 Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. Good morning. We have someone calling in with the last four digits 6131. If you're able to change her name, please. So we can capture your attendance or if you're not sure how to do that. We have unmuted you and you can state your name and we can change that for you. Jim Downey. Ben Grove. I apologize at a hard time hearing that. What was the name? Jim Downey. Thank you. So Easter, are you guys all set? Good morning. We do have six members from the WAC on. Okay. And five members of talk so far. Okay, we'll wait for a couple more minutes then. A lot of people are off of spring break. So, and I am going to hope that my internet is going to stay up. I have two littles in class this morning. We're all competing, I think. All right, Easter, do we think we have a quorum? Yes, we have nine WAC members and seven tech members. And I will call this meeting this morning to order. It is the special water advisory committee meeting on Monday, April 5. This is a Zoom call and we'll have options for live public comment. The WAC contact members will be visible as well as the staff members, Paul Piazza, Don Seymour, Pam Jean, Jay Jaspers, Grant Davis, and Lynn Razzelli. And the public will have their microphones enabled during public comments. And with that, call of the meeting to order and I would ask the recording secretary, Ladesma, to please do a roll call. And if you could please state your agency and your full name when doing that, that would be very helpful. For WAC, City of Katari. Here. City of Petalino. Here, Mike Healy. City of Brenner Park. Here, Willie Linares. City of Santa Rosa. Here, Tom Swadham. City of Sonoma. Yeah, Jack Dean. Northman Water District. Town of Windsor. Here, Sam Salmon. Valley of the Moonwater District. And Marin Municipal Water District. Sorry, I was here. Jack Gibson. John Foreman here. Thank you. Easter. Easter. This is Drew. Can you hear me? Yes. Jack Baker from Northburn Water District is present, but he's muted, so I don't know if that's on his end or. I see him also, Easter. Okay, thank you. He should be able to unmute himself if he's on the screen and he should have the ability. Okay, I got it. Great, Jack. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Jack. Talk to members. City of Katari. Here, Craig Scott. City of Petaluma. Here, Kent Carruthers. City of Brenner Park. Here, Mary Grace Paulson. City of Santa Rosa. Hi, Jennifer Burke. Santa Rosa Water. City of Sonoma. Colleen Ferguson. Northburn Water District. President Drew McIntyre, Northburn Water District. Town of Windsor. Here, Christina Gulart. Town of Windsor. Valley of the Moon Water District. This is Matt Fullner, Valley of the Moon Water District. Marin Municipal Water District. Paul Salier, Marin Municipal. I will state the staff and public attendees. We have Jim Downing, Barry Dugan, Bob Anderson, Brad Sherwood, Chelsea Thompson, Claire Nordley. Colin Close. Laura Sparks. Margaret DiGenova. Michael Thompson. Natalie Rogers. Paul Celski. Peter Martin. Steven Hancock. Tony Williams. Easter Ledesma. Gina Perez. Thank you for that. And we will move on to public comments. We're now taking public comments on non-agenda items. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. I will then ask Secretary Perez if there are any live public comments. Do we have any live public comments? There are no raised hands for this item. Okay. And then Drew, do you have any written or playback public comments left via voicemail? Madam Chair, I have not received any. Then we can move on if there are no public comments. I'm sure everyone has had an opportunity to read the meeting minutes from our February 1, 2021 WAC tech meeting. Are there any questions or comments on that? Seeing none. Then we will take public comments on this item. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you are dialing via telephone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. And Secretary Perez, are there any comments from the public on this item? There are no raised hands for this item. Thank you. And then Drew, are there any voicemail or written comments? I have not received any. Then I would be looking for a motion and a second. Thank you, Jack. I'll second. Thank you, John. And then Secretary Press, could you please do a roll call vote? For WAC, City of Katari? Yes. City of Petalema? Yes. City of Santa Rosa? Aye. City of Sonoma? Northburn Water District? Aye. Town of Windsor? Aye. Valley of the Moonwater District? Yes. That's agenda item number three unanimously approved. Thank you so much for that. Then we will move on to a presentation of the draft 2021-22 water agency budget. And I believe this will be Lynn Roselli. I think she's probably done this many, many times already. So here we go again on-core presentation. Thank you. This is Lynn Roselli, Administrative Services Division Manager for Sonoma Water. And I know many of you have already heard this presentation. Some of you have not. So we will go through it and feel free to ask questions after the fact. This is the 21-22 proposed budget and rates for the water transmission system. Next slide, please. So as some of you know, but some may not know or be that familiar with our system, Sonoma Water's enterprises are water supply, water transmission, flood protection, wastewater treatment and reuse and energy and sustainability. Next. And as you will know that today we are only going to be addressing water transmission system and the revenues that we receive for the water transmission system. Are not shared with any of the other enterprises. Next slide, please. This is a diagram of the water transmission system from a 10,000-foot level in the upper left-hand corner. You will see that that is the Woller and Mirabelle production facilities. And then there are three main aqueducts, the San Rosa, Sonoma, and Petaluma aqueducts. We develop budget and rates for each one of those aqueducts. And those that are on those specific aqueducts pay the budget and rates that we established for the aqueduct. Next slide, please. We engaged in a collaborative process to develop the budget and rates. We prepared the budget and rates in November and December, provided it to the technical advisory budget subcommittee in January, met with them in January and February. The technical advisory committee voted on the budget and rates on March 1st and recommended those to the WAC. We made presentations to city and town councils and water district boards in March, and we are asking for a water advisory committee vote on the budget and rates today. They will be adopted by our board of directors on April 20th. I want to thank everyone who participated in the budget subcommittee led by Ms. Zunino and many others from the city of Santa Rosa, city of Katadi, north marine water district, town of Windsor. And we really appreciated your input. We took it to heart and made some took your input and made revisions to this budget. Next slide, please. So we develop a budget for these main categories, the operations and maintenance budget, what we call the sub funds which address urban water management planning, the biological opinion compliance, recycle water and water conservation. We have five capital funds and we have debt service funds. So we prepare budgets for each of these, for each of the aqueducts, and we're going to start with the next slide with the capital projects budget. Next slide, please. So here are the capital projects for hazard mitigation for next fiscal year. The status of those are shown on the right-hand side there. And these are mostly flood and seismic hazard mitigation projects. They are very key and important projects to our system and the budget for next fiscal year is $5.4 million for the hazard mitigation projects. Next slide, please. Other capital projects are shown here. These will be active next fiscal year. And there's a longer list of all of the capital projects in the budget package on PDF page 6 or Roman numeral page 6 if you have a hard copy. The fiscal year 21-22 budget for these other capital projects that are not hazard mitigation are $4.3 million. And the total then, if you add hazard mitigation to these other capital projects, you get a total capital projects budget of $9.7 million for next fiscal year. Next slide, please. Operations and maintenance include catholic protection projects, pump projects, valve replacements, and our tank maintenance program. And along with a number of different studies, the regional water supply resiliency study, which involves all of the water contractors. This budget represents our efforts to improve the resiliency of the system, maintain operations during floods, fires, pandemics, and the like, and very dry conditions in the watershed. And this budget is $30.5 million for next fiscal year. Next slide, please. These are the sub funds that will be most active next fiscal year. They include the biological opinion, compliance, and water conservation, obviously. One of the main factors in the budget for next fiscal year is the dry creek habitat enhancement phase four project, mile four of the biological opinion project. We anticipate that the core will be constructing this project next fiscal year. They may even be able to initiate phase five of the biological opinion dry creek habitat enhancement project. We have $28 million in authorizations from or from appropriations from the Army Corps. Towards this project, that is their 65% share. The water contract is paid 35%. That is a major benefit to the water contractors. Thanks to efforts from many staff of the Sonoma water as well as the water contractors. And as you know, and may have seen in the paper on Saturday, it's a very dry year. We are experiencing the third driest year on record. And we are staring down the nose of a drought. And so water conservation program is extremely important to us. We will be implementing this very rigorously with a lot of messaging. And we also have some grants, the prop one grant for weather-based irrigation controllers and landscape resiliency programs. And in addition to that, we are also assisting many of the water contractors with their water conservation programs. This is a very key program for next fiscal year, as you would imagine. The fiscal year 21-22 budget for these sub funds is $11.05 million. Next slide, please. So expenditures compared to fiscal year 2021, this fiscal year, the total is $56 million for next fiscal year and $59 million for, I'm sorry, $56 million for next fiscal year, $59 million for this fiscal year that represents about a $3 million difference that is largely due to decreases in the capital projects budget. We received comments from the water contractors regarding the impacts of COVID on the water contractors. The water contractors have to continue to provide water to their customers. Their customers are not able to pay in all cases. So we made every effort to shave down the budget as much as we could and we made the most, got the best bang for our buck in the capital projects area. And so that decrease helped reduce our total budget, total expenditures budget. You can see at the bottom there that we have grants, use of fund balance and bond proceeds. And it's $16 million for this year and $8.5 million for next fiscal year. And when you take the net budget for this fiscal year versus next fiscal year, it's $43 million versus $47 million and that difference makes up, that delta makes up the basis of the rate increase. Next fiscal slide please. This is just a pie chart that gives you an example of how the budget is allocated. It's 54% for operations and maintenance, more than half. Capital projects make up about 17%. The biological opinion and water conservation make up 20% and debt service makes up 9% with $8.5 million in offsetting grants, bonds, and use of fund balance. Next slide please. So we're going to move from the budget to the rate setting calculation. This is an example. It is prescribed by the restructured agreement for water supply that tells us to calculate the rate by dividing the cost of operations and maintenance by the quantity of water sold. The quantity of water sold is meant to be the lesser of the three-year annual average or the last 12 months of actual water deliveries. Next. You can see from this math and you can keep hitting next. The deliveries for the three-year annual average are the lesser, which is 46,095 acre feet and when you do the math, you can continue to hit next one more time. And you can see that when you do the math, you get a rate of $1,000 per acre foot. This is a fully volumetric rate. It's a uniform rate. And as deliveries go up, the rate goes down. And as deliveries go down, the rate goes up. So it is an inverse relationship. During drought years, we often see rates, deliveries, I'm sorry, of between 42,000 and 44,000 acre feet. So we will be watching this very carefully throughout the year because of the drought and because we are anticipating lower water deliveries. So we will have to monitor our expenditures because we are expecting that our revenues will come in lower. We will end up probably dipping more into fund balance next fiscal year. Next slide, please. So this is an example of the wholesale water rates for other wholesale water contractors in the Bay Area. Snomal water is on the left there. It's $1,000 per acre feet. And the other wholesale water contractors have higher rates as I have contacted them and they have indicated that Zone 7 and San Francisco public utilities indicated that they would not be implementing an increase this year. Zone 7 indicated that they would be increasing their rates by 6.7% next year. Santa Clara Valley Water District has a proposal to increase their rates by 9.6% this year. That has not been approved yet. So it's not represented in this graph. Contra Costa County has increased their rates by 3.72% and are expecting a 3.75% rate increase the following fiscal year. And San Francisco Public Utilities Commission is not increasing their rates this year for next fiscal year but expect a small increase the following fiscal year. So this just gives you an example, a broad example of the other wholesalers rates in the Bay Area. Next slide, please. So here is a summary of the rates by the different rate categories or budget categories. The bottom line is that customers on the Santa Rosa and Petaluma Aqueduct will pay a rate of $1,000 in change and the Sonoma Aqueduct will pay $1,145 per acre foot in change. That represents an overall rate increase of 3.47% on Santa Rosa and Petaluma Aqueduct and 3.43% on the Sonoma Aqueduct. Next slide, please. I'm sorry, hold on one second. So the discretionary charges are two thirds down the left-side there. You can see that there are capital charges that the water contractors are able to provide input to per the restructured agreement. They build these charges, build fund balance for future capital projects and also serve as a rate stabilization tool. And I will, the rate for Santa Rosa and Petaluma for next fiscal year is $20 per acre foot and $38 per acre foot on the Sonoma Aqueduct and I will explain in a minute how the contractors came to those figures. Next slide, please. So we, as I mentioned, due to the pandemic and due to discussions with the water contractors, we went through a rigorous process of looking at the budget and rate and reduction measures. We reduced the rate increase from 6.56% originally, back that we had as we started back in January. We reduced it to 4.1% based on comments we received from the water contractors. Santa Rosa and Petaluma water contractors elected to lower their aqueduct capital charge further from the $27 per acre foot they had down to $20 per acre foot to reduce their rate increase further from 4.1% to 3.47%. And the Sonoma Aqueduct water contractors elected to increase their aqueduct capital charge to get to a 3.43% rate increase because they have a smaller rate base and they need to have a capital charge to afford the seismic hazard mitigation projects that are upcoming on their aqueduct and to more closely match the rate increase that was being experienced, that would be for Santa Rosa and Petaluma. So overall, we were able to reduce increase of the budget by 1.3 million. Most of that came from the reduction in capital project costs. We were able to increase our use of fund balance. We still have more fund balance that we can divin to if revenues fall short. We reduced the water management sub fund rate to zero because the urban water management plan is being completed this fiscal year. We will have some ongoing cost into next fiscal year, but we will be using fund balance to fund those. We decreased labor cost and water conservation a little bit because we had some, we just sharpened our pencils, but we believe that there is sufficient budget there to adequately fund water conservation initiatives for next fiscal year during this drought. And so just as an example, our overall cost of water is 0.003 per gallon. And that is the cost of water, the wholesale water to our water contractors. Next slide, please. So next steps unanimously recommended. The budget and rates were unanimously recommended by the technical advisory committee. We are asking for a water advisory committee vote today and the budget will be adopted by our board on April 20th. And I'm happy to answer any questions you might have. Are there any questions from any of the PAC members? Easter, I'm not seeing any hands raised, are you? No, I'm not. Okay. Then I would like to thank you, Lynn. I know that I had quite a few questions and you very quickly answered my questions before you came to our city. I always appreciate the work that happens with the finance group and the TAC group to listen to one another and kind of look at where we are and where our situations are and do what's appropriate for everyone. So I really appreciate that. And I love that you put the comments in the budget so that a lot of the questions that may come up on specific items are notations in there. And I do see that Drew would like to say something. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. I just want to mention, you know, as as Lynn had talked about it was a collaborative process in developing the budget. I want to again just give a special shout out to Kimberly Zunino with the city of Santa Rosa who was the chair of the TAC finance subcommittee. And then again, a special thanks for all those water contractors that participated in that subcommittee. And it was a collaborative process and we appreciated Lynn and the agency's cooperation. And then finally just, you know, it's no easy feat that Lynn has to do during the month of March for all the different meetings especially late night meetings. So we certainly appreciate her efforts to make sure that all the water contractors are informed and have a chance to ask specific questions. So again, it was a good process and I just wanted to give a shout out to all those folks that helped bring this to a conclusion. All right, thank you. Any other comments from any of the Wacker TAC members? I am seeing no raised hands. Then we will take public comment on this item. If you wish to make a comment via zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. And secretary prez. I am not seeing any hands. Do you see any? I don't see any raised hands for this item. Okay, thank you so much. Then Drew, do you, we have any either written or phone messages on this item? We did not receive either. Okay. Then we will move on and it is our opportunity to let's see, we're going to have, we already had the presentation on this. So it is time for us to approve this budget. If there are no issues with this, then I will ask for a motion and a second. Oh, yes. Jack Baker, I'd like to move approval of this motion. Thank you, Jack. Mike, do you have a question, Mike? I'll second. Okay. Thank you, Mike. So we have a motion and a second. Then. Secretary Edesma. Will you please do a roll call? Yes. Yes. City of Petaluma. Yes. City of Brunner Park. Yes. City of Santa Rosa. Aye. City of Sonoma. Northburn Water District. Aye. Town of Windsor. Aye. Valley of the Moon Water District. Yes. That's agenda item number five. You need to see approved. Thank you so much for that help and thank you again to all of you. Thank you. Thank you. And the team and under the leadership of the water agency, we can now move this forward to their board. So with that, we will move on to the water supply conditions and temporary urgency change order. And I believe that Don Seymour is going to handle this item for us. Yes. Good morning, Chairperson Harvey. Good morning. I'm Don Seymour, Sonoma Water. I just want to make one correction on the really dry conditions we've been facing. The cumulative rainfall for 2020 to date is actually about five to seven inches less in our region than we received in the two-year timeframe of the total rainfall for So we're currently on track to become the, you know, throughout on record for our region. So, and it's probably not a surprise thing if you just wanted to point that out. With respect to, let's start kind of starting up at the top of the watershed, like you can see now. It's currently the storage is at about 36,500 acre feet. We're managing the upper Russian river in accordance with the February 11th amended order, the state board issue, issued approving our temperate de-change petition, which under that order allows us to determine the water classification year based on storage thresholds and then likely to see- Hey, Don, this is Grant. Can I stop you just for a second? I don't know if anybody else is having a hard time hearing, but this is critically important information. Is there anything you might be able to do to assist on your end to make it as clear as possible? I'm trying to, is this better, Grant? I think so. Thank you. I might have to replace my microphone at some point. Yeah, we just passed the budget though. That's going to have to wait till next year. Grant. I'll donate it out on my own funds. And also I have to apologize because I'm going to turn off my camera and having a little bit of internet instability myself. But we're currently managing the upper Russian river based on critical water year classification. And that's permitted under this temperature change order when you received from the State Water Resource Control Board. And just as a reminder, our petition, we filed a January only requested changes to the upper Russian river. It did acknowledge that if we didn't see improvements to, you know, water supply in both Lake Sonoma and Lake Benicina, we might revisit that and I'll discuss that when I start to give the update on Lake Sonoma. Just to add to that, you know, we all know the Potter Valley project is an important hydrologic resource to the upper Russian river in Lake Ndissino. Lake Pillsbury, which is the main storage reservoir for that project is also a very low water supply conditions for this time of year, the lowest ever. It's at about 44,000 acre feet. Bit surprised PG&E has submitted a variance request to change minimum stream flow requirements for their FERC license. In the past, they've done it much earlier in this at higher reservoir levels, but I anticipate they will do that. Anticipate transfers in the project at some point will drop quite significantly under a variance that they're likely will request. That's going to patch towards levels at Lake Ndissino even more. Just to put it kind of the, what we're facing in perspective at the upper Russian river in Lake Ndissino. Sonoma water has really done everything it can right now to preserve storage at Lake Ndissino by reducing those minimum stream flow requirements. We can't lower them anymore. There's really, it would be really impossible to manage the upper river to some lower stream flow. And generally, when we see max storage at Lake Ndissino, by October 1, there's anywhere from 20 to 30,000 acre feet in drawdown. So if we apply that right now, we're probably tracking on maximum storage in the next few weeks at around 37,000 acre feet. We're seeing the reservoir anywhere from, starting October 1 at the end of the water year, being at about 15,000 acre feet all the way to being drained. This is really concerning and very high risk to water supply for obviously for human health and safety for communities up on the upper Russian river. The only way to preserve storage and make sure those low storage levels aren't, we don't see those is there's gonna have to be very significant reduction in water use on the upper Russian river. And Sonoma water can definitely coordinate with the stakeholders up there and provide them technical information and to help them achieve that. It's really gonna be up to those water users and the state board to prevent really high risk, the risk of Lake Sonoma draining or just getting to those very low levels. With respect to Lake Sonoma, I mean, I'm sure all of you have been reading articles on the rest of Democrat, they've done a very good job of characterizing our water supply conditions. Lake Sonoma is currently at about 154,000 acre feet. This is where we would generally see the reservoir at the end of the water year in October and we're going into the dry season. Fortunately, 154,000 acre feet of water is still a lot of water. However, as I mentioned, this is a very low level. We're concerned about that. I mentioned earlier that we had contemplated that hydrologic conditions in the large shed in February or January, when we filed our petition didn't improve. We would determine whether we would need to apply that to the entire watershed. So Sonoma water is in the process, along with consultation with TAC leadership of developing a petition to likely file in May, requesting those changes to the entire watershed. That will likely include lowering minimum flows on the lower Russian River, along with committing to the diversion reductions from thermal waters facilities at Woolworm Mirabelle, along with other folks that divert under our water rights. And really that's to preserve Lake Sonoma from declining to some of the forecasts we have for drier conditions extending into the end of the year from declining below 100,000 acre feet. So not great news. I always feel like on the delivering doom and gloom that's what we're facing this year. I'd be happy to answer any questions. I have a couple of questions before I open it up. So you said that PG&E had not asked for a temporary change order. Is there anything that we can do to encourage them to issue one? Well, to tell you the truth, it's actually not in the Russian River's interest to actually push them to do that because once they file that variance with FERC, that would result in lower imports of water from the project. And that would further impact storage at Lake Medesino. So on the one hand, it's good that it's being held off, but it is gonna come and dissipate. Okay. And secondly, I think that the PD articles have been really helpful to kind of get the word out. And so I guess I would encourage the water agency to kind of really keep on the PD, to keep that front and center in people's minds as we move forward. Cause I think it is, you know, something that a lot of people read and it does spread the word. So I hope that we will periodically do more press releases for them so that people keep this front and center. And with that, are there any whack or tack questions on the item? On this lovely report that Don provided us for the Grim Reaper. David, Robert. Thank you very much. Thanks for all your work and everyone else. Don, the numbers that you quoted on Lake Medesino, the lower number at the end of the year, does that anticipate PG&E filing the variants or would PG&E's filing of the variants make it that much sooner? We would get to that drained level that much sooner. Just wondering if it was included in the, and your numbers that you calculated. Under the last condition, it would happen regardless. I appreciate that. Thank you. Any other questions from the whack or tack or comments on this item? Sure, first of all, can I add just one thing? Yes. Sorry, and when I was discussing the reason for really requiring a temporary change petition for the entire river, it was something I missed and it's really important and I'm sorry, but it's in addition to meeting to preserve storage at Lake Sonoma, there's also the issue if we would try to meet minimum stream flow requirements on the lower river under dry water supply condition. There's about a 60 CFS delta between the minimum stream flow on the upper river and then down at Hacienda Bridge. The minimum stream flow requirement at Heelford would be 25 CFS if we didn't make a change. And then it would be 85 CFS at Hacienda Bridge. And if we were to try to make up that difference, we would be in, we would be using up our incident statement on the biological opinion. So it's not only preserving storage, it would be that the river would be really out of balance. We would get out of compliance with the biological opinion. So I'm sorry, I left that out. That's quite all right. So David, did you have any other questions? You see your hand is still up. David Rabbit, do you still have questions? Only that, how do you lower the hand? There you go, you got it. Okay, and so Drew, I believe you were next. Yes, thank you, Madam Chair. Thanks, Don. Don, could you just remind the group how many other times temporary urgency change petition has been filed for Lake Sonoma? Um, we generally, it's generally been included in almost all of our temporary to change petitions other than 2014 and this time because of that issue of, of, of, of needing me a higher minimum stream floor requirement on the lower Russian river, and then being out of compliance with, with the incident state statement and the biological opinion. So it's actually generally what we include in our petition. Like I said, we didn't include it in, in, in, in the one file this January because we really wanted to see what, you know, what we had in store with regards to rainfall, where we see everything balanced out, that didn't occur. And now, now it's, we're, we're seeing that as we come into the dry season, that a lower in Russian river, lower in Russian river and be really out of, out of balance on, on the minimum stream floor requirements. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Sam? Yeah. Can you give a description of, of what it would mean to drain Lake Mendocino? So what, what, what's it look like? It would, you know, that's a really good question, Sam. It's a terrible question. It is a terrible question. We haven't, we haven't faced that ever. The lowest the reservoir has ever gotten was in 1977 in November. It got down to a little over 12,000 acre feet. Since then, you know, there's been sedimentation in the reservoir. It's been distributed differently. So, you know, we, we really don't even know at what level the reservoir might not be functioning anymore because of the sediment that's accumulated in Lake Mendocino. But, you know, just some, at those very low levels, you know, it starts dropping into that less than 20 and getting down to 15,000 acre foot level. I would anticipate we'd see very, very poor water quality. You both would expect a temperature and turbidity. There's already turbidity issues when it's functioning normal. But that would be significantly worse. It, we might have issues even regulating the flow that releases out of the reservoir to meet minimum stream flows. So, it's, it's, it's problematic. We've never been at that level before. We, we have had discussions with the Army Corps of Engineers. They're looking into what they think the impacts might be. We, we, they haven't gotten back to us yet, but it was a good question. The fact we really don't know when the reservoir stops. You know, we were really regulating the releases out of the reservoir. Could there be fish die off? Or is that, is that something that you really have to take them because of the ratio? You know, that'll be something we won't have any control over once we, you know, there's just not going to be storage like the casino for managing flows for fish this year. Thank you. Thank you, Sam. David, did you have another question? I did, and I apologize. I didn't get to this. It's okay. Just in terms of conservation in general, you know, I can tell you that, and it was, there was good coverage in the paper, although there was one number in there that was a misquote in terms of the percentage of conservation that needed. And the paper was supposedly was going to do a correction on that because that came, that did not come from agency source. That came from some other source. And I know that I will just, you probably already know this, the PDs got some turnover going on and there's a lot of scrambling of coverage, but I know that we're very aggressive with them. And in fact, we're, I think we're planning to do a close to home to kind of make sure that we nailed this down. It's interesting that some of the comments from the reporters where they didn't realize a drought was occurring, well, the rain hasn't fallen for the last two years. And as Don said, we're five to seven inches less than we were 50 years ago. So I think we have our work cut act that we've been pretty aggressive. I think part of that quite honestly is that we've been so aggressive all the time in terms of conservation with the Sonoma Marin Water partnership that it's a kind of an end and we're always doing it. We're saving a lot of water. We're all the contractors doing a great work there. And we just need to redouble our efforts to get the word out, especially as the weather turns and people start to turn their irrigator on, trying to produce some patterns there. So I just want to let everyone know that we've been pretty aggressive with the media to make sure that we're getting that word out. And I can tell you I exchanged quite a few, some correspondence over this weekend over some of those numbers that were reported. Because as we all know, the state will end up telling us what the diversions will need to be and we'll follow suit as we have done in the past, all of us staying on the same page. And then also the ag component that's out there as well, making sure that we're all on the same page moving forward. So I just wanted to make sure that that was put out there and appreciate all the hard work by everyone, including all of our contractors and messaging to the public, especially as we go forward this year. Thank you, David. Any other questions or comments? I'm not seeing any other hands. Don, I have a question regarding, you mentioned the sediment in Lake Mendocino. If by some horrible chance, it does get drained, does that make any kind of an opportunity to clean out any of that? Or is that not something that is possible? Unfortunately, that's just not feasible. Okay. Based on the bond. If I could just address some, or remember rabbits, I think where a lot of the confusion has come from is we have these two systems. We have the upper Russian River that's depending on Lake Mendocino, which is in really a dire storage situation. And then we have contractors and folks below Dry Creek that are dependent on Lake Sonoma, which is low. It's not dire. Like I mentioned before, there's 154,000 acre feet of water and there's still plenty to get well past neck even in 2022. And so I think where some of those numbers in the paper might have come was confusion as, the upper Russian River, they don't need to conserve. They need to drastically cut back water use. Whereas the term conservation, I believe applies to our region, just depending on Lake Sonoma. And so I think that's where folks, it's a challenging, it's challenging to understand, for folks to grasp that difference that the whole Russian River does, it isn't operating the same. Dawn, that's a good point. And maybe as what David pointed out, close to home is done, maybe that kind of distinction can be highlighted a little bit more so that the general public has a better understanding. Jennifer, did you have a question or comment? Yes, I did. Thank you, Chair Harvey. And just kind of kind of going along what others had said, I do think we need to do a better job of telling the story and what we've done because we have been really implementing a ton of water use efficiency throughout our whole region and all the contractors. And also a question in terms, maybe for Dawn, maybe might be for Grant, but in recognition that as you know, it's sometimes difficult for perhaps the state water board or others to kind of understand the difference between the two systems and recognizing that really, you have very limited ability to get those folks that are not your customers to respond. And it really needs to be the state water board that needs to follow up. Is there anything in particular that would be helpful from the WAC or the TAC to try and emphasize that point and have you thought about something to that effect? That's a great question, Jennifer. And Dawn or Pam, feel free to chime in after my response to that, if I've left anything out. But, you know, we are currently in discussions with staff at the State Water Resources Control Board and they will be looking to what our ability to divert, reduce diversions will be. That's gonna be a subject of a good deal of discussion from today forward. A couple of observations, I think, that are worth talking about here and that's what you alluded to, Jennifer. And that is during the last drought of 13, 14, 15, one of the things that we have done diligently is to create a group called the Upper Russian River Water Managers, which includes Mendocino County and those that are working, that are more dependent on Lake Mendocino. That's been a long time and we exchange information, we coordinate. Now, we don't have the same contractual relationships we have with you as water contractors, but there is a forum and there is a mechanism by which we can share messaging. A lot of the great work that the Sonoma Rinds City Water Partners have done and you're gonna hear about that from Paul Gatza a little bit here. They're using some of that up in Mendocino right now. In the last drought, we had a very aggressive replacement program, high efficiency toilets and other programs that were put in place that Sonoma Water ran for, Upper Russian River Managers. And so it's not like we haven't been here before. Since the last drought, we've also been heavily involved, and many of you have been heavily involved in groundwater management. That was the Sustainable Groundwater Management Act that was passed during the last drought under the ground administration. So there are some significant tools that we have that we can utilize for this, but the, as we said earlier, the state board will determine under what conditions our next urgency change petition, what we're required to do. And one of the things I don't know if Don emphasized enough, but that urgency change petition expires at the end of July. So one way or the other, we don't see a way forward, but to go ahead and request a new order that will take us through probably like the end of October and what those conditions will be will be a collective effort of all of us. And I would imagine, as you hear more about contingency planning, the diversion that we land on that the board authorizes us to commit to, will then translate into each of the water contractors and they'll decide with their own planning what is the priority to do with the block of supply that is provided for that four month period. So it's gonna require coordination, close cooperation and a continuance of some really good water efficiency practices that the water contractors have quite frankly been implementing all along for the last couple of years plus. Yeah, I think Jennifer, in terms of what the OVAC or TAC could do, when we do file our petition, which we expect to do within the next four or six weeks or so, I think that having some support and getting perhaps some written either emails or letters into the State Water Board in support of whatever it is we file would be good because they may not agree with what we propose in terms of a diversion reduction that would probably be the sticking point and if we have support from you all and a commitment from you all more importantly, I think that will help. And the only thing I would add to that is that what we're proposing is what Sonoma Water in collaboration with its contractors can do in this petition we file in May, I think it would be important to remind the State Board that there's a lot of other water users that we have no control over that need to step up and make the same commitment that Sonoma Water and the contractors are doing that we shouldn't be viewed as the solution. We're not the solution. We're part of this solution, but we're not the total package. Thank you, Dr. Fauci, much appreciated. Jennifer, did you have any other questions? No, thank you. Okay, any other WAC or TAC members? I am not seeing any more hands raised. Then we will take public comments on item number six. 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. And then Secretary Perez, I am not seeing any hands from the public. Are you? I am not seeing any raised hands. Okay, then Drew, do you have any verbal or written comments on this item that you've received? I do not. Okay, then that will end that item. And there is no vote on that item. So we will move on to the winter outreach campaign update and the temporary urgency change control order, term nine and water conservation reporting. And I believe Paul is going to take this item, Paul Piazza. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning, members of the WAC and TAC. Lots of cheery news to report this morning in regard to water supply. Yeah, you guys are going to have to pick it up with the cheerfulness, okay? Yeah, I appreciate Supervisor Rabbit's comments about our continual efforts of the partnership to message water use efficiency and conservation. I think it's definitely the case that, you know, we're always out in front of the community at all times of the year. We do a, you know, a normal peak summer demand campaign annually. And then of course, this winter, the next slide, please. Given the low rainfall and low storage levels early on, we began meeting in the fall actually to discuss a little bit more of an aggressive wintertime campaign. And so there has been a bilingual social media campaign that was developed and shared with the partnership back in early January. I can say from the examples of the social media ads that have been created by all of the partners that there's a lot of effort being put into that campaign and a lot of creativity to build on the ads that were distributed to the partners. In that early January time period, we did start meeting twice a month with an outreach subcommittee to help anticipate the need to evolve this campaign the further into spring. We go and seeing no additional significant rainfall. So that is ongoing. And some of the results of those twice monthly meetings include the development of a much more in-depth multimedia marketing effort. And so our community and government affairs staff at Sonoma Water with city of Santa Rosa staff, public information officers from their agency, ours, Marin Water and North Marin Water District have all been meeting to help develop this message which currently includes broadcast radio and streaming as well. We're working on paid digital and multimedia print advertising. So I know there was a mention with the recent articles with the PD. So a lot of that paid advertising is going into their suite of news outlets that they own and manage. That includes what is referred to as sponsored content. So similar to the larger articles that have occurred over the last two weekends. Sponsored content is essentially a paid approach to writing and placing articles in the paper along with ad content so that we're ensured to get some local coverage as we continue to get additional earned media over time. And we are starting to see earned media from not only the press Democrat but Sonoma publishers and a few others in the area. We're running a weekly water supply infographic. You may have seen this already. It's running in the Sunday press Democrat in both print and their digital online subscription. And that is being translated into Spanish as well plans to get that into La Prensa Sonoma which is a very popular Spanish publication. And then going forward, we're working on regional event coordination. So the city of Santa Rosa has an Earth Day event coming up that'll be largely focused on some of the needed messaging around the shortage. But similar to what happened back in the previous drought where we did a regional drought drive up event to distribute water saving devices and additional information. And just to get the word out, we're working towards a mid June date to do something similar. And then continuing to discuss additional ways to get the message on. Next slide. So just a couple of examples of the current ads. There's a series of ads but they've been sort of improved for the use for the digital multimedia placement and print. So they obviously note the partnership here with this logo that we're working with all of the agencies as needed to co-brand them with partner logos so that they can be used in a variety of different ways by the partnership, not just through the media placements being done through the paid partnership advertising campaign. Next slide, please. And then here, if you haven't seen it is the example of the water supply infographic that our community and government affairs staff developed. It clearly shows the correlation between rainfall this year as being well below average and the water supply levels in each of the two reservoirs. Next slide, please. Moving on to the temporary urgency change order and it included a term nine which was a water conservation requirement for monthly reporting. One of the terms that was included in last summer's temporary urgency change permit had a similar term that required bimonthly porting. So in this particular order, we are reaching out to all of the partner agencies to provide programmatic status updates, participation metrics that we can roll up into a monthly report to the state board. That includes a great deal of detail about the outreach that's being conducted throughout the region, not just through the partnership that is grant mentioned through our coordinated efforts with the upper Russian river managers as well. So we'll be continuing to reach out to your staff to gather that information and provide that report to the state. New this term is the requirement that we report on savings as well. So in addition to the programmatic reporting that we're doing, we are providing an estimate of the savings that's being achieved. Next slide, please. And again, this just sort of summarizes some of the elements that are included in the report. There is a final report due to the state board at the end of the term in August. So again, we wanna thank all of your staff, especially during a time when they're going to be extremely busy implementing programs. It's sometimes a bit of a distraction that have to be pulled away to put together monthly metrics, but it is important as members of the WAC and TAC have already stated to get this message out and to let people know all the work that our partners in the agency have already accomplished. And just to wrap up on a good note, for the Urban Water Management Plan 2020 update cycle that's currently being completed, we're in the final compliance year for the 2009 Water Conservation Act, which has been more affectionately referred to as SBX77. That act required retail water providers throughout the state to reduce their gallon per capita consumption by 20% over that 10-year period from 2010 until 2020. The target set regionally for the partnership was to reach 129 gallons per capita per day by 2020. We're currently at 113 regionally. So although our target is to meet a 20% reduction, regionally we've met over a 32% reduction in that timeframe. And that's no small amount of effort and accomplishment by our customers to meet those targets. And with that, I'll wrap it up and I'm happy to answer any questions. Thank you for that, Paul. My recollection of the last water saving device drive, if you will, you had, it was extremely successful and I think you guys ran out of things very early because it was so successful. And it was all over the county in different spots. Are you planning a similar type events all over? Yes, that's the idea. We're certainly willing to up the game in terms of not running out of things, although that's a win-win when you plan for a certain level of participation in the community exceeds your expectations. But we are reaching out to identify some suitable locations. Obviously we have a little bit of work to do to provide for the safety concerns around the continued COVID virus, but similar to some of the approaches that we're seeing used by our regional library system, we're confident that we can do something similar and provide the distribution of those types of devices safely to the community. Well, I hope that you will reach out to us if you are having issues with a location in a certain areas to see that we can help at all because I think that's important. My other question is the ads. I noticed that the ads had like a lot of children in them. Have we reached out to any of the school districts and such to kind of provide those ads to them? So because kids seem to like latch onto these things and they're like sponges and are able to pick up some of that stuff. Have we utilized any of that? Well, Sonoma Waters Energy and Water Conservation Program is doing a great job providing all of their content to the schools and the current environment where they have both synchronous and asynchronous classrooms but in terms of distribution of ads, there is a need to provide a nexus to the curriculum for schools to be able to accept and incorporate that type of material. At least that's been my experience and my efforts to reach out directly to the schools. Because I know you guys do some conservation programs out with the children to kind of get them going at a young age, which it is often very successful. So thank you for that. And Jennifer? Thank you, Chair Harvey. I just wanted to comment and maybe try to share just a slight bit of good news if we can at all. Yay. Just in terms of the work, so appreciative of the work and the collaboration with the partnership on getting the education and outreach out there. And based on the work that's been happening and the work that some of the contractors have also been doing to supplement that outreach campaign, just wanted to let folks know that at least in Santa Rosa, we think it's working. We are tracking very similar to how we did in terms of our call volume and participation as we started to ramp up in the 2014 drought. So just this last month, we saw a 400% increase in call volume and participation folks asking for more information. So I just wanna recognize that I do think the outreach is working and we're seeing our customers and our community respond. And I think we've always been very lucky to have a very responsive community in this region who really takes these kind of things seriously. So just wanna recognize that. So maybe just a slight bit of good news as we go into this. That is great news. Thank you, Jennifer. David, Supervisor Rabbit. Yeah, no, thank you. And not to beat this up too much, but there's also good news in terms of the, I think the water agency has been a little more aggressive on the website with water supply tracking. There's a button on there that you can go to. And I think that if we can push that out, especially this last year, as everyone has gotten used to understanding, how many doses are in arms and what the positivity rates are and the case rates and everything else, let's keep that going forward with the information that alongside of the water and the drought situation we're in. There is water supply availability and some good data on that site that we can push out and really get into people's arms. And Paul, thanks for all the work. I do think it's a critical time period. I said this before, but as the weather turns nicer and people get out to the yards and start puttering around, start thinking of planting flowers and different things. Maybe this is the year that we try to get in front of that and persuade people that don't go down that path where you're gonna have to rely on irrigation for your yards, but really know that it's gonna be a tight year and not to go there. And even if we can hint about what's to come, which will be imposed upon us at some point in the future. So thanks again. Thank you. Sam? I'd just like to bring up the per capita water use and in Windsor, I'm gonna try to focus. Traditionally, I always thought we had this 139 gallons per capita and I've been advised that that's not necessarily per capita in a household, but I don't know that we get good data in terms of per capita in a household so people can really compare what they're doing with other people and conserve. So I think in Windsor, our capacity might be 40 gallons or 60 gallons a person and it'd be really helpful for us all to understand that that's where we're gonna see conservation and efforts to try to get that down. I've gotten ours down, I've gotten mine down to 10 gallons a day. Wow, don't ask me how I have. And that means you recycle water in your toilet but I think that's really important if we want people to conserve that we give them good data that they can compare to and that's my comment, thank you. Thank you for that, Sam. Any other comments or questions? I am not seeing any other hands at this moment so we can take public comment on this item. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. If you're dialing via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand and let's see, Secretary Press, I think I see one hand out there. That's correct. David Keller, I'm going to allow you to speak. Good morning, David. Good morning and thank you very much and very important to the series of discussions. As we were talking about conservation in the service area for the water agency, I wanted to circle back to something about future releases and flows into Lake Mendocino. And when the water agency makes a request to change flows on the Russian to the state board, if you would please include a request that the water users on the East branch Russian that is above Lake Mendocino also be given mandatory conservation requirements by the state board last series of droughts. The users above Lake Mendocino including Potter Valley irrigation district were not included in any mandatory conservation. So during that period, 13, 14, for instance, Potter Valley irrigation district water users continued to get second and third haycroppings because there were no restraints on their water use. And that all affects how much water comes into Lake Mendocino during that dry spell. So it would appreciate if there would be follow-up on that. Thank you, David. Any other, I'm not seeing any other, are you? Secretary Perez? I'm not seeing any other raised hands. Okay, then I will bring it back. And Drew, do we have any phone or written comments on this? Madam Chair, we do not. We do not, okay. Well, thank you for that. And thank you, Paul so much. I know as Supervisor Rabbit mentioned, it's kind of hard. We do such work in this area to conserve all the time. It does make it even harder when we get into these situations where it's even more dire and we're asking people to conserve more. But as Jennifer pointed out, the people in this area really do step up and work together on that. So I think that that's wonderful and everyone can be proud of the things that all of our constituents do to help us with this. And hopefully, Paul, you'll come up with some rain or something so we can move on out of this. So with that, I will move on to item eight and it's the Water Shortage Allocation Methodology. And I believe, Drew, you're gonna take this. That's correct. Thank you, Madam Chair. And Paul, no pressure on that rain requirement. He's gonna learn how to make rain. Yeah, so what the WAC members have in this agenda item is kind of a summary of what's happened in the past as it relates to water shortage conditions. I think it's evident with this discussion this morning that reduction in diversions from the Russian River are gonna most likely be in place. And so the restructured agreement, as I summarize here, it was executed in 2006, has specific language in there for how any allocation or reduction is allocated between the contractors. And that was done most back in 2007. In 2007, there was a 15% reduction in diversion and the allocation model was developed to essentially identify how much was going to be available to each contractor. An allocation was again done in 2009. For those conditions that happened there. So there's a historical precedent. The allocation can be done by the actual language in the restructured agreement or the allocation can also further restructured agreement. It can be developed by the TAC and the WAC and it's submitted to Sonoma County Water Agency. So the WAC doesn't necessarily need to follow an allocation methodology as defined in the 2006 agreement. It can be developed separately. In 2014, as I indicate here, there was a new allocation methodology that was developed just in principle. It wasn't actually specifically applied in that year, but it was in effect for a couple of years from 2014 to 2016. And the TAC now is working on getting a new allocation model back in place and approved. But in the interim for this summer as a minimum, we expect that there will need to be some allocation methodology for a four month period from July through October. And so the TAC, everybody's for all the WAC members, all the respective TAC members are starting to work diligently on this allocation allotment this summer. And as I close out in here, we're gonna try to bring something back to the WAC to consider at the May meeting. There's not a lot of time. I gotta be honest with you there, but we're gonna try to meet that. And I just wanna give a heads up just to the WAC. We have subsequent TAC meetings and monthly meetings after May. And if we don't meet this May date, then we will most likely have to have include a WAC meeting in a subsequent meeting in June to deal with this allocation if we, again, if we can't bring it to the May meeting. But we're shooting for the May meeting and hopefully this summary here will just give those folks, especially that are maybe new WAC members a little history on during these dry year conditions that have happened in the past, not as significant as what we're seeing now, but there has been some different precedents in the past on how we work together to address these allocations during the diversion restrictions and we'll continue to do so this year as well. So I'd be happy to answer any questions. Mike, Healy? Yeah, thank you. So I appreciate the presentation. I know not enough about this issue to even be dangerous, but my understanding is that the allocation is pretty much driven by human consumption needs, sanitation needs, and that means it's very heavily weighted towards the residential sector and not very much or at all towards the commercial sector can I get some clarification on that? Yes, the allocation methodology starts off first with going and distributing to all the water contractors what's needed as council member Healy indicated that for health and sanitation and fire protection. So essentially it's indoor use plus fire protection initially and it looks at what all those demands are by the water contractors and then allocates the water according to those indoor water use plus fire protection. And then if there's any extra water, then it goes back through and does a new allocation, a supplemental allotment to each of the water contractors based upon their historical use. And as part of this calculation per the restructured agreement, there is an element that's a demand hardening aspect so that those folks that have had more aggressive conservation in the past and it's more difficult for them to achieve additional conservation in that allocation methodology does take into account the demand hardening and that's done on a individual water contractor by water contractor basis. As far as the industrial element of it, the restructured agreement and in the model that was developed initially by John Nelson in 2006, I don't know that that has a specific component broken out I think it's all aggregated as far as indoor water use by each individual water contractors. That said at the end of the day, it's my hope that the water contractors will be able to develop their own allocation methodology and a collaborative process this summer and not have to revert back to the one that was in place for the restructured agreement in 2006. And that's what the TAC members are initially working on right now. I appreciate that. I'm just concerned that on the present course we may be telling our restaurants and breweries and everyone else that there's no water for them. And I don't, I think that would be difficult for us to do. So one thing to keep in mind is we're focusing on whatever the request for the reduction in diversions from the river or from the reservoirs would be. So as an example, if there was a state mandate of a 20% reduction in diversion from Lake Sonoma that the water contractors have multiple ways of achieving that. One way is through conservation and other ways is through increased local supply. So there is an element in terms of how each individual water contractor can operate that if additional local supply is available then that helps meet the overall intent of addressing a certain percentage reduction in actual diversion. Does that help, Mike? Okay. Any other questions from the WAC or the TAC on this item? Yes, Jack? Yes, my question is how to increase local and the resource? How to increase local water supply? So that's one of the things that the the TAC members are doing right now for those agencies that have groundwater there within their region, if they each local groundwater basin is different, but just as an example, if the groundwater wells were off over the last couple of years and there was an opportunity to turn some of those on and pump more groundwater, then that would be an increase in local supply for Northburn Water District, the water that we are able to have in our local Lake Stafford Lake, then we will be maximizing that production out of Stafford Lake as much as possible, recognizing that it's difficult when you don't get much rainfall, but at the same time, we will maximize our production out of Stafford Lake to the extent that we have water available. How many wells in the country are white? From the water and the wells? How many in the public and in most of them in a private? Yes, I don't have that number, but obviously most of the wells are on the private side without a question. Is that all, Jack? Yes, that is all, thank you. Thank you. Any other questions from the Wacker Tech? Not seeing any hands, okay. Then we will take public comment on this item. 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. And Secretary Perez, I don't see any hands, do you? No, or do I? Okay, thank you so much for that. Then Drew, do you have any written or voice comments on this item? I do not. You do not, okay. Well, thank you for that. I guess we hopefully will be able to get the TAC members to come up with a formula for us. I know you guys work really hard and I'm sure that you'll be able to come up with something and just as a reminder in case we don't get this done by May, we need people to kind of be flexible. We may have to have a Zoom meeting. So just kind of keep that in mind. We'll probably discuss that at our meeting in May if that doesn't work out for folks. So with that, are there any items that people would like to have on our next meeting which is May 3rd? Madam Chair, if I can, one thing that has not come up but it goes back to the sense of urgency that we all feel, which we do. One of the things that the TAC members and staff working with WAC members had to consider is that we actually are in a pandemic and trying to get a message through when the whole focus has been on getting through that, you have to admit that that was the priority and it still is. I was concerned, we have been concerned about the message of anything having to do with not washing your hands, right? I mean, literally that's an overlying issue with us and now we have to sort of turn that corner collectively with the folks and our staffs that message well, but we are looking at that as a component of the challenge. Our messaging's got it too. We still have to wash our hands and we still have to practice safe distancing and all that but we are diligently working together. We're gonna get through this. We fortunately have been through this before and are activating muscles that have been used before and Pam said it earlier about supporting us when we're negotiating and working with the State Board. That's critically gonna be important and also supporting efforts to work up North in Lake Mendocino, which is really just an annual reservoir. So it's our challenge. We're not looking at our customer base up there but you'll see us having to spend a good deal of time also coordinating with folks in the upper river and we intend to do that. So please bear with us. And I personally wanna thank each of the WAC members for their agreeing to continue serving on the advisory committee. It's gonna be more important than ever. Thank you for that grant. And so please everyone watch out for opportunities to help with the water control board orders. And I would ask that people support the water agency as best they can to help with those as we move forward. And yes, we still do need to have everyone wash their hands. We will get through this pandemic too. And interesting shots are going up and water is going down but we can do this. So with that, are there any public comments on this item? Please raise your hand. If you're dialing in via phone, please dial star nine to raise your hand. Secretary Pres, I don't see any hands from the public. Nor do I. Okay. And Drew, do you have anything for this item? I do not. You do not. Okay. So are there any other parting thoughts from anyone in the WAC attack before we leave? I'm no seeing no hands. I'm seeing no waves from everybody, anybody. So with that, thank you all for your attention. Just keep saving every drop we can and wish for rain. So with that, I will adjourn this meeting and thank you all for your time.