort by staff. And in particular, I would like to thank Deputy Director Zanino for her work on leading the effort to get our rates adopted. So it was really good news. And thank you again to the board. I also wanted to let the board know that on June 8th, the council also unanimously adopted our urban water management plan and our water shortage contingency plan. Again, this was another really big effort. We asked a lot of the water conservation subcommittee. So really appreciate their work and their leadership on that. This is a really important document that one makes sure we're in compliance with state law. But it also ensures that we understand and are planning to meet the water needs of our general plan. And also has an updated shortage plan that we will now unfortunately be using for the drought. So it's really helpful that we have an updated plan. It's unfortunate that we are in drought conditions, but it's really gonna serve us well. Again, I'd like to thank the board for your leadership. Again, it was a really easy public hearing with the council. Very few questions. They were very supportive. This was an 18-month effort that took a lot of work. And I do wanna acknowledge our senior water resources planner Colin Close for his work and effort in getting this through and adopted. I did also wanna update the board and follow up to the information that was provided by deputy director Martin. So I think the board is aware that the state did issue the temporary urgency change order, which is allowing us to work with Sonoma water on preserving water supply, not only in Lake Mendocino, but now in Lake Sonoma, due to reduced minimum in-stream flow requirements. In addition to that, as part of the order, as deputy director Martin mentioned, there is the requirement that Sonoma water reduce their diversions by 20%. And we have worked with Sonoma water through the Water Advisory Committee or the WAC to have allocations in place for July through October. So we now know and have been officially informed by the water agency what our allocations are for July through October. And that is some variation with the maximum amount being a 20% reduction that we have to achieve. So we will be going to the city council on June 29th to recommend implementation of stage three of our shortage plan, which is a mandatory 20% reduction community-wide. There are a number of restrictions and prohibitions, as was mentioned earlier. I do want to note, one of the biggest ones that's going to help us too is that we are going to be limiting irrigation between the hours of 8 p.m. and 6 a.m. So that's another big piece that's going to help us hopefully see a lot of water savings for our community. We had mentioned to the board and the council when we brought the voluntary request forward that we were waiting to see what the state was going to do and that the action could happen quickly. And we might not be able to come to the board prior to going to the council. And so that did occur as we anticipated. And so we were unable to make this meeting. And so we will just be going directly to the council with a staff recommendation, which is very unusual for us. We usually like to take everything to the BPU first, but because of the quick nature of this and the need to get our shortage stage in place before July 1st, we are going to be going directly to the council. We will update the board after that council meeting. And then last, I know it was already mentioned by board member Wright, but I did just want to acknowledge that the drop drive up was so much more successful or sorry, drop drop by was so much more successful than we ever anticipated. It was a lot of hard work, not only in prepping for it, but day of by the team. We had a number of staff that were there and we quickly had to call in a number of reinforcements. So I just want to acknowledge the folks that not only planned to work that day, but came in unexpectedly. A big thank you to Claire Nordley, Nicole Dorotinsky, Elise Howard, Holly Nadeau, Heather Avilis, Thomas Hare, Deb Lane, Jen Shard, Peter Martin, Kimberly Zanino, Tasha Wright, Rihanna Frank, Bea Amador, Kai Souter, and Davey Peterson. We could not have done this event without everyone being all hands on deck. And I also want to especially acknowledge Council Member Sawyer. We put him to work significantly and he was just a champion getting through that. And also Board Member Wright helped out as well. So we really appreciate all the efforts. Really made this event hugely successful for our community. So thank you so much. And that's my report and I'm happy to answer any questions the board may have. Thank you, Director Burke. Board Member questions or comments from the director? I heard nothing but positive feedback from the drive by last weekend. So that's wonderful. And I would expect that as we move through the summer, if we have more events like this that they're going to be equally well attended. So we shall see. Any other questions or comments for the director? All right, if not, we'll open it up for public comments on item number 13. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Etha. We have no public comments. All right. I believe that concludes our agenda. So we'll adjourn the meeting. We'll see you in a couple of weeks. Thank you all for being here and stay cool if you can. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thanks.