 Good afternoon. I'd like to call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. May we have a roll call, please? Thank you. Board Member Wright. Here. Board Member Watts. Board Member Walsh. Here. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Batenfort. Vice Chair Arnone. Here. Chair Galvin. Here. Let the record show that all Board of Public Utility members are present with the exception of Board Member Watts and Board Member Batenfort. Thank you. Just a reminder to everyone to please mute your phones or microphones when you're not speaking and to put away your cell phones and personal computers and try and leave your video on at all times. We'll move to item two. Any statements of abstention by Board Members? Very good. Hearing none, we'll move to item 3.1, which is our study session. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. Item 3.1 is Study Parameters for the Water Supply Alternatives Plan. And Collin Close, Senior Water Resources Planner, will be presenting and he will be joined by our consultant as well. Thank you so much, Director Burke. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the Board. As Director Burke mentioned, I'm joined today by Christine Kennedy, who is one of the key technical advisors for this effort. I'm going to provide a little bit of background information and then Ms. Kennedy will talk to you about the work that's been conducted to date. The key focus will be talking about the study parameters. And by study parameters, we mean these four areas, the water supply resiliency goal, the supply options for the study, the evaluation criteria we've used to assess each of those water supplies, and then the methodology how those criteria would be used. And then I'll come back and I'll talk to you a little bit about next steps. And then after that point, what we'd like to do is have one slide for each of these different four areas so that one at a time we can make sure to get all of your questions and your comments and your input in a way that allows you to have your thinking organized around each one of those areas. So we'll go through all of this. It's a lot of information. Some of it's technical. It's a little bit on the dense side. But again, we think the way we've structured this will be able to make sure that we get all of your questions answered and get your input at the tail end of this in a way that's really reasonable and helpful. I also wanted to mention the first three items here, the goal, the water supply options and the criteria. We did introduce some early preliminary information in May when we came to you and asked you for your support in putting out a request for proposals. So we had a preliminary goal and a preliminary list of water supply options and a preliminary list of evaluation criteria. Those were included in the request for proposals as well. We wanted to make sure that the agencies or the firms that would be applying and submitting proposals would have a sense of where we were coming from and where we were trying to head. Once Woodard and Kern was selected through that competitive process, they added this fourth piece, which is the study methodology. And that's how to apply those study criteria. And as you'll hear today from Ms. Kennedy, Ms. Kennedy will talk in detail about each of these and how we have gotten considerable amount of input on them from key interest groups and stakeholders. Next slide please. So just a reminder, the purpose is to look at how we can diversify and increase our water supplies. We know that we depend on Sonoma water for about 93% of our supply each year. And we know that Sonoma water depends on the Russian river system for about 95 to 99% of its supply. So that puts us in a position of being highly dependent on one provider who is highly dependent on one source. So it does behoove it for us to make sure that we're diversifying and increasing the resiliency of our own supply options. And Sonoma water is doing their own resiliency study. We are a stakeholder in that group, so we're working with them on that study for the regional approach. But this is really focused on Santa Rosa's water supply for our own constituents. So the approach of course is to look at a wide range of water supply options that we wouldn't normally necessarily be concerned with or consider. But in light of climate change and in light of having three droughts in this century already, it really makes sense for us to look at every possible option and consider the feasibility of all types of water supplies. Next slide, please. So we introduced these questions to you in May. Again, this is the purpose of the project is to address these questions. We're actually bringing you our answers to the first three today. That's why this is such a key milestone. So the first question we wanted to address was how much new water supply is optimal to mitigate our risk of shortages. So that will be that water supply goal that Christie Kennedy will talk about. And that, again, has come through a significant vetting process internally and also with external stakeholders. Which supply options should be studied? Again, we started with a draft list, but that's gone through considerable refinement with lots of input from our constituents. What criteria should be used? How should we study these supply options? And that's gone through this extensive process of seeking input from interest. With those three pieces in place, Woodard and Kern will go off and do the study and that will help us address the next two questions. Which is which mixes of options that are most feasible are going to be best for helping us achieve our goal? And what's the best path forward? Because we know that technology and we know regulations and we know funding sources are all going to change in the future. So what's the best, most adaptive path forward? And that will be the water supply alternatives plan. Next slide, please. So the scope of work, just to remind you, again, it's to engage a wide range of interests. We have our water team. That's our deputy directors from each of our divisions and their key staff. We have a stakeholder group. These are leaders in organizations across our community. And they are representing interests as varied as regional recycled water users, agricultural recycled water users, environmental and climate organizations and agencies, business and economic interests, including chambers of commerce and others, community interests, community organizations, community service organizations, and then local resource agencies. So it's a wide group of interests that's involved in sitting at the table with us. Then of course our community. We are holding community webinars and then of course the Board of Public Utilities. So you are a key, one of our interest stakeholders. So then we come to the next step, which is today, establishing those study parameters. So we're going to present to you the refined goal and options, the criteria and the study methods and get your input. Then Woodard and Crem will conduct the study. They'll provide us their findings. Those will get workshopped through all of our special interest groups. All those folks are going to be able to hear and understand what those findings are and make comments. Then they'll develop portfolios of options. And again, all of our wide range of interests will speak to those as well and then develop the water supply alternatives plan. And again, coming back to engaging that wide range of interest groups. So that's a considerable piece of the work that's being done all throughout this. And it's quite a bit of what Ms. Kennedy is going to talk about in the initial part of her presentation in terms of the work that's been done to date. And then again, she's going to go through the study parameters in detail. We'll talk about next steps and then we'll ask you for your comments and your questions. So with that, what I'd like to do is go ahead and turn this over to Christy Kennedy. Again, she's a technical advisor with Woodard and Curran and really essentially to the success that we've had so far. Ms. Kennedy. Thank you, Colin. That was a great introduction. If we can have the next slide, please. As Colin said, I'm going to walk us through the work that we've done to date. We're at a really great first milestone point. We're about to head into a more in-depth feasibility analysis of the supply alternatives. So this is a nice point to pause and share with you where we're at with the goal, what we're shooting towards, where we're at with the criteria, where we're at with the options. So those are the pieces I'll be going through today. Next slide, please. So as far as the timeline, we've got this broken up into kind of four major sections. The first really is planning foundation, making sure we have our North Star, our goal, we have our criteria developed. We understand the methodology and we understand what options we're starting to look at in that broad funnel before we move further into feasibility, which is next. Once we get through the feasibility stage, we'll start working on a draft plan and then be back in front of you for coordination. And we've had so many meetings leading into this. We're about several meetings with our stakeholders, several meetings with our water team and one of our community meetings and another one coming up next week. Again, another batch of meetings will happen as we go through the technical phase next and then more meetings we're reporting out from there. Next slide, please. So far, Colin mentioned the makeup of these different groups. We've done site visits. We've worked very closely with the water team. That's your water directors and really honing our criteria and making sure that no stone is unturned with the options that we're going to be evaluating for this study. We've had one community meeting where we had several folks back in October. We collected input from the community on goals, supply options and criteria. We used polling features to get input on that community meeting and we'll be refining that along the way. We've had two wonderful three hour end-up stakeholder meetings with a variety of stakeholders. We have a very active stakeholder group. Many folks are present. They are working in their teams. They're providing input all the way through those three hours. It's been very successful meetings to date. And the stakeholders, we've heard feedback. They've really enjoyed working with each other in those meetings as well. And then behind the scenes, we have our technical team taking the input, refining our methodology and putting together these alternatives that are about to move forward into the next feasibility phase. So that's where we are. And I'm going to be sharing the outcomes of that today. Next slide, please. We did want to summarize for you since we've been receiving input in many different forms. What that input overall were some of the highlights of some of the input that we're hearing from your community, from your technical stakeholders, from your own team at the city. We've been using various features to make sure to gather that input. I know in hybrid meetings sometimes it's been challenging. But there's some key themes that a lot of the input is circling around. We're hearing very strongly is a theme around equity and centering equity and in decision making and how we evaluate elements. We're also hearing key themes around cost effectiveness of supply options, loud and clear, how that impacts ratepayers at the end of the day. We're hearing themes around community impacts, multiple comments around conservation. We start to talk about supply options in the community meeting. We heard questions and feedback around conservation. And impacts on rates, these are the things that we're hearing. And then lastly, really hearing strongly a desire for greater independence is Colin mentioned 93 to 94% of that supply is coming from Sonoma Water. So that desire for greater independence and diversification of the supply portfolio. So our study proposal to date incorporates a lot of the key input from the meeting so far and will continue along the way. And today's another input for us to get input from you all. All right, next slide. So I'm going to talk through the study approach will go goal first and we'll talk about the water supply options and overview of our evaluation criteria and then ending on our study methodology for today and then we'll do Q&A with you all. Next slide please. So first off on the goal. On our goal. The important part of the goal is really what's up there in bold. The goal for this study is diversify and increase the city's supplies to reduce dependence on Sonoma Water, particularly during Sonoma Water supply shortages or disruption in delivery. So we are really focused on on that supply, particularly in terms of mitigating droughts of mitigating any catastrophic interruptions and then mitigating any peak day demand challenges. So how that breaks down on an acre foot perspective. It looks that by 2045 as far as our overall water supply, we want to meet 30% of that so that's around 7500 acre feet so that's what we're shooting for as we develop options and put together portfolios as we want to be trying to meet that goal. So that's 30% of the city's water demand with supply with city supplies to mitigate any impacts of Sonoma Water supply shortages. Relating to natural disasters and catastrophic events, this is around 9 million gallons per day is what we're shooting for. That's what that 30% of and how this translates is this would be about providing half of normal domestic or indoor demand for portable water with city supplies during those service disruptions. All critical facilities are still prioritized for health and safety, but we are already in a period of a band you're engaged in if we're in one of these catastrophic events. And then lastly, we want to be able to mitigate any peak day demand challenges so this translates to about 9 million gallons per day. This meets 30% of the peak month average day demand for portable water again with a city supply. So that is our overall goal and that's what's driving the development of these options and portfolios as we get further in the analysis. Next slide please. Rationale for this goal first and foremost is to provide guidance to support the decision making around the magnitude of the portfolio. This helps us determine what you know how much is enough for what we're developing in the supply options. Other rationale this increases the city supply resiliency by having a city supply and reduces that demand on Sonoma water. It mitigates shortages in the Sonoma water supply and interruptions in service. It increases our ability to meet a portion of the peak day demand with city supplies. And lastly this this could be achieved over time with a mix of supplies. It allows for adjustments to volume target demands that are higher or lower than anticipated. And this goal was developed and refined heavily with input from the water team, from the community group and from the stakeholder group. So that's our goal. That's what we're shooting for. In order to get there, we're going to go through options next. We're looking at a multitude of supply options for this study. We wanted to start with as many options as we could foresee and start refining down. So the study is going to include for various options a description of what that is. What the potential supply is volumetrically what those limiting factors around that supply is any proposed or likely locations. The components that are part of that supply and considerations related to legal permitting and what not. Right now we're looking at these five major buckets, groundwater, desal, recycled water both purified and expanded non-potable recycled water, efficiency programs and surface water stormwater supplies. So next slide. So these are the supply options that we're looking at at this point in the study. And I'll walk you through the methodology where we start to screen these down. So we talked about the buckets that these fall in for groundwater. The supplies that we'll be looking at are adding groundwater extraction wells, converting emergency wells to production, adding ASR, so aquifer storage and recovery wells, looking at additionally looking at regional groundwater extraction wells. So wells that maybe not are living in the city, but we have a partner and we have a major part in those wells or regional aquifer storage and recovery projects. So that's our mix of groundwater options for our recycled water options in the purified recycled water bucket. We're looking at producing water for direct use so potable reuse at the Laguna treatment plant. We're also looking at a satellite plant option, so potable reuse not produced at the Laguna plant. We are also looking at the Laguna plant or a satellite plant for indirect use. So that would be a buffer using groundwater injection or using surface storage prior to that potable reuse. We're also looking at a regional purified recycled water option as well. And then still in the recycled water realm, looking at expanding the non-potable recycled water service as an option. So those are our groundwater and recycled water buckets. We're also looking at desal, two flavors of desal, ocean desal and brackish desal. The brackish desal option would likely be regional option and ocean would be either Santa Rosa or a regional partnership option on desal. The other area we're looking at is surface water or stormwater capture. So this would be capturing excess flows either from the creeks, excess flows winter water from Sonoma water or the Russian river or other sources. And then two different aspects of this looking at injecting and storing this in the aquifer for potable reuse later or looking at, you know, an enlarged surface water body, potentially Lake Ralfine or another option to construct a treatment plant around and use for potable use later. And then lastly, we did want to look at a conservation alternative and this would be efficiency programs to reduce demand and that's adding aggressive incentives for efficiency programs. Opposed to, you know, we will always be continuing our efficiency programs. Conservation is inherent to all of this. This would be looking at something in a different way or significantly expanding upon it for reducing demand. So these are all of the options that we're looking at at this point in the study. Next slide, please. So the rationale for these is it is a broad variety of options. It includes both city in city and regional projects where we would partner with other other firms, other agencies for a partnership in a potentially different location. It includes aggressive efficiency incentives to reduce demand over time. And then again, this incorporates input from the water team from the community and the stakeholder group. We started with a list of options and we've expanded or refined based on that feedback along the way. Next slide. So we've gone through goal. We've gone through our list of supply options. Now we start to get into how do we cross evaluate these options? What is the best option? So we wanted to share today, we have not done that evaluation yet, but how we're thinking about that evaluation and how we're thinking about the criteria that we would be comparing these options with. So we've got a list of criteria that we've been working on. It reflects a lot of input from our various groups. The criteria that we have settled on for this so far are cost effectiveness. You know, that's life cycle costs. It's based on the future scenarios for the project goals. Scalability, so not just how much water can we produce with this, but how can that scale over time? Is it modular? Can it flex as we need it to both forward and reverse resiliency? So we want to look at how will an option be resilient in the future? Would we be building something that's in a floodplain that may negate its use in the future? So resiliency is a key evaluation criteria for us. Equity, you know, loud and clear from the community, loud and clear from our stakeholders that this is important assessment to make sure that there's no disproportionate impacts on vulnerable communities. Environmental performance is a criterion that we added to really look at just one of these options provide an asset in a different way that's not captured in some of these criteria. You know, something like storm water might have a water supply benefit from that. That might score very well in environmental performance. Legal permitting and regulatory issues. City control is another one. We'll see that come up on some of those regional elements. You know, are we able to have the agreements in place? And then lastly, when we added based on feedback from our various groups was multi-benefit. It's very important for these projects to have multi-benefit along the way. So we wanted to add that in specifically to the evaluation criteria because that helps with funding as well. Next slide. So the rationale from the criteria again, it captures key considerations that it's going to help us differentiate projects. We've worked really hard to consolidate criteria so we don't have, you know, 30 different evaluation criteria, but make them distinct enough so that you can really score them against each other. It removes any criteria that would pose a fatal flaw if it's not met. It removes any criteria that did not need to stand alone. And again, it ingrates input from the water team, the community and the stakeholder group. All of this has been shared and refined along the way. Excellent. So how we use this criteria, the first thing we do is we share the broad list of initial supply options and we, in order to get into real feasibility steps with them, we can't carry that entire list. So we want to screen out anything that's just going to have some fatal flaws or just be too cost prohibitive along the way. So we're starting with a first step screening analysis where we don't go through all of the evaluation criteria. We look at two key criteria. We're doing a high level assessment of cost effectiveness and scalability. So that's the first step. This is going to help us document the reasoning for why supply options advance further or not. And it's going to give a shorter list of options to carry forward into a detailed feasibility analysis. We'll be using defined metrics for each of the criterion in our scoring once we get into that rubric of scoring criteria or all of the options. And we are also going to assign a weight to each of the criterion, not all criterion are equal. We don't want to come out of this by a spreadsheet analysis where you have to pick the highest one that scored the highest because all criterion are a little different and some are weighted more heavily than others. So we'll show that on the next slide. Again, we've got the criterion that I shared on the left, the proposed evaluation metrics for each one of these and then how we're proposing weighting these once we start to compare them against each other. Again, cost effectiveness and scalability, those are going to have a higher weight than some of the other aspects. We also, based on feedback from our stakeholder groups and our water team, resiliency and equity really are important aspects and that asset, you know, that environmental performance. So we've scored those a little higher when we're comparing compared to legal permitting and regulatory things that we need to go through on every project, city control and interagency coordination and then multi-benefits. So that's kind of how we're proposing the weights for each one of these criterion will break out. Next slide, please. So the rationale for conducting the study in this way is using that screening process really to identify any non-starter options in that broad list. It's emphasizing key considerations such as cost, resilience and equity via weighting. It enables comparisons based on qualitative factors such as regulatory and permitting considerations. This is going to yield a comparison that's going to be meaningful given the level of available information and once again, we've really made a lot of enhancements and refinements to the criteria to the study methodology with feedback from the water team and the stakeholder group in particular on the study methodology. Next slide, please. So I'm going to turn it back to Colin to talk you through next steps and then we'll go through questions. Thanks so much, Christie. Next slide, please. So here's where we are now. We're in January and as you can see a lot of work has been done in the last few months to get us to the place where we have now supply goals, the supply options and the criteria methodology. So tremendous amount of work has been done with lots of input from lots of folks. I estimated it's something in the neighborhood of about 50 people who have contributed to the effort so far, not including the water and current team. When we look out from this point going forward, as Christie said, they're going to take these four areas of the study parameters and go ahead and do that study. And then we'll get to workshop the results, the feasibility study report that will get vetted by all the key stakeholders and the portfolio options will get vetted. So those are two key processes because those will then help us build into the next step, which is developing that draft plan. And again, that also will have opportunities for lots of input from our key stakeholders. So that will get workshopped as well. So that's where we're at today and that's where we're headed. Next slide, please. We do have a community meeting next week. We've been promoting it. That's social media. Deputy Director Martin did an interview with KSRO yesterday. So there's definitely been an effort to spread the word. Also our stakeholders said they really wanted to help spread the word. So we have sent images to them that they can use in their newsletters or their social media accounts to help spread the word. So currently we've got about 25 folks who registered. People do not have to register to attend. But if they register, they can get a reminder a day or two before with the Zoom link. So we're planning on doing this on next week on the 25th from five to seven via Zoom. And essentially we are covering the same information with our community that we're covering with you today in great detail. The one difference will be because we'll be all on Zoom and because this is information that many of the community members may not be at all familiar with in terms of water supply and that sort of thing. We're going to stop after each one of those elements and see if they have questions or comments or input on the goal. And then talk about supply options and stop and see if they have questions and comments. So we're going to go through it a little more slowly with them and allow time for all of their questions and comments. And again, we're going to do as we did the first time provide simultaneous Spanish translation so that if we have folks who want to attend who aren't primarily English speakers, they'll be able to track and participate, ask their questions, submit their comments live during the meeting as well. Next slide, please. So at this point, what we want to do is go ahead and put one slide up at a time for each of these areas and open it up and see what your questions are and what your comments are. So what we'll do is I think what we'll do is go to the next slide, please. And then I think, Chair Galvin, let me turn it back over to you to sort of moderate that question, comment piece, and we'll be taking notes. And where we can answer questions immediately today, we will. If there's any questions that we need to do homework on, we'll be sure to make sure that we let you know that we'll get back to you on that. So at this point, Chair Galvin, I'm going to turn it back to you. Thank you, Mr. Close. Before we get to board comments and questions, I'll open it up for any public comments on item 3.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. There is no one in Zoom raising their hand, and there is no one approaching the podium in Council Chamber. Great. Thank you. All right, so what we'd like to do at this point is try and give staff some direction on basically the four parameters that we were using to assess the potential water supply options. So the first one is the water supply resiliency goal. So I would open it up for questions, comments, staff direction on that issue. Vice Chair Arnone. Thank you, Chair. The 30% number is what I'm interested in. I don't have any problem with 30%. I'm just wondering where it came from. I mean, obviously the more the better, the more independence and greater supplies we could develop. As I say, the more is better. So where did the 30% come from? That's my baseline question. I'll go ahead and say a few words, but then Christy, I might ask you to kind of flesh it out a little bit further. So essentially, that was our first initial goal. We weren't sure if we were too high or too low. But in working with all of our stakeholders and talking about what the ramifications would be, it looked like it was a pretty good level in terms of addressing some of these key issues. So for example, if we had a very severe drought of 40%, if we can provide 30% of our own supplies and Sonoma water is providing 60% of our demand, we still have a shortage, but it's very doable. It's not a heavy lift. It's not a big burden on our community. They'll still do their part. They'll still need to conserve. We're going to participate with the rest of our community, our regional partners, and make sure that we're doing our part. But it takes that burden off. And as I said, we've had three water shortages in just the last 15 years, and each of those have asked our community to do a 20% reduction in use. And I think you may recall, Director Arnone, that our efficiency has gone up so much that we use less and less water per person today than we did in the past. And that trend is continuing. So it gets harder and harder for our community to meet those conservation goals. So the 30% was a way to look at something that would help us if we had an extreme severe shortage. And with that 30%, if we're able to do that, it has two other pieces to it. One, if we had a catastrophic disconnection from Sonoma water, they just could not deliver water to us, then we would be able to provide plenty of water for health and safety. So this helps us, in terms of guiding those health and safety needs, we could provide about half of their normal indoor water use. Obviously no outdoor water use, that would be banned during such a catastrophic event. But that puts us well into that range of having enough water supply for health and safety during a catastrophic event. So there's that second benefit to that 30% goal it rolls into being able to provide about half as much water as folks normally have for indoor use. And then lastly, it also helps us shave off the peak demand. So if we're in a normal water supply here, but we can reduce demands on Sonoma's water supply, that means more water stays in Lake Sonoma. That helps our whole region. That relieves some of the pressure for all of our partners in the region as well. So when we're more independent and we can shave off our demand during peak days, that leaves water in Lake Sonoma. So what I want to do though is just touch base. Christy, do you have something you might want to add to that? Yeah, Colin, I think you answered that pretty beautifully. You know, the driver really is looking at dry years and how to handle those dry years. So it gives us a really strong and resilient element when we can bring that much forward. There's a lot of options. There's a lot of funding and child funding right now. So while we're looking at things, we wanted to give ourselves a goal that is, you know, steeped in giving you some true resilience and reliance when you are in those dry periods where you are being forced into those 20% cutbacks, knowing that those may change in the future as well. So it's a robust number, but it's also a doable number. And I would like to add to that too, Christy. One of the things I thought about was, you know, in terms of the rationale, one of the things we mentioned in that rationale is that with a percentage goal, what it allows us to do, if we find that 2045 demands are much lower than we projected, then that 30% is a lower volume. And so as we're moving out 5, 10, 15, 20 years developing new water supplies, that can be adjusted appropriately to match what we're actually seeing demands become or for some reason demands went up quite high for some reason and well exceeded what we project for the future. That 30% goal is a nice guideline for us so that rather than tying it to a specific acre footage, tying it to that percentage really helps us with that piece. Well, I also like hearing you say that it's related to an analysis of how water is actually used so that we would be supplying 50% of health and safety. That seems like a good solid metric basis to pick a number. So basing it on how people actually use the water, that seems like a very good justification to me. Thank you Vice Chair Arnone. I can't tell. Looks like the hands are raised. Let's go to Board Member Grable. Thank you Chair Galvin. Thanks for the presentations. This is really fascinating and obviously prescient stuff that's on everyone's minds, despite the storm volumes. I had just a few questions that came up for me. One kind of related to what we experienced in Fountain Grove, which I know was an anomaly, but just sort of prompted a lot of questions about the way we look at peaking factors and whether or not we're including fire suppression needs at these sort of astronomical, you know, singular event levels where there's like an additional demand that is so drastic and sometimes unaccounted for. So my first question was about that, whether those peaking factors were including fire suppression, because obviously it's something that we still have to be really prepared for and concerned about. Actually, you know, that's my only question. Yeah, and it's a terrific question. And it is definitely included. I think you'll see on the slide here, while it's not completely fleshed out, we are, here it says in this last sentence at the second point, critical facilities are prioritized for health and safety. That includes functions like fire safety. So yes, very good point. Absolutely part of the calculation. So when we look at this, it's not only what we see as our demands, but we also included all non-revenue water uses, firefighting, flushing our mains, testing hydrants, water loss from our system because our system does have leaks from time to time. So in terms of that, we want to make sure that we are, you know, keeping that piece of it in mind as well. And Christy, is there anything that you wanted to add to that? No, I think just confirming that yes, those are accounted for. And overall, while it feels really big in the moment, compared to the annual flows, fire flows are still fairly, fairly small, but they are accounted for. They are part of those critical facilities that are prioritized. And I'll just also add that, you know, by having this additional supply, it also, again, it helps us to avoid that situation where we're trying to rely on conservation in times of great need. So, again, that is another way to help mitigate, because we're not having to just rely on our community. We're providing additional water to make sure. So, again, for things like firefighting and that sort of thing, you know, it just gives us that extra buffer. And for, I guess to add on to that, for the resilience aspect, for the diversified sort of water supply portfolio aspect, that's, is that one of the goals that you would have at any given time, readily available for extreme use in those cases too? Yeah, we're definitely not just thinking about emergency supply that would be on standby. We're looking at, particularly if we're looking at some of these things like how we might use recycled water in the future, or if we were to do something like desalination. So, other projects you don't turn on and turn off willy-nilly, it's not cost-effective. So, those are things where they become part of your regular production portfolio. So, absolutely. And the additional benefit is, if we have an additional, more robust day-to-day portfolio that we can rely on, we are leaving water in Lake Sonoma. So, we're actually benefiting the rest of our region as well. And on the surface and stormwater capture aspect of the criteria, there was a mention of water captured, for instance, from Santa Rosa Creek and back into the aquifer. What are the industry standard mechanisms right now for that kind of recharge? Because I know it's pretty new stuff, right? So, I'm going to turn to Christy, and I know you also have, we have another participant from your team here, so I don't know who you might want to have answer that one. But that one, that's a great question, Chris, and I feel like I'm not quite capable of answering it effectively. Yeah, and it relates to some of that aquifer storage and recovery or really just an injection well. So, if you think of a groundwater well, where it's essentially a tube down into the aquifer, you look at ways in which you put water back into that well. A lot of times you don't pressurize it. So, it just depends on the source that you're pulling from. You can use drinking water, you can use surface water, you can use purified, recycled water, permitting mechanisms and approvals for different ones, but they're all being used. So, it's either building new wells that have that capability or retrofitting an existing well to do that. No, that's great because I know it's been something that a lot of folks, especially in California and the West, have been working on for a long time. One more just hopes and dreams question that came to mind when you were talking about this. In terms of just say what our goals are for efficiency in the next 10 or 20 years, I know that California's been really good about decreasing overall usage despite any kind of population increases. So, it's been a nice trend. What are we talking about in terms of gallons per day per person? What's a good target? So, the state has some targets that they're going to be requiring, and so we are already meeting those standards. So, ultimately, they're looking at moving from 55 gallons per person per day for indoor use for residents down to about... they're getting as low as perhaps projecting 42 gallons per person per day for indoor use. And then there's a budget-based, weather-based, square foot of landscape-based kind of piece that would be for the landscape irrigation for residents and for the commercial sector. So, there's a whole piece that's in place there. But what we can tell you now is that our current GPCD just before this drought was about 97 gallons per person per day for all uses of water. Firefighting included, leaks included, all water uses completely. And that was 177 gallons per person per day 30 years ago. So, it's a 45% drop. What about per residence, Colin? Yeah, so it's gone from... I'll have to double-check my math. It was 65 per person per day in the residence in 2020. And that's with indoor and outdoor use. And so that... And that's the average. Of course, in the summer, individuals are going to use more water at home because they're irrigating in the winter. They're going to use less than 65 because they're not irrigating. But the average overall for 2020 was 65 gallons per person per day. And that... And it was 120 back in 1990. So, that's another 45% decrease in residential use. The other thing that we've done is we've done an analysis of the last 10 years of water use. And when we add 500 new single-family homes, that only increases our total water demand by less than half a percent. If we add 500 apartment units, that only increases demand less than one-third of 1%. So, with building code efficiencies and with our incredibly effective water use efficiency programs between those two things and state mandates, water use has definitely gone down. And the state is applying pressure to make sure that their regulations on clothes washers, dishwash, all those continue to drive water use down, as well as making sure that agencies like ours are doing everything we can to make sure our folks are using less water. Where we see sort of a couple of places where there's a really kind of a golden horizon for us, a real shooting point. Like, for example, when Ms. Kennedy was talking about the programs, we might sort of really aggressively use direct install toilets, really effective. And there are terrific 0.8 gallon per flush toilets. The state standard is only 1.26. So, this pushes folks well below the state standard and they're very good toilets, very effective. Expensive programs, but boy, they can sure help drive down water use permanently. Well, then getting people to replace their toilets more often takes care of like flapper leakage and all that kind of stuff that's just so common with the older toilets, regardless of the gallons per flush, right? Yeah, that's another good point. And then the other piece is doing aggressive landscape conversions. Our commercial landscapes are typically managed by professionals. And what we find is when those turn from landscape irrigation with turf to low water use, they save about 33 gallons per square foot per day. It doesn't sound like a, I'm sorry, per year. It doesn't sound like a whole lot, but when you add it up, that's a significant water savings. So, we're also looking at, could we do very large programs with a very high level of rebate that would go well beyond our normal cost benefit to push water use down permanently. So there's just a couple of areas where we could focus on water use efficiency over and above what we're already doing. Yeah, and if we're just, at some point getting just down to those indoor uses is essentially use, I would assume that, you know, probably get down to 25 gallons a day, you know. I think what we've seen with a couple of agencies that had, for example, 40% shortages with this last route, they got down to about 32, 35 gallons per person per day indoor. So it's definitely doable, but without some of these additional assistants like efficient toilets and, you know, state standards, it can be hard to maintain that. So, but certainly a great goal for us to work towards. Thank you. I really appreciate all the information. Thank you, Board Member Grable. We'll move now to Board Member Walsh. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. First, I appreciate the presentation and the method. I think it's very sound. And the question with respect to the resiliency, obviously Sonoma Water has a beneficial interest in their main users is going to conserve and increase their ability to be resilient and respond to such situations. I just wanted to know to what extent does Sonoma Water participate in coming up with a 30% goal? Do we have sort of explicit agreement with them? And also since they would have a, they'll get a benefit from the project, all the goals that we have articulated our city goals. Maybe we just want to consider indoor region because we're going to look at regional projects as well. Those are my comments. Thank you. Yes, thank you so much for that. Really great comments, Director. What I'd like to do is do my best to give you a little bit of an answer just about the process. And then I hope Director Burke might not mind perhaps saying a few words about the process that has been used for the restructured agreement and those sorts of things. So what I'll tell you up front is that Sonoma Water is one of the stakeholders in our stakeholder group. And they're excited about this project and they have seen everything that you've seen and they helped us to formulate that goal. They're also working on their region wide resiliency study. So they are projecting that, they're going to need to diversify their supplies and they're very supportive of all of us contractors diversifying our supplies. Climate change isn't going to go away. We've gotten tremendous break this winter. This is lovely. But the projections out for the next 10 years are not good. So the long-term weather projections. So they're also looking at this. And so I think there's that piece of it is that they're at the table with us and they've expressed no worries or concerns. They're very supportive of the goal. They've asked us to come and give an update to their staff in February. I think they're really interested in this. And again, they're sitting at the table. But let me just pause for a moment and Director Burke I just want to see, is there anything you want to add to that? Thank you Colin. I think you covered it well. I'll just add just a few minor points. As Colin mentioned, we are participating in the regional resiliency study and we're using that information and leveraging that as part of what we're looking at for our resiliency study. And any projects that make sense from a regional perspective will work together not only with snow and water, but the other contractors that might be interested. So we're definitely not looking at this just solely from Santa Rosa developing supply projects. But what our needs are and then what those projects could be whether they're individual projects or regional projects that would make that make up the water we need for that goal. The other thing I will just note is as Colin mentioned, we do have in the restructured agreement for water supply a recommendation from Sonoma Water. So it's not a requirement, it's a recommendation in the agreement that we should have 40% of our average day demand in local supplies available to us. We don't meet that right now. Again, it's not a requirement, but it is something that they've recommended and would like their contractors to be a little bit more independent. So we're not solely reliant on Sonoma Water from a water supply perspective. Thank you very much. Appreciate that answer. That's all Mr. Chairman. Thank you, Director Walsh. Director Wright, did you have any questions or comments with regards to the water supply resiliency goal? Not regarding this particular slide, but my understanding is we're going to have one of each slide. Three more slides, yes? Yes. Okay, I'll comment on future slides then. Thank you. Okay, great. Colin, I think you got some pretty good direction from the board with regards to this first item. Yes, thank you so much board. This is really, really helpful. Now if we could move then to the supply options for study. So here we want to make sure that we haven't left anything off the table. You know, if it's a wild idea and it doesn't pass through that first initial phase of analysis, that's fine. But this has greatly expanded from what we had originally brought to you in May. So, but we just want to, we want to gut check. We want to make sure we're not leaving anything out. All right. I'll open it up for board member questions or comments with regards to water supply options for our study. And I can't see, Director Walsh, your hand is up or is that from the last slide? It's from the last slide. Okay. All right. Director Wright. Okay. Finally, it's hard to tell in this format whether your hands are up or down or what's going on. You know, regarding these projects, first of all, a good presentation and that this is a good process, a good process for the city to be going through regardless of the outcome. But my personal favorite of all these projects is the direct reuse, direct potable reuse at the LTP in one question I have, is there any update on regulations for direct potable reuse? I know we've been talking about this for 10 years, but it seems like we never seem to get very far on completing the regulation. So that's my number one choice on the list. And the stormwater capture, rather than using the ESR method, and it seems like it's unlikely in our area because I can't think of where you could do it. But like in LA County, where they have huge stilling basins and they just let the water run down the rivers and dump into big reservoirs and of course they have that porous soil and it just goes down and recharges a few of their outlawographers, not very many of them. And that's a personal favorite of mine as well. I'm a little concerned about groundwater. It just is a tough one in our area and it seems like it's kind of a rush to the pump house with groundwater. So I'm more of an advocate of looking at other options than groundwater. Even though I don't suggest that we stop our groundwater program. I don't suggest that at all. Anyway, if you have any answers to my questions, that'd be good otherwise I'll stand by. Thank you. Yeah, thank you so much, Board Member Wright. I think I'll take a little stab at this, but I do think that this committee is going to probably have maybe a little bit more current information than I do. In terms of direct reuse regulations, that one I'm going to set aside. I don't have a good answer for you there. I know work is being done, but I don't have much to update you. But I did want to mention that we have been talking about whether it would be advantageous to have that at the treatment plant property or would it make more sense to have it at a satellite site? And here's why. We already have recycled water pipe running into Santa Rosa. That delivery system was already there. If we build the direct potable reuse at the plant, we've got to figure out a way to put that water at the south, or sorry, the sort of the southwest end of our system back up and heading back into Santa Rosa. It'd be easier to move recycled water into Santa Rosa, create the direct potable reuse water there and add it to our aqueduct at that point. So just something for us to think about is that we're looking at multiple sites. Let me just touch base on a couple of other ones and then Christy, I'm going to toss it to you. Most stormwater basins, I think that's... We sort of have it kind of generically put here, whether or not there might be some places to do that. No locations are really jumping out at us right now, but certainly there will be some looking at that. One of the things that Wooded and Current has explained to the water team is that they're going to be looking at where would something be built. So these will get a little bit more ground truth, so that if there is a location, it'll be sort of identified in the study so that we have a good sense of where that could potentially happen. And groundwater in our area is a tough one for us. We haven't had as much abundance as we had hoped with all of our wells that we've tried to look at. So certainly looking at whether we could convert emergency wells so that we could use them anytime rather than only during emergencies as an option and then also wells that serve a multiple purpose, or in wet years we could recharge the basin so that in dry years we have those credits to be able to pull them out. So that's another piece of it, so that we stay within the groundwater sustainability agency's sort of balance model, you know, the sort of what goes in and what comes out. And so let me know, Christy, if you don't mind talking a little bit about each of those two. Sure, and we do have, as part of our team, we have our National Recycle Water Practice Lead that's helping us shape up and to understand and look at feasibility on these alternatives. You're right, Glenn, the potable reuse rigs are not finalized yet. They are coming, but a project like this is going to be a 15-year project to get going and build. So, you know, we're right on the cusps of having those regulations approved in the coming year, next couple of years at least. So it is a good time to take a look at those. Regarding the injection alternative with stormwater flows, a passive recharge, kind of like what they do in LA, where they kind of divert it and shunt it to an area that can percolate is not precluded in our options. It is listed as inject on the bullet, but you're right. That is something that we will look at with stormwater. Different ways you might need to be captured from those accessible evidence. So I appreciate it. You're right. Mr. Kennedy, I think you froze there for a minute. I think we lost the last probably 20, 30 seconds of your answer. Oh, I'm sorry about that. The first piece is just our recycle water rigs were really close. Those aren't approved at the state level. They are coming, so it's a good time to take a look at this option. The second piece is regarding stormwater, a passive recharge process. So pulling water off a creek or out of an area, diverting that and letting that seeper percolate in. As you've mentioned, Glenn and LA County is not precluded in our options that we're looking at. It does say inject, but we'll be looking at what's the best way to get that water into the ground. Did that come through? Yes, thank you. Great. So I have a quote. Oh, sorry. Go ahead. Yeah. Colin, you wanted to comment about the having a treatment plan for the water offsite somewhere instead of an LTP, then you ended up piping your brine around. Whereas I think at the LTP, we'll be able to pipe some of the brine, at least to the geysers. But anyway, that's just a technical issue, but it's a very complex concept anyway. It really is. Yeah, it really is. And that's part of it. We've been talking about that as well. So thank you for the reminder board member. I appreciate that. Okay. Thank you. So the question that I had is with regards to the non-potable recycled option, the expansion of the non-potable recycled water service, what do you envision that looks like? Do we know? I'll take a little bit of a stab at it, but I think also this is something that came out of some conversations that I had with Director Burke. So Director Burke, if you do have some additional comments, I'd really invite those. But part of what we're looking at is ultimately, how can we not only improve the water supply scenario for ourselves, but for the region? So for example, if Rona Park wants to make sure that they maximize all of the recycled water use that they have through their contract with us and they want to expand that, then we don't have to build an additional distribution system necessarily, but maybe we build more storage. But what that does is then it leaves water in Lake Sonola and that leaves water for us, and it reduces the chances of shortages for us as well. So it benefits everyone. So it's sort of that kind of idea where is there a way where there's a multi-benefit for something that maybe doesn't provide new drinking water for our customers, but does in fact provide a kind of buffer insurance for that. But let me just step for a moment back and Director Burke, would you like to add anything to that? Sure. Thank you, Colin. And thank you for the question, Chair Galvin. Really, what I wanted to make sure is that we had all options on the table to go through the initial screening. We have looked at expanding our non-potable recycled water system in the past. We do have a plan, and it was adopted by this board many years ago, the IRWP, which has the Urban Recycle Water Expansion. It may turn out as we go through this analysis that it really isn't the most feasible or cost-effective option anymore, but I wanted to make sure that we didn't ignore the work that we had done and we look at that possibility. One, just because it's the right thing to do to make sure we're considering all options. Two, as was mentioned earlier, any kind of portable reuse or direct portable reuse, they're still working on those regulations and we don't know what that's going to look like. We also don't know what the cost may turn out to be. And also, those projects are incredibly... take an incredible amount of time for education to get the community on board. So we want to make sure we're looking at all options. It's entirely possible that that option could fall through and not be something that's what's recommended, but I wanted to make sure that we were looking at everything. Great, thank you very much. Other board member? Assistant? Jason, did you want to say something? Go ahead. Thank you, Chair Galvin. Colin, just wanted to ask a quick question about the stormwater component. Given the ever-increasing regulations around just general stormwater discharge and the intent of wanting to continuously look at cleaning that resource, is that part of the evaluation that's going to be done with the stormwater and surface as a potential component of this? I think at a high level, yes, but these are... I know you're familiar with this term. These are going to be Class 5 assessments, so it's not going to get into as deep a detail as you might hope, but yes, certainly it's looking at a multi-benefit... Again, this is one of those multi-benefit projects, but I think it won't answer some of the fine-tuned questions that I can see you have on your mind, but if we were to see that that went through and it was very feasible and became one of the portfolio options and we get to that point where we're making a decision about it, I think that's where we really drill into even more of those details. But Christy, let me ask you if there's anything you wanted to add to that? Yeah, it's a good question. Any alternative that's going to have some regulatory aspect, you know, a need for additional treatment and cleansing and polishing of the water, we're going to want to capture those costs, so we have a true life cycle cost when we're comparing the alternatives. So at some level, that will be in there. Thank you, Vice Chair Arnone. A quick question. I believe the water we send of the pipeline to the geysers would be classified as the purified recycled water. So it's non-potable. Okay, I was just questioning whether they could take things like ocean water, essentially, or non-potable water and if that could be used in the pipeline to the geysers. So I'll just speak quickly. Currently we produce tertiary treated recycled water that's non-potable. That same water goes to the geysers. It also goes to our ag community and our urban community. So if we're looking at a purified recycled water or potable reuse, that's another level of treatment we would have to do. And then we would determine, you know, typically if you're going to go to that level of treatment, you're going to be drinking that water, right? In terms of could other sources be used by the geysers? Yes, I believe so. They currently, I think, have a water supply source from Lake County that is not a tertiary level treatment. But those are many discussions that we would have and really want to understand, you know, what in the future they're looking for and what we're looking for. It's in the realm of great ideas, but as long as we're talking, you know... Yes, and they are on our... We are considering all options, yes. I would add just one thing to that, or member Arnone that you might find interesting. It's my understanding that the... Calpine is also at very early stages of looking at recapturing the steam. And so, and I think there are a number of folks in other countries where they use this kind of process for generating clean energy that are also looking at that, but I think the technology is fairly new in terms of how they would do that. And I think they're looking at how to keep every drop they can because it really helps them to be able to recharge those steam beds. Thank you. I don't want to go too far down this rabbit hole. Thank you. Board Member Gravel? Yeah, no, it sounds like we were all thinking the same thing. When the question came up about expanded recycled water supply and use and this and that, it was immediately where my mind went, it's what's happening, not just with the geysers contractually and what we're doing, but we know that if everyone's working on resiliency, we would assume that Calpine and the geysers would also be working on more resiliency, more efficiency and possibly more storage. And so, yeah, that was my question is, if we're looking at both purification but also expanded availability of recycled water for the existing uses, which besides the geysers are agriculture and urban landscaping uses, right? That seems to me to be a really interesting realm to explore all the options for portfolio resiliency. So thanks for already having thought about it. Yeah, thank you so much for that Board Member Gravel. I really appreciate those thoughts. All right, I think that Board Member Walsh. Oh, yes, thank you very much. I just wanted to say that the staff and as a candidate for managing this project, the scope of work could obviously create the more we want to get into the other indirect or ancillary benefits or dovetail projects. I appreciate you managing the scope. At the same time, put as much in front of us as we can deal with. For instance, stormwater benefit may have some cost savings if we don't need to do as much scope in the stormwater project how we dovetail with the geysers projects as well. So I just appreciate you managing the scope on this. And thanks. Yeah, thank you so much Board Member Walsh. And I think that's one of the key reasons why there's that initial screening process as well to look at where is the best use of this scope of work to drill into the finer detail. So very good comment. Thank you. Very good. I think that probably covers Board Member Comments and direction with regards to supply options for study. Let's move now to the evaluation criteria if we could please. And I'll just remind you it's going to be easy for us, I think, to move from this to the methodology. But this piece is are there any criteria missing or do you have any questions about what the criteria are? And then we can talk about how it will be applied with the next slide. But this is really more about the content and not the method at this point. All right. Board Member Walsh, is your hand up again or is it from the last slide? I'm sorry, it's from the last slide. I'll take it down. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. No problem. From my perspective, Mr. Close, I think that the criteria looks good. I don't have any particular questions about any of them. I think they're all important criteria when we go to evaluate the various options we're going to be looking at. So I'm fine with them. Other Board Member questions or comments? Thank you very much, Chair. Vice Chair Arnone? Yeah. I guess my year's perked up. There's a lot of interest in the issue of equity, apparently in the feedback that you received. And that's a very important issue across the board. I just don't understand how it applies to this. I don't understand how our water system is designed to provide water to everybody. I'm not sure how it could disproportionately impact a vulnerable community by doing any of these things. So I guess I'm a little unclear on the concept. Yeah, thank you so much for that. I think one thought that comes to mind, let's say we end up with doing, we take recycled water and we're going to do advanced treatment. We're going to turn it into potable. Where do we put that treatment plant? Is it in the poorest neighborhood where neighbors would have to deal with, you know, perhaps 24-hour day production and sound and volume or something like that. And they would be disproportionately impacted or we're going to be able to find a place to do that where there really isn't that same level of impact on folks who are more vulnerable. Our understanding, when we talk about it internally, we intuitively were including equity already because really our water department won't do anything that doesn't meet these sort of basic equity standards. So we have no interest in having unavoidable, I'm sorry, disproportionate impacts on one community over another and our system is set up with redundancies and the quality of our water is consistent and so there are those kinds of issues as well. But if for some reason, you know, there were some piece of this that needed to be considered, we want to make sure so. One of the things I talked to Woodard and Curran about early on was, did they have somebody in-house who's got some expertise in this area and they do. So what they're going to be doing in terms of the methodology is they'll be, for each one of these criteria, more defined understanding of how does something score. Let's say the score is one to five on each of the criteria. Equity would have a way of understanding what the score of one, two, three, four, or five was and it'll be in a sort of matrix so that it's really transparent and as it's being scored, as each project is being scored, it'll be clear not only to us as water folks and you as the governing body, but also to the community. What did we mean by equity and how was it measured? With that, I want to check with you, Christy. Is there anything you'd like to add to that? Thanks, Colin. Yeah, I think this is a metric that's becoming more important and is evolving over time as well. I think Colin's example, you know, I think we're looking at a facility, where are we putting that facility? You know, if the only place we can put it is really going to impact, you know, a very low income community or another community that is vulnerable, then that's not going to score well. So that's where we wanted to capture it. We also heard equity in terms of repair impacts and making sure the distribution of that is equitable. While we won't be looking exactly at that in the study, it's an important parameter to understand. So we'll be working with our team because this is coming up across the west in how you assess this to really define that and make sure we've got the right parameters around that and we're considering it in ways that we haven't in the past. The example is site selection. That fits right in. So I understand it much better now. Thank you. We're going to have a right. Yes, a couple of comments. My favorite criteria is the scalability. That's incredibly important to me. But one other criteria or criterion or whatever the word is that I recommend that we consider is something, a project that can be coupled with another. So you can have two projects that somehow share resources or whatever, because it seems to me we're going to have one have multi prongs. We're not going to come out with one project. We're going to have multiple projects. And so the projects that complement each other, I guess is the word I wanted to say, might also be considered as a criteria. Thank you for being right. And fortunately, I think that falls under multi-benefit. So if there's a project that in and of itself actually makes another project easier or has other benefits like stormwater compliance, maybe not directly related to drinking water, but there's multiple ways that that multi-benefit can be considered. So I think that's the good news. Christy, is there anything that you would add to that? Yeah, I think that's exactly it. We look at it there. We might look at it in environmental performance as well. It gives us a couple of categories that we can assess something like that. Or if something is a net asset in a way that doesn't quite fit and we want to make sure that's captured. OK, I'll say the experts have done their duty. Thank you. I'm sorry to step on that for just a second. I just want to mention to all of the board members that we're taking notes, that we're capturing your comments. And some of our answers, we're answering you right now in the moment and doing our best. But really, these are going to be chewed on by the project team. So what you're presenting to us today is a starting point and your planted seeds. And so just so you know that our answers, we're doing the best we can. Sometimes we're not as graceful as we'd like to be speaking for myself. But these are for taking notes. And so I just want you to be aware of that as well. OK, thank you, Mr. Close. Any other board member questions, comments, or directions to staff regarding the evaluation criteria? Very good. Let's move then to the fourth item, which is the study methodology. I just want to mention one thing at the start. There hasn't been enough time. And because so much of this has been around getting input from all the different stakeholders, there hasn't been enough time to actually set out what each of the criteria will have in its matrix. So if it's a one through five score. So we don't have it as fine tuned, but we will see that with the study when it comes back out to us with the findings. So you're getting a general sense of this. So we're really interested in any input that you may have on this. But we don't yet have that matrix fully fleshed out. OK, thank you. Kind of dovetailing off of Board Member Wright's comments, I think the multi-benefit criterion is medium at best, not low, but that's my opinion. The rest of them might, I think, look fine. Well, thank you so much for that, Chair Galvin. I will mention that when we were looking at these high, medium, and low, one of our worries is whether that's the right terminology. Really what it just means is it's not that it's a low priority. It's just that its score, if it scores a five, that five won't be quite as carried quite as much weight as a five in cost effectiveness. So again, the matrix is going to get fleshed out. But thank you for that point, our community and our water team have mentioned the same thing and the stakeholders the same thing that these, the weighting factors, you know, it looks like something as a low priority and that's not the intention, we haven't found quite the right terminology. Yeah, no, I wasn't indicating that I thought it was being a low priority. I just think the weight that has to be given to that consideration is medium rather than low. However you end up defining it. Okay, excellent. Other board member questions, comments, or directions with regards to study methodology? Board member Grable. Just a quick question and comment that came to mind after the previous discussion of equity. As we're looking at all these supply options and diversification and the portfolio and the way that the costs of any of these projects will be captured, funded, you know, redistributed. We have the pass through from the water agency usually that we can't really do anything about. We can mitigate it slightly as I think we do as a best practice. But, you know, it's just, it occurs to me that, you know, I'm sure that you have already thought about this and have calculations and everything and there's probably state laws already that govern it. So forgive my naivete, but as, for instance, say like we have inflation, it's going down a little bit, but, you know, we had inflation until last month of 8%, but wages only grew 3%. So people actually were making 5% less, but then other costs are increasing. You know, that's obviously an equity question for everyone from middle class to extremely vulnerable communities. For all of these projects and how we're doing the methodological, you know, criteria and the impact criteria, for instance, but how it will impact rate payers and how these things will be funded. Is there also a diversification in seeking grant funding? And as was just discussed by Leicester and the chair about mutual benefit projects that perhaps would also offset potential costs that we under Prop 218 would have to pass on to our rate payers. I'm just thinking about all those things as part of that methodology of like, how can we mitigate any additional costs? Knowing that, at least right now, people have, say, 5% on average less purchasing power, but we know these things are going to incur substantial costs because they're, you know, a lot of them are new projects with substantial capital costs. Yeah, thank you so much for that, Bournemouth Grable. It's really definitely in the forefront of the project team's mind. They've talked a lot about it. We heard it from our water team, our stakeholder group in our community. So this is really a significant piece and you can see that cost effectiveness being right at the top. You can see equity being in there. Those are two different ways of sort of making sure we're doing a check and balance on the cost of these projects. Any of the projects that would be proposed would have to go through a normal budgeting process and would be reviewed by the board. So certainly, you know, when we get to the point where the final plan is presented to you, it is a policy document and not necessarily saying you have approved any one project. So I hope the board does know that any project that gets developed out of this would definitely go through the full board process. So I just want to reassure you about that. I think the other piece of this is that funding options are going to be critical to this and we feel that having this plan in place makes us very close to being able to be shovel ready for the kinds of, you know, infrastructure grants and water supply grants and drought relief grants that are coming down that have already come down the pipeline and the state is promising to continue having come down the pipeline. So having this plan in place does put us at a great advantage in terms of having fought through all of the options, weighing them, prioritizing them and then making some general estimate about what we think it's going to take to do that project. And then lastly, some of the larger projects, projects that would produce more water over time and would be more expensive, that gives us a good 10, 15 years of planning and saving up money over time for those kinds of projects and figuring out funding strategies for projects that might need a substantial amount of money and also having funding in phases. There could be a design phase. There could be then a, you know, that sort of thing so where we could break it up into implementable pieces for those larger projects. And Christy, I know funding is part of what's on your mind as well with this work. Do you want to touch to that, talk to that? Yes, and I think what we're, part of what we're doing too is trying to understand how that fits in cost effectiveness. We want to compare apples to apples, but you may have a project that's expensive, but very fundable, you know, so we want to make sure that we don't throw anything out or discredit something that might be ripe for being able to access, you know, some funding and how we incorporate that. So we're having those discussions with our funding team and with our project team internally to make sure that we are capturing those aspects in a way in which that can fit into the analysis here and also looking at what's out there and continuing to look at that and, you know, pull different outside funding sources that are available and include that to be able to access those as you're going through this access. Something I would add to that that really sparked something to me as someone who has applied for state funding in various sectors before, it seems to me that your methodology already meets the criteria for many of those applications through the governor's office of, you know, planning and research and resiliency and that many of those fund buckets, the water bucket, I know they require, I think probably each one of those categories in your criteria and methodology, I would only say we might want to look at if there are, you know, in this process, if there are any other criteria that are specified that we could do that work now in this process and that, you know, it puts us in a much better position to draw down those grants and be competitive with the 52 other counties in, you know, cities, so. Thank you, Board Member Grable. It's a great, great comment. Really appreciate that. It's not something that had been on my mind and as Ms. Kennedy talked about, you know, she's got a team that's kind of looking at the funding so they can keep that in mind as well in case there is a criteria. And that speaks also to equity and as Ms. Kennedy talked about, you know, this is a huge issue across the state and being able to show that we've looked at that one. That definitely puts us in a good position and maybe there are others that don't neatly fit under one of our, you know, I'll just, you probably all don't remember but we started with 16 criteria and so we had a little bit of an unwieldy list and it was really with the help of the water team and the stakeholder group and then some community input but also the expertise of Woodard and Curran. We were able to kind of make sure that we didn't lose any of those but clump them in ways that was more meaningful. So, but if there's anything missing, I think that's a really good point. We should know what it is and see if we can incorporate it. And Chair Galvin, if I may, just in response to Board Member Grable, thank you for the great feedback. I will let you know that I have been working with the Water Department team to position our projects as best we can. That's something I've been stressing over the last couple of years. So we've been looking at upcoming projects, having them be prepared, whether it's for potential federal funding opportunities or state funding opportunities. And I think because we have been doing that and looking at that, we have been successful recently. We did receive $19.4 million word award for future sewer projects as well as a $1.5 million earmark in this year's state budget. So we really have been actively looking at alternative funding and options for all projects and we'll do so for this project as this study goes through as well. Great, thank you. Any other Board Member Direction or input on the study methodology? All right, I think that concludes this item. Again, Mr. Close, thank you so much for the presentation and Ms. Kennedy, you and your colleagues as well. We'll look forward to further updates as we move this closer to hopefully having identified some projects that we can use to help with our water resiliency. All right, so that will take care of our study session. Next item is the minutes approval. There is one small change on the minutes. Morgan, bigger staff, I got a promotion, I guess, to Assistant City Manager, so we're going to change that to Assistant City Attorney. And with that change, the minutes for December 15th will be approved as amended and entered. We'll take public comments on the minutes approval. If you wish to make a comment on item 4.1, please raise your hand or dial in star nine. Anyone? Sure, Calvin, there is no one on Zoom wishing to provide public comment nor in Council Chamber. All right, thank you. That'll take care of the minutes. We'll now move to item 5.1. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvan and members of the Board. Item 5.1 is our Water and Recycle Water Supply Update. And making today's presentation will be our Deputy Director of Water Resources, Peter Martin, and our Deputy Director of Water Reuse, Mike Prins. Thanks for the introduction. Good afternoon, Chair Galvan and members of the Board. What a difference a month makes our water supply sort of looking quite a bit like the last time I gave you an update. So I'll get to walk through some of the exciting news related to the success of storms we've had since in December and talk a little bit about where things are going with our water supply. So next slide. So the current storage in Lake Pillsbury is about 59,300 acre feet. Lake Pillsbury increases significantly as you can see from that black line. And at the beginning of late December and peaked on January 1st before PG&E started releasing a little bit of more water. The storage levels have since hovered around 60,000 acre feet through various releases they've made over the last few weeks. PG&E did exceed the threshold, if you'll recall, for their FERC variants related to the releases that were mandated by FERC. On December 27th, they crossed the threshold of 36,000 acre feet in Pillsbury. And since then, they've been sending 45 cubic feet per second into the east fork of the Russian River above Lake Minasino. That is up from about 10 cubic feet per second per their variants. So again, they're back to normal operating conditions. That 45 cubic feet per second is obviously a very small magnitude compared to the inflow coming into Lake Minasino, which I'll cover in the next slide. So really the big story here is that after the series of storms we've had beginning on December 26th, Lake Minasino encroached into the flood control pool on January 8th, meaning that really some water handed over the operations decisions for releases from Lake Minasino at that time. In the beginning this Monday, there was a press release put out, but essentially the Army Corps started making high flow releases in between about 2,000 cubic feet per second, taking advantage of this lull and the storms we've had and the receding high flows in the main stem of the Russian River. Obviously their decisions were made to hold back the water for a little while in order not to contribute to any potential flooding downstream. And they're looking at these forecasts very closely and obviously their goal now is to manage a reservoir away to protect the safety of the downstream residents and the reservoir integrity itself. It's possible with some of the longer term weather scenarios that more inflow in the reservoir could be coming, but right now they have started drawing it down. This is really the first time since, I believe, 2019, almost four years that the Army Corps has made high flow releases in order to manage the rising lake levels in Lake Minasino. So quite a stark contrast we've dealt with over the last few years of very low rainfall. Current storage is about 87,000 acre feet. This is down from this curve. Again, they started making releases on Monday, so the peak last weekend was about 96,000 acre feet. This is really about more than 20,000 acre feet above their target storage curve for this time of year. And the releases at the moment are about 2,000 cubic feet per second, and they're drawing down that reservoir slowly and steadily over the past few days. Next slide. So here's where our real excitement begins. There's been a lot more smiles around the office, obviously. We were below, I think, 96,000 acre feet in the end of December, and since then there's been an increase of over 135 acre feet just in that time. So storage in Lake Snum is now, as of today, at 232,700 acre feet, and the flood control pool denoted by that dotted line, the gray dotted line in this graphic, is at 245,000 acre feet. So really there's some scenarios with additional storms, potentially in the next month or so, where we could see storage potentially exceeding that level. So really just some great news here in terms of our fortunes really turning for our regional water supply and the likelihood of more plentiful water supplies this year, especially coming out of the deficits we've had in the last two years that you're aware. So if we go to the next slide, I just wanted to put this up there and really just my hope was to show these numbers and that it's not necessarily, you know, the amount of rainfall, of course, it's the timing of when it comes, you know, if you get and then, you know, more aware lands too, of course. You know, this time last year, we're really close to where we were in terms of rainfall in Santa Rosa, but if you'll recall, you got a ton of water, I believe close to 11 inches in one weekend, almost in October, and then it just stopped raining. And so when you get these events where you've got several weeks of steady rainfall and these atmospheric rivers, it can really add up to a lot more runoff that's captured in these reservoirs. So yeah, it's a really interesting dynamic we're in right now. It's very likely, though, that we'll see, you know, hopefully above average rainfall through the remainder of the year. But at this point, I think most people are probably happy that we get a little bit of a drying out period of course. So next slide. So I just want to talk a little bit about the operations under the flood control stages and the opportunities here that Stimblewater has through FIRO and some of the agreements they have with the Army Corps. You know, as I mentioned earlier, beginning in January 8th, the Army Corps took over control and is now making decisions on the releases from Lake Minasino. But a few years ago, through their Stimblewater's efforts, they've been able to approve up forecast informed reservoir operations and the Army Corps has received the authorization for a major deviation from the flood control curve, allowing them to retain up to 11,650 acre feet above the flood control pool. And you know, this is for the water years 2021 through 2026. They had its authorization for five years. It's likely not going to happen right away, but these storms, as you can see, could result in additional storage being allowed in Lake Minasino very soon. In terms of Lake Sonoma, they also have, should they go above that 245,000 acre feet threshold, an authorization for an additional 9500 acre feet before February 15th. And then after that 15th, they can start storing about another 700 acre feet per day up to a maximum on March 1st of 19,000 acre feet. So really, these are opportunities here to potentially bolster those water supplies. And so hopefully, we'll continue to see some of these events continue and progressing out into the spring. And with confidence from the Army Corps, they have those decision support tools through Stimblewater's forecast informed reservoir operations really to be able to make those decisions that they can save some of that water. And they have the opportunity here to potentially save up to another 31,000 acre feet of storage between the two reservoirs. Next slide. We're still continuing to track our conservation. So, again, the city remains in stage three of our water storage contingency plan. But in December of, so last month, Santa Rosa residents did reduce their water use by about 7% compared to December of 2020. And cumulatively from that time when the declaration was made, water use has been reduced by 18% when compared to 2020. Next slide. So really, you know, this really goes to the work that the staff are doing and that, you know, thinking ahead, we have built a very flexible outreach plan to address conditions as they change and to continue to talk with our customers in a meaningful way about making choices around water use efficiency in their homes. But, you know, at the moment right now, things are really looking positive in terms of our forecasted water supply outlook. We're coordinating with our regional partners in Stimblewater, of course. The governor's executive order does remain in effect. It does specify that all water utilities need to implement specific actions that are consistent with the shortage level of up to 20% depending upon what's going on in the region. So, you know, while not necessarily a specific target, there are some requirements that need to remain in place. So we're taking a look at that, thinking ahead of what that looks like. But at the moment, of course, on saving water and doors this winter, we're out talking to folks about finding and fixing leaks and swapping out those fixtures in their home. And then, of course, we are continuing and will continue to plan for several events, some fun things going on here in the next few months on and through spring. So, yeah, just stay tuned. And this is obviously a very dynamic situation. Quite a bit has changed over the last few weeks. That concludes my portion of the presentation. I'm going to hand it over to Deputy Director, Director, my friends. Thank you, Peter. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. I want to touch base on a number of aspects of regional reuse operations. What you see in the screen right now is a photo of the plant taken not that long ago, as I think you're probably already aware that Laguna de Santa Rosa does go beyond its banks during certain conditions. And when it does that, it can flood the plant. What you see is an aerial photo that does show flooding at the plant that occurred on January 9th. At the very bottom of the photo, just left of center is the bridge of Lana Road over the Laguna de Santa Rosa right near the entrance to the plant. I think the water surface at this time may be a little more than a foot above the deck surface, the bridge deck surface. Just shows the general area of the plant and the plant site itself slopes more or less to the south-south-west. So that's where the main entrance usually is and is vulnerable to flooding. Fortunately, this flooding wasn't as bad as we have seen in the past. Next slide, please. This is another view almost from the exact opposite direction that shows the interior of the plant and how flood water can actually come up into the plant. I've got another slide that I'll show you later that shows some of our temporary flood features in action. But you can see we get flooding even at the stage we saw, which I think was in the vicinity of 86 feet at the Stony Point Road gauge on the Laguna. We can get some substantial flooding into the plant. We have seen worse in the past, particularly 2006 comes to mind. But this was, we saw this coming, you might say, and I'm glad that it wasn't worse than it was. Next slide. We use a number of different tools to predict how things are going to happen at the plant in terms of flood waters and actually flows to the plant. A resource that I use pretty regularly is the Center for Western Weather and Water Extremes Atmospheric River Forecasting Site. Next slide, please. In addition to being, I think, maybe one of the most colorful websites that I go to, this is actually very helpful in terms of us seeing whether or not we may see an atmospheric river. It's fairly complicated. I'm not going to go through all of the details of the slide with you. The magenta horizontal line is roughly the latitude of Santa Rosa. The more purple the blobs are, the more intense the rain is, the more certainty that there is high water transport occurring in the atmosphere. And day zero is at the right-hand side of the most colorful portion of the screen there, and it goes out 16 days. I want to draw your attention to the blue ellipse around the probability of, I think it's integrated vapor transport, 150 kilograms per meter second, something like that, interesting units. But you can adjust that and see where there's higher intensity storms embedded within what you see there. And so next slide, when you adjust to a higher intensity or higher concentration of water vapor, you can see where there are more intense storms embedded in the general region where we expect to see rain. And this is just something that we use pretty regularly to see what kind of storm we're going to get. It's one of several tools that we use. It's very adjustable. I will say this website that I go to and that was shown on the slides, just a few slides earlier, has just a huge array of different kind of graphical presentations of how atmospheric rivers are forecasted. It's very interesting. For me, it's a little bit bewildering. I don't understand all of the slides, but they are very interesting and generally pretty consistent. I've been using this for many years now. So anyway, something you may want to take a look at yourselves and get familiar with. Next slide. We also look very closely at the data for the Stony Point Road stream gauge for the Laguna de Santa Rosa. What you see before there is the blue trend, which shows conditions prior to the date that this was published on. I think this was January 5th when I was taking this excerpt. And then the purple data to the right of that shows you the forecast. It does get updated fairly regularly, but when we do see the forecast stream gauge go above 85 feet and into the pink or salmon colored region, we really do start to make preparations to mitigate any potential flooding at the plant. Next slide. So what you see in front of you right now is a picture I took when we were getting ready for some flooding of what we referred to as, and it's a trademark name, a tiger dam, which is an inflatable bladder that you fill with water. We actually use recycled water to block certain portions of plant access. And you can see on either end of this tiger dam that there are concrete blocks. We have an array of concrete blocks in various locations that the plant tied together to provide a limited amount of flood protection in the event of flooding. But we can't have those concrete blocks block access, so that's why we install temporary, i.e., removable dams that actually seem to work fairly well. I will point out that in just to the right of the middle of the photo, you can see a tan, boxy looking feature behind the yield sign. That's electrical equipment. And there's a lot of electrical equipment at the plant that is vulnerable to flooding that we do want to protect. We are planning a very robust flood burn project around the plant as a whole that will protect to a higher capacity than the tiger dam and concrete block wall that I'm discussing. But nonetheless, the electrical equipment is vulnerable to flooding at the plant. So I think this picture kind of demonstrates quite a bit. Next slide. This is what they look like when they're filled up. And we have a number of staff in the photograph, actually a number of new staff as well. Happy to see that and happy that they had a training opportunity. You'll see a little bit of water ponded on the right-hand side of the photograph. When we install these tiger dams, normal drainage patterns at the plant are disrupted, so there can be some degree of accumulation within the protected area, the area protected by the flood wall and the tiger dams. That gets pumped out of the storm drain system. Next slide. And this is what it looked like on January 9th. The tiger dam is actually holding back water. It wasn't a significant amount of water. We can't predict exactly how deep the water will get, but fortunately we did have the tiger dam deployed. I don't know exactly how extensive the flooding would have been had we not deployed the tiger dams. We actually have various tiger dams in various locations that we deploy when we see flooding conditions forecast. But nonetheless, I think it's kind of an interesting series of photos to show you how our temporary flood mitigation system works and how it's worked recently. Next slide. This is an aerial photo and footnote. I want to just give credit to Christian Williams, our treatment superintendent who has a drone and he took all the aerial photos in his presentation today. So thanks to Christian for that. But you can see in the yellow circled area, the tiger dam that I was just showing you and the effect that it's having on the migration of floodwater towards electrical equipment. So pretty great example of a temporary flood wall in action and great perspective with the aerial photos, in my opinion. Next slide. Moving on, we have had to navigate a few different issues and you may have seen an article in the newspaper recently about a particular rock slide that occurred on Pine Flat Road that presented a problem for a little while. We couldn't get any vehicles through that area, but Snowm County was able to move some of the debris out of the way so that we had at least one lane open. But wet weather, while it's great for a water supply situation, it does present some other challenges, such as what you see in this photo. I actually think the larger boulder in the back is probably twice the size of a full-size pickup. I would hazard a guess on how much it weighs, but it's probably more than most construction equipment could move. So interesting conditions on Pine Flat Road. The reason I bring that up, I'm sure you're well aware, our geysers pipeline goes up portions of Pine Flat Road and we have three very significant pump stations that we access via Pine Flat Road. This particular rock slide was down near the bottom of Pine Flat Road, so we temporarily had no access to our three high-pressure pump stations on the geysers pipeline. We did need to get some work done, actually, so it was very fortuitous that the county was able to clear out a lane and we were able to get here and do some work on a couple of pumps shortly after this photo was taken. Next slide. So this is a chart that I've shown you in the past just putting our recycle water production at the Laguna Treatment Plant into context. This has not been updated through January. It gets updated monthly, but I'm looking forward to showing this to you when we do have it updated next. Last year is represented by the line of red dots and the current year is the black line that goes through December. Just puts things into context. The darker blue lines are averaged from 1986 to 2021 and then the spaghetti-like blue lines are just all of the aggregate curves for years between 86 and 2021. Next slide. Our current recycle water storage levels are high. The red line represents the storage trend for this year and storage as of right now is just above 1.1 billion gallons. Last year is represented by the black trend, which I think I've described for you as well in the past. The brackets of light blue trends, minimums and maximums just bracket the range that we have measured over the years. So you can see right now our recycle water storage levels are breaking records for this time of year. I think we're more than 180% above normal for this time of year. That is relative to our average from 2004 to 2022. Just wanted to show you how things can change rapidly. They changed very rapidly in October of 2021. You can see just before November where we had a very significant storm that elevated our storage levels very abruptly. And what we've been experiencing more recently has been just a consistent parade of storms coming through and elevating our recycle water storage levels consistently. Basically, since about Christmas, I would say. Next slide. This is a summary. I figured I would show you since we've now got it calculated and it's first BPU meeting, I think, that I've been able to present this to you. For 2022, our guys' delivery was 91, just over 91%. We have a 90% minimum requirement, which we always fulfill. 2021, we are at 95% and the data on the chart goes back to 2017. So we're delivering our contract requirement and keeping our storage levels high as a result of keeping that contract fulfillment just above 90%. This is recent data that I wanted to present you with. Next slide. As a result of our high recycle water storage levels, we did commence a discharge yesterday. This picture is basically just to put it into spatial context, if you will. The purple circle at the bottom of this aerial photo is where the Laguna Treatment Plant is. The blue segmented line is roughly Highway 12. The yellow circle is where the Municipal Service Center facilities are at 69 Stoning Circle. And the red circle is Delta Pond, where we have our Delta Pond diffuser. It's where we discharge from the system normally. That is actually a manifold below the channel of Santa Rosa Creek that has duct bill, very large rubber duct bill check valves that allow water to leave Delta Pond and be discharged in a diffuse manner into the creek. And that did commence yesterday and it is continuing today and will continue as flows in the creek allow. I just got an update during the meeting that our flow rate right now is 55 million gallons a day of discharge right now. Next slide. This is essentially just a very simplistic overview of the discharge process. Some simple points to make. It is triggered by rainy weather. The rainy weather typically elevates the Laguna Treatment Plant flows and therefore the volume of recycle water that we produce on a daily basis. We have seen flows nearly 50 million gallons a day recently. These high flow rates to the treatment plant translate into high storage levels in our aggregate recycle water storage pond system. Meanwhile, we are operating the geysers operation at essentially full capacity up to 18 million gallons a day. So there's a net increase in storage level as a result of the plant flows minus the geysers flow rate. And of course right now there's no irrigation happening. Otherwise that would be a demand on the system such as occurs during the summer. But anyway, the process is fairly straightforward. There's a lot of staff labor that goes into it and it is a little bit stressful for staff because it's not something we normally do and there's a little bit of a logistical challenge to get everything dialed in just right before we do a discharge. But nonetheless, we monitor receiving water quantity and quality in Santa Rosa Creek at the Willowside Bridge essentially and then near where the diffuser actually exists just upstream from the Laguna to Santa Rosa. We monitor flow, temperature, pH, turbidity and dissolved oxygen. Lately dissolved oxygen has been the limiting factor on discharge. But based on that data, we calculate the maximum allowable discharge flow rate as compared to our recycle water quality in Delta Pond. It's normally completely automated with data sands which are just instruments that collect water quality data and the USGS stream gauge data. With all of that automated, there are real-time adjustments to valve positions on the manifold of the discharge that adjusts the flow rate to meet set points and not exceed the maximum allowable discharge flow rate. I want to stress that this is tertiary treated, disinfected, recycled water. Sometimes people will try and spin things differently. This is extremely high quality recycled water that we store in our storage ponds and the entire process that we follow for a discharge is according to very specific requirements in our NPDES discharge permit. Next slide. I thought it would be useful to show you a trend of our recent historical discharge. As I think you may already be very well aware, we don't normally discharge from our system. We do occasionally and I think this trend shows that quite clearly. We do have some years where we have significant discharge in 2016 to 2017. We discharged over 1.2 billion gallons. Ultimately, the reason we discharge is we don't have infinite storage capacity. Our storage capacity is limited to 1.4 billion gallons, which is represented by a horizontal line on the storage trend that I've shown you in this presentation and previously. This time of year, when we're in the vicinity of a couple hundred million gallons of our maximum storage capacity, we have to make decisions to discharge. It's sometimes a little frustrating to see that high-value commodity of recycled water having to leave the system, but we just have to because we have a limit on how much storage volume we have. Our most recent discharge was 2018 and 2019, with a few years of zero discharge since that time. Next slide. I wanted to recapitulate the trend that I just showed you earlier. Again, the horizontal line at the top is our maximum storage capacity. Instead of the black line representing last year, I pulled up one of our highest discharge years of note recently, which is 2016 and 2017. What you see in the purple ellipse is the effect of discharge on our storage curve. When we discharge, you produce sort of a sawtooth pattern in the storage trend over the course of time. When you see the storage levels declining, that's when we're having a discharge that exceeds our production rate at the treatment plant. Then when we shut the discharge off or taper it off such that the flow rate of the plant exceeds the discharge amount, then you can see where we have increases in storage. The term that's often used for this kind of a discharge phenomenon is an episodic discharge pattern, and that manifests itself as you can see there was sort of a sawtooth pattern in the storage trend over time. We are breaking storage records right now. I actually saw an update of this chart just today, and the red line had turned horizontally, so our discharge flow rate is approximately the same as the plant flow plus the geysers usage as well. The curve has flattened out, but it's only been a day or two, so there isn't a lot of data to see just yet. Anyway, next slide. I think that's all I had for today. Happy to answer questions. Thank you to both deputy directors, board member questions or comments? Vice Chair Noni. I have a question about, you mentioned what we monitor when we discharge and you included flow, temperature, pH, turbidity and dissolved oxygen. Do we measure phosphorus? Yes, we do, because we consume phosphorus credits when we discharge because there is a quantity of phosphorus in our recycle water. That was my question really. Are we going to be using some of our credits as a result of this discharge? That was my question. I believe so. Okay. Other board member questions or comments? All right, we'll 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 9 to raise your hand. Secretary Manus. Chair, there are no hands being raised via Zoom and no one in council chamber providing public comment. Thank you. That will conclude item 5.1. We'll now move to item 5.2. Director Burke. Thank you very much. Chair Gominem, members of the board, item 5.2 is our US EPA lead and copper rule revision implementation. And Tony Yamas, our water quality supervisor, will be making the presentation. One moment while we promote Tony to panelists. I do see Tony on the panelists side. You can turn your camera on and prepare to present. Okay. Am I here? We see you. Thank you. We've got you. Okay. Thank you, director Burke. And good afternoon, Chairman Galvin, members of the board. I'm here today to give a brief update on the EPA's revised lead and copper rule. Next slide, please. So lead and copper are naturally found throughout the environment, but more commonly, lead and copper are introduced into water supply through lead service lines, lead-based solder joints, and household fixtures. Currently, the EPA does have a maximum contaminant level goal for lead set at zero. And despite the fact that water suppliers only control the distribution system, the point of compliance for lead and copper is actually at the customer's tap. Next slide, please. Okay. So this illustration shows sources of lead where it can be found in household. If we start at the bottom, you have your main water line, and you may have a lead gooseneck, and then you may have a lead service line. There is galvanized pipe throughout the house, which can be considered lead if it's downstream from a lead service line. You may have faucets or fixtures that are high in lead content, and then copper pipe, which is put together with lead solder. Next slide, please. So we'll go back a bit and look at when the lead and copper rule was established in 1991. It began with the sampling in six-month intervals from 100 homes. If these samples triggered action levels, water supplies would have to establish corrosion treatment techniques to reduce lead concentrations below a set level. But on the other hand, if consecutive sampling events were below the 90th percentile of action levels, you could reduce sampling to yearly, and then furthermore to triennial sampling, which where San Jose is today. Next slide, please. Okay, so we'll begin with what was California SB 1398 and 427. So at that time, state-required water supplies to compile a list of all lead services in the distribution system that were on the public side, which was basically defined as the connection from the water main up to the water meter or the property line. San Rosa did survey the system and was able to meet the deadline of July 1st, 2018. Next slide, please. When it to 1940, it was common to use a lead goosene to connect the galvanized service to the water main, but our past surveys have shown that cast iron mains were actually connected using copper material. And as far as results of our inventory to date, no lead goosene connections have been found. Next slide, please. So we're going to shift gears a little bit to lead testing for schools. And in 2017, California Assembly Bill 746 required water supplies to conduct lead testing of public schools that were K-12 built prior to 2010. Sampling was completed by San Rosa Water, and results were made public through the notifications to the schools in the annual water quality report. And AB 2370 followed shortly with childcare facilities requiring to do private testing of lead and drinking water, and that was required to be completed by January 1st of this year. Next slide, please. So despite the fact that so much work has been done to minimize the lead and drinking water, there are still plenty of lead services throughout the U.S. Here you can see that California has what they say approximately about 65,000 lead services, whereas if you look at Illinois, they have about 730,000 lead services with about a third of California's population. So with that risk that these lead services still exist, drives the EPA to further strengthen the rule. Next slide, please. So with the newer visions to the rule, which must be met by October 24th, or as such, develop a lead service line inventory, identify all schools and childcare facilities, develop enhanced public communication, and then as well as other changes in the sampling of routines for lead and copper, and we'll dive into these just a little bit more. Next slide, please. With this new regulation regarding the service lines, EPA defines service line as not only the public side as stated previously, but as well as the private side of the service to where it enters the structure. Next slide, please. And as far as our compliance strategy for the service line inventory, we have already eliminated areas built after 1948 with documents found from construction standards adopted from that year, which only allowed for the use of copper service materials. Staff has already began to survey the map and areas built prior to 1948. We plan to complete the report by the deadline and make those findings available on our city's website. And lastly, have a strategy for informing the public if private lead service lines are found that require replacement. Next slide, please. So now under the new regulation for lead testing, water supplies will be required to do annual testing of 20% of all schools. Now these include public, private, charter, secondary schools and childcare facilities with results to be shared with those facilities as well as with the state. Next slide, please. And our strategy for compliance will be to, number one, compile a list of the facilities by October of 2024, begin the new sampling regime after 2025, revise the list at least every five years, address additional staffing and also just evaluate if any resources are needed. We will provide timely and accurate communications with these facilities. Next slide. And with the additional LCRR compliance measures, we plan to develop internal coordination plans, achieve compliance with new sampling protocols by 2025, update the health effects language for public education, as well as enhancing our outreach and web content. And then finally just determine if actions will be required for less services after compiling this data. I believe that may be the next slide. Yes, that's the end of my presentation. A little brief, but I'll be here. I'm here to answer any questions. Thank you, Mr. Lamas. I'll open it up for any board member questions or comments. Vice Chair Arnoty. My only comment was it was brief and we appreciate briefness and succinctness like you gave us. Thank you. Thank you. All right, I don't see any hands raised from the board. I'll open it up for public comments on item 5.2. If you wish to make a public 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 Galvan, there are no public comments from Zoom and none from Council Chamber. Very good. We'll now move to the consent calendar. We have two items on the consent calendar. I'll entertain a motion. I'll move adoption. I'll second then. Okay, we have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar. We'll open it up for public comments on the consent agenda. 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 public comments from Zoom and none from Council Chamber. Thank you. May we have a roll call vote please? Board Member Wright. Aye. Board Member Watts. Board Member Walsh. Aye. Board Member Grable. Aye. Board Member Batenfort. Vice Chair Arnone. Aye. Chair Galvan. Aye. Let the record show this motion passes with five affirmative votes. Thank you. That'll take care of the consent calendar. We have no report items. Item eight is public comments on non-agenda matters. We're now taking public comments on item eight. 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 Galvan, I see no hands being raised via Zoom and no public comments from Council Chamber. Thank you. We have no written communications. We have no subcommittee reports. Do we have any Board Member reports? Hearing none, we will move to the Director's report. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvan and members of the Board. I have a few items I just want to share with you today. First, I'm very happy to report that we've hit a milestone in our green exchange program. At the start of this year, we removed or rebated the removal of our four millionth square foot of turf. So we've hit four million square feet of turf removed, saving 69 million gallons per year and we launched the program in 2007. I do want to note that since the drought proclamation in June of 2021, our customers have responded and more than 400,000 square feet have been removed and replaced with low water use landscapes since the start of that emergency proclamation. I do want to just recognize the dedicated staff of the Water Use Efficiency Team and their commitment to customer service and our outreach and customer service teams that have really helped us get the word out and encourage our community to participate in this wonderful program. We will be publishing, publicizing this exciting news in a variety of ways soon and encouraging people to continue to participate in the program. Second, I wanted to just acknowledge the water department as a whole. All the employees of the department were amazingly resilient through this series of storms. I just wanted the board to know that you have a great team. We had no interruptions to water service, no sanitary sewer overflows. The treatment plant was able to manage the increased amount of water coming into the plant and meet all treatment requirements, producing recycled water that meets all of our permit requirements, all the way through to now we're discharging as well as our stormwater and creeks teams because of the great maintenance they had done on creeks we didn't see any flooding issues on any of our creeks. So this was a very trying time with a lot of extra effort that folks had to put in and the water department as always came through and did a fabulous job and I cannot thank them enough. I also wanted to let you know that we also had some good news to report on our sanitary sewer side. For calendar year 2022, we only had two sanitary sewer overflows and to put this into perspective, the state water board uses the following equation. So typically for a number of spills they use the equation of number of SSOs per 100 miles of pipe per year and so to put this in context, the state average for 2022 was 23.95 or basically 24 SSOs. The region that we're in, region one, which has 70 systems, the average was a little over 12.5 SSOs and for Santa Rosa, our number is 0.34 SSOs per 100 miles of pipe per year. So again, the staff amazing and the condition and maintenance that they do on the sanitary sewer system and the care that they have for that system puts us really in a class above. So great job to our local operations team. And then I wanted to just remind the board of a few things. One is at your next meeting on February 2nd, we will be administering the oath of office to appointed BPU members. So for those that are completing their term and have been reappointed or if there's any new appointments, we'll be issuing oath of office to all BPU members at that meeting. Also, you have been emailed but wanted to let you know that we are taking updated pictures of board members. So hopefully you all can attend. For those that can't, I know we have board member Wright has told us he's unavailable. We will schedule another time for you but we would like to see hopefully everyone in person on the February 2nd meeting and get your updated pictures taken for all board members. And then last, I just wanted to remind the board, I know I've been telling you this a little bit over the last couple of meetings, but a reminder that the governor has announced that the COVID state of emergency declaration will end on February 28th. So that does mean that we will go back to different protocols over seeing how we comply with the Brown Act. And so we're still working out the details from the city attorney's office and with the council. But we've been following the AB 2449 requirements very closely. And in essence, just recognize that for the most part, we're going to need to be back in person on the first and third Thursdays of every month for BPU members. There are some exceptions. And again, we'll get that protocol out but just want to remind you to start preparing that you need to be back in person for BPU members going forward, starting with the March meetings. And that is my report and I'm happy to answer any questions you may have. Thank you, Director Burke. Do we have any questions from the board? In regards to the director's report? All right, hearing none. We'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. There are no hands being raised via Zoom and no public comments from council chamber. Very good. That concludes our agenda for today's meeting. I wish you all a good afternoon. And we'll see you in a couple of weeks. We're adjourned.