 See if I annotate I can I can set up an outline real nice pick up the thing that's coming up enthusiastic talented intelligent It is 6 30 and so we're going to continue with the public portion of the meeting During the closed session information was provided to the board. No action was taken We will now start the the meeting with the roll call showing that Director Jaffe is not here tonight, but the rest of us are There's no public hearing tonight. So the first item on the agenda is the consent agenda Does anyone wish to take something off? Yes, I mentioned one thing Yeah, the documents that we were provided was tonight and we put them on back table at the same time Yes, and they're they've been provided online as well at the same time we got them Anyway, and then so consent agenda any items anyone wishes to take off of consent Not up here is anyone from the public Okay, I'll move the consent agenda. I'll second All in favor I posed Okay, now we'll move on to oral communications. So this would be on items not on the agenda. So Anyone wish to speak during this time? Thank you. Becky Steinbruner resident of Aptas. I would like to make a general comment Because I am gathering materials from the past for the administrative record of Case 1 9 CV 0 0 1 8 1 against the district. It is interesting to me to see that In not too long ago the district Kept much more complete minutes It noted the name of the members of the audience that spoke it gave a brief description of what they said and In the minutes it appears that there was allowed Discourse between members of the public and presenters of major topics of information now granted the material I'm looking at was regarding the pre pure water so cal project and its predecessor name, but big projects big important information presentations were allowed To have the members of the public ask questions and they were answered and that question answer is noted in your minutes a Couple of years ago that all changed and so now there is very little information as to what People said there's no mention of their names. There's no mention of what they said or the topic even Your meetings have been video recorded before that change in time So while I understand that one might say well, it's all on video. I Can also tell you that some of your videos are not from community television and I've told you this because There was an anomaly But there are some of them that are not from community television and I've asked community television about this and they say It's out of their hands so I want to present this information to you because you are getting a transparency award tonight and Of course one always wants to do better So I'm asking you to return to your former level of reporting of public input and allow once again question and answer discourse between The presenter and the members of the public as long as they were respectful and as long as they are timely Thank you very much Thank you. Anyone else? Okay, seeing none any board Communications I went to the awkward committees today and I still have the documents I haven't looked at but I'll talk about that at the next meeting Okay, great groundwater committee the water management committee and the water quality committee. Hey, thank you for doing that anyone else I guess I do I had a very nice experience because I had a leak and I got one of those leak notices and Of course my mind's gone blank. What is his name Roy Sykes Roy Sykes came over and he checked my meter showed me how to read it and Then showed me that the problem was my toilets were They were cycling so I didn't realize they were leaking because they were doing it off and on throughout the day and Had to put the flapper in and he got flappers. One of them didn't work very well So I bought another one that was specifically for my toilet and because of his training I did it right and now I don't have any leaks, so Yeah, that's that free service that we provide to all our customers and we joke in the office that Roy is the most well-liked person in our District because he shows up with rebates and sharing knowledge and that sort of thing But he said he he's does his job well. We've got a lot of good people in the district All right, then that being said there's no reports So we'll go to the first item of administrative business, which is item 6.1 Conditional wills serves Yep, just 180 you seems to be the upcoming theme I have no real comments There's no unique situation here. So if you have any questions, I'd be happy to answer them. Otherwise Any questions from the public on this one seeing none Seeing none any motions Hey, I'll second all in favor I post All right next item is and 6.2 Hi, good evening. I'm gonna be presenting this item and first I just wanted to do a little bit of introduction and then we do have a special guest here I'm so Cal Creek Water District is one of approximately 2300 special districts in California the special district leadership foundation was formed in 1999 and it's a 501 3c Organization that was formed to provide recognition and certification opportunities to special district officials and employees To enhance the service of the public. It is dedicated to excellence in local government This agency has designed and implemented many programs and today We're very proud to be recognized for two such programs under their umbrella the district's transparency certificate of excellence As well as the special district administrators certification Tonight we have Steven Nassimiento who will be presenting the awards and I'd just like to say thank you for coming And I'm just gonna do a quick shout out since I've been involved with special districts for over 20 years here and at the Santa Cruz port district and And the California Special District Association you see a lot of organizations and This one's at the top of its game. They're a really well-run organization and they provide a tremendous Value to the to the members and you go to their conferences and they and I've told Neil this many times He's nailed it. You know, they've got he's their executive director. They know how to make them informative and Just really beneficial so to that you can take that back. I did a genuine. Thanks for what you guys do Thank you. I came here to say nice things about you guys and now we're getting the praise So thank you very much. It's really a pleasure and an honor to be here this evening This is my first time presenting two certificates to a district in one evening So a special appreciation for you and your efforts I wanted to start with talking about the district transparency certificate of excellence a little bit about the special district Leadership Foundation for those in the audience the special district leadership foundation is a 501 C3 Not for profit organization. That's dedicated to promoting excellence in special districts through our recognition programs And one of those recognition programs is the district transparency certificate of excellence This program was created in 2013 as an effort to promote transparency in the operations and governance of special districts and To provide special districts with an opportunity to showcase their efforts in transparency There's really three main components requirements of the program one is Additional transparency requirements, which include current ethics training certificates for all board members So you all have a role in receiving the certificate Timely filing of the state control or special district financial transactions and compensation report There's also website requirements, which include posting the board meeting scheduled district mission statement current audit and budget and the board of directors roster with terms of office and The district's website. There's also additional outreach requirements community outreach requirements The district has to select two community outreach efforts, which they get to choose from a regular newsletter an annual Informational public budget meeting or a community transparency review and so by undertaking all these efforts Your district has shown that you have a commitment to transparency and CSDA wants to recognize That that effort and so tonight and as I understand you first receive the certificate back in 2015 Which I think is worth mentioning because one of the things that STLF requires is that you have to maintain These initiatives and every two years it gets renewed and that you have renewed it in 17 and now again tonight and so I want to recognize you for that and Was hoping that we could maybe get a photo of everyone together getting their certificate And just would like the audience to join me in a round of applause for their efforts and transparency Yeah, that'd be great You Okay, well thank you for that. That's great. CSC always likes to promote our districts who on our Facebook page and through our other means who receive this certificate. I also have the privilege tonight of recognizing your general manager, Ron Duncan. CSCA, one of its most highly regarded programs is our special district administrator's certification. This is a certification of voluntary designation sought by individuals who strive to be the best in their field. And this certification requires a two hour exam covering various aspects of special district administration and gives successful candidates recognition unmatched by any other program. As Ron can attest, it's not just the exam, it's all the hours that go into preparing for the exam. There's many hours of continued education that are required and it's a very thorough process. There are I think are less than 50 special district administrators who are certified within the state of California. So it really is quite the effort and is a really noble recognition. And so with that, I want to on behalf of the board and staff of the special district leadership foundation, it's my pleasure to present Ron Duncan of the Sokol Creek Water District as a certified special district administrator in recognition of successful completion of the exam, a high level of knowledge and expertise in the areas of special district management and governance and a strong commitment to the community. So congratulations, Ron. Thank you. Thank you. I'll come up. I'll just say that, you know, some people look at criticism or input, you know, when I get my 360 degree evaluations every year, a couple years ago, that was the input that I got from, I think the board and the staff was, you're good in these areas, but beef up in the kind of the administrative, legal, Brown Act, all that. So I took that to heart and I did, I studied for about a year for the exam. I didn't think I passed, but anyway, good job. And I will just say that, you know, Ron's not only put his brains in his hard work into that, but he puts his heart into this as well. This means a lot to him to have the district not only be valuable to the community, but also that all the employees are treated well and are listened to. So kudos, Ron. Thank you. I appreciate it. And I think that means a lot to the board and to the staff. Absolutely. He puts into it. All right. Well, and next is item 6.3. This is, is there any public comment on the awards? So item 6.3 contract award with professional meters incorporated. Yep. That'll be me. So in support of our upgrade from drive by automated meter reading to advance metering infrastructure, we developed a request for proposals for a contractor to replace about 15,500 registers and exchange those out. And the RFP was developed because metering system upgrades really affect every department at the district. It was developed with input from engineering and operations and maintenance and customer service and finance. So I think we, we had a good RFP out there that was released in March. And we got back by April 17th. We got back five bids, which I thought was a good showing given the specific nature of, of the work and the proposal. So the bids are laid out the summary of the bids in the table in the memo. And to give contractors flexibility, we established a minimum bid of 600 exchanges per month. And then we allowed contractors to provide an optional bid up to 1200 a month. We wanted to see if there was any price break by, you know, allowing people to do that, given that most of the people that do this kind of work are not located in our area. They're, they travel all over the country and they do electrical and water system upgrades. So as you can see in the proposals, the cost at 1200 exchanges per month did come out lower. The lowest bid was from Ferguson Water Works. And the second lowest bid was from Professional Meters Incorporated. There's about a $70,000 difference there. However, we felt that the bid from Professional Meters Incorporated had a lot more detail and they have a very robust electronic work order system that allows for electronic upload into our billing system for all of the data collected during the exchanges and it really reduces the chance of error from manual transcription. It provides for detailed reporting and project management, which was very valuable. So we feel that really going with Professional Meters is a best option that they provided the best, most responsive proposal. Just while you're, while you're mentioning that, I think you said also the other one wasn't, was not going to maybe do all the meters. Yeah, they set a lot of restrictions on basically prepping, clearing the areas of meter boxes with shrubbery and also a five minute limit on digging out meter boxes and you could clean out a meter box one day and another go back a week later and it could be filled up again. So we know that we, most of our meter boxes probably have some debris that has to be removed and so that would result in a lot of those being passed on to our staff who are going to be doing other things in support of the project. So we feel that PMI is really the best contractor out there for this work and at the best price for what the services are asking for. We did check their references. They did Coside County Water District's AMI upgrade, which was meters and registers. They did City of Ventura and City of Pleasanton and all three of those agencies had exceptional things to say about them, especially this electronic work order system that really made the projects flow and go well. So with that in mind, we're seeking board approval tonight. We're going to move ahead, approve Resolution 1909, awarding the contract to PMI at a rate of 1200 per month and to authorize the general manager to sign an agreement with them and a purchase order. Okay. Questions from the board? I can only say that I agree with your assessment. I would say that it's pretty critical to be as inclusive as possible so that the project will actually get done on time. Yes. Yeah. And at 1200 per month, assuming we start in June, which is what we're planning, if this is approved, it'll be a 13-month project. So that'll be somewhere around July or August of next year. And when would the act, I know this isn't related to this, but just when will the interface for the public be available? The interface for the public will be available. What we're also working on in parallel to the contractor, the first steps are to get the first base station and repeater in and test that technology and work out any kinks that might come up and also develop new processes internally in terms of checking for leaks and high usage and working with our office and making sure that we're providing our customers great service. And then secondly, we'll be working on incorporating the customer portal. So that probably won't happen until a little bit later in 2019. But in the interim, staff will be checking every day leak alerts and high usage alerts and then following up with the customers. So we'll start and save water right away as an instrument. Yeah, exactly. Good. Any comments from the public on this item? Thank you, Becky Steinbrunner. I have yet to see any discussion of the opt-out availability for your customers. That is an important issue for many people. And I would like to hear some discussion about that issue and how this new meter replacement and smart meter replacement will work and accommodate those who wish to opt out. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Any motions? I will make the first two motions. You want to comment on the opt-out? So we already have an opt-out program in place for our AMR drive-by system. And right now it's a $10 per month manual read. And that's assessed on a customer's bill. And we're planning on just continuing that same policy until we get our AMI system in and we can reevaluate whether we need to increase that cost of service fee. Opt-out policy has been in place for a while and will continue to be. Okay. So any motion? I made the first two motions. I'll second them. Seconded by Director Lather. Roll call, please. Director Lather. Yes. Vice President Daniels. Yes. Director Christensen. Yes. And President LeHue. Yes. Thank you. So we will go to item 6.4, election of Special District Alternate Member. Yeah, I was looking at Emma because she actually wrote this memo and I think it's the first one that you've actually lend your name to even though you go written, you want to switch over or go down to the signature page. So thank you, Emma. So congratulations to Director Lather. She was nominated by our board and elected by her colleagues out there in Special District Land to LAFCO. And Dr. LeHue is stepping down from the position and representing. So thank you for doing that. So in that transaction, I guess, it opened up Director Lather's alternate position. So we didn't know if the board wanted to nominate a board member for that position or somebody else even out in another board member for another Special District. And if you do, you can see the motions there regarding how you want to conduct the election and then give us permission to submit the nomination. Okay. Anybody have any ideas, thoughts? Something you want to do? Yeah. I don't have any. No, I actually don't even know what the time commitment is. Yeah. It's meetings are essentially once a month. On Wednesday. On Wednesdays at 10 a.m. And as an alternate, you wouldn't have to go to all of them. Yeah. That's what it is. Convenient. I know you were kind of interested in the past. Yeah. I just got through an election, though. Yeah. This is just being elected by the boards of all the other Special Districts. Well, I'll think about it then. Okay. We won't make any nominations at this time. Okay. Okay. So then we don't really need to worry about the preference for conducting the election then. Correct? Right. Right. And I don't know if the due dates could have passed by the next board meeting. Yeah. The deadline is June 7th. June 7th. So you could still. Okay. So we have one more. We have one more. Okay. We'll bring it back next meeting. Let's put that on the agenda. For sure. Okay. Now we'll move on to item 6.5. Consider. So who's taking that one? Yeah, I'll kick that off. This is for consideration of agreement for an option to purchase the property at 2505. Chanticleur Avenue. And the corner of Soquel Avenue. And so what's on the back table is what was provided just before we went into closed session. So it's accessible to everybody. All at the same time is the purchase option. I mean the purchase option agreement. And then also if we were to move forward with that or the board was desired to move forward with that in the future. We'd have to come back to another meeting. The purchase agreement. And we know people are interested in this. So we actually put together a few slides. I think there are a few new faces here in the audience. They're probably here for this item. Is that correct? Okay. Anybody else? Okay. Great. So let us run through this if you would. And then we can take a comment and that sort of thing. So let's switch it over here, Shelly. And then knowing if you could run that. So go up to Y and Y. So back up the other way. So one more up. Two Y's. Why do we need a project? We always. The Y is at the central of any decision, you know, if you really peel back the onion. So why do we need a project? We're going to touch on that. And then why the purification portion at Chanticleer. So we think that just trying to dive right into what we think the new members of the audience want to discuss. So why the challenge? What is our challenge? Next slide. It's seawater intrusion. This is a map of Soquel Creek Water District. The bay is in dark blue. And then our service area is outlined in black there. What you see red dots and orange dots are our monitoring wells along the coast that show seawater intrusion on shore. The red dots are nearly at sea water concentrations. And the yellow dots are very high to the limits around 250. So I think the orange dots is at least a thousand to a 10,000 if I see that right. So we have it on shore. And the green dots are our wells, monitoring wells. And the wells with the W are our pumping wells. That's what we supply all our water to all our customers. And there are a lot of other wells in here too. We pump probably about 60% of the water out of the basin. So preventing, what we didn't know a couple years ago was we knew we had seawater intrusion on either end of the district. Matter of fact, just about six months a year ago, a guy in the southern end walked in and his farm just got hit by seawater intrusion. He had to give back about $25,000 because the farmer couldn't use his land anymore because it as well went bad. So we knew we had seawater intrusion on either side. We didn't know where it was in, let's say, the middle of the banana, kind of like Capitola and all that area where you don't see red dots. That area right there. Thank you. So next slide. So this is a bigger area. The area down in yellow is Monterey Salinas. That's where seawater intrusion has occurred over the years into there. So it's about eight miles inland or 10 miles inland. It's actually moved quite rapidly in the last couple years further. And then that's the Pajaro Valley. It's in about three miles there. And the way I think about this is it may only be moving. How it moves is based on the gradient, the hydraulic gradient. But in Pajaro, it was moving about three quarters of a foot a year. So if you could imagine a cliff eroding three, you know, an ocean cliff eroding three quarters of a foot every year, what that would feel like. Well, that's what it's like with seawater intrusion, except it's under a ground. And because it's underground, it happens. And it's hard to stop. People don't believe it. It's easy as an elected official to say, I'll kick the can. I think our board's taking a different position. We have a slide that's not in here. But I often use the statistic to stress the point is that it's groundwater. Seawater intrusion has happened in about 70% of the populated coastal regions of the world that rely on groundwater. So we have a map that actually shows around the world and you can see all the spots. So this is not a figment of our imagination. This is a very, very real thing. I showed this map last week. Well, I'll get to that in a second. Let's go to the next slide. Wait a minute. We do. Yeah. It's not three quarters of a foot per year. Oh, that's a year? No. You said a year. Oh, I'm sorry. Day. Yeah, well, a day. Yeah, per day. The Pajaro, it was found in 1950. Yeah. It's three miles inland. It's three miles. That's like 100 feet per year. Yeah. It's three miles inland. So if you do the math, 1950 and 5,280 feet per mile, blah, blah, blah. So our basin, the state recognized the threat to our basin and declared it critically overdrafted just a few years ago. They just, last month, came out with that redesignation and published that. And we're still classified as critically overdrafted. That's that area. There's only about four or five coastal areas that are designated as critically overdrafted. In the state as a whole, there's only 21 basins out of 500 that are critically overdrafted. And so what that means is the state has mandated that the Santa Cruz Mid County Groundwater Agency finish a plan in about, by January, with projects to bring the basin back in sustainability and it has to be done by 2040. So 20 years, we've got to bring this basin that's been out of wax since the 1980s. Next slide, please. So remember I said in the banana bent portion there. Let's call it Capitola, if you will. Sea cliff. We didn't know where seawater intrusion was offshore because this is, imagine layered aquifers and if the ocean's here and this is land, the seawater as you pump on land, it comes in like this under the aquifers and destroys them. That's what it does. It comes in and contaminates the water with seawater which makes it unusable. Well, we didn't know. We thought maybe it's a mile offshore and we have a lot of time. It could be very close to shore. Well, the Danish government offered us this technology and they worked under the review of the U.S. Geological Survey and Stanford University with writing papers. Stanford's paper just came out. Matter of fact, with this, what we're showing you here right now, it's online, it's free. And it was wonderful because nobody thought it could work, but it did. So that's the positive part. The negative, the downside was the result and what they discovered is that it's right at the shoreline. It's not a mile off, so it's right near the wells and Stanford has even come out with a paper that confirmed that and they said it may even be a little closer than you think. We think there's some beyond where you flew so it's at the coastline. So it's there. It's real. Now we presented this the other night and somebody said this feels like a scare tactic. It feels like a threat. You know, I didn't know how to respond because it's data. And then I thought about it. Yeah, it probably does because it is scary because it has happened. Of course there's a visual reaction to seeing this and going, it's not, you know, trying to defend against it but as you can see down there are friends to the south and I don't have the map for all around the world but they may have had the same reaction that it couldn't happen there, but it does and it happens and it continues to happen until you stop it. So once it happens, it's ruined for pretty much Yeah, I mean you can in a near zone you can probably flush some of it out and bring some of it back and those concentrations that you see there were taken in 2017. You can see 1,000 on the left up to 1,700 and remember the limits 250 at the red dots. 1,000. Yeah, so. Well, one thing we did get some feedback on the map that Ron first showed which just showed so-called Creek Water District Wells. So on this map it does now show other municipal wells that are also pumping within the Santa Cruz Mid-County Groundwater Basin. So there are wells not just so-called Creek Water District but also Central Water District which serves Aptos and then the Live Oak Well Field which is part of the City of Santa Cruz Water Department system. And we'll get to that. Live Oak has a well filled, I mean probably before most of y'all's time but they had their own little groundwater and we got a slide on that. So we'll get to it in a second. So the next slide please. What we didn't add and maybe we will in another rendition are the thousands of private well owners that are also pumping. Yeah, better threatened by this. So the concept of in this together is that communities that haven't worked together have had seawater intrusion. This is, you know, well, the city pumps water out of the Live Oak Wells, we pump water, private well pumpers, Cabrillo College, golf course, all the way down to Pajaro, Mutuals. You know, it's just a matter of time if we don't stop it as you can have seen on some of the other maps. So that what we've come to embrace is we have to work together. So that's the message there. Now, were you gonna take this? Okay, so Melanie's gonna take the next part and then I'll come in and wrap it up at the end. I just have a few slides just to introduce for those of people in the audience who may not exactly know what the Pure Water Soak Health Project is. There are also some handouts on the back table that provide fact sheets or overviews related to the project. So here's one here. The Pure Water Soak Health Project is actually one of the water supply options within the Soak Health Creek Water District Community Water Plan. The Community Water Plan was an effort by Soak Health Creek Water District to really get input from our community on what they valued in terms of water sustainability and reliability and from those efforts the district has been pursuing water conservation, groundwater management, and developing new water supplies. Through that effort, Soak Health Creek Water District is the lead agency working with multiple other agencies including the City of Santa Cruz, the County of Santa Cruz, the City of Capitola on providing a reliable water supply by using purified recycled water and what is Pure Water Soak Health. So the project entails capturing about 25% of the 8 million gallons a day that goes out to the Monterey Bay National Marine Sanctuary. About 50% of that 8 million gallons a day is generated in the unincorporated areas of the county that we serve. So that's Aptos, Seascape, Capitola, Soquel, that region, then another 4 million gallons a day is produced in the City of Santa Cruz. That water is treated to secondary standards and then it goes out into the ocean. What Pure Water Soquel is planning to do is to recapture that water, recycle it and then purify that water through advanced treatment processes so that water can be put to beneficial reuse to create a seawater intrusion barrier to prevent that seawater intrusion that Ron talked about that's actively intruding into our groundwater resources and keep it at bay. So one way to address overdraft conditions is to refill the basin, create that higher pressure head that would then keep that salt water from moving inland. And actually the source water would be tertiary. Right. Yes. Thank you for the lead-in. So as part of the project development and evolution we have completed a feasibility study. We completed the environmental review process and we've been working with the agencies on furthering the preliminary design and as Director Daniels mentioned what the project now entails is that the water would be first treated at tertiary level. So the advanced water purification process includes microfiltration, reverse osmosis and then hitting it with UV light. The first portion which is the microfiltration actually takes secondary water and creates it to tertiary level. Tertiary level treatment is what people may know as recycled water, purple pipe water. It's traditionally used for irrigation of parks, golf courses, crops. That water is then going to be treated to tertiary levels down at the Santa Cruz wastewater treatment plant which is that star at the bottom. It would serve multiple purposes. First it would provide feed water to the advanced water purification facility at Chanticleer. But it also would be used for the city of Santa Cruz to use recycled water at their facility for in-plant uses. They're also planning on using it to irrigate a park nearby. And they're also going to be creating a fill station. So typically right now when there's contractors or development that's going on they have to fill up at a bulk water station for desk control or construction. There will be a fill station now so that the water that they're using is not going to be drinking water. It's going to be recycled water. So the water then is treated to tertiary levels down at the wastewater treatment facility and it would be piped over to the Chanticleer site where it would be purified. So I know we've been getting quite a few letters and there is some still discussion, misinformation that this project is a sewer project, a sewer treatment plant, a wastewater treatment plant. This is not so. The water, feed water is recycled water and the water, I don't even have the recycled, but this is secondary. So the recycle, the tertiary I think is in somebody's car. But this is secondary water. So this is what goes out to the ocean every day and it's pretty clean. I mean, we open it up, we have people smell it. Some people say it smells like pond water. So the water then is treated through microfiltration and then it would go to the Chanticleer site. It would be purified through reverse osmosis. Some people have reverse osmosis technology under their sink. Or it's also the same technology. If you go and you go get those big five gallon things at a grocery store, they use reverse osmosis technology. It's hit with some UV light and it becomes purified water. So this is purified water from Orange County Water District. They've generated over 200 billion gallons of water that goes and recharges and creates a sea water intrusion buried down in Orange County. That purified water then would be transported through those blue lines on the map to three sites that the district hydrologist has helped to identify that would be beneficial to the Mid County Groundwater Basin to create kind of what they call an iron curtain or sea water intrusion barrier system to protect the groundwater wells behind it. Just one thing to note. You know, use of recycled water, especially advanced purified water, is something that is not uncommon in California or in other places. This is a map of water reuse in California and how it's being put to beneficial reuse by either being placed into the groundwater basin to replenish the groundwater basin or create a sea water intrusion barrier, or it's also plans used to augment surface water supplies. So just wanted to kind of note that in terms of the map and that the demand projections out there statewide is to increase the use of recycled water to over 400 million gallons a day by 2023. Currently, I just kind of wanted to also recognize that two things. At the end of December of 2018, the state passed some new policy and their recycled water policy goals. Again, that stated expansion of reuse. There is no new water. And also to really identify and set some priorities related to maximizing recycled water in areas where there's the groundwater resources are in a state of overdraft. Currently, there is a state bill called SB322, which is cosponsored by Senator Hertzberg and Senator Wiener. And that bill is to reduce ocean discharge of treated wastewater effluent and put it to beneficial reuse. And I think that's important. In the current bill version, if you don't do it, it's $2,000 an acre foot. So what that means that, and it pushes it back to the water provider. So Santa Cruz and us would have to relay that cost on to our customers. If that bill succeeds in the way it's moving now. But you want to recycle. Can I just mention one other thing is just that a lot of energy and effort has already been put into treating the water to secondary standards that's now just getting wasted and put out into the ocean. So the additional energy and technology to get it to usable for recycling and then polishing it for purification is a very beneficial use. Yeah. I mean, to put a number to it, each household in this area pays $750, although that's per year to have their water treated and put out to the ocean. So we'd be capturing that. And actually that rate's going up, I believe. My last slide before I turn it back to Ron is just again kind of giving a visual of what the inside of a water purification facility would look like. The units behind myself and Director Lather and a City of Santa Cruz staffer are the reverse osmosis membranes on a municipal level. Obviously they're bigger than the kind that you would have underneath your sink. But again, just to clearly show that this is not what some people may envision when they think of the misinformation of a wastewater treatment plant that there would be these open pits or something. Everything is enclosed. It's a closed system. There is no smell or odor. Everything is being treated through membranes. And that facility there was a demonstration facility in San Diego. It was about a one million gallon per day facility. So there's not a lot of units that some people may think of. It really is a nice compact way to provide a water treatment facility. Yeah, I think it's important to reiterate the water coming has, I mean, the water going out the ocean has no odor. It's treated again because odor is a big thing to people. So it's further treated. It absolutely has no odor. So really I think the couple of you that are out there from Live Oak and I'm a Live Oak resident myself are going, but why? Shanna Claire, you know. So we did look at many, many, many sites. And this site was chosen to optimize community benefit as a whole. And let me get specific here. Next slide. So here's a slide out of the Mountain Water Management Plan from the city of Santa Cruz. What you see there on the tip is Pleasure Point. I think everybody knows that area. And you see what's called, you see some monitoring wells, but you also see the production wells and what they call the Belts well field. So roll in drive. If anybody's ever been to roll in drive off 30th, down in there, there are a couple wells in the ground. And the amount of water they've been pumping out of here, the city of Santa Cruz and providing to Live Oak is enough to serve, I think it's either, I think it's half, about half of Live Oak. To put it in another perspective, it's about 500 acre feet and put it another way, it's about one third of the problem, the deficit that we're facing or the amount of water that Pure Water Soquel would produce. So Live Oak is, you know, in the game here. And this is within, they have wells and it's within the Mid County Groundwater Basin. Okay, next slide. So this is complicated, but I'm going to run you through it. If you can hang with me for a second. So this is modeling. Groundwater modeling done by hydrologists for the Mid County Groundwater Agency. And you see the coastline there in the upper right. You see some wells circled there in that picture. That right along Pleasure Point. So those are the wells that are graphed here in these graphs. And let me explain the graphs. On the left side of the graph, you have elevation, groundwater elevation. And along the bottom is time going out many, many years. So they've worked a couple years on these groundwater models and this is kind of state of the art. The dash line that you see there, either the fine dash line or the more broken dash line, yeah, those are where we need to get the water levels to be in order to prevent seawater intrusion. Okay, so we got to get above those dash lines. Otherwise, it's continuing to come. And you can see it's down below that now at some of these points because they have it in the real data point starting there. The yellow line is baseline. What happens if we don't do anything? No action. No action. And you can see at those elevations that seawater is coming at you. Plain and simple, plain and simple. You double that distance or drop that line twice, it'll come at you twice as fast. It's a linear equation. So anyway, what you see in the green and blue is what the impact of pure water soquel has when we recharge the wells. And you can see it brings it up above there and brings it up maybe a little more than we need in the bottom right, but not enough up in the top left. So we're advancing this concept to redistribute, pumping a little bit more. So in other words, where we put water in, recharge the wells, which show them over here, we could pull a little bit of that out, still create a seawater barrier, but pump less down in the wells that you sit down in the live oak or other places that we have wells, the jewel box all the way down, the aptos, whatnot. And more uniformly create a, I like to call it a seawater iron curtain. So what I'm trying to demonstrate here is number one, live oak. I want to be very clear about this live oak, because this is something we missed early on when we talked to the school district and other people, they go live oak and we go, well, I'll get to some other reasons, but it was a member of the public that brought this to us and said, well, it's clearly helping. And so anyway, you get the idea, live oak pumps water, this and they're creating a situation that's unsustainable and I should be clear, Santa Cruz pumps that water. The 500 acre feet of the year they've been pumping, again, that's one third of the problem. They're really allowed, their urban water management plan had estimated they'd be pumping in the future three times that much. Now, I don't know if they will, but that would be equal to what the project produces. Okay. I hope I'm not talking too many numbers. Let's get to some pictures. So here we are, Highway 1. On the left is the Chanticleira site and then on the right is the Kaiser site. So in the Sheriff's office right there. So just to give you like a scale, I think our site's maybe three quarters or half the size of the Kaiser site. And let's go down to the next slide. So this is what was in the draft EIR. It's a very rudimentary picture, but I just wanted you to see, you can see Soquel Avenue and then Chanticleira there and then what's important to note here is the proposed bike path pedestrian way. I don't know if any people in the crowd are aware of that. We weren't, but it's been 10 years in the making. EIRs approved. Well, we were aware that's why. Well, we were aware, but I wasn't aware like three years ago and it's been 10 years in the making. Oh, right. Yeah, we've been recently aware. 10 years in the making and completed EIR, right? EIR certified. EI certified. And they're at 60%. And they're at 60% design on that. So that was one of the things that attracted to this site because that bike path as you'll see obliterates the frontage along Soquel and for store frontage and that sort of thing pretty much is a no go. People aren't interested in it when your road frontage is gone. So it made the site less valuable to something like that. Next slide, please. So here is a picture of the site. Everybody recognizes it by the old house that's there. It's a barn. Yeah, barn, whatever. It actually was a house. So there's the glass place and it gives you a little side. There's the APN. It's Zone Light Industrial. So they're the... Proved uses. Proved uses, yeah. Next slide, please. So here's an artist rendition and this really doesn't mean a whole lot because we're seeking, as you'll see at the end, input from the community about design features and that sort of thing from the live Oak community specifically about what they want to see as far as the layout in the facility. So here it is. Is this out of the EIR? This is out of the regional transportation. Okay, so this is the RTC who we've been working with and they're very excited to have a willing partner to say you can take that portion of our site so you can put the bike pedestrian pathway. So this is coming over Highway 1 from the left, coming down and coming right down all along the front of that lot. Shana Clara lot. Okay, next slide, please. Here's a view. If you're coming down Highway 1, these are cool. I just want to throw you in there, throw them in there just so you can see what's coming down the pipe here for us, which I'm really excited. I'm a big biker and to have a way over that is critical because we know Soquel and 41st are pretty dangerous. So next one. So here are just some possibilities of what pure water or Soquel could look like, the treatment plan itself. We'll have some sketches that we'll bring into a future meeting, but this is just to get the creative juices flowing. You can really make it look like anything you want. The renditions that we're working on for a future meeting have features in there, like if you're coming down the bike path, because that's really the only place you can really see the lot, unfortunately, I guess. So if you come down, is there potential for a green roof maybe, or I don't know, we're trying to get stimulated by the public here. But here's some ideas. Next slide. And then we've done a lot of outreach. We wanted to do more of a Live Oak. We recognize that. But one thing I would like to point out is that over 7,500 postcards went out and a lot of those were in Live Oak. And Santa Cruz. And Santa Cruz. We have facilities. All along the pathway that you saw, there's a certain buffer zone. And then you can see all the other things. We don't need to go into that. So here is an upcoming meeting that Live Oak residents particularly are invited to. You can see it's on a Saturday and another weekday. So I want to encourage people to come to that. We will have our partners. The Mid County Groundwater Agency will be there. The RTC promoting the bike route pathway. It's the same presentation, same information will be at both meetings. One's on a Saturday afternoon and one's on a Tuesday evening. Right, right. And yeah, try to divide it up because there's many people. There'll be, obviously, there'll be interpreters for those who... Spanish. In Spanish. And some of the stuff will be in Spanish too. So I really want to encourage that. So I think, did we throw this slide in? It's just in there in case... Okay. Well, we wanted to just note that one of the things related to that area specifically is that we have had people go, you know, there's so much traffic in there and then you're going to be putting in this, your Pure Water Soquel project there. Just in terms of the impacts that were identified in the EIR, we did want people to note that facilities such as ours really doesn't have a lot of traffic impacts. The generation of vehicle trips that would go back and forth really are isolated to those who are working at the facility. So we do assume that we probably will have somewhere around five to ten employees that may be coming through there. And it would also be what we have identified is that we do want to encourage education and youth tours. We do have a very broad outreach program and we do consider, you know, water purification to be something that we want to educate the community on. And it was something when we started to do some early outreach with the Live Oak people, they wanted to make sure that we were having education there. So let me wrap it up with why Chanticleer again. So number one, Live Oak is, we as a community and throughout, you know, have skin in the game, so to speak. Number two, the centrally located location of the facility offers up in the future if Santa Cruz wants to irrigate with that water along the way, that is a beneficial use that they could look at if they want to do another, they have to do an EAR, it's not included in our thing. But that's where the bulk of the irrigation for like fields, because remember it's tertiary treated to that level. If you purify it down there, if you were, it's much more costly and takes more energy, so it's, I don't think the right environmental thing to do. But if you bring it up to Chanticleer, it could offer going up to Delaviega, there's Simkins, there's other places in the future if Santa Cruz wants to pursue that, the, we're building it in such a manner that allows for that. We, then from there on purifying it, there's very little opportunity for irrigation along the way, but you could use that water then if Santa Cruz liked, and again they'd have to go back to the table, but it would at least be purified. Maybe a recharge pond there at the corner, 30th and Baroma, I think. I've never seen that whole much water be an example. So that'd be one thing, or other places if they need be. So it's designed, the facility's being designed for future potential to benefit even greater than what it's doing now. And of course we mentioned that there's pending legislation about mandating coastal communities reducing their discharge to the bay, so if we, that comes to fruition and we don't do that, we're all gonna be hit with that. Anybody if we're not recycling the water. So there's other benefits, I'll just touch on one. Right now I've had like, you know, representatives in the community say you're putting a lot of heat on Live Oak and other areas because buildings harder in Soquel Creek Water District. Since 2003, we've had what's called our Water Demand Offset Program, and Builders, and we're meticulous about this. We document it, it's all online. You can see they have to save twice the amount of water they're projected to use. So if you build a house, you've got to save twice what it's gonna use, and we've seen that in our numbers come down. And what's it cost a single family right now? They can actually buy into that because we have a project that'll save some water. $23,000. So it's about $23,000 extra burden to people developing in Soquel Creek Water District since 2003 to build a house because we're in a critically overdrafted situation. And we feel, our board has felt that if we didn't make that mandatory to the developers, number one, it would do more harm to the basin. But what kind of signal would that extend to our existing customers who are saving beyond belief? I mean, we're using about one-third, 50 gallons a day, one-third the state average. So our people are rock stars that save them water. But, you know, we hear it all the time. Yeah, I want to take a longer shower. I want to quit hauling buckets, blah, blah, blah. So this project will also, if the board chooses when it comes online, it might have the potential to make that program not exist. That'll be a board decision, of course. But, again, and allow some more development into the house and our area that maybe we're burning other areas with right now. So I think that's it. Do you want to go into that agenda item now that we've set? Yeah. So we set the stage and I know the public, you want to get up there and comment and the board wants to hear that. But what is, well, really this item centers around tonight is on the back table, as was mentioned, when we went into closed session, before we went into closed session, we set this out here for the public. And it's the agreement for the purchase option. And if the board does approve the purchase option and decide to move forward at a later date with the purchase of the property, it has that agreement, too, out there. They're on the back table right now. I think there's still copies. Tash or Leslie can. Okay. So they're there. And so what's in front of the board tonight is to direct, authorize staff representative to sign the agreement for the right to the option to purchase a property. I want to be very clear, not to purchase a property. And as it's shown in number two here, the motion, if they do go forward with the authorization and sign the purchase option, then the direct staff to come back at a future date and other board meeting, we don't know when that would be, but for approval and consideration and potential approval of the purchase agreement. I just want to be very, very, very clear about that. Thank you. Okay. Any questions from the board? Okay. Any public comment on this item? Becky Steinbruner, resident of Aptos. I hope some of the people that I think are here tonight from the Live Oak community will speak. Thank you for the presentation. I just want to point out that there is litigation against you and part of that, one of the causes of action is that you did not expand outreach to the Live Oak area when you changed the scope of the project. Those people have had no input on the CEQA process. Yes, they can come and tell you what they want to see now, but they have had no input through the CEQA, California Environmental Quality Act process. That needs to be redone. And so I'm glad you're doing some outreach now, but doing outreach after the fact does not correct the problem. So again, I'm asking you to respect the litigation that is before you in case 19CV00181 and stop with the process of acquiring this property. I see that you're now up to over $3 million. That does not, I do not see in here what the premium is, which as I understand there must be some of money put forth as consideration to make the contract legally binding. I do not see that in here. And I do see that the term of the agreement is one year I had heard earlier today. It was 11 months. So I'm a little confused. You've presented a lot of information. What I have not heard you say is that you're taking this property under friendly condemnation. What is that process? What is it costing? I see that you're going to pay for the survey and do diligence. I'm glad you're going to do that, especially when Director Lather had many reservations about this site due to historic use earlier. I want to point out with limited time here that you talked about how once seawater comes in the things are just gone forever. That's not true. And that was pointed out recently when it was discussed the Moran Lake monitoring well had been up to 500 to 700 milligrams per liter of chloride now it's down to 50 and it is usable. So it can be recovered. I want to encourage people to go to the April 1st, 2019 Santa Cruz City Joint Meeting of the Water Supply Committee and Water Advisory Committee, wherein Isidro said that actually would end Rosemary Menard that if pure water so cow comes in along with the very aggressive aquifer storage recharge project that the city is doing in the Beltswell area they will actually be competing for storage space and your own hydrologist has said that if the two projects go, the water level would come to surface level. Your time is up. Thank you very much. Thank you. I hope the live vote people will speak. Is there anyone else that wishes to make a comment? Can we reset the clock? We start off with I do. I thought you were talking. Go ahead. You just got into my car. I'm Marcus Hadnack and I live in the live Oak area of Santa Cruz. First time I'm not a professional person that confronts or I'd like to live my life, pay my taxes, vote my voters and bring good people of goodwill into positions of power and I'm speaking here tonight because that process has now failed and it's failing the citizens of live Oak, it's failing the citizens of Soquel and it's failing the citizens of Santa Cruz County and I'm here because it's really important as a community that we confront the financial malfeasance and community disenfranchisement directly and not let it go unchallenged. The Soquel Creek Water District Board has spent $2 million to acquire property in Soquel for uses including a small advanced water purification facility that money has been spent and the residents of Soquel, they rightfully complained about the untreated wastewater that was going to be treated in that facility but this board is elected by the citizens of the Soquel Water District and bowing to voter pressure the board found reason to look for an alternative site and found a location in live Oak for their project and the residents of live Oak have no say in that. John Leopold doesn't have any say, we don't have any say in the composition of this board and that by definition is disenfranchisement and it's not right and it's not just. It gets worse. Now you're looking to spend $3 million, $4 million to buy additional land for a project that you've already bought. This makes no sense. Makes absolutely no sense. The pure water, Soquel water is treated an entirely different now than the original project that was proposed for the Soquel site and that the Soquel residents oppose. It's an entirely different project. That project needs to go back to the land that you bought. You don't spend the $4 million and just to finish I would urge the board to locate the pure water Soquel project to the original Soquel site and save the rate payers and taxpayers the millions of dollars. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anyone else? Anyone else that wishes to address the board? Hi, my name is Jennifer Campanolo. I am a resident of live Oak. I have three children that I'm raising within that community. I actually do a lot of community support within the entire county, which I'm really proud of. But what I would really like to understand and express my concerns for is that this property at 205 Chanticleer is actually zoned as mixed use commercial and it's actually located right down the street from a very new, very exciting project. Santa Cruz's first and only handicapped playground. So this is strictly a neighborhood that is up and coming and really trying to move towards a family friendly type of a community. And zoning is there in place for a reason and that's why it's a mixed zoning. And I'm just not understanding why one of the original options of research drive is not being taken into consideration when that is more zoned for more industrial and it's not a mixed zoning. Thank you. Anyone else wish to address the board? Hi, my name is Julie and I live in live Oak and I just want to say that I didn't ever receive any information about this going in. I found out about it on the internet and I've talked to neighbors up and down my street and nobody is aware of this going on. And I think it would be very professional and conscientious to the people in the area to let them know so that they can have some input on it. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Jane. Hi, my name is Jane Paradise and I'm speaking on behalf of myself and others in my Soquel Village neighborhood community which is surrounded which surrounds the West Antique site on all four sides including sharing fences and we do support the district's well research recommendation that the Pure Water Soquel's industrial wastewater recycling project even as it stands be appropriately located at industrial zoned locations such as Chanticleer site and Santa Cruz wastewater site. Your decision to choose industrially zoned sites is environmentally sound and consistent with the Santa Cruz County general plan policies and zoning code provisions. We therefore support the board moving forward on the purchase sale agreement for the Chanticleer site location that's before the board tonight. Both Chanticleer and Santa Cruz wastewater facility sites are already zoned industrial and have been for decades. People who work and live there already do so with the full understanding and acceptance of its industrial use location. However, locating this industrial project at West Antique would not be in compliance with zoning general plan Soquel Village plan or the sustainable Santa Cruz County plan. Placing this industrial facility at West Antique is the location of its zoning which is residential general plan designation which is low density residential as well as the Soquel Village plan where it's designated residential. Decades ago the Soquel Village community was committed to having a livable village community and they deliberately downgraded all of their zoning. So something that was heavy commercial they made like commercial. Something that was like commercial map and are designated as residential. Additionally, when the project cost comparisons were made in 2017 the Chanticleer site is $1,700,000 cheaper than the West Antique site and this is a significant difference in cost especially for us the district rate payers and these comparisons do already include land cost acquisitions and even though values both have gone up those that still the difference remains the same. So Chanticleer site is 1.9 acres, West Antiques is 1.5 which means Chanticleer the district would be getting more land for significantly less cost to the rate payers. Therefore we do support the board in finalizing and improving and moving forward on the purchase agreement for the Chanticleer site location. Thank you. Is there anyone else who wishes to address the board? My name is Kurt. I am a live oak resident and I attended the prior board meeting I think the last time the agenda item was discussed. I did talk to you, Ron, I think afterwards and you did take our name down and I'd just like to echo the same concerns that some of the other live oak residents have expressed including the lack of outreach you mentioned postcards never received it you had our name my phone number, my email never heard from you. So I still clearly have concerns with the lack of outreach to the live oak community but I think more importantly I have bigger concerns with the intended use of the property on Chanticleer. I fully support your project. I think it's a great idea and a great opportunity to further advance take a treated water inject it and combat that salt water intrusion but what I don't agree with is where it's being proposed in the community in an area that's really outside of your jurisdiction on a piece of property that is in my opinion primary real estate between 41st and Soquel along the frontage road when you have a big anchor development coming in like Kaiser that would support other better uses that would benefit the community the county, the live oak community and I hear you about the bike path but I think developers can get creative and frankly I don't think that that's an issue in terms of having missing that frontage strip with an important development like what is being proposed down the street there would be other opportunities to take advantage of that property for a better use of the community so that's what I'd like to I wanted to express my concerns I will be at the meetings later in the month along with other members of the community and I look forward to hearing more from the district thank you thank you is there anyone else okay seeing none back to the board then presently you there's a couple of items that were mentioned that are simply not true there was a statement made that there's no consideration for the option the first five months of the option are covered by the cost of a survey which if the option isn't exercised is something that's of value to the property owner and the next seven months which originally were six and it was recently changed to seven in negotiations which is the difference between the 11 and the 12 as Steinbrenner referred to that next 12 months seven months is paid for $5,000 a month so there is consideration for the option okay and the argument that keeps being made that because somebody files a lawsuit on whatever grounds everybody else must stop is something that Ms. Steinbrenner has put to the court three times in the last four months and each time the court has told her no and denied her temporary restraining order that's not the way law works you have to win your lawsuits and you have to prove to the court that you have an ability to win you can't just file it and have everybody else stop their activities okay, nope public comment period is over alright any comments or proposals or motions from the board I still think it's a good place to put it I will make the motion I'm still pretty torn about all of this I have issues with a lot of misguided people spreading misinformation about the project and using it to win whatever argument it's going on it started with our local people and it seems like it keeps spreading this is a great project it is no matter where it is it's going to be a showcase project and whatever community gets it I'm pretty lucky in my mind I am just disappointed that we're not doing it and so Cal I lived in Live Oak I live in Capitola now but I have lived in Live Oak and when I first moved to this area that lot was pretty much the way it was nothing had gone on there for over 30 years it's been stagnating it's a very interesting neighborhood it's a very lovely neighborhood but in general I took my kids to Daycare on Shannon Clear Avenue I was there every day of the week for 5, 10 years so over that period of time I got to know the neighborhood a little bit and had friends there and I respect your community I apologize that we just because the way this project developed it's it became much more feasible to put the project in Live Oak for a number of reasons not merely the reasons that have been put out there but I have looked at a number of projects up and down the coast recycled water projects and they have the potential to be really an asset to anyone's community we just looked at one this past March and there's garden gardens a place for environmental meetings for playground for gardens it could be a showcase area and it would be one that would be accessible by bicycle from all parts of many parts of Central Santa Cruz it's really can be a very good site and I think that is one reason why I supported I think it has great potential as a water project to solve a lot of the problems in the entire basin which includes Santa Cruz City Pleasure Point, Live Oak as well as Aptos, La Celigiche and Soquel and Capitola so it's really could be a linchpin for a regional solution to our water solutions problems in this area and so I support this project and I'll just add that it's been pretty clear from the recent groundwater modeling that the best solution for our region is to have both this project and the Santa Cruz you know their advanced water or their aquifer storage and recovery to give us the best chance of preventing groundwater intrusion and I think it's a real threat and it's been one of the goals for my time on the board to find a solution so that my family can feel like we have a safe water supply so I will second your motion which I'm hoping includes both motions and in fact to say a little bit more about what you said the modeling has shown that the city's plan aquifer storage and retrieval without pure water fails so the basin becomes polluted and the state board comes in right so alright let's call for the question then all in favor aye all opposed one me okay the motion passes three to one thank you that concludes our meeting except for written communication does anyone wish to make comment on written communication yes I do thank you and I have requested written response from the district and hope that I can receive it many of my comments that I asked for written comment received none so I did write you with these concerns namely the information that I saw at the county building regarding the Lamb State and no one answered my question about the friendly condemnation proceedings that you are taking to get this land in 2017 Mr. Duncan had actually sent a letter to Mr. Lamb before he died essentially threatening eminent domain so this is this is an interesting development and I'm disappointed to see that you are forging forward again with this and that I with the project that I really see is unnecessary with regional management so I would like a response to my first question about the acquisition of the Lamb property what is involved in the eminent domain friendly condemnation the second part of my letter I ask for a discussion from you about the placement of your twin lakes church recharge well in your presentation you say there is no opportunity for irrigation yet you have promised twin lakes church three and a half acre feet a year for 50 years whether the pure water goes in or not so there is opportunity for irrigation with this treated water you could do well to irrigate cabrio college athletic fields and in fact cabrio college in a public records act request now says any recharge well that could have been a golden opportunity to provide them with water for their fields and rest their three private wells that are struggling but you didn't choose to do that I also want to in my correspondence I talk with you about the Haley and Aldrich hydrologic consultant and the placement of this recharge well in relation to the location of your estates well and how that might be affected the hydrologist Mr. in arson went to great lengths to discuss as he said a bit curious placement of your recharge wells and compared them to what orange county has done and your iron curtain against seawater intrusion is not in the proper place to accomplish that and that is not in keeping with what you tout as what Southern California does so I would like to I would like to thank you very much meeting is adjourned we will be back on May 21st