 Good afternoon everyone. I'd like to call the meeting the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. We have a roll call please. Yes Chair Galvin. Here. Vice Chair Arnone. Board Member Badden-Ford. Board Member Grable. Here. Board Member Walsh. Board Member Watts. Here. Board Member Wright. Here. Well good afternoon. Welcome to our semi-virtual meeting. Reminder to please mute your phones or microphones when you're not speaking and to put away all your cell phones and personal computers. We'll move to item one or item two. Any statements of abstention by board members? Very none. I'll take care of that. We have no study sessions today. The minutes for August 5 we're sent to you so at this time we'll take public comments on the minutes approval. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom please raise your hand. If you dial in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand. Do we have any in-person attendees? Seeing none. Secretary Aitha do we have anyone? There's no public comment. Very good. The minutes will be approved for August 5th. We'll now move to item 5.1 which is the first staff briefing. Director Burke. Thank you Chair Galvin and members of the board. Our first staff briefing is our Water and Recycle Water Supply Update and Deputy Director Water Resources Peter Martin and Deputy Director Regional Operations Emma Walton will be making the presentation. Thanks for the introduction Director Burke. Good afternoon Chair Galvin and members of the board. I am pleased to provide you with a water supply update today and then I'll hand it off to Emma to cover some of the Recycle Water Storage information. If we go to the next slide please. Looks like we're still bringing it up here. Thank you. So we'll start off just on the upper watershed. Lake Minasino and upper Russian River continues to see diminishing supplies and is at historical lows for this time of year. As of August 27th the reservoir storage fell below Sonoma Waters 20,000 acre foot storage goal that was established for October 1st so they did not achieve the savings in the water the lower upper Russian River that they had expected and therefore it has fallen below that target. That's largely due to larger than expected channel losses that could be partially attributable to water diversions downstream of Lake Minasino and the upper Russian River. I think I've mentioned to this board before over the past few months the state of California issued curtailment orders to cease diversions amongst a variety of water right holders and upper and now lower Russian River with certain exceptions for health and safety needs. And then we also heard from some water staff recently that officials are currently in the process of conducting inspections with those water right holders to ensure they're complying with those curtailment orders and the requirements of their water right permits. Next slide. So this is a sort of a slide that kind of speaks to the targets that Sonoma Water had established for Lake Minasino. It's a little different than what you've seen before. But as you can see, they're continuing to fall below the projected storage at this point. This is kind of a slide to show some of the revised projections through the remainder of the year under some different planning scenarios. The Orange Line sort of represents where Sonoma Water expected to be and obviously see the black line there. That's the actual storage line. And they expected to be at that Orange Line based on the operations ever previously negotiated with State Water Resources Control Board and the expected conservation of water and water right curtailments. And then that obviously combined with reduced releases from Lake Minasino. The blue line shows projected storage with water right curtailments being enforced as far as what they project. And then the green line shows projected supplies with full demands without any conservation. So in those scenarios, water storage could fall very low in Lake Sonoma by the end of the year. So unfortunately, I guess this just tells you that the requirements that they had for minimum and stream flows and releases today combined with the higher than expected diversions downstream and channel losses has basically led to less water being left in Lake Minasino. Obviously this sort of hurts the ability of Sonoma Water to stretch those supplies for the upper Russian River and should dry conditions persist into 2022. Next slide. So in Lake Sonoma on the lower Russian River, you know, storage remains at the lowest in the 40 years of operation for this time of year. But as of August 30th, storage is about 116,000 acre feet or about 47% of their target water supply for this time of year. And Sonoma Water is again doing everything they can to manage their water supplies for the contractors, including Santa Rosa, and ensure sufficient carryover storage in case of another dry winter. Even with the multiple dry years we've experienced, we've been told by Sonoma Water that if dry conditions persist this fall and winter, they will have enough water supplies in Lake Sonoma to last another two years and meet the contractual obligations. However, you know, as expected, their additional mandatory conservation orders would be required if we get into that scenario. Notably, water supplies could fall below the 100,000 acre foot threshold by the end of this calendar year. I think we've spoken about this at times that Sonoma Water's water rights do have some potential for mandatory triggers of additional reductions and diversions if they fall below that threshold. You know, sometimes next year, perhaps, or beyond the existing temporary to change petition, or if they're not meeting the existing temporary to change order requirements. Next slide. So speaking of the temporary change order, I just wanted to just kind of give a abbreviated timeline of, you know, where we are today and what's occurring and how Sonoma Water is responding. You know, obviously on May 3rd, the Water Advisory Committee unanimously adopted a temporary methodology for allocation of water deliveries this summer. That was a flat allocation for all contractors lasting from July through October until they could create a revised methodology from the previous version that we that was adopted in 2014 or maybe it's 2016. Forgive me, I'm not sure actually. So, but and then June 14th, obviously the State Water Resource Control Board issued an order allowing them to reduce their flows from Lake Sonoma and continue to reduce flows in Lake Mendocino. And it also required diversion. They reduced their diversions from the lower Russian River by 20% compared to 2020. Therefore, they would have less water to deliver to the contractors. So, Sonoma Water issued those temporary allocations to all contractors beginning July 1. And then those monthly allegations began in July and they began reducing their diversions at that time as well. So, Sonoma Water has been tracking those diversions for deliveries to contractors in addition to many other metrics that are required to track for the purposes of complying with the temporary urgency change order. Those are specific to water quality and fishery health. So, next slide. So, this is sort of the latest graphic towards the end of the month. The contractors including Santa Rosa Water are continuing to reduce their water usage compared to last year and overall diversions by Sonoma Water are down 22%. So, they are achieving their goals in terms of meeting the requirements of the temporary change order. Next slide. So, we'll just switch real quick to some of the things that we're doing here at Santa Rosa Water. In terms of outreach this month, we will continue to ramp up our focus on turf replacement programs, the cash for grass. We do have an increased per square foot rebate right now. That is, we're really trying to get the word out there and get as many folks to do turf perversion as possible during this drought. So, we'll be doing an additional bill insert that I believe is already out running right now and radio spots directing folks to this program. Then, we've been conducting a lot of large landscape outreach in addition to landscape contractors as well. This month, we'll launch our SuperSaver campaign, which should be very fun. It will highlight folks throughout Santa Rosa that are Super Savers in hopes that they can show others perhaps throughout the community various ways that they can save water as well. We have launched a Trusted Messenger video series. I will share one of those in the next slide and then those are going on. The Trusted Messenger video was something that was an idea of Claire Nordley, our Water Use Efficiency Coordinator. She worked with the partnership folks to develop the proposed scripts and things like that for these videos. There's about seven of them. They're focused on folks that are Trusted Messengers, business and community. I'll share one of those with you again in the next slide. Then, of course, we have the long gone sheet mulching 101 workshop. It is part of our contract with Daily Acts, hosting these workshops. We look forward to that. Again, that can help folks to effect changes in their turf replacement in a way that doesn't require a bunch of watering immediately after that occurs. Then, of course, the next Drop Drop by event will be October 9th, and we'll have more details on our webpage there. Next slide. As I mentioned, we have some Trusted Messenger videos. There's a series of these that are out right now. I think we can bring one up. The audio was working earlier, I promise. I don't know if we want to attempt to try to reload that, or we could certainly provide the links to all these videos to the board if that's something that Director Burke is interested in at this point. Why don't you hold on for just a second, Mr. Martin? I think we're hopefully going to get this resolved. Great, thank you. Sorry, we're not able to get it to play any louder, so we'll just have to move on. Great, thanks for trying. I apologize. That's always this learning curve, especially with the hybrid meeting we're doing today. Let's try it again next time. Okay. With this slide, I just want to share some good news in terms of our water usage over since the institution of water allocations. Of course, the gray line in this graphic shows our water use in 2020 during that time of year. The blue gray line on the chart shows a water usage for this year, and then the orange kind of small line there is our target. In terms of water usage last month, or excuse me, never in September now, in July, water usage was down overall 22% compared to last year. I do have some news to share too, as well as we just got the numbers this morning. It looks like in August, we also achieved a 22% reduction overall. For the first two months of our new allocations and the institution of the Stage 3 of the Water Shorts Continuity Plan, we are meeting those community targets, so definitely some good news to share there. Next slide. In terms of just looking ahead, we continue to meet with our regional partners and the contractors twice a month, including Snow Water. At the next Water Advisory Committee, I believe on September 13th, they will be updating the Water Shortage Allocation methodology. In my previous slides, I pointed out that a temporary allocation methodology was applied for the term of July through October. This will carry that beyond and will also be approved perhaps for future times when allocation methodology is necessary. Then, of course, Snow Water is continuing to work on a regional resiliency study. As a result of us being in a critical drought right now, they have kind of moved some of the tasks around a bit to focus more on projects that could affect drought resiliency as part of that study. This is a study that is incorporating information from different contractors and looking at ways that the delivery system could be more resilient and, of course, resilient to drought, fire, and earthquake and other emergencies. Then, of course, we're continuing to plan ahead for another dry winter. Of course, thinking about the possibility of going into additional stages of our shortage plan if necessary, that includes, of course, once you get to stage five or a 30% reduction overall, the institution of allocations for individual customers and businesses in addition to requirements for new development. This board will see some information coming out the next couple of months from staff on the demand offset policy for new development. That will be carried forward to the City Council in hopes of having it adopted by the end of November. Then, of course, we're continuing to provide routine updates to the board public utilities like today and the City Council. Director Burke and I did give a update to the City Council this Tuesday. I guess we can move to the next slide. Just a reminder that we're here to help you save. You can go to src.org slash water smart and then for all the latest information on the drought and other updates, you can go to src.org slash save water. That'll conclude my portion of the presentation. I'll hand it over to Deputy Director Walton. Thank you, Deputy Martin, and good afternoon, Chair Galvin, members of the board. Next slide, please. Thank you. I'm here today to give a brief update on our recycled water production and storage. Here's our production. You can see our production continues to be very low, lower than it has ever been. Our production to date has been lower than it has ever been, as well as our average monthly production. Next slide, please. Our recycled water storage is actually in pretty good shape, given the restrictions that we put in place this year, the allocations, excuse me, that we put in place this year. However, given the low production that we are experiencing and an anticipation of another dry winter, we are holding a little more in storage than we typically would. This is to ensure that as we move through the year and into early next year, we have enough water to meet all of our obligations. Next slide, please. So just some kind of brief overviews of what's occurred. We are on track to meet all of our contracts and all of our allocations this year, including our ag allocations, our geysers contract and urban contracts. Our irrigation season is coming to an end. This month will mark the final month of our irrigation season. The season went very well, and as expected, no major issues. We do have about 50 million gallons left in allotments that we have enough water to make sure that we meet those allotments. In addition to our irrigation season coming to an end, our water year is also coming to an end. Once we do complete out of the water year, I will be coming back to provide a recap of the water year and some kind of metrics to kind of close out the water year. And we will be beginning to start our planning and our projections for next water year. As I mentioned, we are holding a little bit more in storage in anticipation for another dry year, and that kind of marks how we're already starting to plan for the next water year. Next slide, please. That's all I had for you today, and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Thank you to both deputy directors. I'll open it up now for any board member questions or comments. Board member Batenfort. Thank you both for important updates. Just a couple of quick questions on the inspections that are underway. Do we have an ETA on any results or when we might see any results from the inspections that are happening? Are those inspections that happen kind of normally throughout the year? Obviously, any acute feedback to be addressed as urgently as possible. This would be the most important time to do that. So I'm just looking to learn a little bit about our inspection process and what that might look like. So I guess I am unclear. Are we talking about the inspections for water rights? Yes. Okay. Yeah, I'm sorry. I should have made that a little clear. So with the curtailments of water rights in the Upper Russian River, there is a concern that many folks are not complying. And so there is a limited amount of enforcement. From my understanding, the State Water Resource Control Board definitely, my understanding too, also coordinates with the Department of Fish and Wildlife as kind of an enforcement arm too as well. They can go and check people's diversions any time. And I think it has taken on a bit of a more of an urgency as a result for that. So they are actually moving up and down the river according down to some water staff. And something interesting, too, is that we found is that that means that the lens has also been focused on some water. So they are inspecting some water operations as well. So yeah, so I think in terms of water rights, there is a provision in most water rights that any time they can be inspected and they do, they are inspected. But this is obviously something because of an enforcement measure associated with the order that was issued by the State Board previously. And then I think also there's some emergency regulations that were adopted as part of that. And that allowed State Board to come in and tell people to basically stop taking water out of the Upper Russian River. And of course, I guess there are some as well on Dry Creek and the Lower Russian River as well. So yeah, I think this is more of a concerted inspection and enforcement effort. Thank you. That helps. And then to Deputy Director Walton, this year you guys you guys put so much thinking into different options on our recycled water. And this year we allowed for some trading of allocations if that ended up being a useful option. Do we know if that was utilized or if that proved useful to our ag users? Yeah, great question. I do believe that we had a number of ag users utilize that option. I'd have to talk to our operators to see how many, but I do believe that that was utilized. And I know it was appreciated and it was a specific request. And it's very easy on our end to facilitate those kinds of agreements. So that's something we're happy to accommodate in the future as well. Great. Thanks so much. Any other board member questions or comments? All right. We will open it up for public comments on item 5.1. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. We have no public here in the chambers. So Secretary Aether, do we have anyone? We have no public comment. Very good. That will conclude item 5.1. Thank you, Deputy Director Martin and Deputy Director Walton. We'll now move to item 5.2. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 5.2 is a staff briefing on our Creek Week. And Katie Robinson, our research and program coordinator with the stormwater and creeks team will be making the presentation. Thank you, Director Burke. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and board members. My name is Katie Robinson and I'm with the stormwater and creeks division. Next slide, please. Oh, sorry. Throughout much of California, including the Russian River watershed, cities, counties, and other stewardship organizations are recognizing the fourth week of September as Creek Week. On September 14th, a proclamation is being presented at city council proclaiming September 18th through the 25th as Creek Week in the city of Santa Rosa. Next slide, please. For over a decade, Creek Week has offered fun, educational events, and volunteer creek cleanups. Over the past year, in an effort to minimize the spread of COVID-19, the stormwater and creeks team has developed protocols for conducting safe cleanups led by small household groups. Last year, our creek stewardship program was able to support 62 volunteer cleanups, including Creek Week cleanups that resulted in 80 yards of trash being removed from 15 different creeks. This year, we are encouraging citizens to join in the Creek Week festivities in their local neighborhoods and from the comfort of their homes. By visiting srcity.org slash Creek Week, citizens can learn how they can keep their local creeks clean and find fun and engaging activities to participate in, such as household led neighborhood cleanups, an online cleanup competition, a virtual Santa Rosa Creek tour, printable kids scavenger hunts, a Creek Week webinar, downloadable creek trails maps, and much more. I'd like to thank you all for your time, and I hope you'll visit srcity.org slash Creek Week to see how you can get involved. Thank you. Thank you, Ms. Robinson. Any board member questions or comments? Very good. We'll now open it up for public comments on item 5.2. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Hitho, do we have anyone? We have no public comments. Thank you. That'll conclude item 5.2. Thank you again, Ms. Robinson. Thank you. We have next the consent calendar. We have six items on the consent calendar. I'll ask for a motion to approve the consent calendar. I'll move to approve the consent calendar. Second. We have a motion by board member Wright and a second by board member Watts. At this time, we'll open it up for public comments on item 6. 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 Hitho. There are no public comments. May we have a roll call vote, please? Yes. Chair Galvin. Aye. Board member Baden-Ford. Aye. Board member Grable. Aye. Board member Walsh. Aye. Board member Watts. Aye. Board member Wright. Aye. Very good. Item 6, the consent calendar passes unanimously. Thank you all. We'll now move to item 7.1. Director Burke. Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 7.1 is a report item on our Freeway Well Planning Project Feasibility Study. And making the presentation today, we have Collin Close, our Senior Water Resources Planner, as well as one of our consultants, Jim Cannell with West Coast Associates. Thank you so much, Director Burke, for that introduction and hello, good afternoon to Chairman Galvin and members of the board. So we will in fact give you an update on the Freeway Well Planning Project. We'll go back in time to the start of the project and run you through to where we are today. Next slide, please. We also wanted you to be aware that we did meet with the Groundwater Ad Hoc Committee to discuss the history and progress that's been made to assess this site and what potentially could be done with Freeway Well. We met with them on July 8th. They had some excellent questions. We followed up and provided some additional information to them on August 23rd. And they reviewed this presentation before we finalized it to make sure that we were on point with the information that we were presenting and the way we were presenting it. So we were really appreciative of their guidance. Next slide, please. So for those who may not be familiar, Freeway Well is a well that was built back in 1957. It's on a little strip of land that's, as you can see, has sort of an odd structure to it that yellow highlighted parcel. The well was drilled 817 feet deep, 16 inches in diameter, and was extremely productive in use. It could produce a million gallons of water per day sustainably and would recharge relatively quickly. Unfortunately, we did discover during normal water quality testing that we do for our system in our wells. In 1987, we discovered that there were volatile organic compounds in that groundwater. Something to point out, we don't use volatile organic compounds in that site. So we knew that this was from off site. We didn't know exactly where or who would be responsible, but we did stop using the well immediately. We alerted the state and we let them know what had happened and we continued to test the well, but we did not use it ever again for our drinking water system. Next slide, please. So when the state did an investigation, if you'll advance twice, what we're going to do is see some circles come up. The first set will be on the left and the second set on the right. So maybe advance one more time. Perfect. Thank you so much. So on the left, we see a couple of sites at the regional board identified as definitely being responsible parties. Southern Pacific did install, in fact, a small treatment system there that's ongoing. The Bradley property ultimately simply put a hard cap on top, basically cemented over the site and did not do any remediation. Other potential sites were considered National Guard Armory, California Department of Forestry. Those are more on the right hand side on kind of that orange, almost in the center of the slides. And there were additional sites as well that could be potential contributors. There really wasn't a final resolution. There were lots of other sources and really the cleanup never was a very comprehensive effort. This is an area that has been industrial and light industrial for as far back as we have records. Next slide, please. So by about 2016, the state of affairs was such that where you see black dots, those were cases that had been closed where you see red dots, those were cases that were open. Some were related to volatile organic compounds, some were related to old gas tanks, that sort of thing. So quite a range of problems out in this general area, but again, no clear resolution. And the state approached the city and did mention that there was a potential that we could apply for some grant funds to study the freeway well site and vicinity to get a better understanding about whether or not there were options for us to, in one way or another, either put that well back online or potentially officially abandon it, maybe replace it with a well on site. But in some way, looking at this through the lens of a grant that was related to groundwater cleanup. Next slide, please. So the Proposition 1 groundwater grant program did offer grants for cleanup of sites and for projects that would either remove contamination, prevent contamination, reduce contamination, protect drinking water wells from contamination, but also planning projects such as this one to look at the feasibility of a site in terms of whether or not it could be cleaned up, whether or not groundwater could be treated, that sort of thing. It was a competitive process and required a 50% local match. We submitted a pre-application. We were then invited to submit a final application and our application was approved for funding. So from start to finish, it was almost a three-year process to get under contract. Initially, we anticipated our timeline to be 2018 to March of 2021, about two and a half year timeline. As you'll see later, that did get extended. Next slide, please. The budget was capped at no more than $1 million. So when we looked at this and we did the best we could to stay within that limit, we ended up with the state providing 50% and the city providing 50% for a total of $977,866. Our match was in-kind as well as cash. So we did get credit for some work that had been done previously and some reporting and consulting work that had been provided to us previously. We also got credit for staff time working on the project, for example, my time and some others. And then also there was cash involved in terms of paying for things like a drilling contractor to establish monitoring well and some other work as well. So the other piece that was cash was hiring Westeos to be our technical advisors, the engineer and consultant in terms of the installation of the monitoring wells and also the completion of two phases of this study that Jim Cannell will discuss in more detail in just a moment. Next slide, please. There were some additional pieces of work that we needed to do over and above simply assessing the site. We needed to establish a technical advisory committee and we did that very early in the project that included a number of folks from the water department and from public works. So we had water resources, local operations, water quality, CIP engineering, as well as Westeos as our technical consultant. The state included representatives from the state water board and the regional water board locally. The intention originally was to have the department, excuse me, the division of drinking water representative on there as well. They were fairly busy not only with working with us after our fire in 2017 and some of the impacts to a small section of our water system, but other disasters and other issues were underway for them and they were not able to participate, but the state and regional board did keep them informed. Next slide, please. We also needed to make sure that there were plenty of opportunities for the public to participate, so we did make presentations to the full Board of Public Utilities. We made presentations to the City Council. We sent letters to folks within 2000 feet of the site and followed up with direct contact, inviting them to participate in interviews. Also, lots of contact with folks who might have wells in the area that could potentially be observation wells. So an outreach to owners within about 2000 feet, there were a number of ways that we conducted that. We also sent letters to parcels within 500 feet specifically to let them know that the project was going to have a construction phase, that the construction phase was pending, that the construction phase was beginning, so those folks got lots of information too. And then we held a stakeholder work group advisory meeting and this included inviting folks within the 500-foot range, all responsible parties, and all members of the advisory board to the Groundwater Sustainability Agency. About 20 folks were invited from that because they do have quite a bit of expertise and interest in groundwater, so we thought that was a natural group to reach out to. We also have a webpage that we update every quarter that has a tremendous amount of information, quarterly reports, and all of the products that have been delivered to the state, all of the reports and quality assurance plans that we have delivered to the state are also loaded onto that website for public access. Next slide please. So at this point what I'd like to do is have Jim Connell, he's an engineer working with West Yoast and he was the principal in charge of the work that West Yoast conducted to do a remedial investigation and to conduct the feasibility study itself. So at this point I'd like to have Jim go ahead and I'll mute myself at this point. Okay, thank you Colin and good afternoon Chair Galvin and board members. As Colin pointed out there were two main parts of this study, the remedial investigation and then a treatment feasibility study that I'll talk about later. Prior to starting any of this work we prepared draft and final a remedial investigation work plan and then a monitoring plan and a quality assurance project plan and had all those documents reviewed by the state and regional boards and approved prior to moving forward with the project to make sure everything would be in compliance with the grant requirements. The remedial investigation itself consisted of two main parts, the site assessment which was a very thorough records review and then a site characterization which was the physical drilling of the test boring installation of the monitoring well and doing the pump test and coming with results and analyzing the results from the aquifer test. So the first part was the site assessment. We had records from the state board documents. We had a big database dumped from the environmental data resources database and we had information from the regional board and we sorted that out and we ranked sites and color coded sites based on our perceived risk and that's on the next slide you shown the results of that ranking if we can go to the next slide. Yes, this one. So we ranked the parcels within a 2000 foot radius of the freeway well with various color code with no color code is a residential site. The brownish tannish color is where there really wasn't any data on either what the use was or any use of chemicals to low risk use of just maybe it was just a retail facility. The yellow is medium risk where there's a potential use of solvents and that's only because of the name or the prior uses but no actual record of solvents. The orange represented a high use and we categorized that as being known documented use of solvents but not necessarily any spills or trouble with handling the solvents and finally the reddish color is the known sites of known releases and of either PCE, TCE or other solvents and so those were our hot points and so we the city sent out mailers to the high and very high risk sites asking if we could come interview them. Most did not respond we did receive seven responses and we went out and we interviewed the folks on site to gather information about the use of the chemicals. We also at the same time did a search for potential observation wells so that we when we did our pumping test we could measure the water level changes of in wells that are scattered throughout the 2000 foot radius and the observation wells are shown on the next slide if we can go to that and here are the observation wells they're pretty well distributed around the freeway well. There is also some groundwater contours shown some approximate groundwater contours indicating that with the freeway well not pumping there's sort of a east to west kind of maybe northeast to southwest flow of groundwater it's pretty flat in that area but this shows these folks are the folks who gave us permission to use their wells or monitoring wells. With that we I mean we show the monitoring well there but then on the next slide we'll talk about the installation of the monitoring well on the freeway well site if we can go to that. So the monitoring well was constructed in January and February of 2020 the initial boring was 800 feet deep and 8 inches in diameter we then reamed that out and completed the monitoring wells at a total depth of 520 feet and with a 14 inch diameter there were three monitoring wells installed in the greater casing the shallow one was screened between 150 and 160 feet below the ground surface middle one was screened between 288 and 298 feet below the ground surface and the deep one was screened between 508 and 518 feet below the ground surface. The next slide shows what the surface completion looked like we can see there that in this case they the individual monitoring wells the shallow one is the one that's highest up and then the medium one and then the deep one to make it easier to identify in case the tags fall off it's easy to identify them and they finished up the site and they got it to this point when we were ready to conduct the aquifer test and do our sampling and then March 2020 rolled along and Colin I think you're going to take the next slide and just talk about the delays and the rescheduling. Yeah so if we can go to the next slide that'd be terrific. So as you know we entered into pandemic mode in March and there was a shelter in place order and there wasn't a lot of clarity initially about whether or not work could continue. Some public works it was very very clear the kinds of public works that would continue under those conditions others it wasn't quite as clear so there was some confusion initially and then we had a couple of false starts where we tried it to get out in there and get that pumping test done and then we had the first fires occur in August and that stopped us short and even after the fires were somewhat it was clear that that it wasn't hitting city of Santa Rosa as directly as had been feared the region wide evacuations meant that there was no lodging available and our pumping contractor was from out of the area and to do a 12 hour pump test rest of day and then do a 72 hour pump test you really need to be able to be have folks on site and have lodging nearby and we just couldn't find anything within even 30 miles so we had to abandon that effort. Luckily we were able to get in in September just prior to the glass fire of course we didn't know the glass fire was coming but fortunately we were able to get work done get the pump test and the water quality sampling done in that small window of opportunity in the meantime we did reach out to the state let them know that there were a number of challenges that we had faced with pandemic with public safety power shutoffs with lightning I'm sorry with fires etc and so we were hoping that we could request an extension and we did request that and it was formally approved with a contract amendment so we are still well within our timeline and so that's a little bit of good news that despite all the challenges we faced and we are on track with the new calendar that's been set by the state our new deadline so we're we're well in compliance back to you Jim. Thank you with with the next slide we talk about the results of the aquifer pumping test and so we pumped we did a 72 hour pump test here's a snapshot of the data from 50 50 almost 53 hours after the start of the constant rate test and you can see that there is drawdown being affected in all the wells that we monitored and it really created sort of a classic cone of depression when you're pumping from wells the next slide shows a profile of just the freeway well and then the different observation and monitoring wells just in a radius from the freeway well and as we can see it's the freeway well shows like a really great correlation and a hydraulic connection with middle monitoring well the colligan well and then the other the rest of the observation wells a slightly less correlation with the shallow well and then it's showing that the deep monitoring well didn't draw down nearly as much as the upper levels and most of the observation wells were also very shallow they they were not as deep as the deep monitoring well and so and this really shows that the water is coming in the contaminating water is coming in from the upper levels we then conducted water quality sampling from the freeway well and the three monitoring wells and we have a brief summary of that on the next slide so we were able to confirm that this is the same water um volatiles were detected in the freeway well and all three of the monitoring wells but the concentration were highest in the freeway well uh the concentration of tce exceeded the mcl in the freeway well and the shallow and middle monitoring wells but not the deep monitoring well and so again it's it's the same chemicals plus a few more that we found in the monitoring well in addition we we detected manganese at 620 micrograms per liter and the secondary mcl is 50 micrograms per liter so if we were to use this well as a water supply we would have to treat four manganese and then treat four the tce which is part of the feasibility study i'll talk to in just a couple minutes so a summary of the findings of the remedial investigation is on the the next slide and with the database search we you know we did this enormous database search we didn't find anything that the state didn't already know about mostly because you know we didn't get any people running out of their buildings saying hey i you know i dropped a drum here everything that we found was something that the state had already found um the freeway well because of its construction it is screened um for through the the shallow the medium and the deep aquifer screened all the way through with a gravel pack all the way through and so it is almost certainly a conduit for cross-contamination of the the more contaminated upper aquifers to the lower aquifer we looked at modifying the freeway well by maybe blanking off some of the screening and maybe injecting grout into the gravel pack to try to just isolate the contaminated areas we didn't consider that feasible for for several reasons one is um just that it's it's not a guaranteed process and there was almost guaranteed to be some leak around the the deep aquifer is also contaminated to a to a lesser degree and the vast majority of flow into the freeway well was coming from the shallow and middle aquifers and there was almost no flow coming from the lower aquifer so that fourth bullet point um if we were to construct a new well but only screened in the lower aquifer what we would expect to have lower concentrations of vocs but we have no idea if we would get much water at all out of it and so the recommendations from the remedial investigation on the next slide indicate that you know regardless of what happens next that existing well should be abandoned properly abandoned destroyed and and crowded up and blocked to stop it from becoming a conduit of contamination of the the deeper aquifer and recommending in the remedial investigation to continue just to see the feasibility of is are there other ways to protect or remediate the groundwater and so this rolls into the feasibility study which we'll I'll start talking about on the next slide okay so the feasibility study looked at three possibilities can we remediate and treat the water from the freeway well to meet water quality standards should we replace the freeway well with a new well on site should we abandon and properly destroy the freeway well so the first and the major part of the effort was can we treat the water and so on the next slide we show the first part of what would be required to remediate and treat the water and that's a manganese reduction so this is a picture of a green sand filter it's the same system that you have over in farmers lane except that it's much smaller and it's it would be you we would oxidize the water filter using manganese oxide coated media and this would have to be upstream of any voce treatment because the manganese would follow the voce treatment step so for voce removal shown on the next slide we looked at two possibilities one is pack tower air stripping and the others granular activated carbon both are feasible both have known and proven technologies for removing TCE PC and other contaminants we practiced we did some layouts of these and on the next slide I showed we tried to and this is actually the fatal flaw of treating on the site is that just it's not going to fit so this this shows one layout that we looked out looked at we we tried various different shapes and and you know trying not to have setbacks but the triangular shape of the parcel and you know the required access and piping and other supplemental things it just it just wasn't going to fit on the site and this shows the air stripping tower and equipment the GAC is very similar and as shown on the next slide and so yes so this is um yeah that one it's pretty much the same but but same as with the pack tower it's just compared to just finding a clean well it's just isn't cost effective and the footprint exceeds the available space and I didn't mention that bullet point on the other one with the air stripping there there may be concerns with the air quality board they didn't seem too concerned I was on the phone this morning with someone in Southern California and they were not allowed to do um pack tower air stripping for their um TCE PCE removal their their local air board just would not allow it and so but the GAC is an own quanta treatment method that would work so that was the treatment part of it replacing the well we I talk about on the next slide um the the idea would be to just install a new well on the same site to replace the freeway well maybe install screens only in the lower aquifer and of course the assessment is that as I mentioned the yield's uncertain uh we the current contamination level is less in the deeper aquifer but if we start pumping it we may draw water down into it um from other um from other zones and it would be again just much more expensive to do that because we would still need treatment than to put in a new well at a clean site and we did look at it the other way around is install a shallower well to protect the lower aquifer um just install the screens in the upper part and now we're right back to where we were with just with the treatment sizing and just not being able to fit on the site and again it would just be less expensive to find a clean site um to to install a well that does not need treatment or at least does not need organic removal um the third part that we looked at would be to abandon the freeway well and that's on the next slide and so abandoning the freeway well um would eliminate the conduit between the aquifer zones and what we would do is we would blast perforate the casing and then inject the sans sorry cement and just turn the thing into a one big plug and that would um that would help protect the groundwater resources and it would at least stop the freeway well from being a conduit from the upper contaminated zones into the lower less contaminated zones and so in conclusion on our next slide just um here's a summary of what I just mentioned can we treat it that we you know we're saying not feasible because it just doesn't fit and it's expensive the technology is there to treat that water to drinking water standards but really not on that site and um not with that well and so um and again it's it's at what price um replacing the well as I just mentioned it's um we end up with all the same problems as just remediating the treatment there we're not going to drill a well that suddenly come on that site that suddenly comes up clean so we determine that to be not feasible abandoning the well and protecting the lower level that is feasible and that is recommended and you know as we recommended at the end of the remedial investigation report that was already foreshadowing that no matter what we do on the site we need to we need to destroy that well and stop it from being a conduit um and so those two reports went to the the state and the regional boards and I think Colin you're going to wrap it up with talking about what they thought about the reports and um you bet thank you yeah so if we can get the next slide that'd be terrific so we did send the report to the regional board and state board our technical advisory committee it had already been reviewed by our internal stakeholders um and what the state uh told us when they met with us in person and they followed up in writing as well is that the report was excellent they felt that the data the scope of work the quality of the work all of it was really up to their standards it was well done they were satisfied they had no questions or comments about any of the findings they did have some minor changes that they requested correcting some typos in a table adding some additional information about the known plume that was already in our remedial investigation report so bringing that over into this feasibility study and adding a little bit of discussion about what we know about the behavior of these kinds of contaminants and what we know about the behavior of them so far in the known plume so those pieces were uh were are underway right now Jim and his team are working on uh making those corrections in additions to the report otherwise uh the state board and regional board were quite happy and congratulated us on a job well done uh disappointing results obviously but they were quite pleased with the work again and the quality and the comprehensiveness next slide please so with all of that in mind it is recommended by santa rosa water that the board of public utilities by motion accept the freeway well planning project feasibility study report and i'll just mention you do have the draft report that was provided to you and i discussed on the previous slide the changes that would be made so essentially we're asking you to adopt it with those changes uh we just were not able to get it final before uh in time for this agenda packet so apologize on that it's just going to take a little bit more time um so we are recommending that you do that by motion except they're free well planning project feasibility study and the last slide is just whether or not you have any questions we'd be happy to address those thank you very much mr close and mr connell i'll open up now for any board member questions or comments board member right yes thank you and a nice presentation i was on the ad hoc committee and i must say that uh i went into the committee uh thinking we got to save that well we need that well that's a million gallons a day that's something we can't give up but i have to say that the the evidence is overwhelming that we need to abandon that well and uh i saw i have to support this even though i don't want to support the findings so anyway that's my comment thank you thank you other board member questions or comments board member grable yeah i just wanted to concur with my colleague on the groundwater ad hoc uh i i too was a little surprised when we were when we were presented with the uh the prospect of shutting it down because you know let's be honest when we look at the projections the drought projections for the entire state of california let alone northern california it seems that it's our you know our duty to the folks we serve to try to find the water that we will need for the future wherever it's available but then you you look at the numbers of this well and and everything that was presented in the diligent research of our staff and uh the over under the zero sum game of it all um and the fact that the water you know may never be uh uncontaminated and and ready for us to use so luckily aquifers you know spread out underground uh in every which way so hopefully we can find another another place to tap into that type of a resource for the future because i do think we will need it but uh i don't think this well is is the straw that that that we should uh keep using to access it so thank you to the staff for all the research on this it was really um eye-opening and it's one of those instances where it it really helps to sober our intuition or our impulses to say oh no we need this we need this and with hard data and research um to change our minds and and explain to the public why we're doing what we're doing so thank you thank you both really appreciate that and i do want to extend that that thank you to jim cannell and his team at west jose they just did terrific work thank you uh mr nut i see you have your hand raised you need to unmute yourself please thank you chair galvin i'm calling and jim a question for you and i apologize if i may have missed pieces of this um did you get a chance to actually profile to some extent the level of contamination i mean obviously the draw from that particular uh shallow aquifer source was extremely good and would be very beneficial if there was a potential location in that same draft area where where we could relocate the well but i didn't i guess i couldn't put a finger on if we could identify something that was with a space within that same area of influence that did not have a level of contamination that we were seeing uh in the current well site well i'll take a stab at it a little bit but then i'm going to ask jim to back me up here um as you could see out 2500 feet there was communication in that middle and upper aquifer so it certainly is a very vast area that potentially we could tap into in the past the water department has done a significant amount of work with west jose assistance on our groundwater program so we have a groundwater master plan that was adopted by the board in 2013 and so what we've been doing ever since then is looking at pieces that we could move forward with such as a place to play well and there's some other pieces that we're looking at moving forward with as well refurbishing some existing assets like carlin petersprings and leet well making sure those are able to provide us with additional service for the next 50 years or so um so there definitely you know there's been a tremendous amount of work to look at where there is water we have a lot of good sense of that because there are eight test boardings that were drilled so we do have a good sense of where water could be available in the city of san rosa the disappointing thing is that we haven't found another well that would produce a million gallons per day so despite a wide geographic look and a pretty deep dive geologically and technically and with the engineering services of west jost we haven't found another really big producing site so um that may be sort of an unusual circumstance based on some underlying geology and fault lines and just some other um some other pieces that you know we may have had unfortunately one of the highest producing areas affected and we also don't know how far and how extensive the exactly the known plume is and there are unknown plumes that are very likely in the area so that's another one of our concerns is that if we were to start drawing water at a million gallons per day somewhere in the vicinity that could touch on the known or unknown plumes in that area that we could draw them not only towards our own well but perhaps contaminate other wells that are industrial processing wells or private wells that are used for irrigation and that sort of thing so it's another one of our deep concerns is making sure that wherever we do find a high producing well that we do have an understanding that we're not going to be impacting those kinds of issues so but I do want to just at this point that's sort of the initial piece I wanted to add but also just ask Jim his thoughts looking very specifically at this site and the deep dive that his team did what are your thoughts Jim on this question that that Mr. Nutt has brought forward to us and thank you Colin yes one the one point I didn't mention when we were talking about it if this site were large enough that it would that treatment would fit and if we were to redrill the well you know to be a shallow well and conduct treatment then we get into the realm where what Colin expressed is that we we're almost certainly changing the groundwater gradient and pulling into the well so okay so we're treating for that but what are we doing what are we doing to the neighbors and you know we we could figure this out through studies and so it's not impossible my hopes live with the greenway to install wells there where it's where the water you know we have the Martha way test well and we know that there's you know a high productive aquifer there it's the same aquifer that the farmers laying wells are in so yes to answer your question it would be technically feasible if we had room to treat this water and pump we don't know what the externalities are for the other wells but yeah so I think that answers your question thank you thank you very much and I really do appreciate that the thoroughness of the report in the study any other board member questions or comments all right hearing none I will open it up for public comment on item 7.1 if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone please dial star 9 to raise your hand secretary aether we have no public comments very good at this point I'll entertain a motion based on the recommendation well I'll move that we accept the report second thank you we have a motion by board member right seconded by board member grable do we have a roll call vote please yes chair galvin hi board member badenford hi board member grable hi board member walsh hi board member watz hi board member right hi great thank you very much gentlemen for the presentation and the report we'll now move to item 8 which is public comments on non-agenda matters 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 aether do we have anyone we have no public comments very good we have no referrals referrals we have no written communications subcommittee report I will report that the contract review subcommittee met on august 16th to review three agreements all of which were unanimously recommended by the subcommittee the first contract which was on today's calendar consent calendar was a purchase order for the replacement of the Agilent 7500 icp-ms which is at the end of its surface life the replacement is the Agilent 7850 icp-ms which is a direct replacement for the previous icp-ms resulting in startup of the new equipment and demonstration of its capabilities being significantly shorter than other equipment options the second contract which was also on today's consent calendar was a general services agreement with full spectrum group for the on-site maintenance and emergency repair service of the laguna environmental lab advanced documentation instrumentation and the last contract was a third amendment to the project work order with corolla engineers for professional engineering services for the laguna treatment plant ultraviolet light disinfection remove improvement project the amendment will provide additional professional services for unforeseen design changes and project delays and will provide the city with final construction contract documents the contract will come before the board at a future meeting do we have any other subcommittee reports if not we'll take public comments on item 11 if you wish to make a comment via zoom please raise your hand if you dial in via telephone please dial star nine secretary atha we have no public comments very good that'll take care of the subcommittee reports board member reports seeing nobody indicate we have any we'll then move to item 13 which is a director's report thank you chair galvin and members of the board i actually do have two very short items to update the board on first i wanted to let the board know that the santa rosa plain groundwater sustainability agency has hit a crucial milestone all chapters of the groundwater sustainability plan have been drafted and they are now being reviewed by the advisory committee to the gsa board comments will be reviewed by the full board at their meeting at the end of the month and then will be incorporated into a draft that will be released for public review in october the gsa is planning to hold a community meeting via zoom on october 13th at 5 30 that will coincide with the release of the public draft we will be bringing an item forward to the board in early november to give direction to the gsa board member regarding adoption of the groundwater sustainability plan and then we'll be going to council with that recommendation and direction for their consideration the second item i just wanted to acknowledge um deputy director martin mentioned earlier in his water supply update that we had held a drop drop by event um we held one on saturday august 21st and we did wind up handing out 1300 uh drought kits and just wanted to acknowledge that there were 28 people um that staff that we needed to make that event successful and i really want to thank the team that worked not only from getting the materials to stuffing the buckets to being at both events uh to help hand out materials to our customers and a big shout out to claire nordley our water use efficiency coordinator who overall managed and uh oversaw the event and alise howard our communications coordinator helped us to promote that event and have a really successful event that is my report and i'm happy to answer any questions the board may have thank you director berk any board member questions or comments regarding the director's report all right we will now take 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 aether we have no public comments on this item thank you that'll take care of item 13 we'll now move to item 14 which is our closed session and i would ask assistant city attorney caron donovan to announce the closed session uh the board is now going to adjourn to closed session to discuss one litigation matter involving the city's petitions for review with the regional water quality control board thank you before we go to closed session we'll open it up for public comments on item 14.1 if you wish to make comment via zoom please raise your hand if you're dialing in via telephone please dial star nine to raise your hand secretary aether we have no public comments all right at this point then i'm going to ask the board to please disconnect from the zoom and reconnect via the closed session zoom information that was provided to you and those of us here in the chambers will move to the mayor's conference room and we will all zoom in and conduct our closed session shortly thank you okay we are back in open session i would ask the secretary aether to do a roll call please chair galvin here board member battenford board member grable here board member walsh here board member watts here board member right here okay at this time i would ask assistant city attorney caron donovan to report out on the closed session item uh there is nothing to report thank you very much i believe that concludes our meeting we will be adjourned i'll see you in two weeks enjoy your holiday weekend and thanks for being here this afternoon thanks everyone