 Well, we'll go down, but we'll just thank everyone. We're all over. Good afternoon. I'd like to call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. If we may have a roll call, please. Thank you. Board Member Wright will be absent today. Board Member Watts will be absent today. Board Member Walsh? Here. Board Member Walsh, can you hear us? Yes, I'm here. Can you hear me? Your audio doesn't seem to be working. I'm here. Board Member Walsh, can you hear us now? Yes, can you hear me? Yep, thank you. Oh, great, thank you very much. Okay, Board Member Grable? Here. Board Member Badenfort? We'll be absent today. Vice Chair Arnone? Here. And Chair Galvin? Here. Let the record show that all board members are present with the exception of board members Wright, Watts, and Badenfort. Great. Good afternoon again. A reminder to everybody to please mute your phones and microphones when you're not speaking and to please put your cell phones and personal computers away. We'll move on to item two, which is statements of abstention by board members. Do we have any? Hearing none. We have no study session. We have minutes for the July 7th meeting that were circulated. So at this time I'll open it up for public comments on the minutes approval. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Manus, do we have anyone? There are no hands being raised via Zoom and no one in the chamber wishing to make public comment. Thank you. That'll take care of the approval of the minutes. We'll move to item 5.1, which is our first of two staff briefings. Director Burke? Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 5.1 is our wildfire preparedness staff briefing and making the presentation will be Ron Morinchuk, our acting deputy director of water and sewer operations. Thank you for that introduction, Director Burke. Can you hear me okay? Yes, we can. Thank you. Chair Galvin, members of the board, good afternoon. Today I'm going to provide what seems to have become an annual briefing on the status and preparations for the fire season and all things associated for local operations in the water department, but provide a little different approach as we are different. We're tempered, more experienced and continually improving. Next slide, please. As we all know, fire season is here again. June 6th marked the beginning of the 2022 fire season as reported out by the fire department and the press democrat and online. Next slide, please. So I'd like to begin with what we have done to date. As brought to the board as a consent item on the June 16th meeting, we're replacing 18 generators at our water and wastewater pumping facilities. We've also purchased two new portable generators. We're installing below ground fiber optic communication where applicable that utilizes station to reservoir communications. We've conducted a water system reliability study as well as a water system risk and resilience study. We perform abatement just as we asked our residences to do, we've increased communication and as with any good program, we practice and drill. Next slide, please. So during an event where the EOC or the DOC is activated, information comes from everywhere and is channelized very efficiently. Aside from that, we currently meet regularly with key groups and staff such as these shown. So with the groups proactively established, the frequency can easily be accelerated or decelerated as well as the function of the meetings changed to customize to whatever the situation may be. We also have two excellent internal means of communication that I will discuss further. They are INET and send word now. Next slide, please. So INET is City of Santa Rosa's internal web or intranet where pages can be created and customized to suit the need. This one is one we created for communication between water department personnel and the fire department. Each item can be situational item like taking a water storage tank offline or a proactive status change like raising our water storage tank levels. Beyond employees having the ability to access this, instant email notification can be set up to specific individuals when an item is created or modified. Next slide. This is an example of how the data is entered by the user created with dropdown menus, checkboxes for easy quick reporting for all to see as well as the direct email notification to assigned groups of fire and operations personnel. Next slide, please. So the last item I mentioned was send word now. This is a pre-populated notification tool similar to group email but can also be sent using text or voicemail to multiple phones per person or any combination of these methods. Next slide. Lessons learned from the Tubbs Fire and trying to organize different shifts on the fly during an event was difficult to say the least. Specifically to local operations, we have over 60 people that we predesignate to shifts on the onset of any emergency. We're in triage mode. So we basically have two 14 hour shifts as shown on this slide. We have day shift, night shift and as quickly as possible, we wanna move out of that through post triage and go to three 10 hour shifts, day swing and night. This was incredibly difficult to do as we were calling people up individually trying to get a hold of them. But with this one touch application, everyone can be notified either to report or to be prepared to report in at a specific time. Beyond the scheduling for shifts, this is also an excellent communication tool often during an emergency. One of the frustrations is lack of information for staff that might be stationed at a specific location in the field for many hours. With this tool, we can send current information and update staff at any given time and they'll all receive the same information very quickly. Next slide, please. So the screenshots that I have on this slide are two different moments in time from a site called purpleair.com. And we utilize sites like these to monitor wildfire smoke. Another lesson learned is the hazard of wildfire smoke even if there is no threat of fire. But there are other resources such as Bay Area Quality Management District and airnow.gov. The difference in hazard for a given location is shown numerically as particulate matter and in difference of color, green being good to dark red as hazardous. Next slide, please. Air quality monitoring is not only important outside but inside as well. These are two examples of air quality monitoring devices that we've purchased with documented SOPs for staff to use. Office personnel with indoor work environments such as support staff can use resources such as masks, moving work locations or thanks to COVID, some staff have the ability and experience to work remotely. In addition, we've also installed HEPA filters on facilities HVAC systems. Next slide, please. So moving forward, moving forward, we're going to continue in locations where applicable to install below ground fiber for more communications. We're going to install solar battery charging for our battery backup systems at our water storage sites. Look at installing high flow pumps at some additional water pump stations. Water and wastewater pump station hardening, utilizing fireproof materials and protecting vulnerable infrastructure. We also conduct our own abatement, continue this education or communication and continue to practice and refine drills. Next slide, please. For public safety, PG&E continues to rely on proactively turning off electricity when gusty winds and dry conditions combined with a heightened fire risk are forecasted as a way to minimize the potential fire risk caused by their infrastructure. As we all know, this action is commonly referred to as a public safety power shutoff or PSPS. These PSPS events will essentially happen when we are in a red flag fire condition and the forecast also calls for high wind speeds. Fortunately, these events are fewer, more focused with shorter durations than those in the past with much better communication, but we still take proactive measures to ensure we can maintain uninterrupted service to our customers. Next slide, please. Our water storage tanks need very little power to operate, only enough to run our SCADA and monitoring equipment. These systems have backup battery power that allows us to monitor tank levels and chlorine residuals remotely through our SCADA system. And as I previously mentioned, we're investigating solar powered chargers to maintain those battery systems. Next slide, please. All of our 20 water pump stations have backup generator power. These generators can operate for an extended period of time and will be supported by one of our many refueling procedures. We know how long each generator can operate with its current fuel supply. We can also operate our pump stations with portable pumpers or portable generators that can connect to each station in the event of a generator failure. Next slide, please. Our local sewer collection system is supported by 17 sewer lift stations. All but three of these stations have stationary generators on site. The size of the properties do not allow for generators to be installed and the area that is serviced is so small it's more practical and cost effective to use portable pumpers, generators, or vac trucks to service these facilities. Next slide, please. As we all know, we just flush the toilet or turn on the tap without a thought of how it works until it doesn't. Some citizens may not be aware they have their own private systems. We have the ability to identify and notify our customers that may be impacted if they have private water booster pumps or sewer grinder pumps so they can be prepared as well. Next slide, please. Some excellent resources are pgne.com slash psps as well as srcity.org slash emergency. We also want to spread the word that SoCo Alert is the best way for residents to stay informed about threats to themselves and their property but you have to sign up at SoCoAlert.com. Lastly, I'd like to highlight a free app that I recently found called WatchDuty. It was reported in the press democrat on June 17th. A retired person from the tech industry who lives in Hillsburg developed the free nonprofit app that has excellent fire reporting and communication ability. It started with within Sonoma County but now has gone statewide. I encourage people to check that out. It's a really nice app. Next slide, please. That concludes my presentation. I'd be happy to answer any questions the board may have. Thank you, Mr. Morinchik. I'll open it up now for board member questions or comments. All right, well thank you for your presentation. We'll now open it up for public comment on item number 5.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. There are no hands being raised via Zoom and no one in the council chamber wishing to make public comment. Thank you. Thanks again, Mr. Morinchik. We appreciate the presentation and I know we're way better prepared today than we were a few years ago and thank you for all you're doing. Thank you for the opportunity. Very good. That'll take care of item 5.1. We'll now move to item 5.2, Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvan and members of the board. Item 5.2 is our water supply update staff briefing and making the presentation will be Peter Martin, our deputy director of water resources. Good afternoon, Chair Galvan, members of the board. Happy to be before you with the water supply update. If we could go to the next slide. So this is a snapshot of Lake Pillsbury storage as of last Sunday. Lake Pillsbury storage is at 47,000 acre feet and I just want to point out to the board this time that the FERC Federal Energy Regulatory Commission has yet to respond to PG&E's variance request for reducing their FERC mandated minimum flows to five cubic feet per second. And I just want to point out, if you'll recall, one of the previous updates that gave PG&E's goal was to secure storage to protect cold water, storage releases for the yield river and then also keep 36,000 acre feet in storage by October 1st. So in comparison to last year, you can see that olive green line at the bottom. That was the storage last year. Obviously there's a lot less water in storage then, but last year, FERC granted PG&E's request for variance to 20 cubic feet per second in May. And so you can kind of see the differences in slope of those two lines, the black line being this year and that all green line. So it's rapidly declining due to them releasing their normal FERC releases for this time of year. We don't really have an idea of when FERC may respond to PG&E's request, but we're definitely monitoring as you can imagine. Next slide. So storage continues to gain or remain flat in Lake Mendocino. As of today, storage is at 50,000 acre feet or 61% of the water supply pool availability for this time of year. And then releases are at about 82 cubic feet per second. Interestingly, Director Burke actually pointed out to me yesterday that storage is on a trajectory to be near where it was in 2013, which is prior to the previous drought. And really this just to me kind of underscores the impacts to the operational flexibility that the ongoing releases from PG&E can make up for Lake Snow in terms of their operations of Lake Mendocino and the Upper Russian River. I think it's a fail of two years basically when you look at these graphics here. Last year, very little releases being made after May and then continuing to release water at this time. So, and I think if you recall too, Snow Water was making their releases and operating on a very razor thin margin last year to meet their minimum flow releases. And then several, many, many people on the Upper Russian River were curtailed of their water rights. To date, very few curtailments have occurred in the Upper Russian River. I think you've heard some of the stories about these water sharing agreements that are going on up there. This year is obviously much better even though we're still very similar in terms of where we are on the drought. So, next slide. So as of today, storage in Lake Sonoma is at 127,000 acre feet or 52.2% of storage capacity. The releases are at 95 cubic feet per second. We did learn at the recent technical advisory committee that Snow Water continues to operate under their temperature change order that was issued last month. And anticipate still that storage were made above 100,000 acre feet by the end of October. This is very similar to the way the reservoir was being operated last year. So there's some experience gained there as well. So just a reminder, we now have allocations for our contract water from Snow Water and our tracking customer usage internally on a regular basis to ensure compliance with those allocations. Next slide. Just to circle back on status of PG&E's Potter Valley project license. Something did occur this month. As a reminder, PG&E is currently operating under an annual license from FERC. This is subsequent to the expiration of their prior license term. And then just on May 11th, FERC did request that PG&E submit a plan and a timeline schedule for surrender application for this project. And on July 8th, PG&E did submit to FERC a schedule. Pending, obviously approval from FERC, they submitted this letter. 30 months is proposed for surrender plan and application. This includes several pieces and components and timelines. It doesn't have a ton of detail in that schedule, but I'm sure that we'll hear more in the ensuing months in terms of what PG&E's plans are. Next slide. Unfortunately in June, Santa Rosa residents slip a little bit in terms of our cumulative water use reductions. We now have, as you can see, a year of data since we first initially enacted stage three of the Water Shores Continuity Plan. In June, Santa Rosa residents reduced their water use by 17% in comparison to 2020. And cumulatively from July through June, water use has been reduced by 17% compared to 2020. If we go to the next slide. So what does this all mean in the backdrop? Show these graphics and kind of see those cumulative reductions. Again, just we enacted this stage three in June 29th, beginning in July of last year. So it's one year from that time where we're still in that stage three requirement. And our customers in that meantime have saved over a billion gallons during that year. So that should be noted. And just wanna point out that we've doubled our efforts as a team internally as we head into our hottest time of the year. We're very hopeful that we'll start to see some gains in terms of water save now that outdoor usage makes up a significant amount of water usage by our customers. And then I just wanna point out, hanging out on the fact that customer response and demand remain strong for all of the services from the water use efficiency team, audits, rebates, water waste reports, they're all still at strong levels very, very much compared to where last year people are paying attention. So just some good news there too as well. Next slide. And then I just kind of wanted to go down this exercise of looking at the trends longterm in terms of our gallons per capita per day. This graphic was provided to me by Mr. Conclose. We've been tracking sort of trends of gallons per capita per day amongst the backdrop of what we're asking of our customers right now. As you can see where those gray lines show up over time, those are droughts and are below average years. And you can really see through this data the blue line representing total gallons per capita per day and the orange being our residential gallons per capita per day. There are significant reductions that occur after these droughts. And really what we're seeing is that they don't ever come back after that. So the rebound does occur a little bit but it's definitely not as large after these droughts. So over time the trend just continues to go down if you revert back to that line at the top. So just to point out that there continues to be progress and a lot of it comes out of these droughts in terms of people being as very efficient in their homes and businesses and the customer response associated with that. For comparison, if you go back to 2013 which was prior to our last drought, if you compare where we're at today in June of this year, it's 27% lower than 2013. So there's a little bit of an understanding of the magnitude there too as well in the progress that's been made. And then cumulatively 26% lower than 2013 for our timeline over the 2021 through 2022, excuse me, July 2021 through June 2022. So yeah, just very interesting graphic. I like to get into these and just really see what's happening and just see the progress that's being made. Next slide. Very excited about the efforts this year with the regional partnership and the snowmower and saving water partnership. This year we are coordinating on what we call our summer pop-up series and you can go onto the saving water partnerships website and see these pop-up events that are occurring throughout the region. So you can go on and folks can see where we're gonna be next and they'll be providing drought tips and supplies of these various events. And it really just gives people a roadmap of where they can go and receive materials, supplies and things like that and shows that we're getting on the community and we're messaging about the drought. Next slide. So in terms of our contribution to this pop-up series, we're gonna be out and about in the next month here which I've highlighted some of the events. To the left, that picture there is a, this will be a bill insert and it will go and folks bill so they'll see the event that we're having here in partnership with Friedman's of Improvement on Santa Rosa Avenue and that will be on August 20th. So we're hopeful that a lot of folks will show up for that. Furthermore, we're planning to be at the live at Julliard concert series for every Sunday in July and August. Those are occurring July 17th to the 21st. So we had our first one last weekend from five to 7 p.m. The hydration station is there too as well. So it's a good time to get out and talk to the public. We'll be at the family night events coming up here at the end of the month, July 29th at downtown Courthouse Square handing out drought kits. And so just folks if they wanna find out more information about where we'll be they can go again to src.org slash pop-ups. So we're definitely getting out there and staying out there and being visible. So next slide. And I just wanna highlight, we're retooling. We have some real key outreach messages to our customers and I wanna share those with you today. We're asking folks to go obviously to pick up a free drought kit in multiple events or at our offices during business hours. And we're really pushing folks to save water outdoors now and throughout the summer and providing those tips on reducing watering times, making sure your system and irrigation system is in top shape, using rebates to become more efficient in your watering outside and watering during the times which are required under stage three or reminding folks that those are in place. And then we've got our plant picker tool which has been really helpful. If people wanna swap out plants for drought tolerant plants and really we had a workshop two days ago that was very well attended on tree care during drought. Don't want people to forget they need to protect their shrubs and trees. During drought, it's very important that they don't lose those and the shade that they provide to as well. And then we're working to get folks to use mulch to reduce evaporation in their gardens as well. And then we're having folks report waterways when they see it and use the WaterSmart portal to track your water usage at home and in your business as well. Next slide. So that ends my presentation. We'll continue to ask folks to go to src.org slash WaterSmart and src.org slash save water for the latest drought updates. Happy to take any questions you might have. Thank you, Deputy Director Martin. I'll open it up now for any board member questions or comments. I think it's interesting that we're kinda hoping that FERC takes its time in making a decision on the releases out of Lake Pillsbury that'll hopefully keep more water going into Lake Medicino. So we'll open it up now for 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, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. Chair Galvin, there are no hands being raised via Zoom and no one in council chamber wishing to make a public comment. Okay, thank you again, Deputy Director Martin. I'll take care of item 5.2. We have one item, item 6.1 on the consent calendar. I'll move adoption of the consent calendar. I second. Okay, we have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar. Any board member questions or comments on the consent calendar? Hearing none, we'll open it up for public comments on 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 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. There are no hands being raised via Zoom and no one in council chamber wishing to make a public comment. Thank you, may we have a roll call vote, please? Board member Wright is absent. Board member Watts is absent. Board member Walsh. Aye. Board member Grable. Aye. Board member Batenfort is absent. Vice Chair Arnone. Aye. And Chair Galvin. Aye. Does the record show that motion passes with four affirmative votes? Thank you. That'll take care of the consent calendar. We'll now move to item 7.1, which is a report item. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 7.1 is a contract award for Delta Pond Diffuser Maintenance Contract Number C02200 and making the presentation will be Rachela Mayeda, who's the associate civil engineer with our capital projects team. Thank you, Dr. Burke. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. As Director Burke mentioned, my name is Rachela Mayeda and today I will be discussing the contract award for the Delta Pond Diffuser Maintenance. Next slide, please. Today I will start off with a little bit of background for the project. Then I will go into permits and approvals. I will touch on the anticipated construction schedule and then I'll get into a couple of aspects that make this project a little more unique, which was the bid opening and contract negotiation. Finally, I will end with the recommendation. Next slide, please. The diffuser was originally installed in 2010 to satisfy regulatory requirements for discharging into Santa Rosa Creek from Delta Pond, which stores recycled water. The previous outfall was retrofitted to enhance the plant's compliance with evolving regulatory requirements for discharging into the creek. Since its installation, plant staff have been serving and monitoring sediment levels and have found that the diffuser is essentially covered in sediment. The purpose of the Delta Pond Diffuser Maintenance Project is to remove that sediment and make the diffuser fully operational again. On the right, we're looking at Delta Pond from the northwest corner, and the diffuser is located in that red rectangle. Zooming in to it on the left, those purple arrows coming in at an angle represent flow from Delta Pond, and then you can see a series of submerged vows in Santa Rosa Creek. Next slide, please. Here we are looking at a couple of construction photos from the original construction in 2010. On the right, you can see Santa Rosa Creek in the background, and then where those workers are located is where the pipe from Delta Pond is coming in. On the left, we're looking at those valves. They are two feet in diameter, and they are called ductile valves. These were originally selected because they are designed to prevent reverse flow, so water and gravel cannot enter into the diffuser manifold. They have no moving parts, which means less mechanical maintenance, and they are designed to be continuously submerged. Lastly, the water that exits from these valves forms a little bit of a jet, which provides good mixing properties between the water coming from Delta Pond with Santa Rosa Creek water. To address the issue that the ductile valves are buried in sediment, a handful of alternatives were evaluated, and those alternatives included solutions such as directing hyper-sure air or water to mobilize the sediment that is settled and adjusting the valves to increase their height so that it would take more sediment accumulation to actually cover the valves and impede flow. Next slide, please. Each alternative was evaluated for regulatory considerations, constructability, effectiveness, cost, and then also operations and maintenance. And ultimately, there were concerns with each of the alternatives. So plant staff opted to go with a different route, which is dredging. At the top here, we're looking at a plan view of Santa Rosa Creek, and on the bottom is a profile of those same extents. The diffuser facility is outlined in black, and on the bottom, there's a green dashed line that represents the natural channel bottom. There would be two types of dredging for this, mechanical and hydraulic, which are indicated by the orange and red areas. Mechanical dredging, which is shown in red, would be completed with an excavator that scoops out the sediment. And then hydraulic dredging, which is shown in orange, would be completed by divers going underwater with a pump and essentially vacuuming out the sediment. While mechanical dredging would be more time efficient, hydraulic dredging will provide the precision needed to protect those valves. What's not shown here, what I'd like to mention is that this entire dredging area would be surrounded by a turbidity curtain. With all of these dredging activities, we do anticipate that some sediment will be suspended into the water column. And so the turbidity curtain essentially acts as a screen that will prevent sediment from mobilizing downstream. Next slide, please. Briefly, I wanted to mention that all of the dredged materials would be hauled within these blue lines to the areas marked as soil handling areas. And this will be an area where water is allowed to decant from the material. It will provide a means for the sediment to dry prior to being off-hauled in dump trucks, which we really can't have leaking any water. I just wanted to touch on this briefly because in a couple of slides, I'm going to go over the schedule and you'll see some time allotted for drying and offline, so I just wanted to provide a little bit of context. Next slide, please. Here is a summary of the permits and approvals required for the project. We are in the process of securing a couple remaining authorizations, and we do not anticipate issuing the notice to proceed until all permits and approvals are secured. We are aiming to have all permits in hand in approximately three weeks, which brings me to our schedule. Next slide, please. In approximately four weeks from today, we anticipate issuing the notice to proceed. We estimate four weeks for the contractor to prepare this middles and mobilize to the site. Two weeks are provided for dredging, which needs to be completed by October 15th for permitting requirements. There will be two weeks for the material to dry and be off-hauled, and then the final four days are for site restoration, which would include things like replanting the area, and then also time for the contractor to demobilize from the site. Since the entire project area is located in the flood plain, all work needs to be completed by October 31st. Next slide, please. In the next couple of slides, I'll get into the background of what makes this contract award a little bit unique. The project was advertised on May 26th of this year. About a week later, we had a pre-bid meeting where two contractors were present, and then at the June 14th bid opening, and unfortunately, we did not receive any bids. Next slide, please. According to public contract code, section 21066, a city can directly negotiate a contract if nobody bids after going through the competitive bidding process. As I mentioned, at the pre-bid meeting, we had two contractors attend, only one of which is a prime contractor that the city can directly contract with, and that contractor is Dickson Marine Services. Although we are calling this contract negotiation, we didn't actually have any back and forth on the price of their bid with the contractor, but what we did do that was a little bit unique is we had open conversations about what the work would entail and what the cost would be prior to receiving their bid. In the end, their bid came out to 11% under the engineer's estimate. Next slide, please. It is recommended by the Transportation and Public Works Department and the Water Department at the Board by motion, award construction contract number C02200 in the amount of $514,728 to Dickson Marine Services of Inverness, California for Delta Pond Diffuser maintenance, approve a 15% contingency and authorize a total contract amount of $591,937. Thank you for your time and I'd be happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Ms. Mayeda. We'll open it up for any board member questions or comments. Board member Walsh. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Just a comment, I very much appreciate the basic engineering lesson and the vigils and the walkthrough presented by engineer Mayeda. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Any other board member questions or comments? All right, I will entertain a motion. Mr. Chairman, I'd like to make a motion. Thank you. I move that the Board of Public Utilities by motion award contract number 00 in the amount of $514,728 to Dixon Marine Services of Inverness, California for the Delta Pond Diffuser maintenance and approve a 15% contingency authorizing a total contract amount of $590,937. Second. Thank you. We have a motion by board member Walsh and a second by board member Grable. This time I'll open it up for public comments on item 7.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Manus? Chair Galvin, there are no hands being raised via Zoom and no one in Council Chamber wishing to make public comment on this item. Thank you. May we have a roll call vote, please? Certainly. Board member Wright is absent. Board member Watts is absent. Board member Walsh? Aye. Board member Grable? Aye. Thank you. Board member Battenford is absent. Vice Chair Arnone? Aye. And Chair Galvin? Aye. Other records show this motion passes with four affirmative votes. Thank you. That'll take care of that item. Item number eight on our agenda is public comments on non-agenda items. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Manus? There are no hands being raised via Zoom and no one in Council Chamber wishing to make a public comment on non-agenda matters. Thank you. That'll take care of that item. We have no referrals. We have no written communications. I don't believe we have any subcommittee reports and seeing nobody move otherwise. Any board member reports? All right, we will move to item 13 which is the director's report. Director Burke? Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. I have a few items to report on today. First, I wanted to let the board know that last year, Santa Rosa Water was awarded a $75,000 grant under the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, Small Scale Water Use Efficiency Project Program. And the U.S. Bureau of Rec recently gave the formal notice to proceed with the grant-funded project. And we will be using those funds to double the existing cash for grass rebate to $3 per square foot for a limited number of commercial, industrial, institutional and multifamily customers. The project will help us replace a total of 50,000 square feet of turf and customers that are eligible to participate in the grant will need to retain or plant one tree for every 600 square feet of turf removed and then comply with our standard rebate requirements. Targeted marketing to landscape contractors and eligible customers will begin shortly and we will return in the future with an update once the project has been completed. Next, I wanted to let the board know that the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency at their July 14th meeting, the GSA board took multiple actions to establish an updated groundwater sustainability fee. They adopted an ordinance, they accepted and adopted the final rate and fee study and then they passed a resolution establishing a five-year groundwater user extraction fee of $40 per acre foot, which is what was recommended by the rate and fee study report. The decision came after months of public outreach, technical evaluation by staff and the advisory committee and multiple meetings by the Santa Rosa Plain GSA Board of Directors. The updated fee will cover the forecasted costs necessary to begin implementation of the recently adopted groundwater sustainability plan for the basin for the next five years. The board may recall that the County of Sonoma and Sonoma Water had covered the initial fee for development of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan for private, domestic, agricultural and commercial groundwater users throughout the county. But now this updated fee will be placed on the upcoming county tax roll for all registered groundwater users, including those who were previously paid for by the County of Sonoma and Sonoma Water. So just wanted to make sure the board was aware that this fee process, which took a number of years, is now complete and in place, which is good news for the GSA and the desire for the GSA to be self-funded. Next, I wanted to let the board know that we continue to look for various opportunities to assist our folks with past due accounts or assist our customers with past due accounts. So Santa Rosa Water is now fully enrolled in the new Federal Low-Income Household Water Assistance Program, or LIWAP. This will provide one-time financial assistance of up to $2,000 to assist our low-income households with paying their outstanding residential water or wastewater bills. California has been allocated 116 million in one-time funding to provide assistance under the LIWAP program, and the program is being administered by the Department of Community Services and Development in California, otherwise known as CSD. CSD has contracted with community-based local service providers who are accepting program applications and determining eligibility. For this area for Santa Rosa, the North Coast Energy Services is the local service provider and they're now accepting applications. If they determine a Santa Rosa Water customer is eligible for a one-time benefit, Santa Rosa Water will directly receive the customer's payment and we will apply it to their past due bill. Anyone who is listening and is interested in finding out more or enrolling in the program, you can go to n-c-e-s dot org. Again, that stands for North Coast Energy Services or n-c-e-s dot org to apply and you can also go to our website, srcity.org slash h2o, and we have more information and links to the application from our website. And then some more good news for the board. I wanted to let the board know that due to great work by our reclamation team, we have identified that we can free up an additional 200 million gallons for our agricultural recycle water customers. So allotments have been increased. Initially you might recall earlier this year we started at 900 million gallons. We were able to increase those allocations a couple months later to get to 950 million gallons. And now with the additional 200 million gallons we have a total of 1.15 billion gallons for our agricultural customers this year. We are still on track to meet our contract with Calpine. We are targeting that we will meet 93% of the contract and we're required to meet a minimum of 90%. We are always a little conservative to ensure that we meet that contract amount. So we have shared that information yesterday with our agricultural customers and they were quite pleased with the information. And then very last due to the fact that we have no pressing action items prior to our August 4th BPU meeting, I talked with the chair and the chair has authorized that we will go ahead and cancel our August 4th BPU meeting. And that is my presentation and I'm happy to answer any questions that the board may have. Thank you, Director Burke, Vice Chair Arnone. Just a quick question about the GSA fees. When do those go into effect? So they technically are adopted for this fiscal year but they will be collected through the tax roll. So the first amount or the bills will go out, what? I think they're in October or something like that. They get mailed and then you have until early December to pay so that'll be the first round and then you can either pay everything up front or you can pay on the two installments. And then my understanding is that we will be receiving bills for all of the member agencies sooner so that we can keep cash flow going to keep the GSA board operating. That was my question. So we will continue funding. We'll pay the amount that we should be charged for the amount we anticipate pumping out of the groundwater basin so it is based on actual pumpage. So it's our fair share. Thank you. That answers my question. Yes. Any other board member questions for the director? All right, at this time I'll open it up for public comments on item 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 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. Chair Galvin, there are no hands being raised via Zoom and no one in council chamber wish to make a public comment. Very good. That concludes our agenda and we will next meet then on August 18th. So I wish you all a good afternoon. We are adjourned. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.