Transportation Board - Regular Meeting

All right, we'll welcome everyone tonight to the Board of Public Utilities meeting. I'll call this meeting to order. It's 5.30, and we've got three board members here, so we have, oh, four board members here, so we have a super quorum. So before we get in, we do have a new member sitting on the board. Alvin, you've got the committees. Board and board, I just want to take the opportunity to introduce, there's no Thomas Wyman, but he's still about this. Great, thank you so much. Welcome. Thanks for helping us keep going straight now. My name is David Powell. I live at 1732 Ponderosa.

And I had the pleasure of serving on the Board of Public Utilities from 2011 to 2016. By way of introduction, I'm a retired professional electrical engineer with about 40 years of experience in the design of commercial industrial utility power systems. So on May 8th, we had an hour and a half power outage. I don't understand the explanations that I saw in the paper. I don't understand how a selectively coordinated system, cable fault, which in a selectively coordinated system, only the overcurrent device closest to the fault should open. I don't understand how the entire town site went offline. So I really would like to hear an explanation, and I'll bet you would too. And so that's my comment. Thank you. Thank you so much.

Chair, I just wanted to mention at the end of the utilities manager's report, Dennis Ashley is going to make a report on the outage. So if the member of the public wants to stick around for that segment, appreciate it.

And if you don't want to stick around, we do record these meetings so you can find it online. Any other questions? Please state your name and address. You've got three minutes.

Good evening. My name is Tom McCrory. I live at 1333 Sage Lube. And the Friday before that, I had the pleasure of going on one of the new EPU water tours. And I just want to compliment you all, the folks who ran it. In fact, I think Clay was there for part of it, right? Yeah. It was excellent. It was well put together. They actually took us out and showed us things out there. They explained it in a way that people from various backgrounds could understand. I want to thank you all. Last but not least, they gave out these great water-colored M&Ms. Thank you.

Anybody gotten any of those? Any other public comments here in the room? Could you check and see if you've got any online?

Thank you, Chair Huebner. For members of the public who are joining us tonight on Zoom, if anybody has a comment they'd like to make for an item that's not on the agenda, please wave your hand in front of them now. If you're participating by phone, press star nine to raise your hand.

I don't see anybody raising their hand.

Okay, great, thanks.

Members, now we're at the approval of the agenda, so welcome any on the agenda.

I'd like a motion that we approve the agenda as written. I'll second.

Is this the time for you to make a statement? I think we'll do it after we vote on the agenda. Do you have to vote on the agenda? I'll put you on the spot. Is this where we need to do a roll call? Thank you. Do you want a roll call for this? Yeah, a roll call for this. Good. Okay. Agenda is approved. And now I'd entertain a statement regarding the closed session.

I move that the Board of Public Utilities approve the following statement for inclusion in the minutes. The matters discussed in the closed session on May 6, 2026, were limited only to those topics specified in the notice of the closed session, and no action was taken on any matter this closed session.

Second. Thank you. Any hand vote? All in favor? Opposed? Now on the Consent Agenda, I move that the Board of Partners and Utilities approve the items on the Consent Agenda as presented.

Congratulations, and the staff reports to the Board of Ministers for the record. Thank you, sir. Second. Second.

Does this need a vote since it's got actions on it? Yes. Thank you. Member Hollingsworth? Yes.

Member Moffley? Yes. Member Stromberg? Yes. And Member Huffman?

Yes. And we've got a presentation by DOE EM, Osama's field office, and a 3D on the Ex-Valent Communism Campaign and the current status of the interim measures. Followers, would you like to introduce folks here?

Stephanie, you want to introduce your team? You set up the meeting agenda for me.

There's a lot of faces here, so I don't know them all.

Good evening, everyone. Stephanie Gallagher, Public Affairs for NLA. Thank you for the opportunity to present. We are going to give an update on the HECS mail-in campaign and the status of the interim measures. Presenting tonight will be Joel Hedlund. He's the deputy program manager for environmental remediation at N3E. We also have Brian Harsnick, our director of regulatory quality and regulatory compliance, leading the way to help answer your questions. We're looking forward to presenting and looking forward to questions.

All right.

If you could go to the next slide, please. So since we have a few new people, I want to make sure that we understood that there is a difference between DOE up here on the hill. The easiest way to look at it is that stuff on the green, the right-hand side, is MLA. We're looking at doing the cleanup. So the cleanup of anything that's legacy waste is our responsibility. All that other stuff, the supercomputers, all that other kind of stuff is covered by National Security Agency, or NSA, N-A-L-A and Triad. So N-A-L-A and Triad are inside the fence, and we do some work inside the fence, but a lot of ours is outside the fence. We take care of that, so that would be E-M-L-A and N-3-B. Do you guys have any questions on that? Pretty quick and dirty, but just to make sure we're paying for it without it. With that, I'll turn it back over to Joel and let Joel give the presentation on where we are with the crop.

Good evening, members of the board. I'm Joel Hudson. I'm relatively new to the project. I've been here shy of a year. I was brought in because I'm a hydrogeologist, and I am currently the... I'm the deputy program manager for environmental remediation and the acting division director for . We just recently brought on a new director, and I'll be stepping back, and she'll be presenting probably the next time you see her, Stephanie . So with that quick introduction, what I intend to brief you on tonight is the state not necessarily the state of all of the studies that we're doing so it's a very summary level presentation if you have any questions I'd be happy to answer them if they're more detailed I'll be happy to answer them afterwards so the hexavalent chromium plume we believe it began with as a corrosion inhibitor released from the head of Sandia Canyon the This potassium chromate was used to wash down the stacks. And the toxicity is actually in the hexavalent chromium, not in the chromium-3, which is 3-chromium-3 and chromium-6. But we look at all chromium as though it were one chromium. So the numbers that I'll be presenting are all just chromium. In 2004, the first detection about the New Mexico groundwater standard was made. That standard is 50 micrograms per liter or parts per billion. The EPA federal standard is that it's 100 parts per billion. That's significant because the federal standard applies on, say, the federal or the state standard would apply off the federal. We have a consent order that we comply with. That's what we're using to prosecute this investigation. So as you talk, the 50 parts per billion standard is the applicable one. The plume is located in the regional groundwater aquifer. The water table, if that's not a known term, it's the surface of the saturated zone beneath the ground, and that occurs at about 1,000 feet beneath the Morton Bed and Sandia Lounge, the canyons. It slopes heavily from the west towards the east, and we'll show that here in a minute. Next slide, please. So this is a fairly recent depiction of our plume. You see the two, I call them the two livers. The one shape, the light blue shape is the contamination level at the surface of the aquifer and the purple one is the contamination level deeper in the aquifer. The water table that we're studying is about a from the surface of the water table, the potentiometric surface to the depth of the water table. So the difference between the top and the bottom of this pool is about 100 feet. We've identified or we've marked several of our well locations. I'll be talking about these in a minute. We have about 32 sampling locations that we consider for providing data in this study. We're continually installing new ones. The latest well you may have heard about is Simmer 3. It's just above, below the dashed line, above the box in the middle. Right in the middle. The bottom green circle is just below that. That's on the floodway. That well is the one that we're currently finishing. We're just in the process of collecting samples from it. Next week is when we will collect our second sample. The first sample was collected about a week ago. So I don't have... political results for the chromium there. But I do have water level data from that location. And what we're seeing is that it's consistent with regional water levels that I've been reading about now for a number of years. No surprises there, at least in the water table. The wells marked in green I'm going to be talking about because we are tracking the contamination in those and we have some plots that I'll be talking about in a minute. and about the way that the contamination is behaving in the groundwater. These are three of our marker wells. Next slide. So this is just a quick graphic of what a pump-free system is. You hear about the IM. The Intermajors is actually a pump-free groundwater system where we pump the groundwater out of the aquifer, as you can see on the left. It goes into an IM exchange column, Two of them, the first one has the majority of the removal, and the second one is the polishing column, which removes anything that's left. And between the two, we sample to see if there's any breakthrough. And with the breakthrough, we put in a new column to make sure that we're always polishing well below the groundwater standard. And then that water, once it's cleaned, it's returned to the aquifer through an injection well. I want to point out on these little diagrams flow lines. That's an approximation of the way groundwater will behave in the vicinity of these wells. The pumping well, you can see how the water will come in from up gradient and under the well, but some of the water that gets past the well will, because there's negative pressure there, probably negative pressure, negative head, that's pulled into the well. But not all of the water is caught. Some well outside of the area of influence, like on the bottom line, some water makes it past. And our wells are screened at the top of the aquifer and at the bottom of the aquifer. Our extraction wells, they're screened where they're screened, I guess that's what I would say. And each well behaves this way, but each well is independent too. So we're in the process of conducting a series of studies to decide how best to configure these wells so that we can stop the migration of the aquifer and go a long way from there. We're developing a study plan right now. It's called Adaptive Site Management Plan, where we're going to spell out the necessary remaining investigations, not just into the geohydrology and the behavior of the pool, but also into how we can best optimize this system to capture as much chromium as possible, remove it from the aquifer, and then remove that cleaned water back into the aquifer. we don't want to do is we don't want to remove water from the aquifer and not remove it to the aquifer. That's called mining. Our aquifer here is losing about a foot, about three quarters of a foot per year just because of climactic conditions. So it's going to be dropping. We don't want to make that situation worse. There's too many uses for the water and we don't want to become a factor in that use and the ability of the water to other potential users. Next slide.

So my reflection from previous talks on this is that the amount of chromium, the number of pounds of chromium that have actually been removed is very small. It's about 860 pounds. Compared to the estimates of a couple hundred thousand were made during the operation.

We don't know exactly how much is in the aquifer. I've got an estimate that I don't want to share because I don't know how close it is. But somewhere around 160,000 pounds of chromium. were released in the discharge and it went into a ditch so it's an unlined ditch and it's somewhere in the soil I have no idea how much that's available or on its way into the aquifer that's one of the studies that we do actually about the site management program no questions? no slide so The I am the pump and treat system has operated off and on since the spring of 2018 the Designation CRE X that's chromium extraction. Well then is chromium injection. Well for each initial startup was with extraction well one could in one and two and injection wells three four and five late in 2019 Extraction well 5, Crex 5, CRIN 1, and CRIN 2 also became operational and we started using those. Not long after that, in March through June of 2020, we were shut down due to COVID. Not because of any other reason, but we were shut down because of COVID. In October of 2022, we were asked by NMED to shut down, and we did so. We'll be talking about that in some future slides, the consequences of that. In April 2023, we were asked... We shut down again in September 2024. We restarted after a bunch of back and forth. I think it was actually a good thing. Some of the improvements that were made. It was a limited restart. And then in November 2025, we were asked to shut down once again. When did the independent... I wasn't here then, so it was about a year and a half ago. Because the restart was as a result of that study. It was one of the conditions, yeah. It was all involved. So if you think back to the earlier diagram that I showed of the plumes, I apologize for having to do it this way. But this is the trend chart for contaminationists at well R50, which is on the ground here. They're down here at the bottom, just above the property line between the lab and the Pueblo. But what I wanted to show you here is how the contamination was increasing, which is an indication from the bottom on the left. Those are parts per billion. You can see that it's increasing. There's some variability due to seasonal effects, different sampling, different analysis methods, whatever. But there's some variability. But you can see clearly there's a trend up until the start of the IM. Then there's a little bit of a lag. And then we get a quick drop in the concentration of chromium at that location, all the way down until we're asked to shut down It bumps up again. There's a little bit of lag. It bumps up again. And so we restart. And then concentrations of chromium again decrease. And so we're asked to shut down. And then we bump up again. And then we shut off again. And you can see on the very far right, that's where we are today. We're seeing very minor but observable increases in contamination. And it's well since the last shut down. Oh, I wanted to mention, this is the top well. So this is a well at the water table. That's two. This is a well, same well, different screen. This is 100 feet deeper in the aquifer than the previous well, but the very same location. You'll see the line across the bottom, that's the chromium contaminant level, and it's very close to the levels where it's impossible for a laboratory to discern that it's there. Very close to zero. We would say that this is the background. So that's the natural groundwater, undeterminated. Same location with the aquifer. So we believe at this location, the contamination is conformed to that very top level of the aquifer.

Is that consistent, just out of curiosity, with your modeling? I've always been curious about how the ground flow models work. compared to the data?

I want to say yes, but we've been constrained. Just like the state has asked us to shut down several times, they've also limited our ability to punch deep holes. And there's some reasons for that. There's some concern that contamination might be entrained deeper into the aquifer. Very soon we'll be able to get some deeper wells. We've got our plans call for some deeper wells where we'll be able to see deeper into the aquifer. And in fact, SIMR 3, the well in the very middle on the bottom, SIMR stands for San Ildefonso Monitoring Well No. 3. In that well, we've got contamination at the top and at the bottom, 100 feet apart. And we're... based on preliminary results. We don't know what those numbers are. We don't know if they're significant, but we're waiting anxiously to see what the actual results are from our analyses. I would not hesitate to guess at this point why that might be, but we're anticipating plugging those numbers, whatever they are, into our model. And going back to adaptive site management, we'll talk about this in a later slide, but What we do is we put in these data points, call them wells, we get the information from them, we learn from them, and then we go to the next stage. We expect to be surprised as we learn new things. We adapt, we adjust our investigations so that we can look into those and come up with feasible answers and then continue our investigation, with the point being always to understand the nature and extent of the plume, it's sufficient detail that we can implement a final remedy at some point that'll clean up the contamination.

I agree. I guess my question was, though, how... predictive, I'm going to assume you have three-dimensional ground flow, water flow models of the entire geology. Yes. How predictive are those models? Because you have a lot of data here, actually, that can hopefully inform you as to how predictive your models are. Can I argue with you? I'm just super curious. Do they, like, predict, oh, at this place it should be, you know, within 100 feet of the surface, or in this place it should dive deeper? Like, how well do your models work? The models work very well.

What we don't have is a lot of data. When I said, can I argue with you? We have a limited number of wells. They're constrained on where they are placed. The screens are placed in the aquifer. So all we can do is what we can do with the data that we've got. If I were at Hanford, a similar-sized plume... We were talking to some folks from PNNL a week ago, and they claim that they have somewhere around 300 wells in a plume of comparable size. They're putting in between 10 and 15 wells per year. We're putting in one well every six to eight months because we're drilling so deep and it's so expensive. So we're adding data points all the time. Each time we add a data point, we look at the information and we say, what do we know? What's new? What's different? How do we adjust? That's adaptive site management. Yes?

Can I hear you correctly? So the R50 screen, too, was at 150 feet, whereas the Simber well that you just mentioned was at 100. So top and bottom, so top to 100? Top of each one of these wells is 150.

Zero, which is the water table, to 100.

To 100. For the one on the side of Ildefonso. But the R50, I think you said 150.

Is it a 150? It's 100.

So they're all 100. Okay. So in one case, at 100, you have non-detect. And in the other case, at 100, you have quite a significant amount. Roughly. Okay.

So they are the same. Too much detail. Pipes are 20-foot lengths. We weld them together and we draw them down the hole. So it's pretty easy to know you're 100 feet apart. Whether the water table and the bottom of the hole. Exactly. So when I say 100, it's with a grain of salt. Next slide. Okay, this is a well that's behaving a little bit differently. In this one, R70S2, this is right in the middle on the eastern extent of the plume, which kind of indicates the plume is The contamination that we're intercepting here is the contamination that's going to east. You can see this well came online right after the COVID pause. So we were pumping and the concentrations of chromium were dropping right down until we shut down for one of the shutdowns. And then it popped back up again. And then it started coming down again. before we actually restarted. I call this anomalous data. There's a whole bunch of possible explanations for it. I personally believe, as a hydrogeologist, I can have an opinion because we're talking constantly. I personally believe that this well is in the place where the contamination was arriving during this period of time. You can see the concentrations are fairly high. And then it started to decrease really quickly, which shows that we were effective in removing the contamination with the extraction well immediately upgrading. But there's always a lag, and there's always leakage between wells. So when you get over to the very right, which is where we are today, you see an immediate bump when we shut down the well, and it's bigger than I would have expected. And that kind of validates my opinion. I think this well is behaving exactly as I would predict. AND I BELIEVE THAT IT SHOWS THAT WE'RE EFFECTIVE IN EXTRACTING THE WATER UPGRADIENT OF IT TOO. NEXT SLIDE. R45 SCREEN 2, THIS IS THE DEEPER WELL AGAIN. YOU CAN SEE THE CONTAMINATION IS INCREASING BEFORE WE GET THE IEM ONLINE, AND IT CONTINUES TO INCREASE AFTERWARDS. This is probably, in my opinion, due to a lag, probably the distance between this well and the extraction well. But at the point where it becomes effective, right there just before the big white bar, you can see that we have an effect, and it drops quickly over the period of about four months. It drastically drops. And then when we go back on, it comes back up. and then it drops again, and you can see where we are today. It's fairly stable. This is a deeper well. I believe that this well, once again, it's right in the middle of the plume. You can see the plume arriving, and it's hard to know if we're getting higher concentrations in the blue part that's helping to drive it up due to higher concentrations in the plume, or if it's... less effective in our pumping and treating. This is one of the wells that we're looking at with a very great amount of interest to see how it responds as we go into the future. I believe that, once again, that this is a well that may be difficult to explain. It's not difficult to understand if we get that additional data. This is a deeper well. I'm a little bit surprised that it has concentrations of chromium at that level, but we'll be studying it and hopefully next time when we come back, we'll have an explanation for this behavior for you. So adaptive site management, what I'm saying is that I've still got things to learn. This is a good example of one of the places where we're trying to learn more. Next slide. Okay, this is an animated slide and it's not working. Okay, it's a PDF, so it's not working. But in its animated form, this is generated by our model. And it starts in year 2016 and it ends with our latest data from last year. And it shows that our model is... It's a predictive model. It's predicting that the plume is shrinking. And it's predicting that the plume is shrinking at a very, in my terms, a very rapid rate. In other words, that the IM is extremely effective. The reason I wanted to put this slide up here, and I wish it were animated, is that it shows that the plume... is shrinking even when we have these disruptions. In other words, the pump and treat system is so effective that we can survive those periods when we're not actively extracting and injecting water. The capture is still relatively effective. Obviously, we could be much more effective if we were turned on all the time, but even when we're not on all the time, the pump and tree system seems to be very effective. What are you plotting here? Is it concentration of chromium? This is the concentration of chromium at the state concentration limit of 50 parts per billion. I see. Okay. Yeah. And the San Ildefonso line is the light blue, our light green. So... Obviously, we don't have SIMR 3 on there. That's the new data that we hope to include before we come and visit with you next time. Indications being what they are, there will be a change in this map, but I could be surprised.

So within the dashed blue, or sorry, that's purple, I guess, the dashed purple. That is the edge of the 50, whatever it is, micro... That's 50 parts per billion.

50 parts per billion. Everything inside that is above 50 parts. So that would be the part that's above the state standard. If I were talking about 100 parts per billion, the federal standard would be inside of that. I see. Yeah. And the gray, what does the gray do? Um... The gray is what our model is, what I call the kidneys. If I were to hand-draw the concentration, the bloom, without considering the effect of the modeling, that would be what I'd call baseline. And remember, too, that this modeling, we've chosen to use the state standard because that's what we're trying to achieve for our cleanup But the contamination obviously extends much further than that in lowering concentrations as it goes out. So this is a very small depiction of what could be a larger plume. But once again, if you look at where it is, we believe we've got a very contained area where the contamination is of concern. Once again, we're studying it constantly. Hope to have more information for you.

So in terms of extraction and re-injection, A few back napkin calculations. It seems like you have to pull out 2 million to 2.5 million gallons of water for every pound of chromium extracted. Roughly, yeah. Roughly. That's a lot of water. And there's a lot of chromium down there. Is the goal to get it below 50 and then say we've done a good job?

I don't want to get too technical on the regulatory compliance part of it. But the goal for the interim measure for the pump tree system, that's exactly right. The goal for the final cleanup has not been set yet. And we'll do a risk assessment. We'll talk to the state. And we'll decide what that end point needs to be. And that will become our goal at some point. So if I were to facetiously say 800 pounds over 15 years, relative to what the final remedy is going to be, I don't know if that is even relevant.

And the soil soaked with hexavalent chromium, are there plans, I suppose, on remediating that or into it?

We're looking into it. Obviously, it's extremely difficult to go after chromium in a 1,000-foot soil column. There may be any number of ways that we would remediate that. I can think of capping. That's what they've done at Hanford is they've capped the places where the contaminants were entering the ground. We may inject liquids that would react with the chromium and lock it into place. I just don't know at this point. We haven't even commenced those studies. But part of the remedy will certainly include control of that source material somehow. Next slide. Land application. We do have the ability to apply the water that's removed through these extraction wells. I don't personally like it because it mines the regional aquifer, like I mentioned before, large quantities of groundwater that are placed on the surface of the soil to evaporate, and we're essentially mining the aquifer and wasting the water. But our permit conditions right now limit our operation. We've been asked by the state to consider land application. But our permit conditions limit our operation to daylight hours, no ponding, There are sampling requirements for the soil and the water. We have to have somebody on the job 24 hours, well, full time while the land application is working. And all of these conditions work together to limit the amount of water that we could actually land apply to about 4.2 million gallons per year, which is way below what we need to be at. So we're really not liking the sound of that. I'm hoping that we can. come up with a better answer. It might mean that we expand our land application capabilities, I don't know. But compared to reinjection, reinjection treats significantly more per year, and those are the numbers I want you to remember. Operating at 240 gallons per minute, we extract about 120 million gallons per year. And there's no, if we're reinjecting, there's no net reduction in the aquifer capacity. If we're land applying, that's 120 million gallons per we remove from the aquifer, never to be seen again. Next slide. I've talked a couple of times about adaptive site management. This is the model. If you've got experience with ISMS, integrated safety management, it's the same circle. You start with what you do know. You identify things you don't know. You go out and you do some studies and review those studies. And as you get more knowledge, you come back and you look at the assumptions that you started with. And through this process, you become smarter, you focus more and more on the real issues, and you come up with a more and more polished answer. And this is the process that we're just beginning to initiate. Before we were asked to shut down, we were meeting with several government agencies and developing our adaptive site management plan. We actually have it in outline form and we're ready to start putting that thing together. Tom, a hydrogeologist who came with me today, is the project manager for that. We're really excited about this because it's the first time, I think, here at least at LANL, that we've worked collaboratively with these agencies with the goal of getting better and better at what we already do. Like I said, I'm encouraged about this one. Next slide. So the key takeaways. The hexavalent chromium plume does not pose an immediate threat, and I didn't mention this before, but either to public or private drinking water wells. If we go back to that plume map, you can see that the public wells are significantly outside of the area of influence of the contamination. And if I were to draw water surface maps, you can see that the contamination is actually flowing away from those wells. The chromium IM system operation has very positive effect on the plume, even when we are only allowed to operate part-time. The final report by the expert technical review team concluded the single most important recommendation, their single most important recommendation, was to restart the IM and to keep it going while other studies and field investigations move forward. Other studies, that's the adaptive segment. Because the chromium IM system is not currently operating the NMED and NMOSC direction, and we're complying. But the plume is now currently unmitigated and is moving uncontrolled as though we were doing nothing. So it's continuing to move in the directions of regional groundwater flow. Land application, we believe, is not a viable option due to permit restrictions and because its effectiveness is limited. It's not a responsible use of groundwater, a very precious resource that I myself am committed to preserving. And then the bottom line. Additional characterization is needed to support decision-making and also to decision-making, but additional decision-making regarding nature and extent of the plume. So we need to understand it and then the appropriate decision-making to remediate that plume, whether it's polishing the existing inner measure of the pumpkin tree system or going beyond that and doing something better and more effective. At this point, I don't know. But we need to continue the characterization in order to make those kinds of decisions. So that's the conclusion of my presentation.

So NMED shut down the IIN because it found an exceedance right at Semrin 3, right? You'd have to ask them. Currently, I have no data.

Let me ask you on the IIN. So what is the path? We're adding up additional well so I can continue to characterize that plume. We're continuing to look at alternatives to the pump and treat system as it's currently configured. We might put in additional injection wells, additional extraction wells, I don't know. But we're continuing those studies. Just because we're shut down on the pump and treat system doesn't mean that our obligation to address that contamination and arrive at an eventual cleanup goes away. We're I represent, at least in this capacity, I work for the federal government, and they're obligated under a whole bunch of regulations, not least of which is a consent order, to continue moving forward. So we're continuing to move forward.

So we have our Pario 3 shutdown out of an abundance of caution. Is it your view that that is too much of an abundance of caution? Too little? I'm asking very uncomfortable questions. Very uncomfortable.

I'm not sure that it's within my domain to answer, but I can answer as a private person. I don't think there's any threat to the law.

I want to follow up on that one, though. questions first and then we'll open it up for public comments the independent review team thought it was prudent to shut the well down while studies continue because you look at your zero feet down to 100 feet moving eastward PM3 is eastward PM3 is a little north but it's outside the area I should have brought the water table maps

But the water is actually moving away from it, not towards it. And there was something else you said, that the IRT asked that we shut down while the studies continue. The IRT asked that we continue the pump and treat while we're continuing the studies.

I don't think there's a dispute about pumping and treating. It's reinjection point, where it's safely outside the plume. That's what we need to get answers on. Well, we can't say that, you know, you mentioned, okay, well, it's 50 parts per million, and then... It could be 30. When do we suck in 30 parts per million and send that to White Rock and to the lab to drink?

Those are questions that we should be addressing, absolutely. That's what we need. That's the reason we're doing this adaptive site management approach to our investigation. I want to point out, though, that these lines represent the state standard. They don't represent the plume itself. The plume, like you just pointed out, could be beyond that. And in some places, I would imagine that it is. We've not studied that. But I can tell you that in the well you're talking about, we have data that shows there's no contamination there. The well that's just immediately upgrading from it also shows no effect. That's what we call a sentinel well, and it was placed there specifically to keep an eye on contamination so that we would know if there was any threat to the well. And currently, we're at background.

We're not pumping. We're not pumping 1,300 gallons a minute. It's a major producing well.

Your IM is 60. One of your key takeaways is that because the chromium IM system is not currently operating, the plume is currently migrating uncontrolled. You showed us a lot of nice data for specific wells. How do you put that data together to demonstrate control in the opposite case when IM is operating?

When the IM is operating, the contaminants go down to a certain level and hold steady. That represents control.

Controlled migration.

Controlled migration. What we're doing is we're stopping the chromium in its tracks. If it's staying at its constant level, then the contaminant plume is not moving past that point. That's the way we interpret it.

In the case of, say, R45 where you actually saw an increase, and this is the point where you say you have a lot to learn, but is there any, like, can you overlay these?

If you have questions about that well, I'd love to talk to you about that afterwards because it's very, hydrogeologically it's very complicated, but I think I have a simple explanation. But I'd have to go into some background.

A push and shove from the other well that's just above that.

Some people are contending that we're pushing contamination low. In those flow lines that I showed you on the pump and treat system, when we inject water into those wells, it creates a column of water and that creates pressure at the screen where the water goes back into the aquifer. We are very careful to make sure that we don't create any head, any pressure above what's already in the aquifer. So we're trying our best not to create pressure to the screen, which would cause any contamination to go lower. So when people tell me that they think that we're pushing the contamination lower, I have to disagree on principle. Maybe I'm wrong. But the way we're trying to operate it should not have that as a consequence. It should not.

Yes. So well 3, getting back to well 3, that was permitted as a drinking well that we can pump water out of. Earlier, you showed a slide of ion exchange systems. You bring the water out, go through ion exchange, pump it back in. Is it at all practical to put ion exchange on, say, for example, well three, and instead of pumping it back in, use it as drinking water?

Can I defer and say it's been done in other places very successfully? I think that's a question that there will be a time for that to be answered.

Let me open it up for public comment. Yeah, please come up to the podium. Give us your name and address for the record.

No address. Is there a question for a representative?

I'll go back. Thank you. My name is Marlene Wilden. I'm a reporter with Exchange Monitor. It's my understanding that the NMED order marked the second time the state has halted the system, which has been designed to contain the plume by pumping, treating, and reinjecting groundwater to form a hydraulic barrier. Questions I have for Joel or anybody who has the ability to speak on behalf. What alternative remedies is EMLA N3B evaluating beyond pump and treat and reinjection? And is the DOE considering abandoning the hydraulic containment concept altogether?

Thank you.

This is public comments, not public questions, but if you'd like to address them. I can address that one. I'll go back to our adaptive site management model. We're considering virtually everything that might work at some point. The EPA has devised a model for selecting the appropriate remedies. They include things like implementability, cost effectiveness, There's eight criteria. And as we go through our evaluation of all of the remedies, we'll compare them against those eight criteria. And pump treat will certainly be one of those. And we will select the remedy that's the best. Right now, the IM is an interim measure. intended to do what we can do to prevent migration of the plume while we study it more and come to a final remedy. And that final remedy will be selected at some point in the future in a collaborative fashion using that EPA model, but also with the partnership of NMED. And depending on who else is affected, they'll be given a voice also as appropriate and as required by the regs.

Are there any other public comments here in the room? Any online?

We do have someone, but Abby's trying to get her. Okay. It's Jody Ahrens with CCNS.

You should be able to talk now, Jody. Thank you so much.

Thank you for this presentation. I'm Joni Ahrens with Concerned Citizens for Nuclear Safety Base in Canapé. I do have a couple of clarifying questions for Mr. Hebden. And specifically, could you explain again how you're counting or how you're measuring the top and the bottom of the aquifer or how you're referring to how you're referring to the measurements in the aquifer, because it sounded like you were saying the top of the aquifer is zero feet and then going down is 100 feet to the bottom of the aquifer. And I've never heard that explained that way before. And I'm just wondering if you could clarify, please.

Thank you, Jodi.

Again, it's public comments, but if you're willing to. I'm more than willing. Hi, Joni, how are you? So when I said the top of the aquifer is at zero feet, that's relative to the thickness of the aquifer. We screen at the surface of the aquifer, call that zero feet, but it's about 950 feet. plus or minus 100 feet, about 950 feet below the ground surface, and that would be the top of the aquifer. When I say it's about 100 feet thick, we're screening about 100 feet below that, and we're calling that arbitrarily, admittedly, but that's the full depth that we're actually looking for data from the aquifer. So we're screening at the top of the aquifer, call that 0 or 900 plus or minus feet below the ground surface, and then about 100 feet below that. Now, I want to be clear, Joni, that in that top screen, you know, we screen so that we intercept the water table. So our screens are about 20 feet long. So you waste some of that length by making sure that the water table is captured so that you'll have the The screens start here, and the water table's somewhere here, and then the screen ends here. And one of the reasons we build our wells this way is so that as that water table drops, these wells will last as long as possible. If we're dropping a foot per year in water table, these wells have about a 30-year life before they're no longer usable for the water table. So there's a whole bunch of engineering and design that goes into placing these wells so that we can capture representative samples at the surface of the water and as deep as we can go into the aquifer.

Any other public comments?

Thank you. With regard to what model are you using now? Are you using FAM? Are you using ModFlow?

Are you willing to answer quick questions?

Joni, we're still using FEHM for the time being. We're still investigating a transition to mod flow, but we have not made our decision on that yet. The state's asked us to look into mod flow, and we're doing exactly that.

Okay. What is your time frame for the transition?

At this point, I can't say. We're trying to move forward as quickly as possible, remembering that... This is a difficult transition that these models don't just turn on and turn off. So we're looking at how long it's going to take, but it's not going to be tomorrow. It'll be a period. And then there will be a transition where we're operating both models so that we are able to continue providing usable models and usable data as we go forward. And I expect that transition will be a period of months, but once again, at this point, I don't know.

Are there any other public comments? More questions, please? Anybody else online with comments? Okay. Other questions for discussion from the board?

Or to the next presentation?

Future updates, yeah. Thanks so much for your time in the presentation. All right. Now we're on to public hearings. Incorporated County of Los Alamos Code Ordinance Number 02380, an ordinance amending the Department of Public Utility and Water Service rate schedules. Article 40, Article 3, Sections 40-171, 40-173, 40-145, and new Sections 40-176, 40-177, and 40-178 to the Incorporated County of Los Alamos Code. Joanne. A little different.

Thank you, Chair Hefner, members of the board. I'm here to present on ordinance 02380, which is the water rate ordinance. I have the same presentation that Ms. Gentry gave you all on May 6th, so I'm just going to run through it again for a refresher in case there's any public that are here for this item, just so they can get a chance to see that. As I mentioned, it was introduced to BPU on May 6th. Today is the BPU public hearing. It'll go to council for introduction on June 9th and then to council for public hearing and maybe adoption on June 30th. Also one quick just an overview. Essentially what this is doing is it's giving an 8% rate increase in fiscal years FY27 and 28 for our existing rates. And after pretty significant rate analysis during the budget cycle, it was determined that we would be looking to present a new rate for Pajarito Mountain, a revised bulk rate for Llano, and then an irrigation snowmaking rate. So that will also cover under the ordinance. Go to this slide, thank you. This gives you an idea of the households within the Los Alamos and White Rock neighborhood. So 66% reside in Los Alamos, 34% in White Rock. Below gives the average customer counts. As you can see about 7,000 residential, 84 multifamily, 288 commercial, 91 county, and 28 schools. When we're going through the presentation and the ordinance, please keep in mind that sales and revenues were projected on a five-year average. This was done on a three-year average to give a better idea of some of the recent growth and to incorporate some of that into the averages. So that's why this is a three-year versus everything else being done on a five-year average. And just for your information, multifamily is in the cases where there's one meter for more than one home, so such as a duplex or something. And that's what that's about. multifamily. Next slide, please. This is an overview of the multifamily customers. So you can see we have 55 customers at our apartments, 19 that are condos, seven that are duplexes or quads, two that are mobile home parks, and one senior living center. And for the mobile home parks, that is Elkridge and La Mesa. Next slide, please. This gives you a look at Monthly residential consumption in Kegel for Los Alamos and White Rock residents during peak and non-peak seasons. And just for information, peak, it runs May through September. Next slide, please. This slide gives you an overview of residential peak consumption, which, again, as I mentioned, is May through September. The rate increase that applies here is only for Residential which are the single-family homes. So the rate increase would apply to the different tiers So you can see here the average consumption for peak 65% of residents are keep stay under 9,000 kgals 15% are between 9,000 to 15,000 kgals and 20% to use above 15,000 kgals the three chairs that we have are 9,000 or less and The second tier is between 9,000 and 15,000, and then the third tier is greater than 15,000 gallons. Those are the tiers. This next slide gives you a comparison of our current and proposed rates for FY27 and 28 in comparison to City of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County and Española. Off to the right, you can see what the projected bills are based off the different gallon usage, starting at 4,000 gallons up to 30,000, so you can see we're significantly lower than the city of Santa Fe and Santa Fe County, but higher than Española. Española is on a flat rate basis, and they really haven't changed their rates in quite some time, so that's why they're significantly lower than us. Next slide, please. This is the potable water consumption, going back to FY21. So this is consumption in KGALS, and it's budget to actual. So the blue bars are budget, red is actual. And this is also based on total water delivered to the system. Next slide, please. This is a similar slide. However, this is based on actual sales. So this is dollars. So again, blue column is Budget, red is actual. There was a situation where actuals are coming in higher than budget, and you can see in about FY24, FY25, and that was due to reimbursements from LANL for the TA50 water line project. So that inflated revenues a little bit more because those revenues were categorized in that same bucket. Next slide is the non-potable water consumption. This is in KGALS. And so you can see the same thing, budget to actual here. Here you can see that for the last couple years, the budget for consumption has remained flat and has not been updated to better match actuals. And so what we did during this year's analysis is we went back and looked at a five-year average, and we did change the budget to 97,000 KGALs for FY27 and 28. So hopefully we'll see through the next two years that budget to actuals will be more in line. Next slide please. This is the same site however for sales and in this case it's the inverse. The sales have been coming in higher than budget and so we did the same thing. We looked at the last five years and put in a correct budget. So we budgeted for FY27 $392,000 and $423,000 for FY28. So we're hoping to see that those budget two-actuals are better aligned in the coming years. This slide is the 10-year forecast for the water utility. The same 10-year forecast that you all saw during the budget presentations. And they went through the adopted budget. So you'll see for FY27 and 28, the 8% increase is up on top. And then it gives you the various categories to look at. So O&M, debt service, projected cash balances, interdepartmental charges and administrative expenses, CIP, capital improvement projects, the recommended cash reserve line, the cost of water, and then revenue and proceeds. Next slide. This is the proposed service charge per month by meter size. So you can see on the left it starts at 1 inch and under and then goes up to 12 inch, which we do have some new rates for the 10 and 12 inch meters. You can see what the rates are currently. and then what they are effective July 1st, 2026 and then July 1st, 2027. Rate increases are at 8% except for the meters that are between one and a half inch and two inch meters. Those are going down. We looked at those rates and they were recalculated using a square inch methodology and so We looked at that for all the meters, but in those two scenarios, it was determined that they should be reduced. So there's a reduction in those categories. As I mentioned, these rates are effective October 1, 2026, and then again, October 1, 2027. And the service charge essentially covers all of the water utilities, interdepartmental charges, and administrative costs. So that's what that's covering. Next slide, please. THIS IS THE PROPOSED CONSUMPTION CHARGE OR COMMODITY CHARGE FOR WATER, EFFECTIVE OCTOBER FOR RATE INCREASE, EFFECTIVE OCTOBER 1ST, 2026, AND THEN AGAIN, OCTOBER 1ST, 2027. THIS COMMODITY CHARGE COVERS EVERYTHING THAT'S NON-IDC OR ADMIN ALLOCATIONS, ALL OF OUR OTHER OPERATIONAL COSTS. YOU CAN SEE ON THE LEFT-HAND SIDE THE RATES FOR NON-PEAK SEASON, WHICH IS APRIL THROUGH OCTOBER, WHICH THOSE ARE, IT'S AN 8% INCREASE THERE, AND THEN THE RATES FOR THE PEAK SEASON, MAY THROUGH SEPTEMBER. There is one difference on the single-family residential where the increase is actually 10%. So again, single-family residential is the category that gets the peak rate increase. You can see that the rate remains the same for multifamily, commercial, and county and schools. Next slide, please. This is the proposed non-potable service charge and cost per 1,000 gallons. This rate is half of the potable rate because this is really a seasonal rate, which is where we're going with half. The purpose of this rate is to cover admin and billing costs. This rate would go into effect July 1st, and this is also an 8% increase. So you can see there's, on the non-potable, it's currently $369. Currently no service charge, but we are implementing those service charges beginning July 1st, 2026. Next slide. Next slide. This is the proposed bulk water delivery. This is our sales to water distribution from water production. So there's a bulk service charge and then the KGAL charge. You'll see what the current is and then what the rate would be effective July 1st, 2026, July 1st, 2027. And again, 8% on both years. This next slide, this is the proposed irrigation meters and snowmaking service charge, consumption charge per 1,000 gallons, and energy charge per 1,000 gallons to Pajarito Mountain service area. This is a new rate, so currently nothing in place now, but it was determined that we would look to create a new rate for the Pajarito Mountain service area. So you can see what the proposed rates would be, which would be effective July 1st, 2026, and then July 1st, 2027. And I did want to point out on the bottom, you'll also see in addition to the service charge and the client charge, there's also an energy charge per 1,000 gallons of $1.50. And so that energy service charge is to account for pumping the water 1,800 feet to the 250,000 water storage tank on the mountain. Next slide. This is the proposed bulk water delivery sales to Los Alamos National Laboratory. So there's a service charge and then the bulk rate that would apply to LANL and N3B. There is a larger increase from, so currently what they were at is they were at the same bulk rate as the water distributions bulk rate. This is to get things more in line with what they should be paying for their use of the system. So LANL purchases account for approximately 26% of the system of total water production, so about a quarter share of that. This was newly calculated, so we're incorporating things like debt service and contingency cash reserves to cover some of those. So then with this rate, LANL would be paying their share of that. The next slide is the calculation of the bulk delivery charge, and so this shows things that are taken to account in developing that rate. So you can see everything from operations and maintenance. In the blue, we did add in the contingency cash reserves and debt service cash reserves so that they can fund a portion of that. And then capital CIP, five-year averages were helped use to determine this rate. So that's how that was set. The next slide is also a calculation of the service charge to Los Alamos National Laboratory. So with this, we're expecting to use this to help restore the water fund's cash flow to a sustainable level. It should also help fund essential repairs, replacements, and ongoing operations and cash reserves. Future rate increases on the 10-year forecast are projected around 7% starting in FY29. And that is the end of the presentation. So let's see.

Let's go back to square one. Can you find the slide in here that walk me through how we're swimming in red ink now, what the projected future is likely to be if we don't increase rates, and what it is when we increase rates? Because I am having a very hard time pulling that out of the slide. Of this slide? Any of the slides. I'm looking. I've been spending most of my time looking at that one. But if you can walk me through, like, so where... First things first, how does it show that we are in bad fiscal shape now, which I'm fully willing to believe, by the way. I'd like to see it and then have you walk me through what are the consequences of not increasing the rates.

So if you look at the board member and board member Nockley, if you look at the red line for the recommended cash reserves, that's where you can see we're below... Where are the values you're plotting? That's showing that we're below. That's the projected cash balances, and then we have the recommended cash reserves, which is the black line. So you can see up until FY2033, all of our current cash reserves or projected cash reserves are below the recommended targets based on the current financial policy that we hold. Is this the millions of dollars or something? Yes. So you can see there that we're in cash reserves up until 2030. 2033. And what this also does is it looks at the projected rate increases that are needed to obtain those levels of cash reserves and start getting into meeting those targets by 2033. So it looks at, so 27, 28, we're looking at the 8% increases which are in the ordinance and then we're projecting about 7% two years after that and then dropping down to 5% and then to 3%. And by the end of the 10-year plan, then you would reach your recommended target reserves based off the current financial policy.

Just tell me if this is looking correctly. When I look at it, I say the total operations and maintenance expenses are not really increasing. I mean, they're slowing over time, right? But it's not huge jumps. And I think that's mostly true for all of the bands there. They're kind of constant but then inflating really over time. So we just have got ourselves... Your argument is we've got ourselves into this spot here in 2027 where we're trying to get better now because we have not increased rates in the past to kind of steadily keep up.

Sure. With O&M costs, what we've projected in there is about a 3% inflationary increase, so not a large swing there like you mentioned, so you are correct on that. And yes, we are digging ourselves out of a hole. So if you look at the budget slides, in the previous slides of the budget two actions, you'll see that Sales just haven't been hitting the budget, so we set the budget. Sales haven't come in, but our expenditures during those years were still either the same as budget or possibly higher, so we lost cash in those years. Haven't had a chance to fund reserves, so we're now trying to catch up on a shortfall, plus trying to meet the target reserve. With this 10-year forecast, it looks like we'd be able to start hitting that for around 2033.

Any public comments? Check online.

Thank you, Chair Havner. For members of the public who are joining us online tonight via Zoom, if you have any public comments, please raise your hand. And if you are participating via phone, press star 9 to raise your hand. Chair Havner, I'm not seeing any.

Chair Hefner and members of the board, I also did want to mention this is the same information that was presented during the budget and which was approved in the county budget now in April. So it's still in line with all of those projections and net gains and losses and things that were discussed then. Thanks for noting that. Other questions or discussions?

I move that the Board of Public Utilities recommend that Council adopt Incorporated County of Los Alamos Code Ordinance Number 02-380, an ordinance amending the Department of Public Utilities water service rate schedules, Chapter 40, Article 3, Sections 40-171, 40-173, and 40-175, and adding new sections 40-176, 40-177, and 40-178 for the Incorporated County of Los Alamos.

Second.

Thanks for the second. We'll do a roll call vote on that.

Member Hollingsworth? Yes. Member Notley? Yes. Member Stromberg? Yes. And Member Hebner? Yes. The motion passes 4-0. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Now we're on to departmental business. The first item there is approval of Department of Energy Los Alamos County Electric Resource Pool Budget for fiscal year... Good evening.

Thanks for having me here. So this largely follows the same format that you saw at your last meeting. Some of the slides have been updated to reflect some corrections that were made between that meeting and this meeting. This slide, I believe, has not changed. It shows how we calculate and forecast what our loads are going to be, how we match our generating resources to meet that load, and this is all on a megawatt-hour energy basis. If there's any questions, anyone speak up.

Otherwise, I'll move on. Maybe I'll just go back.

Next slide shows a similar thing for loads and resources for FY2028. And I did get a question, which has been answered, but I'll go over it just for completeness. The first box, loads, shows three rows. The first row is an independent calculation by Los Alamos National Laboratory staff. on what they forecast the load will be, including all their major loads and everything else added up together with the county's load. And the second row there, Lack Load Forecast, shows another independently graduated load forecast performed by DPU staff. And the intent here is to show that while there is some difference between these two, and again, the primary difference here is because You'll see some big differences here on F-28, and that's mainly because of the difference in the way we're treating some of our resources further on and the way they are. They are not including the gas turbine operation in their load, and we're accounting for that, I believe. So that's the main difference there. But we do generally, if you look at the previous slide in particular, if you go back one there, you'll notice that the forecast is here pretty close. And that's what we're aiming for, to show a sense of confidence that we agree on the load going forward. Now, we do a 24-month budget for the power pool, as is expected under our electric coordination agreement. But we'll come back to you next year with a revised budget and loads of resources for FY28. So if there's changes needed there, we'll deal accordingly. We don't generally make large energy procurement decisions based upon the top year. So there's some flexibility there. If we could skip ahead two slides now This gets us into the dollar values. There's a set of six slides here, breaking out by three slides each for each fiscal year. This first slide shows the expenses that the county is expected to incur in FY 2027. There's lots of numbers. I won't go over them. If anyone has any specific questions they want to ask, please do so. Otherwise, we'll move to the next slide. which shows expenses that the DOE is planning on incurring in FY27. Their expenditures are much smaller than the county's because they have a far smaller contribution to the generation resources than the county does. And then this next slide shows the combined resource expenditures for both DOE and county. This one did get some corrections made to it, and it changed the numbers, the values, the average cost per megawatt hour that you'll see in the green boxes there. The total resource cost is what the entire power pool will see for all those resources. $68.93 is forecast. And then they break that out between the... Los Alamos share of that at $66.92 per megawatt hour. And then down in the last yellow box, orange, is the cost that DOE is forecast to be paying for their electricity. Next slide, please. This is a similar assessment and forecast for FY2028. Oh, no, I'm sorry. This is going, for FY 2020, this is showing the county resource expenditures. And then the next slide shows DOE resource expenditures. And then this following slide shows the combined resource expenditures, again, with the two green boxes showing the total cost per dollar per megawatt hour, the county's dollar per megawatt hour, and the DOE's county dollar per megawatt hour values. I believe that's the last slide in the presentation. Yeah, eight slides. I will put out some details about why these numbers changed. They moved down because we had been double counting some values in the costs, in the cost categories. I also want to point out that this was reviewed by the DOEs. They have a consultant, Exeter, who performs a lot of calculations for them. They did look at our budgets. We sent them our budget sheets and our loads and resource sheets. They looked at them. They helped us identify some things we needed to fix and we did that. And they also do their own separate calculations. And so they match theirs against ours and they're within reasonable measure for this sort of forecast. And so they recommended to the operating committee meeting that was held last week that was presented. Any stand for questions?

Any online? This is the approval again. This is budget revision 2026-73. It's really a year-end budget entry that we do. So every year towards the end of the fiscal year, we like to look at our budget to actuals and see if there's anything out of line that needs to be adjusted. So it's really a budget alignment entry. This is the form, but if you'll go to the next slide, The projection that was used to calculate the values. So there's three pieces to the budget revision. There's an increase. to the transfer between electric distribution to electric production, which is for the cost of power. So that's for the power that's sold to electric distribution, which is then sold to the customers ultimately. Same thing for the next thing, which is water distribution. So it's an increase for cost of water. So it's the transfer from water distribution to water production. And then an increase to interdepartmental charges or IDCs. So the first thing with cost of power, You'll see our FY26 budget is currently set at $11.1 million. Through March, we've spent $9.3 million. And based on a five-year average of the months of April through June, we're anticipating a spend of $3.3 million. So that gives us a total projected for the year of 12.7, which gives us a shortfall of $1.5 million, almost 1.6. So the budget revision for cost of power As I mentioned, there's an increase in that transfer from electric distribution to electric production in the amount of $1.6 million. Similarly, in water distribution for cost of water, we have a current budget of $4.2 million. Through March, there's been a spend of $3.1 million. Again, a five-year average for cost of water for the months of April through June is showing about a projection of $1.7 million, bringing it to a total projected for the year of $4.9 million. or a shortfall of $710,000. The budget revision has just a little bit of contingency in there, and so it's rounding up to $750,000 for that transfer. Now, for those two transfers from the electric distribution fund to electric production and then water distribution to water production, there's no net change to the utility fund. So it's just one transfer from one fund to the other, and so there's zero net impact for those two transfers. Inter-departmental charges, on the other hand, is a little bit different. You'll see there's IDCs for each division. You can see what the budget is for each one of those, what the spend is through April, because in this case we have had 10 months post on our general ledger, so we're projecting out two months for May and June, and we do know what those numbers are, so it says projected, but that will be actual. So we have total projected spend. So for total IDCs, we have a current budget of $4.4 million. Spend through April is $4.1 million. Projected for May and June is $863,000. Total projected is $4.9 million, and there's a shortfall of $540,175. We did look back, and as far as how the budget was set, it doesn't match what the current actuals are. So I'm not sure what was used. I do know that for this year, we did receive the budget file from Finance for IDCs, and we budgeted accordingly. In this case, when we look back, we saw that there were some cases where there was slight 3% or 5% increases in some categories and then some decreases in others. So I'm not sure if maybe the budget file for IDCs wasn't available at the time the budget was prepared, and so there was just some assumptions that were made. But basically, this is aligning it to what actuals will be. So the overall net impact to the utility will be an increase of expenditures of $540,000 and then a decrease in fund balance of that amount, which is broken up by each individual division. So with that, I'll stand for any questions.

Any questions? Any public comments? Is there any room, any online?

Anybody who's wishing to make public comment who is attending via Zoom, please raise your hand now. There's no hands. Great, thanks, Ed.

Discussion or motion?

I move that the Board of Public Utilities approve Budget Revision 2026-73 as presented and the Board of Council for consideration and approval.

Motion to the second and a roll call vote.

Member Hollingsworth. Yes. Member Nockley. Yes. Member Stromberg. Yes. And Member Hefner. Yes. Motion passed.

Now we're on to board business, and the first item is chair's report. I just have two quick items to share. The first is, if you didn't tune into the county council last night, you're stuck with me for another five years. I was reappointed, so... The second item I just wanted to share the last Thursday, Ben, Philo, and I all went out to Foxtail Flats for the groundbreaking, and we drafted a press release that Abby's working on. I shared some pictures there, so I don't have pictures to share tonight. But it was very impressive and definitely exceeded my expectations. We got out there and there were people. We had folks, investors, and they wanted to hear about it. Really good. And there was an NPR reporter. Most importantly, we saw some good, real progress. It was exciting to see. That's everything I've got for updates.

Any board member reports? I'll just say I did the BNC luncheons, and I only get to do that like once a year or something, but it was really a lot of fun. It was fun, and the food was great. What are other boards doing? I tell you what, I had serious jealousy of the Art in Public Places Board. They had the best colorful picture-ridden handout, and I just had crayon scribbled notes.

They sounded like they were doing a lot of cool stuff. Thanks for representing us there. Utility Manager, any other board members?

Utility Manager's Report, by the way. Sure. Chair and members of the board, As you know, the primary election, it still continues in our first meeting in June, so we will meet on the third floor in room 330 on June 3rd. Then for White Rock substation, Sambro's completed the rerouting of the conduits so that we can install the caissons, and R&M Construction completed Getting the rebar delivered and hopefully drilling will begin next week, towards the end of next week, for the foundation. And tie line installation, that's complete, but we're still waiting for the programming for the recloser control. And Elk Ridge, this week we actually abandoned and purged, cut, and capped the gas line. Oh, great. That's good to hear. So there was two homes that didn't convert over, but they're working with their plumbers to cut over, but we don't have the cold weather any longer, so they're working on their own timeline, but they have a plan to cut over. So that's a milestone. We still have some as-built drawings and easements to work through that go to council. So, Father, can I ask now, at this point, we own all of gas system, right? Like, it's clear and sorted. Once the easement's accepted, yes. Okay. Yeah, yeah. But we're substantially there now. And then another gas topic with New Mexico Gas, they're planning to hydrotest seven, eight miles of their high-pressure main from Santa Fe to Los Alamos this summer. And they're going to take what's called a virtual pipeline, set up a liquefied natural gas area where they're going to receive trucks daily and re-release that gas into our pipeline that leads up to Los Alamos while they do the pressure testing. I've been in a lot of meetings with LANL about their combustion turbine because that's a big demand for gas over the summer. They won't be operating that during that period of time and so Ben's going to be scheduling some additional power to offset what the combustion turbine was planned to supply during August. Well, July and half of August. So that's an interesting project. More details to come, I'm sure. Recruitment status. We're in the process of filling some summer interns. We got a new superintendent for water production interviewing a GWS superintendent pretty soon but our open vacancies are still electric distribution engineering manager a senior engineer within our engineering division for in this office associate engineer for electric distribution management analyst energy and water conservation coordinator since Abby's stepped up to the new role and GWS superintendent I mentioned. We have a trainee, position opening, as well as engineering aid for locates. Then plumbers and pipefitters, the contract expires in June. Negotiations actually concluded this week. They're still working on the final terms and conditions of that contract, so it should be brought to the board for approval on June 3rd and then council on June 9th. The ECA, Kootock Rock, got our last round of edits from us, the county, meaning all our staff. They're doing a final review and then we'll turn that over to the DOE and NSA for their final review. After that step, we'll bring that back to you hopefully June 17th for approval and then be routed up to council I think June 30 or so after that and then today I actually received the sub grant agreement for the Hamas mountain fire protection project for the electrical undergrounding work so I'll have to work in Alvin's office to get a quick turnaround review it's typical grant agreement from FEMA, so hopefully it's fairly quick, but we'll bring that to you as soon as possible so we can procure materials for that project. Then I mentioned that we had two groundbreakings last week. It was the atomic fiber and the foxtail flats, and I wanted to let Board Member Stromberg know that it There's real dirt being turned out there at Foxtail Flats. It's a real project. The only way I know that is through the net. There's a line of 12 pile drivers there ready to set the panels. It's going to be fun to see that get set up. And I also received what's called the $17 million letter of credit that assures that the project will be built. So there's actually money in there. So it's real money that we can call on. So they're meeting all their terms of the contract. So it's pretty exciting. And then, yeah, it's just great to see that mobilization really was there at the groundbreaking. And then locally, I wrote a letter of support for San Ildefonso Services for a $10 million federal grant to construct a test geothermal well. It's basically a cross from Totave towards the Oahe Canyon. And so it proves to be feasible. We could enter a PPA with them to get some around-the-clock power to meet our future needs and locally source. So we'll see where that goes. I'm hopeful that... You know, new amps, we've had geothermal products, and the biggest problem with that is transmission. So having something this close would be pretty exciting. Then chromium plume. The Environment Department had planned a presentation to follow the one we had this evening, but they had some reviews that didn't get it here on time. So we'll bring that back in June for a presentation on it. call it rebuttal, but on the progress they may have. Volley. And then the NMED, our sanitary survey items with our water tanks. Everything's completed short of one issue with a housekeeping curb to go around the tank the sycamore tank doesn't have a concrete foundation it was founded just on the i believe the tuft rock at the time it was it was a doe project and trying to get engineers at nmed to understand that it's been a challenge we don't have as built drawings that's that's the challenge we have so we're trying to work through details on what's an acceptable housekeeping curb with no structural plans in the past. PFAS, the class action suit, we provided some well pumping data and the law firm for Louisiana is going to set up a training for us, so we'll learn more hopefully next month where that's going. And then This past month, we held a water production tabletop exercise with LANL, and that was actually a really good exercise. We had productive discussion, identified where their procedures and our procedures differ and how to better communicate and coordinate going forward. So it definitely helped among our teams to do that. had a meeting on water needs with NNSA and DOE on their SWICE expanded mission. And the supercomputing, obviously, demanding some water for cooling, as well as, you know, just other mission enhancements that need water. And I did a little back-of-the-envelope calculation, and they were pretty much meeting the... water rights limit. We are working on getting proposals for a 40-year water plan and we're going to look at that in more detail on where that may be. But I think it will prove up that we need to continue to seek funding for a well at Overlook Park so we can take advantage of San Juan Chama water right. And finally, on the electric outage on May 8th and 9th, I There's primarily the underground fault at the aquatic center. There was an overcurrent situation that had a cascading event of outages. And I'm going to ask Dennis Asley that he's been investigating the cause. I don't think he has a full conclusive determination because we're still gathering some other data. I'll ask him to come up and tell the board what he has learned to date because he was on the phone as I was writing this report. I even still didn't know the answers.

This is not fun. Most of the time I enjoy making presentations to the board, but this one is not fun. We have a circuit of 500 aluminum running along Canyon across from the Aquatic Center parking lot. that had a cable failure. That's not one of them that we've been talking about for the last year and a half in the electrification study that is old, prone to failure. This is fairly new stuff. But it failed, so there was a three-phase fault. The fault current that LANL told me they measured on the transformers was 5,000 amps each, so 10,000 amps of fault current. That is very significant on a distribution system. And there were four locations that we had to repair between 9.30 when it occurred and 9 a.m. the following morning. There was that section that we isolated. There were two locations upstream from it where the jumpers between the overhead and the underground burned through. Basically, at 10,000 amps, everything becomes a fuse. So they became a fuse. And then there was another outage on Cheyenne that occurred at the same time, but was not upstream or downstream of this cable failure. So around 2 in the morning, two linemen went to go find the location of that outage and isolated for repair that they repaired on Monday morning. So you think that was independent? That was independent? It was independent of the cause by the three-phase cable failure. I can't tell you why it failed. I hear that that's happened around here before. I have some very unsupported concepts of why. But those are just my suspicions of why. So I just call it, for lack of better words, a sympathy fault. But it literally burned some underground cable that we knew was at risk. And that's the stuff we've been talking about for the last year and a half since the electrification study of we need to look at replacing because it's old and at risk and it's had failures. But it failed as well. So that got isolated. while we were repairing jumpers on the overhead line, the underground on Trinity. The circuit path is from the switching station near the school district admin office, down Trinity to 38th Street, over to Canyon, and then back toward here is where the cable failed, right across from the parking lot of the aquatic center. So therefore, there was a couple of transitions between overhead and underground and it burned at that point. I have to also say it was such a strong force on that current that it twisted some of the overhead conductors along Trinity together. And as we were patrolling, saw that and used an extendo stick to separate them back out. But with that kind of fault current, it doesn't surprise me a bit. Terrible things happen with the electromagnetic fields with that kind of current. And so people had reported that a transformer exploded at that location. And it wasn't a transformer. It was jumpers that had melted. And so when the lineman responded, after he was able to get out of a dark facility that had an electric gate he managed They all seem great at the time don't they? He did manage to get there and he said I know the problem is beyond here so he opened it and he got on the phone with our line superintendent that we do appreciate having in that role and he started closing the circuits back in at the switching station and therefore I was able to come into town a few minutes later and traffic lights were working and I could see a few lights in town. Then we started patrolling to find out what happened. And another lineman showed up and we patrolled the overhead lines in the western area west of Diamond because that would have been the most likely source of the problem. And we found nothing over there. So they opened the switch somewhere along the line and started to backfeed off another circuit to bring up the west side, which also gives us an idea of where is the fault, because if the fault is before that switch they opened, everything will hold. And the fault was on a main line that had no fuses it's hard to fuse conductor that large and so basically what they did was they call it walking the circuit to the fault point and when it trips the other circuit we know we found that we've gone past the faulted cable section and that's what we did after we patrolled all the overhead and found no issues and I got to sit at the switching station and say it tripped and closed and then they stopped working their way down and they knew they had found the location eventually. But when it tripped, it went through, it was circuit number 13, it went through the breaker and relay on circuit 13 and tripped the two main lines coming from the Los Alamos National Lab substation. That should not have happened. And that bothered us on why did that happen. Are those relays that old and failing? And today, we found that somehow the settings on that relay, which had four different families of curves that could be programmed in it, had been put on a fur family that had no settings. We're trying to figure out, starting tomorrow, when that happened and why. But that's why that relay did not trip. The breaker is because it didn't know what to do when it saw the fault. But the one up line, which is the main relay back toward LANL, our breaker and our relay did trip, both of them. And that's why all of town site went down.

Who is responsible for making sure those settings are set correctly?

We are, and those supposedly had been set correctly in the past. I just can't tell you when it would have been changed.

I have zero idea about how these things work, but do you check them at some periodic level and require to say, okay, I checked them and this date?

Actually, they were all scheduled to be checked, but because the group that was coming in to work on the transformer at White Rock that's currently covering all of White Rock, that project was going to be done, then this was going to be done, and we pulled them off because they couldn't do the project at White Rock, and we focused all our attention on the transformer that failed at White Rock. And I've been focusing the attention on getting the Los Alamos switching station energized, which would allow us to work in town site with less risk, because all of town site is sitting on town site switching station, and I'd rather move the risk over to the new LAS so that we can work in town site and not worry about tripping off the community like it just happened. So all of those relays are supposed to be inspected, tested, and it's just been postponed due to not being able to do anything with LAS yet, which we're getting close. And the same crew was going to mobilize and do White Rock and Townsite at the same time.

So are these things, like, I don't have a sense of what they're really like, but are they, like, locked out and tagged out so that you can't go in and change them? Or, like, how does that work?

Actually, it can be done on the faceplate of the relay. They're general electric. Password protected. These were not even password protected. They went in and changed it back to Group 1 from Group 4. Just, we printed out the instructions to do it, but it was done without any password protection. Now, the SEL equipment that I want to replace it with in the near future, that would be password protected. But you and I both know the SEL passwords. I was thinking these were SELs, but I guess they're not. Okay. These are General Electric, generally expensive, 750s. Oh, okay. Wow.

Multiline.

But we are trying to research and see if we can determine when and how these got changed. But there were two of them that were in what's called Group 4. They are now, as of this afternoon, back in Group 1, which does have the relay settings that they should have. That was... not pleasant to experience and I feel bad that it happens. I don't do much in that station. I've been focused on White Rock and I don't know anything about GE Relays except GE's a reputable company and they should have worked properly. I don't mess with those relays because I don't want to do something stupid and cause it to trip and I would not do anything without the instructions which we did print out and used to change it back to the other group. I don't know why it might have been changed. It should not have been changed but that's why it went through the feeder breaker that should have isolated the fault on feeder 13 which includes the hospital. We don't like that one to go down. But it went through that and took out all of town site. And it took about an hour for Wayne to get all of the other circuits back up, find where the jumpers were burned, and test it and find that the balance of circuit 13 could be re-energized while we did the repairs and did the isolation of the faulted cable section. But I hear it burned through about that much cable, but 10,000 amps, that's an arc furnace type burn. It's significant. I would have, in a substation that had fuses, had current limiting fuses at that point to try to prevent the current from going that high. But you can't do that with breakers, except use the breaker to open it. It was significant. Now I won't feel so good about our Sadie numbers next month. I'll be thinking, man, it's still going down. That's looking great. It's going to be an ordeal. I'm going to try to break it up so that I don't show 12 hours of outage for all of Townside. I'm going to try to show, as we restore pieces of it back, to keep the numbers more realistic.

There seemed to be two surprises that came out of this, right? The improperly set relays.

Yes.

You're investigating that, but then you also said at the beginning that the original three-phase fault was in an area where the cable should be relatively new.

Yes.

Any thoughts on to, is that just a fluke?

Probably just a fluke in manufacturing. I can't give any better explanation. It was in conduit. So I can't say it was a tree. I don't think a mouse got in there that far and chewed it, but if so, there's no evidence left at 10,000 amps of fault. And why would they chew there when it would have been easier to chew it back at the switch 50 or 100 feet away? I don't know. That just happens. Cable gets old, and when you've got... almost 8,000 volts on it, because it's 7620, and we usually run about 5% hot, if there's a failure point in that insulation, it'll find it.

Yes? Yes, so I remember, after you and I spoke, I remember the conversation. Back when TA3 substation was being built, the There was concern in the county that the fault current in the county was going to get higher and what's Lannell going to do about it. There were some negotiations between C.A. Lannell and the county. And I asked about, well, why don't you just put in some reactors, line reactors. And I remember now that they said that they decided to settle on a neutral reactor. Oh. And so this kind of goes back to our conversation that how is neutral picked up? Because they're line to line and we're line to neutral over here. Yes. How's that current getting back to substation? But I thought about that. I remembered that that subject did come up and they are supposed to put a neutral reactor. So they knew that neutral current was coming back to the substation.

Apparently. That would be interesting to know more about.

I think they even forgot about it.

And if you get with me, I'll share with you what I got out of Heather and Robo in an email.

10,000 amps, I'm thinking with a neutral reactor, it had to be line-to-line. Yeah, it was, definitely. And the reactor would have mitigated the line-to-neutral.

It sounds like it would have to be line-to-line because if it were line-to-neutral, a jacketed cable, it shouldn't have necessarily gone to the adjacent cable.

Other questions? Thanks. Anything else, Philo? Other questions?

I just wanted to say thanks to Dennis' team because it was a long night. Sure, yeah. It's been all night after working a long day.

Any other questions on anything else Philo brought up? All right, thanks. Now, Ann, the County Manager's Report.

Sure. So we got a lot going on. It's been a busy, busy month. I will mention the broadband groundbreaking. So that project is going strong. And just to remind everybody, it's a open access network where it's a publicly owned infrastructure. The county through bonds are financing the installing all the fiber. But there are going to be four Internet service providers that are who the customers are going to buy service from, that are not the county, they are private, and they are using the infrastructure, and they were all there. And there will be a website that allows you to, on Atomic Fiber, that will allow you to link to the different providers. and they'll start advertising what kind of services they have available so you can get signed up even before maybe it's in your area. Sorry, Member Hollingsworth. You and I in Baronga are the last to get to benefit from the new fiber, but it will get there sooner than later. They hope to be ahead of schedule. They have several years to make all their contractual obligations, but they do want three of them. They want to go as quickly as they can. They're very motivated. That's exciting. Also in White Rock, I don't want to steal too much of Council Herman's thunder, but Council did approve the next step of the Longview Drive realignment project, which includes utility realignment or relocations and upgrades as well as a new road where people cut through that area around Longview rather than taking the long sort of U-shape road around the Montefiore school. So that is moving forward in the summer will be design input into there's a center line kind of alignment, but kind of parking parallel angled one side, two side bike lane with side blocks, other amenities. That's going to go through a public process and with the hope of construction next year. And this Friday, we have the first summer concert. lovely barrier concrete barriers are back on the south side for safety but they're getting painted it's called fat cat green it's a very lovely color that we thought blended them a little more nicely so they're in the process of being painted and we're going to encourage and i'm not sure how yet but people to be able to paint at least the park the side on the inside not on the roadside artistically for fun just to kind of and we're going to be promoting our permanent bollard options that have been developed. We put them in the paper. I think we're going to hand out some flyers, I think, at the concert, but it's going to go to the Historic Preservation Board, Transportation Board, and Parks and Rec Board. So there's a few different options there that have been vetted and priced that are all doable. And we'd like to get the actual installation should go fairly quickly once we have the materials to move that project forward. Um... Trinity Drive realignment as well is going to be happening. And that is Oppenheimer to, I should say, hybrid road diet from Oppenheimer to, all the way to 20th Street. So that design was already approved with that contract and that is all grant funded. It's not generally fund funded. And then the last thing I will say is with the early voting, Still going on. We halted until we're going to put a press release out. We've delayed the EV installation by two weeks at Mesa Public Library because we wanted to maintain the drive-through for the ballot box there. And we found out it didn't. We had a little more time on the grant than we thought, and the contractor just happened to be really agreeable to that. So the nice thing is that parking lot should be reopened again tomorrow once they fill in the trench. and it'll be open for the summer concert, but it'll just mean that the later concerts will be a little stressed with not having that parking lot. And then we just did the groundbreaking for Garden Station 4, so if you were to pass there, the contractor got the notice to proceed very seriously and proceeded. Almost didn't leave us time to do the groundbreaking before. I felt it box.

with that I'll stand with any questions not a question but if you early vote they have cool stickers this year thank you chair so we had meeting last night regular County Council meeting and passed in the consent agenda were Let's see, budget revision for a vector, which I'm sure everybody knows. I'm excited. That is exciting for me, yes.

I made a phone call at like 9 o'clock last night.

Excellent, excellent. As well as repair of an 18-inch water transmission line and written determination emergency procurement approval of the reinstatement of contract for the bio- NP Booster Station Rehabilitation Project. So good utility stuff. Wanted to include all of that. Introduction of the ordinance pertaining to the gas service rates. Let's see. Ann mentioned the demolition of the three buildings down on Longview Drive in White Rock. There was also the award of the bid for the Jemez Mountain Fire Protection Phase 3 project. And just kind of of interest, the award of the bid for the Trinity Drive improvement project was fully grant funded, which I just thought was interesting. Wanted to pass that along. Let's see. The board appointment for Chair Hefner was already mentioned. And I also wanted to mention the fire station foreground breaking and Friday night concerts. So that really is it. Any questions?

Thank you so much. You bet. ESB liaison room.

Good evening. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay, yeah, the Zoom audio quality has been variable this evening, so I'm glad you can hear me. Good evening, Chair, Board, and Council members and staff. At our April meeting, the ESC heard a presentation on the recently adopted statewide New Mexico Climate Action Plan in some detail. We also heard a presentation on the new Climate Action Marketing and Engagement Plan from our consultants, Firebrand. These consultants will assist county staff, including the DTU, in education and outreach to our community to support implementation of actions outlined in our Climate Action Plan. And county council has requested that the ESB draft and propose an ordinance to ban single-use plastic bags in the county. A subcommittee of the ESB was appointed to research and present an ordinance for council for consideration within 90 days. We meet again tomorrow night and then the board will hear a presentation and give feedback to Angelica Gurley, our sustainability manager, on on-bill financing for efficiency upgrades. So this is an exciting potential program that could help residents improve home efficiency and comfort by providing low interest loans for weatherization and appliances. and you'll hear this presentation also at your June 3rd meeting. We'll also have a presentation from the CEO of Ridwell, a company that specializes in hard to recycle plastics, and they offer a program for families and businesses to recycle sometimes plastics that the county currently doesn't accept. And then finally, we'll hear an update on the process from the plastic bag subcommittee, which has been working with the legal department to draft an ordinance for council. And with that, I'll take questions.

Thank you, Sue. Any questions? No, thank you so much for the updates, Sue.

You bet. Thank you. And welcome back to the board.

Thank you. I don't think there's any general board business. No board expenses. And we are on to status reports. Status reports for April.

Sarah, the one thing on the... Our risk report, we didn't have some data. So I'll have to report that next month. I think on the electric status, we've got a long one already. So we know the number is going to go up. And then collections seem to be going well. So that's all I have in summary.

Any questions on that question? Thank you, Board. Okay, so there seem to be a lot of sewer backups in the SNATCH report. And I'm kind of wondering, are they getting fewer? Are they getting more, staying the same?

I think it's fairly consistent if we want to look at them. And then Clay can give a little more.

I've given it a lot of thought. So what we're finding is that as people... i mean we we definitely have uh quite a few distribution lines that need we we've kind of curtailed replacing a lot of the distribute the collection lines that's not distribution collection so you know we're we're doing a condition assessment and finding those that are just this this one is just you know it gets wonky with those three foot uh clay pipe joints and a lot of them are at the bottoms of neighborhoods and they were never lined or anything and so you know over time roots start to intrude into them and then you get the grease and wipes and so the what the wipes are kind of the common denominator and that's what we're seeing not only in our community but like nationwide and worldwide everybody's starting to have this problem and we were just talking about an article that was in the New York Times about some communities are having to put sensors and use AI. It will start to notice patterns of flow changes, and it'll start to sense back to a computer that analyzes that data. Well, we don't have that, so we just have to be lucky. We have a pattern of maintenance that we go around town and White Rock, and we flush, and we're trying to hit more of the difficult, because they've built so many sewers in people's backyards, those are really hard to get to with the . And that was part of the factor thing. We have now a hose reel that can move, because we need to really start getting aggressive with maintaining the lines in the backyards. But back to your question. What we're finding is that when we do have even a partial backup, Some homes that are, so many homes were built low, below the upstream manhole. There's just so many of them in town that were like that. And no one was ever held to the plumbing standard of putting the backwater valve. Well, now that they're doing that, we're finding that they did it kind of on the cheap a little bit. And they're putting the most basic type in there. And it's just a flapper. And, you know, after a while, we've started to learn that, wow, there's like a 40% to 50% failure rate on that. It holds partially, but it's allowing the, you know, some of the flow to back in it. And it's small backups, but it's, yeah. And so as soon as they get it, you know, of course, they're going to make a claim against the county. There might be an opportunity here to start educating the public, okay, do you have a backwater valve? Hopefully you do. If you do, you need to go see what type you have because they do have compound ones where if the water backs up, it moves afloat and then closes a real valve versus just a flapper because the flappers are bad. And then another thing that we found are that a lot of people got a... After the original home was built, they got an addition, and they just put a new tap for that addition. They didn't tie it into the home's plumbing, and the tap was not done properly. And so there's an annular space between the service line coming into the main line that once the main backs up, it allowed water to come around the tap and just saturate the soil all around their house and stuff like that. So those are kind of the patterns that we're seeing. So we will probably have another round of education to get people to be aware of what it takes to really protect their homes.

On the bright side, I'm starting to see on the wipes packages, they'll say, this is not flushable. Yes, I'm starting to see those.

There's actually a law in front of Congress about those right now. It's a big class action suit.

So, Clayton, how can people, is it possible for people to get some guidance from the department? Like, here's how I find out what kind of thing.

Yeah. I mean, we've done some looking around, and there are resources out there. And we're just going to have to point to some websites and then the way Abby and Kathy. Don't flush that video. Don't flush that video, yeah. And it's just an education thing. People, you know, like, there is just no way that we can guarantee, or the way Alvin put it, we can't indemnify the entire county and pay all of this if you didn't do your part. There are certain situations where it's like, clearly, that was a failure on our side or something, and it's obvious when that happens, but like a standard Mainline backup those are going to occur and so as a homeowner. You've got to protect protect your home from that and There are things that can be done. There's even there's even little Backwater valves that you can buy that have a sensor that says we have water pressure That alert you so there are things that can be done Chair and member Stromberg the other piece is we identified in our capital plan that

We're going to focus on the RIP loans that become available every September. So you'll see a resolution to go for those loans. And we're going to be focused on those trouble areas where Clay mentioned, the low spots where the clay lines are just not at sufficient grade to carry that sewage away and need to be upgraded to PVC. So, yeah, we're going to. focus program on those. And we have another project coordinating with Public Works on Fairway. Again, there's sewer lines under homes. We don't want that. So we're looking at options how to reroute those. We have a lot of old legacy where the DOE allowed for these homes to be built over sewer lines, which is a wonderful legacy they left us there. Along with chromium, but the whole thing.

Any other questions? All right. Thanks for going through it. Upcoming agenda items we have to take care of. And then we have comments, questions.

You're going to get the NMA presentation on?

Yes.

Seeing nothing, I'll move on. And one last call for public comment. See any in the room? Any online, Abby?

No.

Okay, thanks for checking. With that, we are adjourned. Thanks, everyone.

Yeah, that was dumb.

Recording stopped.

Yeah, yeah, 12. So that's when we first met. Hi.

Not too bad.

ideas around water cooling and super cooling. Yeah.

I've got a couple of follow-up questions. I'm on deadline to get something to exchange money. Dave Kerber, right? Your PR?

So I'm...