 Good morning, everyone. It seems like we're still waiting for some staff and board members, so we will get started in a bit. Secretary Ata, has board member Walsh confirmed this meeting? I believe he accepted, I can detect them too and just make sure. Okay, great, thank you. We'll give a minute or two more before we get started, but we do have a quorum, so we can proceed. All right, I think we'll go ahead and get started. We have a pretty big agenda today and so I wanna respect the staff's time. So with that, I would like to call the meeting to order at 11.04, Secretary Ata, can we do a roll call? Yes, Chair Walsh. Here. Board member Grable. Here. Board member Walsh. All right, well, I'd like to remind everyone to please mute their phones, microphones when we are not speaking. And now we will take public comments on item two, public comment, if you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Ata, do we have any live email or voicemail public comments at this time? We receive no public comments. Okay, great. We will move to the minutes approval, but before accepting the minutes, we'll open it up taking public comments on the minutes. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. And if you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Ata, do we have any live email or voicemail public comments? We have no public comments. Okay, great. With that, we will accept the minutes. Now we will move on to new business. I'm Director Burke, if you could introduce item 4.1. Thank you, Chair Watson, members of the subcommittee. Our first item will be our 2020 Urban Water Management Plan. And Colin Close, our Senior Water Resources Planner, will be presenting this item. Colin. Hi, terrific. I'm gonna see if I can share my screen. Are you all able to see that? Yes. Okay, let me get into presentation mode. There we go. So it's a pleasure to be here with you. As you know, this is our third meeting on this topic and we thank you very much for the time and attention that you've paid to it. I think considering current water conditions is probably a very compelling topic and we really appreciate the guidance and support that you've provided so far. We've given a pretty good update to you on the water shortage plan. What we wanna focus on today is the Urban Water Management Plan. Previously, we talked a little bit about the content of each of the chapters and we talked a little bit about the regulatory environment for this Urban Water Management Plan. Today, we're gonna zero in on the results and the findings and the determinations from that plan. So we'll talk about our water projections, how much water we think we're gonna need out to 2045, our water sources, how reliable they are. We'll talk about targets that we've hit. Pardon me. And we'll also talk about demand management measures. Those include not only our water use efficiency program, but also some additional steps and measures that the state prefers that we discuss in our Urban Water Management Plan each five years. Pardon me for just one moment, I'm sorry. Excuse me, I'm sorry about that. For the water use projections, we'd like to show you the previous Urban Water Management Plan's projections and then show you this set of projections so that you can see that we're constantly updating these. The value of this iterative process of planning every five years is that we do get to consider new variables, updated information, trends and that sort of thing. So in our 2015 Urban Water Management Plan, you can see what our projections were for 2020 to 2040. And you can see the actual water use in 2015. And remember, 2015, we were actively in a mandated state of water reduction. So our community responded with a 25 to 30% reduction each month and it was 25% overall over the two year period. And so we definitely see that water use was at a low point in 2015 under drought conditions. So considering that, staff looked out at the future and did not rely strictly on drought conditions to project future, but rather was more conservative. Consider drought rebound after a drought, water use can go up. We look at things like climate change, increasing population, land use development, that sort of thing. So once again in 2020, we considered all of those types of factors again. And so when we look at our projections looking out to 2045, you can see that these are below what we projected when we made projections in 2015. We've received additional information. We have additional regulations in place from the state on water conservation and water targets that need to be met. We've also seen our community sort of harden its demand at a lower pace, a lower rate than it used to be. And so when we looked out and projected over that 25 year period, you can see that these projections are slightly lower than what they were projected in 2015. And again in five years, we'll come back and we'll be looking at new data and comparing that to the assumptions that we made this time. And so you'll hear in five years how these projections compare. We do like to be more conservative. In other words, we like to assume more water demand than less just to be on the safe side. So while we've seen, for example, population growth has slowed considerably in the last 25 years, we still use the same population projection rates that we used in 2015 just to be on the conservative side. We did not dampen down assumptions about population growth. So we do update that information. But again, we're always trying to be conservative and consider a higher demand than if we were fully looking at all of the, for example, all the impacts of water use efficiency and that sort of thing. So those are our demands. We also had to look at demands for the immediate five years assuming there were no drought. So if we had no drought conditions in place, what would our normal water demands be? So we projected those out as well for this immediate five years. This takes into account new development, more intensive land uses, population growth, climate change and that sort of thing. This is part of a new assignment the state has given us to do a drought risk assessment. We'll talk about that drought risk assessment more as we move through the slideshow. But this is just the normal demands we would expect if we were not having a water shortage. I also wanted to talk to you about the targets before we get into how much water we project having. We needed to comply with a 2020 target. In 2009, the state mandated that water suppliers reduce demand by 20% by 2020. So in our 2010 urban water management plan, we projected out what our goal would be for 2015 an interim goal and our final goal for 2020. In 2015, we reported on our progress with that interim target and reminded our community about our 2020 target. And this time we're gonna be reporting on how we achieved our 2020 target. So good news, as I had mentioned in our last meeting, we absolutely achieved the target. Wanted to show you though, the 25 year history so that you can get a sense of just how, I think impressive this accomplishment really is. When we look at this assignment from the state to reduce our water use, they wanted it to be normalized in terms of gallons per capita per day. And I think sometimes for the general public, that can be a little bit confusing. So I wanted to clarify. When we talk about this gallons per capita per day, we are talking about the total water use throughout our community for all uses. That includes residential, commercial, industrial. It includes flushing our water lines, firefighting. It includes churches and schools and government uses. So irrigation, everything you can imagine how water is used within our community. And then it's simply divided by our population. So this is not the amount of water we think individual folks are using at home, but this is rather a community wide assessment of our water use compared to our population. So let's look at the last 25 years. And as you can see, we absolutely met our 2015 goal. It was 136 gallons per capita per day. We came in at 84 during that drought. And our 2020 goal, let me move. Hopefully that's not in your way, there we go. We show that we had 99 gallons per capita per day for 2020. So we absolutely met our target. In fact, we did a really terrific job of exceeding the expectations for that target by a considerable amount. So we're in really great shape. The other thing we have to think about is the state wants to make sure we don't do what they call backsliding, which would be somewhere down the road exceeding that 2020 target. They wanna make sure that target isn't just a one-off, but rather that we continue to stay below that target. So we looked out at our projected water needs without the recycled water included because this target does not include recycled water use. And you can see that even up to 2045, we're well on target to stay within that 2020 target of 126 gallons per capita per day. So excellent work has been done. Our community's done a terrific job. Our water use efficiency programs have done great. So we're really in good shape with that target. Now I wanted to talk to you about our water supplies. Our water supply portfolio includes three sources of water. So we purchased water from Sonoma Water. Sonoma County Water Agency has shortened their name to Sonoma Water. And through a restructured agreement that we've signed along with other major water contractors that purchase from Sonoma Water, we have an allocation of 29,100 acre feet. We also have our own groundwater wells that can produce 2,300 acre feet a year. We don't produce that much from them, but we know that it's essentially they have that capacity given the kinds of pumps that they have in place and the water table. We also have 140 acre feet from our regional recycled water system. For about 32 connections within the city limits for urban, for parks, homeowner associations, business malls, that sort of thing. So our total portfolio is 31540 acre feet a year in normal water conditions when there's no water shortage we have an abundant supply. We also had to project out what our water supplies would be if we were to experience in this immediate five years a drought that mimicked the driest five year period on record. So Sonoma Water did an analysis of how much rainfall fell and when we had the five driest years on record as a period, as a five consecutive year period. That was 1987 to 1991. And then their task was to model what water supply would be if we had the same rainfall patterns in this existing five years that we had in 87 to 91. And they determined they could provide 20,220 acre feet a year in the immediate five years if we had that same hydrology. And we know that our wells tend to produce, they become artesian most years. Our recycled water use is only 1% of our portfolio and it's a small percentage of water produced and they are one of the highest top priority users of recycled water, uninterruptible. So we see that our groundwater and our recycled water supplies would not be affected during these five dry year periods. So our total portfolio would be 22,660 acre feet. No need to remember the number because we'll do a comparison in just a moment to show you how that compares to what we projected as our normal water demand if we were not having a shortage. So chapter seven is really the heart and the soul of the urban water management plan. That's where all things come together to consider our water demands, our water use, these projections out to 2045, our water supplies, how they perform under normal years, single severely dry years, dry five year periods. And then also that comparison for that immediate five year drought risk assessment. So let's take a look at those. So when we look at our normal water supplies, as you'll recall, it's 31,540 acre feet. So that's what's represented here. I realize recycled water is quite hard to see in this graph. It's a very small orange band at the very bottom. That's because it's less than 1% of our supply. So it doesn't show up, but it's an important part of our supply. So we do include it. So how does that compare to the demand for water that I had shown you previously? As you can see, during normal water years, we have quite a bit of supply and in fact excess supply during normal hydrologic conditions. And remember these projections for demand considered population growth, land use development, more intensive use of land includes climate change and also includes passive savings from regulations and rules that the state will roll down over time. So in normal water years, we're in really good shape looking out on our 25 year horizon. When we look at a single severely dry year, that equates to the 1976, 77 year. Currently, that's still the driest year on record. And when we look at a severely single dry year, the water agency projects that its water supplies would not meet normal demands, but they would actually have a shortfall and their shortfall would be anywhere from 16 to 19%. But because we have wells and because we have recycled water, the shortage is about 11 to 14%. So of course we would implement our water shortage contingency plan to make sure that demand for water doesn't exceed supply if we have a single dry, severely dry year. So that gives you a sense of sort of one of the worst case scenarios in which case we would implement our water shortage plan. When we look out and we consider five dry year periods to be very conservative, Sonoma water again selected the driest five year period on record, 1987 to 1991 and modeled out how much water supply they would be able to provide under those conditions if rainfall fell in the same days of the year and the same quantities as they did during that five year period if that would occur in the future. And the water agency anticipates they would have adequate supply to make it through that five year period if the hydrology, if the rainfall fell in the same patterns that it did in 1987 and 1991. I will say though that while the modeling shows there'd be sufficient water, of course we never know we're in the middle of a dry year what the next year will bring. So I think very much like we're at today we're in a second dry year and we are already working with you and our community and with other local water providers and with Sonoma water to message to our community that it's a dry year and that it's time for folks to be careful with water use. And so while the modeling shows there would be sufficient supply I think you would see immediately just as you do now in a second dry year we would be working with our community and with you to take steps to make sure we have sufficient supply in case that dry period can persist. So models out very well but of course our behavior would be to be very conservative during dry years. If we have the exact same hydrology in this immediate five years that we had in 1987 to 91 we would have sufficient supply. But again, as you're seeing already in a second dry year regardless of how things model out we're very conservative with our water we wanna protect that water supply make sure we have adequate supply for health and safety, for fire all those sorts of things and also for businesses to continue. And so although we would theoretically have plenty of supply of course again in a second dry year you would hear from us as you are now about it being a second dry year and about steps being taken to ensure we have adequate water supply. I also wanted to talk about our demand management measures. The state wants to make sure that there are at least six measures in place for water suppliers. The heart and soul of our demand management of course is our water use efficiency programs but there are other steps that we take as well to reduce demand over time in years of abundant water supply as well as in years of shortage. We have a consistent set of six strategies that we use to make sure we have adequate water supply. So in the urban water management plan we'll talk about what we've done over the last five years what we will be doing over the upcoming five years and how we are on target for new state targets that are being set. Those targets have not yet been finalized. So we know that we'll be coming back to you in the future to let you know what those targets are and how we're on track for them. We have a sense of what the draft targets will be and we're in very good shape with those. So the urban water management plan will provide a report on the actual targets since they haven't yet been finalized but we do have some narrative about the fact that we've analyzed where we're at now and what the draft targets are and we're in good shape. So the six demand management strategies that the state would like us to report on include waterways prevention ordinance, metering, conservation pricing, outreach and education, controlling water loss and assessing water loss from our distribution system and water conservation programs and staffing. We do have a waterways ordinance that's been in place since 1999 that was adopted back then and it's been enforced ever since. And in fact, our water use efficiency team is using some new tools and technology to do even more kinds of enforcement. But I wanted to remind you that in terms of enforcement we use progressive enforcement and that means that we first reach out to customers alert them, work with them and use education as our first tool, technical assistance as our second tool and then eventually we can use warning letters and penalties if we need to but about 95% of folks who are alerted there's a problem are quick to fix that problem. So we really appreciate our community and we really prefer to use that progressive enforcement. Metering means having meters on all water connections. All of our water connections do have meters and we sell water by the 1,000 gallon unit so we charge for water by usage which ties into that conservation pricing. About 67% of a water bill is driven by the amount of water that a customer uses. So that helps to reinforce that water conservation message and it rewards customers who can serve water on an ongoing basis in normal years as well as in dry years. We have lots of public outreach and education programs our water use efficiency does public outreach and education. Our marketing team does outreach and education. Our energy and sustainability team does a water education program. Also Sonoma County Water Agency has a water education program as well. So there's a lot of activity in that area that we participate in. We have a very active process for assessing and auditing our water losses every year the water use efficiency team heads up that effort as well as minimizing water losses. So our operational team does leak detection and repair. We have crews on board all the time to respond to emergencies. If we had an emergency major main break we have teams that are ready to fix those at any time. So we also have our asset management team and they are constantly assessing the age of our pipes how often they're repaired and when they need to be replaced. So we have a very robust system around water loss control. And then of course our water conservation programs and I wanna take a moment to highlight those. Over the last 25 years there's been significant penetration into our customer base in terms of the amount of participation we've had in our programs. Most parcels have participated in at least one program over the last 25 years. And I wanted to give you some specific data about the last 30 years. We hired our first water use efficiency coordinator in 1991. So we have had funded staffed programs for 30 years. And I think the accomplishments are something you can really be proud of because the Water Conservation Committee has been hand in glove and helping us achieve these over the years. So we've invested $21 million in staff and rebates education programs and drought response as well as all sorts of giveaways and incentives for folks to use water wisely. We've helped our community replace more than 56,000 high flush toilets with ultra flush low flush toilets. We've helped our community convert 3.5 million feet square feet of turf to low water use landscape. And we currently have nine types of rebates in place. Some of those have multiple iterations. So for example, we have our cash for grass program and we have a version for our single family residential and we have a version of that program for commercial sites as well. So nine different types of rebate programs in place. We also help our customers in 10 additional ways. Things like doing site visits and assessments, making watering recommendations available to them online and by phone weekly. We have do it yourself kits and workshops. So lots of ways we help our customers. When our water use efficiency team did an analysis recently they determined that we can tie 7,100 acre feet of sustained savings compared to 1990 looking at 2020. So we're currently saving 7,100 acre feet of water a year because of our water use efficiency programs and our community participating in those programs. Overall, looking at 1990 to 2020 our gross gallons per capita per day has gone down 44%. About half of that decline is due to our water use efficiency programs. About half of that is due to plumbing changes, ordinances, building code changes, this sort of thing. When we compare the total amount of water that our community used in 1990 to 2020 we literally used 14% less water in 2020 than we did in 1990. And that's despite the fact that our population has increased 53% over that 30 years. So again, really tremendous accomplishments. And again, we really thank the Water Conservation Committee because you've been here all the way through this last 30 years helping us make these achievements. Getting close to wrapping up here and then I'd be happy to take all of your questions. I wanted to mention that there are requirements for the urban water management plan and the water shortage contingency plan to allow transparency and public participation. So we have a wide range of ways that we have reached out to our community to encourage them to participate and help us. So we've sent out notices to cities and the water agency in the county. We've gone before you three times in publicly noticed meetings. We'll be going before the full BPU twice at publicly noticed meetings. We're sending out notices now to our community about the fact that we are working on these documents and that their input is welcome. The public review process will be May 7th to June 8th. So we'll have these documents published online for folks to be able to review them and provide comments to us. And then we'll go to the city council for two meetings that are publicly noticed including a public hearing. And this website is a shortened version of the long website address, but that will get folks to the page that will have the updated documents for folks to review and provide comments. We have a special email box for folks to use so they can send us their comments and questions. This is the bill insert that's currently going out to all of our customers. It's English on one side and Spanish on the other. And again, it refers to that water concern or excuse me, that urban water management page where folks can review the documents and provide comments. I apologize, I do believe that this slide in your packet was a previous version and it was out of dates on my apologies. This is the updated version. April 15th, we'll go to the full BPU for a study session on the urban water management plan and the water shortage plan. At city council on April 27th, we'll do a study session. On May 7th, we'll publish the two documents and allow for a 30 day public comment period. The law requires 14 days, but we like to allow much longer for our community to read those and provide us comments. On May 20th, we'll ask the BPU to consider recommending that city council adopt the documents. May 25th, the city council will consider the water rates including the water shortage charge. On June 8th, city council will hold a public hearing and consider adoption of the two documents. And by July 1st, we're on schedule to submit those documents to the state. So at this point, I am happy to take any questions that you might have. All right, thank you so much for the presentation. Do we have any board member comments or questions? Can't tell if board member Grable, yes, I think he has a question or comment. Board member Grable. I just wanted to say thank you for the depth and the expertise in the presentation. It's obviously something that's on all of our minds and regrettably, the BPU is in the spotlight and Santa Rosa water is in the spotlight because no one, for good reason, no one cares when things are good and we don't have water shortages when we do and it's compounded by our required rate increase from the past through. Obviously we're getting a lot of questions right now. There's a lot of concern for good reason. So it's just so reassuring to have that depth of strategic planning and data and modeling. And I think we will have to continue to be a leader in the field in that because I think we are leagues ahead of many other jurisdictions in this, not just in our in-house strategies, but also reckoning with the reality that we may be facing in the coming decades. That's gonna be really intense and really sobering. So thank you for doing the work to both communicate and adequately prepare for what many of us climate nerds know is coming. So thank you so much. Yeah, thank you for that. And I'll just say that today I'm the face and the voice but there is a whole team behind me, folks who've worked on this from water use efficiency, energy and sustainability asset management, some consulting folks have helped out as well. So planning department has had tremendous impact. So in terms of helping us make sure that we're considering land use changes and population growth and that sort of thing. So I'll extend that your thanks to the folks who've been working on this. We all really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. I also wanna just bring up that 30 years of successful water conservation, those numbers are really incredible to see as cumulative and something that I hope we can educate our public on the good work that has been done over the last 30 years and continuing to do that work. I have one quick question, just when you're doing the projections for the five years out, the 2020 numbers, are those based, is that based on actual data from 2020 or is it too soon to have gathered all of that at that point at this point? No, that's actual data for 2020. When we project out to 21 to 25, we didn't yet have the 2020 data. So we used 2019 as a base year and we looked at what we had projected for the long-term projections, what the 2025 number was. We looked at that difference and then we allocated it. We just apportioned it evenly across the time period. So it didn't include, because in 2020 we actually saw an increase in water use of about 8%. And in the single family sector, it was about 13%. And as you can imagine, of course, in the commercial sector, there was a decline. The biggest decline was in the institutional sector, which would be churches, schools and government, which all makes sense. Government, predominantly working from home, schools being from home, and then churches not being able to have their congregations come in person. So that was the biggest percent decrease, but overall there was an increase in water use. So using the 2019 creates a little bit of a funny blip, but ultimately those are projections. And again, we'll keep refining those over time. And it might make sense 2020, hopefully as an outlier. I mean, although I think that employers and industries are adjusting how we do work. So there could be some numbers that might be accurate, but I think that it'll probably be more of an outlier than the common year. So I think that makes sense that you guys went with that method. Yeah, and the state was actually very interested and asked us, even though it's not required by law, asked us to please include a paragraph or two about the 2020 year. So we have included a little bit of what I've relayed to you orally. That's a little bit of that is included in the plan as well. So we have a little bit of a historical moment that's been captured there too. Thank you. Thank you for that. All right, if there are no other comments, we will open up for public comment on item 4.1. So if you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have any live or prerecorded email or voicemail comments for 4.1? We have no public comments on this item. Great, thank you. So now I'd like Director Burke to introduce item 4.2. Thank you Chair Watts and members of the committee. So item 4.2 will be our Water Use Efficiency Awards. This is always a fun item that we do. Unfortunately, we weren't able to do last year due to the pandemic. So we're very excited to be bringing those back this year. And Heather Abulis, our sustainability rep will be making the presentation. Hi, my name is Heather Abulis. I'm the sustainability rep with our Water Use Efficiency Team. And I think I'm waiting on Roberta to pass over control so I can share my screen. Heather, you should have co-hostability so you should be able to share your screen. Oh, okay, perfect. Let me, are you able to see my screen now? The PowerPoint? Yes, thank you. Okay, perfect. Thank you. So this is our, I'm here to speak about our Water Use Efficiency Awards for 2021. We at this time are going to City Council on May 18th to present these as long as you accept these nominees. We have three nominees this year that are selected by the Water Use Efficiency staff. You do have a handout with a detailed description about each of the nominees, but I'm gonna give a little description as well of each one in details. Our first nominee is our single family residential one. It's Mr. and Mrs. Marigold. They are being nominated because they've continually made an effort to be water efficient. In 2019, they removed all of their turf and put in a small permeable patio as well as a low water use garden. But over the past 12 years, they participated in multiple of our programs, including replacing their toilets with low flow toilets, installing a recirculating hot water pump. They've purchased a high efficiency clothes washer through using our rebate as well and installed a weather-based irrigation timer before doing this project. And so they've really gone above and beyond some of our other customers. So we would like to nominate them as our first awardee. Nominee is, the next two are actually selected because they've supported our programs and helped us be successful to our community. So the first is the garden sense program. And the garden sense program is part of the master gardeners. You see master gardeners of Sonoma County. Their program provides an expertise on landscape design, plant choice and basic irrigation practices. This is free to customers in Sonoma County. And they've provided over 400 home visits to our local residents since the program began in 2014. This is important because it really adds that additional help that we can't provide that lets the average customer feel confident about completing the CAFRAGRAS project, the rebate that we have available. It makes the customer feel confident in being able to do the project themselves or guide their landscaper through it. The master gardeners help them choose the right plants that are acceptable through our program but also work in their yard and cover any desires that they have like maybe inviting in bees and butterflies and hummingbirds or going with more aesthetics with the house. They really help in levels that we can't. In 2020, the master gardeners also stepped up partnering with us to provide three virtual gardening workshops. And that was amazing this last year because that was an adjustment for all of us to go from in-person shots to virtual. So they stepped up really fast and helped us with that. Our last nominee is Ann Baker and the Ann Baker Landscape Architecture her business. She led a team to create eight free scalable front yard landscape designs that focus on low water use and fire safe designs. You may have all heard of this at this point. They're available for free on the Snowmomer and Saving Water Partnerships website. She has dedicated her time to create realistic renderings as well to show the homeowners exactly what each template will look like once installed. And the picture you see on the PowerPoint is one of her examples. It makes the customer see exactly what they're gonna get and feel comfortable with those choices. At this time, over 40% of the fire rebuilds have actually used these templates, which is a good amount and it helps adhere to our Wellow standards as well. And that is our three nominees. I'd like to ask for your approval to move forward with these at this time. And I'll take any questions that you have as well. Great, thank you so much. Board Member Grable, do you have any questions? No, no questions. Yeah, it's exciting stuff. And I'm all for moving that recommendation forward. Thank you, Ms. Sevilleis. Great, thank you. Thank you so much. Yes, and I would definitely approve these three moving forward. It's always fun to have these awards and glad we're able to do it again this year. So do you need a formal motion to approve or? No, okay, great. Thank you, Chair Watts. Thank you. All right, I do think Chair Watts should need to take public comments on this item. Oh, yes, we're gonna get your next agenda item. I'll be the speaking on the next agenda item, but it's... Oh, okay, they're two separate. Got it, okay, same presentation. Okay, great, thank you. So with that, I will take any public comments on this item. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. And if you are dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have any live or prerecorded email or voicemail public comments? We have no public comments. Great, thank you. All right, now we will move on to item 4.3. Sorry about the confusion. Thank you. Thank you. I'm gonna give you Water Awareness Month activities for our water efficiency section. As you may know, May is Water Awareness Month in the state of California. And we do our best to celebrate this in multiple ways every year during the month of May. Beginning with the proclamation of Water Awareness Month, we will, that will be presented at the city council meeting on May 18th. And we plan on advertising our activities for Water Awareness Month through social media, radio, multiple different newsletters, including the city connections letter, as well as through our local partnerships. In the past, we've done, our main event was our Water Smart Expo, as many of you may remember, but due to the current health concerns, we aren't gonna be able to hold the Water Smart Expo this year. And in addition to that, for the past 25 years, we've partnered with Sonoma Water on hosting the poster contest for children around Sonoma County. And due to the lack of participation, as well as the change in schooling, we aren't able to hold that this year. And they've decided to cancel that completely. So yeah, that won't be continuing, but they're hoping to rethink these activities. And once they do know more, we'll be able to work with them on a brand new project, hopefully starting next year. At this time, there is no plan to replace that for this year. We are gonna start off our water awareness events with the Eco-friendly Garden Tour. That will be held on May 15th. Now it is still virtual this year. We have 14 sites in total throughout Sonoma County. That'll be professionally filmed and photographed. Three of those gardens are in Santa Rosa. We're expecting about 2,000 to 3,000 people to sign up. And when they sign up, they'll get a reminder. And then all the videos from these gardens will go online. There'll also be a list available of addresses for demo gardens that people can go see to get ideas for their own gardens. If you wanna sign up, you can go to the savingwaterpartnership.org there's a link on the PowerPoint. You can sign up through Eventbrite there. We are also doing a participating in the Earth Day drive-up event. We are handing out leaf kits, which include a flow bag that we use for our audits to measure the flow rates of faucets and shower heads. It's going to have a little giveaway sponge in there, some information on how to save water and some other giveaways as well. So everyone going through the drive-through will receive one of those through the window. That'll be April 22nd, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. at a place to play park in Santa Rosa. We are taking all precautions at that event. All masks will be required. You can sign up at srcity.org slash Earth Day, or sorry, get more information on that at srcity.org slash Earth Day. And this is not in replace of the poster contest, so we're hoping to keep that spirit alive. And so this year, we are gonna try to provide a coloring page to kids of all ages, instead of just third through sixth grade. It'll be available on our website to print, and then they can submit it back to us, and we'll display all of the pages on our website once they're done. So no contest, but it'll be a little activity for Water Awareness Month. That is it for Water Awareness Month. Do you have any questions? Any board member questions or comments? Okay, well, thank you very much for keeping activities going during this unprecedented time. And I look forward to driving through for Earth Day, and hopefully the rest of our customers will be able to participate in these events. Thank you. Board member Grable. Yeah, I had a question. I know it was really fantastic for my daughter when centers of water and Sonoma water were visiting classrooms, and we're doing this outreach and education. I understand that's obviously complicated by the pandemic and public health protocols. Do we kind of have an idea of when we might be returning to those outreach programs because just from the previous presentation and knowing that obviously water is becoming a more and more precious and scarce resource, especially fresh drinking water. You know, it seems like the next generation is our best hope for education in that. So just give me an update if you could on what our outreach education strategy looks like for getting back to kids in schools and these sorts of programs. Yeah, thank you board member Grable. That's a great question. And I actually do have an update from our energy and sustainability team that heads up the TAP program. As you know, they've done historically that in-person presentation and obviously visitors are not allowed on campus right now at the school's kind of part-time returning, but in the past month or so, we've actually seen some requests for I think you've seen the take it from the TAP bottles that go out to kids. So obviously we don't want to give those out without some accommodation of additional materials. So they've been kind of packaging up some PowerPoints and other handouts and things that can go along with that. And then they've also kind of generated some presentations that are in English and Spanish that can accompany those. So we're starting to push that out as the kids are starting to return in this kind of hybrid model that's going on right now. That's great to hear. Thank you. I know it's always, I know this happens to me as a parent, it's always better to combine public outreach and informational campaigns with education with children in schools because parents obviously are stressed about the cost of water, the impending and worsening drought, all these factors. But when kids are part of that conversation and can articulate these things, I think it's a lot less stressful and dubious and daunting for parents who are thinking, we get our chicken little moments where we're like, what are we leaving our children? They're all gonna suffer and dry up and it's gonna be death valley everywhere. But if the kids are actively engaged in that and really can articulate how we're gonna adapt and survive on this planet, I think the parents can kind of take a breath too and not stress out financially or existentially. Just as a note in my experience, it's, I think you get a little bit better sleep and we all are able to work toward these goals more effectively without the reaction that's constantly, the knee-jerk reactions that sometimes come with, what do you mean? What's going on? What is this crisis? Why weren't we told about this? Say, well, we're doing our best, you know? So thank you for that. Yeah, and Board Member Grable, if I could just add, I think that's a great point. It's been one of our biggest losses with the pandemic. We had such a strong school tap program. We've used that program whenever we had shortage conditions and it was a great way for us to be in the classroom and talk to kids. And so as Deputy Director Martin mentioned, we're really looking at ways that we can re-engage that with the pandemic. I think it just shifted everything, right? So we're really just looking at those models similar to that little tangential to that, but same thing with treatment plan tours and a great way that we could capture and educate kids and could bring any messaging, including drop messaging there as well. And so we're really looking at all those opportunities to bring back as much options for bringing the education back into the schools and working with the schools the best we can. I think the biggest difficulty, frankly, is they're just still trying to figure out how to teach and then bringing in something else has presented a little challenging. So we're continuing to let them know we're here, we're a resource, we have things, we wanna partner with them to help get this education back to them as best and easiest as we can. So it's a great point, we do miss it and we are actively looking to reinstate it. Thank you, thank you for that update. And I'd like to request a take it from the TAPS SIPI Cup. Those options would be good. Board member Grable and I could use those soon. We have smaller ones for kids, they may be a little bit above a SIPI Cup, but we can definitely look and see what we still have in stock. And if folks want one, we definitely have those available. I'm half kidding, but well, I obviously have a personal interest in the take it from the TAPS program. That's where I started with the water department years back. So I'm really glad to see that you're doing some adjustments to make it, to continue it. So with that, I will open this item up for public comment. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please dial star nine. If you're dialing in via telephone, I just did that the opposite. If you're going in through Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing into the telephone, please dial star nine. Secretary Aitha, do we have any live or prerecorded public comments at this time? We have no public comments on this item. Great, thank you very much for the presentation. Director Burke, if you could introduce the last item 4.4. Great, thank you chair Watson and members of the committee. Our last item is going to be an update on our US Bureau of Reclamation Grant Opportunity and Thomas Hare, our sustainability technician will be making the presentation. Hello everybody, thanks for being here today and I'll be sure to take as much of your time as possible. I'm just going to share my screen. And is that showing up? Okay. Yes, we can see it. Fantastic. So there was recently a really exciting opportunity to apply for a small scale of water efficiency grant from the US Bureau of Reclamation. And so I'm here to talk to you about that. Just as background, as Colin mentioned, we in the water use efficiency team which much precedes my own work in the section have helped customers remove more than 3.5 million square feet of turf, which is incredibly exciting. And that alone saves more than 922 million gallons of water every year. And I always tell customers, you know, it doesn't really make sense to have decorative turf here in California. My dad is English. And so it does make sense there. You don't even need to irrigate the turf but we're not exactly in the same place here. So we're currently giving 75 cents per square foot of turf removed. But in this case, less is not more, more is more. So we're looking to supplement that with grant funds. So applied for a grant that would increase the rebate to $2 per square foot of turf removed for commercial customers. So those are customers that have dedicated irrigation meters and in order to help mitigate some of the climate change that we know is coming our way, we're requiring trees as part of those landscape conversions. So one tree would be required for every 600 square feet of turf removed. And our goal with this grant would be to remove 37,500 square feet of turf. So specifically we requested $75,000 from the Bureau and that does require a 50% match but because we're running that program already, we're able to provide that match just with in kind staff time and program support. So that would provide that complete match. And so we would be able to put $75,000 from the Bureau of Reclamation straight into the cash rebate program for our commercial customers. And so if we're able to achieve our goal of the 37,500 square feet of turf removed and of course we will, we always meet our goals, then we would be able to save 1.2 million gallons of water every year. And we expect at least 15 years of savings for each of these turf conversion projects. And so that just, it would be 17.4 million gallons of water total. So on the 13th of April, the city council will consider a formally approving the submission of the grant application. The deadline was the 18th of March and so we did have to preliminarily submit that, but it's not formally submitted until there's been official resolution from council which is required within 30 days of the grant submittal. And we expect that the Bureau will notify awardees in September and would then work for a couple of months through all the legal process and sign a financial assistance agreement in January of 22 for applications that are successful. And then we would have two years to complete all the activities for that grant. So those are the details. I will stop sharing my screen so that we can be slightly larger than one of the other. So that we can be slightly larger than one inch each if you have any questions. Thank you. Are there any board member questions or comments at this time? Well, it's always great to have a grant opportunity to enhance our efforts. So I will hopefully we will get this opportunity and get to work on this. Board member Grebel. I didn't notice it was already in there and I apologize if it's not in our, or if it's already kind of in our realm of templates and landscaping recommendations, but it occurs to me that there's maybe an opportunity to, and I think there might be funding for it or if there isn't already, and I understand if it's already baked, it may take a while to change anything, but regarding pollinator habitat, it seems that there are, especially with this sort of urgency of the Western Monarch and other insect and pollinator populations and just the dire circumstances there for both the insects and our food systems, there might be an opportunity to combine some of those turf replacements and drought tolerant landscaping templates that we already have with maybe Cal Flora's recommendations on pollinator plants, narrow leaf milkweeds, those kinds of things. Seems like it could be a really cool synergy there that really doesn't require changing much, but adds that component of real long-term pollinator habitat. Yeah, I love that idea. Thank you for suggesting it. We were really excited last summer to move a little bit in that direction. We went from not requiring any plants at all in the conversions to requiring a 50% plant density, and that was part of the rationale behind doing that, but I love that idea of specifically calling out pollinator habitat. Thank you. Thank you. I think the UC Master Gardeners also has a lot of that education as well that we are giving an award to from earlier presentation. Okay, great. With that, I will open it up for comments on item 4.4. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Aitha, do we have any email, voicemail, or live public comments? Sure, unless we have no public comments. Great, thank you so much. Thank you for all the information on these presentations today and all of the work that has gone into them. With that, I believe that concludes our meeting and we will see each other at our next BPU meeting. Thank you all. Thank you. Thank you.