 Hi, we have an attendee with the first name, Mary. Could you please confirm or deny that that's Mary Watts? I see we have all the board members, Jennifer or Roberta, are we waiting for anyone else? I think we're good to go. Great. Good afternoon, everyone. I'll 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. Yes, Chairman Galvin. Here. Vice Chair Arnone. Here. Board Member Badgeford. Here. Board Member Grable. Board Member Grable. Board Member Mullen. Here. Board Member Watts. Here. Board Member Wright. Here. Board Member Grable, are you with us? Yes, here. Thank you. So good afternoon again, everyone. Happy New Year to all of you. I hope that you all had a wonderful holiday season. We're starting the New Year fresh. So I want to remind you please to mute your phones and microphones when you're not speaking and to please put away all your cell phones and personal computers. So our item number two on the agenda is statement of extension by board members. Do we have any? Very none. We have no study session. The minutes from December 17th will be approved and entered. And we will move right to item 5.1, staff briefing. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvan and members of the board. Our staff briefing today is a water and recycled water supply update. And Peter Martin, Deputy Director of Water Resources and Emma Walton, Deputy Director Regional Water Reuse Operations will be making the presentation. Thank you. So yeah, absolutely. Today I have a water supply update just kind of going over some of the response that the city and our region are doing in response to the ongoing dry conditions. As you know, we're falling well behind of typical year rainfall. So we'll discuss that link there in this presentation. So next slide, please. So just a reminder to orient everyone. This is sort of a graphic that shows the upper Russian River watershed and where our water supply comes from. As you're aware, the Potter Valley Project in the Yield River watershed at the terminus of the hydroelectric project transfers water into the upper portion of the Russian River watershed in the East Fork. It's then conveyed down to Lake Mendocino, which is Sonoma Waters Reservoir. I should mention the Potter Valley Project is a PG&E run project. And then Lake Sonoma downstream in the lower watershed conveys water into the Russian River through Tri Creek. And then just above all, the diversions and the storage and the minimum hemstream flows for the water rights of Sonoma water are governed by decision 1610, which is a state water board issued order governing their water rights. Next slide, please. So at this time of year, the in-stream flows for the Russian River are based on a calculated cumulative inflow into Lake Pillsbury. If you look at that map previously, you'd see Lake Pillsbury is in the Yield River watershed. And pretty much from October 1st to each month from January to June, that cumulative inflow sets the targets for those in-stream flows. And so it's considered normal unless dry or critically dry conditions exist. But currently, the upper watershed and based on those in-stream flows into Lake Pillsbury, it is tagged as being normal conditions. So it's not necessarily reflective of what's going on in the watershed. And therefore, Lake Minasino just fell is the reservoir levels are continuing to fall. You just saw the third driest year on record going into this water year. Snowwater's temperature urgency change petition expired in December. So at the time that that temperature urgency change petition expired, they began running their operations in what's considered normal operations and normal conditions. But as you can tell, we're continuing to see a low average rainfall, which you can see kind of shows that we're seeing critically dry conditions in the watershed. So at this time, we're starting to see critically low storage levels projected for Lake Minasino without intervention. Next slide. So just this month, Snowwater filed a new temperature change petition. This follows on last year's temperature urgency change petition, which expired December 27th. Basically what kind of triggered that as a series of events, PG&E has notified Snowwater that they're going to reduce flows into the upper river, Russian River watershed and is requesting a variance from FERC for their operations of the hydroelectric project. And then additionally, we're still continuing to see very dry conditions and low rainfall in the upper watershed. And so the strategy is to preserve Lake Minasino storage, which will help Snowwater meet water demands for the region and then also support the releases necessary for the fall run of fish in the Russian River watershed. So Snowwater filed that TUCP this January. And what it does is it establishes minimum in stream flow requirements based on a hydrologic index that is actually in Lake Minasino. So the difference being that the index will be based on Lake Minasino storage rather than Lake Pillsbury inflow. So it would adjust immediately to dry water supply conditions in the watershed and allow Snowwater to start to preserve more water in Lake Minasino and Lake Sonoma. Next slide. So just to follow on that strategy and changing the hydrological index to Lake Minasino, this is a similar request to that that was filed in 2014-15 water year during the latest drought. And it mostly affects the operations, the upper Russian River. So the impacts would be mostly in the upper Russian River. And just to note, decision 1610, which I mentioned, governs the water rights for Snowwater. Snowwater is in the midst of a fish habitat and water rights project. And one of the items that they are proposing would be to make this change permanent. So this is nothing new, but it is something that Snowwater is pursuing as a long-term change to better align their in-stream flows with the actual conditions in the watershed. Next slide, please. So just to check in on our rainfall amounts, we haven't had any rainfall since I last updated this slide, but we're continuing to fall, around 30% of normal for this time of year. We typically seeing a lot more rain. And even last year, which was the third driest year on record, we had seen significantly more rainfall by this time of year. Next slide, please. So this slide is just a little bit outdated for Lake Minnesino storage. As you can see on that black line, reservoir conditions are continuing to decline in Lake Minnesino. As of January 19th, storage is actually at 42% of target water supply for this time of year. Their releases are set at 142 CFS and their reservoir elevations continue to decline. As you can see on that black line, we typically be seeing reservoir levels start to rebound and trend upwards at this time of year based upon the previous year data that you can see above, but we're not seeing that. So it is a little concerning. Next slide. And with regard to Lake Sinoma storage, they are currently at 64% of their target storage capacity for this time of year and releases are set at 92 cubic feet per second. So, and then additionally, as I mentioned in the previous slide, storage elevations do continue to decline or sort of level off. Next slide, please. So with the next few slides, I just kind of wanted to highlight some of the activities of Santa Rosa water over the last couple of months in preparation for this dry weather and also kind of setting up the potential for extended dry weather. So we're continuing to work with our partners in the region, other contractors, the Sonoma water to make sure we're ensuring a consistent message and carrying that message well. Continuing to extend work products with the city's communication team assistance that's been ongoing since November. We're continuing to just repair things and be ready to go several months in advance with regards to our messaging on dry weather and getting information out to our customers as quickly as possible. And then we'll be launching a multimedia outreach to both internal and external stakeholders. When I say internal stakeholders, I mean other department employees and others that may be able to help carry the message and make sure that we understand that water is precious at this time until we can get some extended rainfall. Next slide, please. As you know, the Santa Rosa water is part of the Sonoma Marin Saving Water Partnership. A regional awareness campaign was recently launched. The tagline, it's a dry year, save water with us has been officially launched as of last week. There will be a variety of water saving tips and it will also direct the public to rebates of the individual agencies. There's 12 agencies residing within Sonoma Marin counties that participate in this Sonoma Marin Saving Water Partnership. Next slide, please. So what you'll start to see on social media and other digital media areas is sort of these little snippets that say it's a dry year and save water with us and they will direct public to additional resources and also water saving tips that they can use in the meantime. I should mention too that these are, while they just have the Sonoma Marin Saving Water Partnership, we do have the ability to add our own logo to these as well so it'll kind of have a dual purpose as well. Next slide, please. And then I think I had highlighted this in my last presentation in December. We continue our winter outreach campaign. It's a dry year, do your part to be water smart. Several sort of digital media was put out in the last couple of months. We're continuing to do so on things like Facebook, Twitter and other city connections newsletter, and other things like that. But really what we're trying to do is direct as much traffic as we can back to our WaterSmart pages for Santa Rosa water so that we can help customers continue to be water smart and make advancements in their home as far as water use efficiency. Next slide. We also continue to, we'll be putting out some messaging on our billing envelopes so look out for those as well. Those will be running out in the next couple of months just again, trying to direct customers back to where they can get to our WaterSmart pages and request several WaterSmart devices, checkups and also free tips on how to be water smart. Next slide. And then just I wanted to kind of remind everyone that we do have tools in our toolkit, including the water shortage contingency plan. The water shortage contingency plan is in the process of being updated through our urban water management plan update that's currently ongoing, but there is a document that already exists that lays out a plan for how Santa Rosa water will respond to various stages of dry weather, drought or emergencies. And that document is largely driven by a regional supply outlook, but also obviously if we ever triggered anything as far as mandatory cutbacks through regulatory or other emergencies that may come up. It has voluntary or mandatory levels of action. It's that kind of progressively have different water use restrictions or prohibitions, enforcement actions and other demand management tools that we can utilize to, I guess, affect customer behavior, right? So, and then also just wanted to note that the implementation of the water shortage contingency plan does require a resolution of the city council. We would also bring this before the BPU as well, likely. Next slide, please. So just finally, I just wanted to remind everyone that we're definitely here to help. You can go to srcity.org, WaterSmart, or call us at 707-543-3985. And with that, I will hand it over to Deputy Director Walton. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Thanks for being here today. Roberta, you can move to the next slide, please. Thank you. I'm here to provide a pretty brief recycled water supply update. Unfortunately, since we last met, our situation hasn't changed substantially. So this is information that hopefully won't be a surprise. Next slide, please. To recap what our deliveries looked like last year, these are our final numbers through all of 2020. We delivered 3.8 billion gallons to the geyser system, which was substantially less than we normally send to them. For a number of reasons, we cut the contract down to 91% of the contract, which we were required to do to help free up some, or not required, but we wanted to do to help free up some water to put in deepened storage as we move into the ag irrigation season. We provided about 0.4 billion to our urban users and 1.5 billion to our ag users. In total, we provided 5.7 billion gallons, which is again, substantially less than we typically are able to provide to our customers, given last year was such a dry year. Next slide, please. A look at our recycled water production. As we move into January, we are seeing a little bit of a bump. We did get a one-day bump of our inflows into the treatment plant, where we got about 18 million gallons into the plant. Normally about this time we're at 20 million gallons into the plant or so in the low end. We haven't seen our plant flows sustain, so that overall number for January will come down as we move through January, unless we get additional rain. Again, just well below average on our recycled water production last year. Interesting note was our previous historic low in 35 years of record. And as you can see, the black line is well below our previous historic low. So unless we get some substantial rain here in the future, our ability to provide recycled water as we move into the irrigation season will be severely impacted. Next slide, please. Our recycle water storage curve, as you can see again, we're below average on our storage. It doesn't look like we're much below average, but unfortunately right now we are pumping less to the geysers than we typically would right now in order to help preserve some water and storage. And ideally this curve would be on the upward trend. And we are really just maintaining a little less than 400 million gallons in storage. Next slide, please. So as I've mentioned before, we are preparing for a little to no recycle water going to be available for our interruptible customers. We are continuing to have ongoing meetings with our ag users and we will continue to have meetings. We held an all users meeting yesterday to share the information that we've presented here to you today with our users so that they're well aware, really held a meeting this year much earlier than we typically do. January is still very early in our season to be making these kinds of predictions, but given kind of what we anticipate occurring, we wanted to reach out as soon as we possibly could to get information out to start communication early and often we had up until January also been meeting continuously with our users and the Farm Bureau to just let them know kind of what we were anticipating coming. We will continue to monitor the rain and our on our recycle water production and maximize what we have available, but we can really only do so much. We have been working with our regional partners who also produce recycled water to try to maximize availability in the region as well. Windsor has agreed to increase their flows to the geysers to help us offset what we need to send to the geysers to help us maintain a bit in storage to make available for our ag users. We've also been in conversations with Sonoma water and are willing to take any excess water that they may have in order to really just maximize what we are able to provide. Unfortunately, back to back dry years it's just been really difficult. Next slide please. So with that, I'd be happy to open it up for any questions for Deputy Martin and myself. Thank you both for the presentation. Board member questions or comments? Right here. Board member, right? I have two questions that are both about flow. How much is the flow being diverted at Van Arsdale? Is that like half or a quarter? And I don't think the plant's even working up there, the power plant, I don't know. And then how much are we pumping to the geysers right now? And are we concerned about our 91% quota? Thank you. So I can answer, partially answer your question about Van Arsdale. At the TAC meeting we did hear that they anticipate a drop of flows by about 30 CFS as the request to FERC coming out of the hydroelectric project, but I don't have the numbers exactly for the operations right now. But I can get back to you on that. And with respect to, if you had any follow-up questions for Peter, sorry. No, that's fine. Thank you. With respect to the recycle water, or the, excuse me, the flow, the recycle water that we're pumping to the geysers, currently we're pumping a little over 14 MGD. Right now we typically are pumping upwards of 17 MGD because we are typically in a situation where we are gaining in storage and we really need to manage our storage and maximize what we're pumping to the geysers in order to make sure that we don't have to discharge any of our stored water. From a contractual standpoint, with the geysers, we've been in close coordination and conversations with them right now because it's such a dry year, the lower flows work operationally for us. They also work operationally for the geysers. It will mean that when we typically would have to drop down lower in the summer, we might have to maintain a little bit higher flows just to really ensure that we meet our contract by the end of the year. But operationally for us, pumping at 14 right now works really well. It is going to maximize the amount of water we have available for our agricultural users. And it also works very well for geysers operations. So at 14, I think that's your dry weather flow. So you're sending everything you're making up there. Exactly. And that's why in our storage curve, you see we're pretty much flat lining. So of that 14, it's like 14.2. Of that 14.2, Windsor is sending 1.5. So we're sending around 13 or so so that we are gaining a tiny bit in storage over time. But in essence, we are matching our dry weather flows. So we're sending what we're producing. Thank you. Board Member Mullen. Thank you. Following up again with the geysers and our contractual obligations there and how we're doing it, it seems to me when we had a, whether it was last month's report or the one previous to that, we'd made great strides on catching up from last year. And so have we gone into this new year that we've just begun sort of caught up or are we still trying to catch up from last year? So we have no catching up to do. We could start the new year fresh. So at the end of the year, we did make our contract. And we, as you mentioned, we were able to catch up. Fortunately last year, we experienced a number of situations that were beneficial with respect to PSPS events that helped us with our contractual flows because when we experienced PSPS events, we go into fortune-major events. And so that helps reduce what we need to send. So our staff worked really hard and did an amazing job to get the system back up and running and provide geysers with our contract flows. And all of our stars just aligned and we felt really proud and successful finishing out the year at 91%. Great, thank you. And again, I commend the staff for making that effort. It was a monumental lift in a short period of time. And so I commend them for doing that. The other question, and I guess it's more of a comment is the Potter Valley project has been sort of a contentious one back and forth for a lot longer than I can remember. And last time I delved into it in any depth, PG&E was basically trying to walk away from it. And it sounds like they're still trying to do that. And they're trying to find any different way to give themselves the ability to walk away from that. Once that happens, then the diversions that come over into the upper Russian river and come down our way are really in jeopardy. And so do we have a plan or does Sonoma Water have a plan to maintain the allocations to the wholesale users, which includes us? If that diversion in that reliable water supply that's been going on for decades, all of a sudden stops. That's a tough question. There's a lot to dissect there, but I should mention that Sonoma Water is part of the two basin solution. I think we've talked about that a little bit, but they are pursuing the relicensing of that project, which is interesting because the licenses for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, correct? And it's surrounding the operations of the hydroelectric project, but for Sonoma Water, they're likely mostly interested in the water supply benefits. And so they're continuing to stay engaged. It is a difficult process. PG&E didn't give much time and their notification that they were no longer interested in relicensing that project, sort of amidst the background of the bankruptcy that they're undergoing. But for now, there is a significant effort. And I think actually, Dr. Burke will give some updates on the project in her comments, but they are kind of going through a process right now where they're looking at what's called the initial studies as part of that relicensing process. And it'll look at what they have as far as our revised project. But I don't know how to respond to the question about does Sonoma Water have a plan, but they are very much interested in trying to continue to preserve that water supply and also contributing to the, what's called the co-equal goals, the two Heal River and the Upper Russian River Watershed. So there's a commitment there. It's an interesting group of folks that are pursuing this license because they have varying interests. It's got Caltroud and others as well. So, but it's definitely ongoing and you'll hear a lot about it over the next couple of years. The schedule right now is such that they would need to relicense by, I think next couple of years here. So that license expires, but just you should know that I don't believe PG&E can just walk away from the project. They have to kind of stay involved and they can, while it does appear that they're banning the project, there's a lot of hooks that can allow them to just do that. That's somewhat reassuring. So my last is more of a comment and it's relative to the graphs that you just, Director Walton put up about the flow regimes and some of the spikes in the valleys that we see with the drought. And droughts used to occur in Northern California in sort of 10 year cycles and those cycles now are getting compressed more and more. And our new normal is I think is gonna force us to really come up with policies and practices and infrastructure that allows us to manage these things. Because I don't think we can successfully keep going back to our ratepayers and saying, we need you to cut back more water because they do it every time we ask them and then they don't go back to their old habits. And so the elasticity we have for savings down the road and crises like this gets minimized and pretty soon we're out of savings or the ability to save because we have efficient plumbing fixtures and we have people changing their outdoor water habits and so forth. And so I just think we have to develop a strategy and I'm sure the staff, they're all bright people and I'm sure they're looking at that but we have to develop a strategy to come up with some formula that is gonna be a consistent message so that when we run into these bumps in these water shortages, it isn't hair on fire kind of thing. It's more of a, okay, we're moving into step two and everybody knows what that is and they just implement it. So it's just a comment. So thank you. Thank you. Any other board member questions or comments? All right, then we will now take public comments on item 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 Atha, do we have anybody or email or voicemail comments? I don't see any hands raised. Oh, we just had one hand raised, one moment please. It may take just a moment to put up the timer slide. Mr. LaFranchi, you should be able to unmute and make your comment. Good afternoon, my name is Ken LaFranchi. Speaking as an ag user with the wastewater system and Dan, it's good to see you still head in VPU. I appreciate all that you have to deal with. I just want to remind everybody of the dire need that ag has for the wastewater. There are a lot of us that depend on it for watering pastures and for the wine great growing community. It's a vital source for frost protection. We continue to get told that and I understand the predicament or the situation that the city's in with having a contractual obligation with the geysers, but at the same time, there are a lot of us who could lose a portion of our livelihood. If we don't get the wastewater, there's a frost event, we could lose entire crops. So, as we once again course through a very dry year, I just ask that you please keep in mind the needs of the ag community as a component and a long-term partner with the city of Santa Rosa in the wastewater process and program. We were the insurance policy and still remain to be in the insurance policy at times for that program. And there are a lot of folks in the ag community that feel like we're getting hung out to dry literally and figuratively through this process. And I just, it's a long-term relationship and ag is I think in everybody's mind extremely important to Sonoma County. So I just want to remind the board and the folks from city of Santa Rosa who were kind enough to host a meeting with us yesterday of the very serious needs that we have. So thank you for your time. Thank you for your comments, Mr. LaFrancoe. I'm sure you can understand that staff and this board is well aware of the issues involved with the ag community. We've spent many, many meetings and hours dealing with the program for the ag community. We have signed agreements with everybody. We have the rate schedule that was established. And at this point, staff is doing everything that it can to maximize the availability of the wastewater. And we will continue to do everything we can. Chair, I'm not seeing any other raised hands at this time. Thank you. There's a public comment on item 5.1. And if there is there any other comments from the board or staff with regards to Mr. LaFrancoe's comments? Chair Galvin, I'll just mention that we, I do want to reemphasize and echo your comments. We do take these concerns very seriously and are looking at every opportunity we can to maximize water supply availability. We do recognize that we do have contractual obligations that were committed to by the city council and we need to meet those and we're doing everything we can to meet those and ensure those happen and then honor whatever we can in terms of making water available for our interruptible customers. So we take that very seriously. We completely understand and we're looking at everything from that perspective. To that end, I was going to announce this during a director's report, but I think this is an appropriate time now as it's part of our recycle water. I have spoken to the chair and have made and like to make a request that because of the water supply conditions and the lack of rainfall this year, we'd like to request a two-person ad hoc committee of the board to work with us on prioritizing water availability for this year. And so I'd like to put that out there and if the chair concurs, would ask the chair to make appointments once we have the full new board seated to work on that ad hoc. And I totally concur with the request from staff and I will be setting up a two-person ad hoc committee to handle the availability of water issues. We're at a little bit of a state of flux at the moment in that we don't know what the exact makeup of the board is gonna be. Hopefully that'll be clarified within the next week or two as the city council members make their appointments. And once we know what the makeup of the board is then I will approach two people to sit on that ad hoc committee. Any other questions or comments? Great, that'll take care of item 5.1. We have two items on the consent calendar. Item 6.1 and 6.2. I'll entertain a motion to approve the consent calendar. I'll second. Motion by, I believe it was Vice Chair Arnone and seconded by Board Member Grayvall, I believe. At this point, we'll open it up for public comments on item 6.1 and 6.2. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have anything or anyone? We have no public comments. All right, maybe we have a roll call vote, please. Yes, Chairman Galvin. Aye. Vice Chair Arnone. Aye. Board Member Badenfort. Aye. Board Member Grayvall. Aye. Board Member Mullen. Aye. Board Member Watts. Board Member Wright. Aye. Thank you, passes unanimously. We'll now move to item 7.1, which is a report item. Director Burke, if you'd like to introduce our speaker. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 7.1, we're excited to bring this forward to the board for consideration. It's a report item for approval of a memorandum of understanding with the Water Now Alliance for no cost professional services assistance with Spanish language water use efficiency program enhancements. And Claire Nordley, our sustainability coordinator for water will be making the presentation. Thank you, Director Burke. Good afternoon, members of the board and Chair Galvin. Thank you, Roberta for pulling my slides up. Thank you. As I said, I'm Claire Nordley. I'm a sustainability coordinator and I'm going to be presenting on a proposed MOU with Water Now Alliance for Spanish language water use efficiency program enhancements. Next slide, please. So who is Water Now Alliance? Well, they are a 501C3 non-profit organization. They're fiscally sponsored by many nationwide companies and organizations, including the city of Santa Rosa. We are a member of Water Now Alliance. And their main mission is to support policies and programs that advance sustainable water management. Next slide, please. So Water Now Alliance provides a project accelerator grant every year. This award provides hands-on support to accelerate sustainable water projects. And like I said, it's awarded annually to public water agencies who may apply. Santa Rosa has been offered this award. And we're one of only 15 entities nationally since the award has begun to receive this award. The past winners include the city of New Orleans and Multanigal Water District, so we're among good company. And then what this project accelerator grant or award is, is it provides technical assistance to Santa Rosa water at a value of $25,000 or 250 hours. Next slide, please. So we applied for a Spanish language water use efficiency enhancement program. And the purpose is twofold. One is to research water use efficiency program frequency and saturation across our Latin American Spanish-speaking communities so that we can really understand internally how frequent and how much our programs are being taken up by our Latin American Spanish-speaking communities. And then two is if they find that our programs are not being taken up as much as other areas in our community, they'll identify best practices to enhance outreach and increase water use efficiency uptake in those potentially underserved communities. Next slide, please. So we're proposing five project phases for this award. The first one is that we will develop a baseline understanding, Water Now will develop a baseline understanding of internal water use efficiency programs and our current outreach strategies to the Spanish-speaking community. Two is that Water Now will conduct an analysis of our customer participation data for our water use efficiency programs. And we have data dating back to the early 1990s to current. And then analyzing that and comparing it to and matching it up with census data and other demographic data to understand the saturation rate across our entire service area. And then projects three and four are conducting research and gathering feedback on our water use efficiency programs. And then five is developing a report. What did they find during this analysis and this research? Next slide, please. So the goals of this project, again, is to provide us technical assistance. And we're hoping that this technical assistance will assist Santa Rosa water with a few different things. One is creating equity in our community and across our community, identifying options for increasing water use efficiency, supporting internal programs and staff by providing value-added services with no cost to Santa Rosa water. Next slide, please. So we are putting forth a Memorand of Understanding, which basically outlines the responsibility of the parties. Like I said, it provides 250 hours of technical services to Santa Rosa water at no cost to us. It describes the scope of work. It sets out the timeframe of the project, which is about probably about six to nine months. And of course we must execute the MOU in order to participate in this project accelerator program. Next slide, please. So last week on the 12th, we went to the contract review subcommittee who reviewed and recommended approval by the board. And today I am asking for recommendation or is recommended by the Water Department that the Board of Public Utilities by motion approve the Memorandum of Understanding. The language for the Spanish language, body's sufficiency program enhancement project, assistance between Water Now Alliance and the city of Santa Rosa and authorize the chair to sign the agreement. So be happy to answer any questions at this point. I also have a representative from Water Now with me, Amy Weinfurter. So she can also answer any questions if any arise for Water Now. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Nordley, as was mentioned, this did come before the contract review subcommittee and was unanimously a recommendation from the subcommittee that the full board approve this and make then approve the motion to have the Memorandum of Understanding executed and move forward. Other board member questions or comments? Seeing none, oh, board member Wright. Just as I was gonna say, great job to the Water Use Efficiency Group. And this is, I think, tapping on the Hispanic community is huge because that's a difficult community to reach out to. So anyway, kudos to staff on that. Thank you. Or Member Mullen. Thank you. I second the comments to the staff. I said this at the subcommittee when we reviewed this last week that the effort to take advantage of a program like this that's a nationwide program and have this project awarded to us this year is really something the staff should take a lot of pride in and our community should take a lot of pride in because this is exactly the sort of thing that I was referring to in my earlier comments about changing the way we conduct our business and looking for new ways to provide efficiency at the same time quality service for our ratepayers. And this is right up that alley. So I appreciate it. Thank you very much, staff. Thank you, Board Member Watts. Yes, this is a very exciting opportunity for our department to move towards as well as the community as a whole. And I just wanna also comment that it's very difficult to I think in a lot of our city and just government employees to be able to have that Spanish speaking and bicultural and bilingual employees. And I know that the city of Santa Rosa has a job opening for a diversity officer. I don't know the official title, but I just hope that these types of projects and really looking for a bicultural and bilingual staff are encouraged throughout all the departments. And I know that the water department and the fact that we're even seeking this opportunity shows that we're making strides in this area. So I just hope that, you know, not just our department but other departments across the city are using opportunities like this and increasing diversity among the employees. Thank you. Board Member Batenfort, you're unmuted. So I can't see you. Did you want to make a comment? Oh, yes. I just wanted to echo the congrats to the staff. It's, I'm constantly impressed with your foresight in anticipating things that will help our team, help our delivery. I'm looking forward to, I haven't been a part of a program like this. So I am looking forward to seeing what those program recommendations look like. I think it makes our department better and our service better. So thank you so much. Great, thank you for your comment. If there's no other Board Member questions or comments, I'll entertain a motion. So moved. Second. We have a motion by Board Member Batenfort and a second by Board Member Mullen to approve item 7.1. We'll now 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 Aitha, do we have anyone? We have no public comments. Very well. May I have a roll call vote, please? Chairman Galvin. Aye. Vice Chair Arnone. Aye. Board Member Batenfort. Aye. Board Member Grable. Aye. Board Member Mullen. Aye. Board Member Watts. Aye. Board Member Wright. Aye. Very good. Passes unanimously. Thank you all and thank you Ms. Nordling. We'll now move to item eight, which is public comments. If you wish to make public comments, please via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Do we have any public comments? We have no public comments. Very good. We'll now move, we have no referrals. We have no written communications subcommittee reports. I believe Board Member Watts has a report. Yes, thank you. The budget subcommittee, we met this last Tuesday on January 19th and we reviewed three different items that will be coming to the BPU and then city council this spring or the first half of this year. The first item was the water and wastewater rate schedule that will go through 2021 to 2025. And there's been an ongoing effort by staff to really reduce the proposed rate increases because of the pandemic and making sure that we acknowledge that our rate payers are in a financial situation this year. And it was successful with the bond sale and the refunding completed at the end of last year that they are able to be reduced. I'm very excited that we were able to do that and just comment to staff all the hard work that went into that. And we recommended unanimously to recommend the final report for the four year rate schedule. So that will be coming to the BPU, I believe next month and then to city council in March. The next item that we went over was the water shortage rates. And I know we've gone over this a little bit before but it's part of the urban water management plan and it is due to the state on June 30th of 2021. And we unanimously recommended to move forward with that as well. And that will be incorporated into the Prop 218 process for the proposed water and wastewater rate schedule. And then the last item was the water and wastewater demand fee study and the proposed update incorporates the water and wastewater systems updated valuation including addition of assets, depreciation, changes in debt financing and reserves designated for capital projects, some modifications to the various customer categories as well as updated water use and sewer flow factors based on data that's been collected over several years. And we provided some feedback to staff. So they're going to take that and come back to the subcommittee at a future meeting for review and recommendation and then we'll move forward to the full BPU and then to city council after that. And I believe that's it. I want to thank the rest of the board member right and board member Grable for going through this process. We're getting closer and staff has done an excellent job following the data so closely and the ever-changing numbers that has been that we have seen due to the multiple disasters that our community has faced. So thank you. And that's the end of my report, I'll take any questions. Thank you, board member Watts. Any questions for her or the subcommittee? Our thanks also obviously to the committee for all the hard work. We know it's a laborious effort to get through that and do the best you can to keep the rates as low as we can and yet still keep the department operating. So thanks for your hard work there. I'll make a quick report with regards to the contract subcommittee. We met on January 12th to review two agreements. The first was a professional engineering services agreement with Belgian race for the design of the seismic upgrades and improvements at three reservoirs and two water pump stations. This is the fifth and final phase of a five phase effort to bring the facilities up to current code and that item will come to the board probably at one of the February meetings. The second item was the memorandum of understanding which we just approved and which the contract committee unanimously approved and recommended. So at this point, any questions or comments from the board with regards to either of those reports? Seeing none, I'll open it up for public comments on item number 11. If you wish to make a public comment regarding either of these, please comment via Zoom by raising your hand or via telephone by dialing star nine. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? We have no public comments. We have any, that'll take care of item 11. Do we have any board member reports? Seeing none, directors report. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. I have a couple of things to update the board upon, a board about. First, I wanted to provide an update on the Santa Rosa Plain Groundwater Sustainability Agency or GSA. I know it's been a little bit of time since we've provided an update and the GSA work is starting to get quite busy. So the Santa Rosa Plain GSA is preparing the Groundwater Sustainability Plan to meet the state mandated deadline of January, 2022, in order to meet the proposed timeline. They are planning to have a public draft completed and released by September of this year. To meet that schedule, the GSA is proposing to add three additional meetings of the advisory committee and two additional meetings of the board of directors. Santa Rosa's board of director continues to be Council Member Schwedhelm. The advisory committee is continuing to refine the groundwater model and is in the process of finalizing the 50 year projected baseline water budget and forecasted demands for the region as well as finalizing the remaining three of six sustainable management criteria that are required to be in the Groundwater Sustainability Plan by the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act. Draft chapters of the plan will begin circulating for advisory committee review late next month and in March and then subsequently they will be brought to the board of directors for recommendation prior to releasing the public draft in September. We will be bringing more information forward to the board and be providing periodic updates as those chapters are available and as the GSP is developed. Developed. In addition, this month the GSA did send out information to groundwater users about registering their groundwater wells. This is an important step which will be integral to determining fees for the basin that are gonna be necessary to the implementation of the Groundwater Sustainability Plan. As the board may recall, we had a number of discussions regarding funding for the GSA and the county agreed to fund the existing efforts to develop the Groundwater Sustainability Plan. Basically, the county agreed to provide the funding to offset the need to have the individual groundwater users pay the fees to develop the GSP. So that funding runs out by next fiscal year and so the GSA is gonna have to start working on developing a plan for either charging individual users or somehow funding the implementation of the GSP. So again, we'll keep the board updated. The GSA is really starting to get busy on a lot of these efforts and we wanna start bringing more updates back to the board as that goes along. I also wanted to update the board on the Potter Valley Project, kind of similar to what was asked earlier, but as the board may recall and as was mentioned earlier by Deputy Director Martin, there is a two basin partnership that consists of Sonoma Water, the County of Humboldt, Mendocino County Inland Water and Power Commission, the Brown Valley Indian Tribe and Caltrout. They continue to work together and make progress on the next milestone to ultimately seek the re-licensing of the Potter Valley Project. As the board may recall, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, or FERC, approved this partnership in submitting a feasibility study to see if it was feasible for this coalition to re-license the project. The current effort is focused on the finalization of a plan outlining the necessary financial, technical, and environmental studies needed to re-license the project. From September through November of last year, the partnership sought stakeholder input on their initial studies planning document, which they submitted to FERC and in December of 2020, they responded to all formal stakeholder comments. The next step is for FERC to issue a formal determination of the sufficiency of the partnership's proposed study plan. There is potential that FERC could recommend changes or any comments from the formal stakeholders. The expectation is that the formal determination from FERC could be issued any day. And these studies, the costs of these study continued to be a concern. Ultimately, the costs are probably gonna be in the tens of millions of dollars, and they'll need to be completed in the next two years to meet the schedule. We continue to get updates and work closely with Sonoma Water, and they're really focused on meeting the requirements for the re-licensing as well as identifying the funding and resources that they're gonna need to complete these studies. We'll continue to keep the board updated as this work also progresses on the Potter Valley project. Third, I wanted to update the board on basically what we anticipate the Board of Public Utility changes are going to be. I have received some questions from board members. We are still waiting on council appointments regarding board members. At this time, council member Alvarez has announced a new appointment. We hope to hear from all three remaining council members who need to make appointments soon. In the meantime, we are getting clarification from the city clerk and the city attorney's office on which appointments, new appointments, replace former appointments. So as soon as we have that information, we'll definitely share that. We would like to ask and hope to have all current board members at the February 4th meeting as we wanna thank and recognize any members that may not be continuing on prior to swearing in any new members on the 4th. So that is where we are at this point in time with any changes to the Board of Public Utilities. And then last, I know this also was mentioned a little earlier by Deputy Director Walton, but I really wanted to emphasize just because it was such an amazing effort by staff, the very good news that we have to share is that despite a number of challenges, we did meet our contractual obligations to CalPine in the calendar year 2020. As the board may recall, this last year was a very tough year. We had the pandemic, we lost a coworker. We had a lengthy geyser shutdown. We had numerous public safety power shutdown events that affected us as well as the third driest year on record. We had changes in staff and we also had, we're doing the best we could to maximize water availability. And yet through all of these challenges, our incredible staff readily embraced the challenge and successfully brought the geyser system back online with a new team of extremely talented operators and the support of our highly skilled mechanical services team. And we're able to meet the contract. So I'm just so very grateful to work with these amazing folks. I'm impressed by their technical skills and ability and dedication and the pride they take in serving our community. And in particular, I do wanna recognize the leadership of deputy director Walton and also our acting geysers operations coordinator. Both have done amazing work and I'm just really happy to report to the board that we made that contract last year. That's the end of my report and I'm happy to take any questions you might have. Any questions or comments from the board? Board member Mullin. Thank you. Circling back to the Potter Valley project, you were reading off some of the partners that are in the barrel, so to speak, on the discussions about where it's going and so forth. I didn't hear Sonoma Clean power in there and are they purposely staying out of it because I understood that one of their goals and their mission statements is to generate non-fossil fuel power for their customers in this region and it would seem to me that a project like that is right in their wheelhouse, so to speak. So that is a good question, board member Mullin and I think there were some initial questions brought up and thoughts that maybe Sonoma Clean power should be involved and participate. I can't speak to the discussions that happened behind closed doors but I do know that the work sort of started through an ad hoc committee with Congressman Huffman trying to pull together various interests to look at a two basin solution. When PG and PG&E was part of that effort, when PG&E surprised us, gosh, the years are starting to blend together but I believe it was in 2019, early 2019 and they surprised us and basically did a 180 and decided after spending quite a bit of time pursuing relicensing that they were no longer pursuing relicensing and they were looking for someone to take over. Initially they were looking to sell the project and then looking for any option basically as you kind of noted before to get out of the project. Discussions started happening very quickly and Sonoma Water with others, they pulled together this group of those five partners. Initially it was Sonoma Water, Mendocino County, Inland Water and Power, Cal Trout and then County of Humboldt joined as well. They all committed to the goals of the two basin solution. Round Valley Indian tribe has some basically rights up there in relation to the project and so they were always allowed to be included. At one point there was some discussion of should they broaden the partnership but pretty quickly they all agreed that no. This was the group that was getting together and working on the solution. So, for example, one of the questions has been brought up, what about Lake County? Because Lake Pillsbury is in Lake County, they're not part of the partnership either. So I can't speak to how those discussions happened behind closed doors, but they did agree to those five partners and once they had made that agreement, they decided as partners that they were just sticking with those five partners to move the project forward. Okay, thank you. Any other questions or comments for the director? All right, we'll now take public comments on item number 13. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have anyone? We have no public comments on this item. Thank you, that'll conclude item 13, which brings us to item 14. So we will adjourn the meeting. I wish you all the good rest of the day and we'll see you in a couple of weeks.