Transportation Board - workshop

Work session of the board of public utilities. Thank you everyone who is participating this evening whether it's here or online We do appreciate it this is nominally a work session, but we do have a number of Action items that we need to consider so our first order of business will be action to suspend the procedural rules for the work session and I have a motion to do that.

Sure. I move that the Board of Public Utilities suspend the procedural rules for the June 3, 2026 work session so that formal action may be taken. Second.

OK. Any discussion? This would be procedural. All in favor indicate hand raised aye. And Charlie?

Aye.

Thank you. OK. Motion passes 4 to 0. We move on now to public comment. Is there any public comment in chambers? I don't see any. Do we have any public comment online?

Thank you, Chair Gibson. For members of the public who are joining us tonight on Zoom, when Chair Gibson calls for public comment, please use the raise hand function. If you are participating by phone, press star 9 to raise your hand. If you wish to make a public comment at this time, please raise your hand on Zoom. Chair Gibson, I don't see any hands raised.

Thank you. Okay, no public comment. We'll move on to approval of the agenda Would someone like to make a motion to approve it sure I move to approve the agenda as presented. Thank you Second nobody else is jumping a second. Okay record Eric is having seconded Okay approval of the agenda any discussion Seeing none in all in favor Hand up. And Charlie, I see you're favorable. Let's see. Motion passes 4 to 0. That takes us to a presentation by the New Mexico Environment Department on our favorite hexavalent chromium plume.

So Chair, well, Caitlin Martinez is going to make the presentation this evening. So she's on her way up. And welcome. And I know Mike Peterson is a hydrogeologist that's backing her up if there's more questions. So is he online? He is in the audience. There he is. Okay. Yes. All right.

Okay, Caitlin.

Thank you.

The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair. We appreciate the opportunity to improve. present for you apologies um mr lashley was at another event in albuquerque today and couldn't make it here today so you can check your mic if it's a green light there's a green light maybe i'll or we'll move closer closer closer seems to work better yes that's okay i'll try my best let me know if i diverge away from it but um So anyway, I'm Caitlin Martinez, and I'm a water resource professional with the New Mexico Environment Department's Groundwater Quality Bureau. So we like to start kind of the core concept a little bit on something we all can agree on, which is everybody wants clean drinking water. And this is just really one of the foundational things for NMED, one of our kind of core building blocks on why we exist as a department. Maybe you could help me. I'm going to lean on you. Thank you. Next slide. And so just to start by sharing some of the facts before we dive into it. But the contamination, as you guys know, is a little complex. It's present in the soil, the 1,000 foot of soil essentially leading up to the top of the regional aquifer water table and also present in that water, both in Los Alamos County and in Santa Fe County. Next slide, please. And I'm sure as you guys all know, but we'll just address it anyway, the plume kind of came from this release of contaminated water, potassium dichromate contaminated water that was flushed periodically into Sandia and Mortandad Canyons up at the labs, generally between 1956 and 1972. And next slide, please. And as you guys know, effluent, the effluent-driven water flow released from those power plants releases hexavalent chromium contamination, which spread down through the soils and into the water. And in that 54 years, since they ceased those type of operations, the plumes just kind of spread a little bit horizontally and vertically based on natural flow conditions and stuff.

Next slide, please. And a little basic about

you know, sometimes it gets kind of lost in the mix on why we care so much, you know. So just going back to the basics for us is that there's risks associated with long-term ingestion of hexavalent chromium. That's why it's something we look into and care about. And so these kind of concerns for this long-term ingestion is just an example of why it's important to ensure that there's like no connection between the receptors and this contamination, kind of in the short term and in the long term. just because we want to make sure to protect that water supply for generations to come. So even though the plume, as we know it now, is not an immediate risk to human health and safety because of its proximity to those water supplies and thus to the receptors, the remediation is something critical to us because we want to ensure that for the long term and future usage of your guys' water to the future. And so to address this and to remediate the problem and kind of make that, assurance for long-term water supply, LANL implemented a remediation approach in which they extract that contaminated water and on the surface of the land they treat it through what we call a pump and treat system. And just for anybody that's not science-y, hexavalent chromium contamination and how we kind of talk about it in terms of, you know, regulations is in parts per billion. So that's kind of just how we relate the number. Thank you. And so in order to operate this pump and treat system, right, where we pull the water out, we treat it, we have to find a way to dispose of the treated water. And so going back to 2012, I think it was, when DOE initially proposed to conduct an evaluation of potential alternatives to implement a remediation strategy for the plume, part of that included this kind of evaluation of what do we do with the water if we go with a pump and treat system. And so in the end, they looked at, these are some examples of some things that were evaluated. It includes putting the water into lined ponds on the surface, kind of letting it evaporate, using evaporative systems to speed up that process, putting water on top of the soil surface so it can evaporate through the soil, or injecting the treated water back into the aquifer. And so in the end, DOE initially conducted a mass removal pilot testing back after that 2012 assessment. And they used land application in compliance with a temporary discharge permit at the time to discard that treated water into the soil. And it also discussed in that initial document how they would evaluate several options in the future using like a specific study on larger scale water disposition because we were doing a pilot test at the time looking at smaller term. But now looking at larger scale water disposition including the feasibility of reinjection being proposed then.

Thank you.

And so that gets into the regulatory split a little bit between what happens here. So the first part of it with the operation of the pump and treat system and the primary, you know, regulatory authority over the remediation of the plume is held with the Hazardous Waste Bureau of the New Mexico Environment Department. And this is because it's a legacy discharge of hazardous waste like we had talked about, and thus is subject to RCRA corrective action requirements under the New Mexico Hazardous Waste Act. So that involves the extraction and treatment that's happening under the interim measures now, and that will also include when Hazardous Waste Bureau executes a final remedy selection. And all of this happens and is executed under the compliance order on consent, so. That's kind of where it sets the procedures for how we go through this and describes what this particular remediation strategy is now. And then the other side of that is the Groundwater Quality Bureau with the New Mexico Environment Department. And they come into play because of LANL's selected interim measures technology, which utilizes a reinjection of treated water through what we call underground injection control wells. The use and operation of those underground injection control wells subjects them to the requirements of the New Mexico Water Quality Act and its rules and regulations. So that's kind of why things get a little complicated. And when we go through more recent actions, you'll see why there's kind of a split in regulations here. But thank you. So kind of going back to what you guys know and just giving a little context on how we got to the position we are. is the system was designed in an interim measures to contain the plume. That's the primary goal of it is essentially trying to keep it within the existing footprint it is while we figure out all the information we need to design a final remedy that will remove it all and meet our regulatory requirements. And so this pump and treat system was essentially planned with like a hydraulic control through the injection wells where, the water wells would produce a head change that would essentially suppress some of the natural migration of the water in the regional aquifer and be kind of a, not a, like a stopping gap for that, you know, with that hydraulic head change. So that was what the interim measures proposal was. That's why it's this series of injection wells kind of slated the way you guys see it. And at the time they were anticipated to be at the plume, the periphery of the plume boundary to be kind of that, water shield is kind of a way to think about it. But as you guys have heard, multiple years back and forth between the state and LANL, there was some concerns from New Mexico Environment Department's Groundwater Quality Bureau regarding groundwater quality samples and, you know, the potential spread of the plume. And their assertion at the time was that part of that could be attributed to operation of those injection wells and, you know, would be a concern. So multiple years there was kind of this back and forth about whether or not the system contained the hexavalent chromium plume. And the data kind of showed us that that did not occur as it proposed. And so we'll first talk about what you guys are more familiar with, with the violations and exceedances on Los Alamos County and the groundwater quality. Bureau stuff. So we'll start with the initial 2004 when they found the plume. You guys all know in regional aquifer monitoring well R28 and that showed higher, showed exceedances above groundwater quality standard and kind of led to this whole investigation of the plume. So Then in 2019, if you guys have heard, we had an R70 out in the east side, and that was down gradient of injection, kind of closer to the PM3 well stepping out, and that one had deeper contamination than what you'd seen before and was one of the conceptual site model kind of pivots that we had as far as our understanding of the plume at the time. And the big one that you guys have heard many, many times, and I promise I won't spend forever on, but is the R45 groundwater quality sample where in 2021 it was previously below regulatory standards, closer to background, and through the operation of injection wells, the time period in which those injection wells were operated exceeded regulatory standards. So all of those are in Los Alamos County. And this is, I promise I won't take long, but R45 was one of the primary wells of concern that kind of led to the independent technical review and kind of led to some of these impasse items that you guys have heard about. And so it exceeded what that regulatory standard of 50 parts per billion. And again, just to orient, this is the lower screen. So we're talking deeper, you know, closer to, I believe it's like 100 feet below the top of the water table. And so this was also, it's below what was anticipated. The top 50 feet is where we thought the primary contamination resided in the regional aquifer. And so information like this kind of, you know, went against what we designed the system, what LANL designed the system to treat. And so because of these exceedances, that's where the independent technical review came in. And you guys have heard from them and know some of these results, so we'll go through them pretty quickly. But one of the big things for NMED was that they did state that the detections and the increase at R45 screen 2 could plausibly be resulting from that injection into CRIN 1 and CRIN 2. because they increase vertical downward gradients by adding that flow there. And so the concern is that it could drive mass horizontally east and vertically downward, and the IRT kind of supported that there was potential in that occurring. So this kind of leads through this whole process. There was a cessation of injection a couple times. So we'll talk about that. The first cessation was injection was because of this kind of problem child, R45 screen 2, and that's where, we started to have conversations about what a path forward would look like. But the other half of it that you guys have heard about now is kind of talking, moving to the southern boundary here. And our recent concern and the more recent cessation of injection that you guys have heard less about is resulting from these concentrations that were detected on the Pueblo de San Ildefonso lands. south of the facility boundary. And that's called Monitoring Well Simmer 3. I tried to mark it on there. It's not on the thing. So it's kind of south of those R50 and those southern boundary injection wells. And it was sampled a couple times, both as screening levels during the development of the well and then we had conducted a final regulatory split sample, at least on the lower screen. And so what you're seeing here is talking about our lower screen values. Because we haven't finished the regulatory sampling of the upper screen quite yet, that's supposed to happen later. So for now, that's what we're talking about. And the first one is our most recent May 2026 regulatory split sample, in which NMED's analytical results showed a 98.9 parts per billion. And prior to those two and those of which were referenced in the ACO were these March 2026. It was October 2025 that was referenced in the administrative compliance order. But after that we also conducted a March 2026 after development. And these just kind of show the progression of samples here. So that's new information in the southern boundary of it that led to another cessation. And what this shows and the concern for New Mexico Environment Department is that these samples kind of prove that the plume is not contained within the LANL facility boundary. And that was one of the fundamental goals of our interim measures work plan was to contain the plume where it was and prevent the offsite migration from occurring. And then looking at R45, that shows us in the east side there may be a lack of containment issues and contamination moving past our radius of influence from our current existing treatment unit. And that those injections likely increase the spread of the plume. So this kind of indicates to us, you know, bigger problem around both these individualized regions of the plume that we've talked about having hydraulic control over, as DOE has identified as having hydraulic control over. Next slide, please. And so what is the state doing kind of in response to this? You know, it's been a lot of stuff happening. There's been a lot of outside input into this. And how has the state really digested this information trying to find a solution? And so first we'll talk about it from the Groundwater Quality Bureau perspective. That, like I said, was with kind of resulting around that R45 trend. But this, again, after the SIMR3 data, we, again, the Groundwater Quality Bureau required LANL to stop injecting those treated extractions into the groundwater, even on the limited basis to which they were authorized through letters. And then they also issued on February 11, 2026, served an administrative compliance order and asserted violations and penalties, including, you know, corrective actions to fix those violations. And the first of which was a failure to meet the regulatory water quality standards in the New Mexico Water Quality Act. And the second was a failure to meet the requirements in the existing discharge permit 1835. And that's the condition 19. And so the history of this kind of resumption of injection a little bit gets a little murky. So I wanted to spend a little bit of time kind of talking through why decisions were made and the way that they were made at the time and kind of why this resumption of injections back and forth has occurred. And so initially, the 2022 cease injection directive that kind of started this whole thing, the initial argument was was for just the straight resumption of injection from LANL's side. So they did not agree, you know, with the state's directive to cease those injections and requested approval or authorization to resume injections. And the groundwater, as part of that eventual attempt to gain a, get on the same page in the same book so we can have a path forward, a long-term path forward, and allow resumption of injection to occur while that long-term path forward is implemented, we wanted to spell out and have that agreement for what the long-term plan is and allow the short-term operations. And so with the long-term plan, what we wanted to condition the resumption of injection on was first that they propose an additional injection location and solve our issues. You know, if these existing injection locations are a problem, let's put a new one in a place that isn't a problem. Let's solve our capacity issue in the long term while we figure out what to do with what infrastructure exists. And that's, you know, just to ensure that our injection isn't increasing migration and making a bigger problem for us in the long term. And then also condition that we use a monitoring well data from SIMR3 that wasn't installed at this time to evaluate that long-term path forward for injections on the southern boundary. And then R80 was for the eastern side. So R80 is down gradient of that problem child R45. And it was slated to be similar depth so we can see if that injection did in fact result in bilateral push-outs. of that contamination plume. And what we've heard a lot, and I'm sure you guys have heard a lot, is that monitoring well R50 is kind of one of the success stories here, you know. And so monitoring well R50 is right near those southern boundary injection locations, and the lower screen, that's what we're talking about referenced here, had data drastically decreased upon injection into CRINs 3, 4, and 5. And so LANL's position was that these R50 samples indicate that the method's successful, that we are preventing that southern boundary migration of contamination. We're suppressing the zone and keeping it kind of on that LANL facility boundary. And so because that was the primary interim measure's goal, that was some back and forth on whether an interim measures problem or if this is a problem that could be solved when we move to final remedy. But our position on that is that we got a lot of injection of clean treated water occurring, you know, in a rather close vicinity to that and there's likely some result of flooding of the area with clean water that's causing our detections to go down and that we're pooling some of that treated water when we conduct our sampling of that monitoring well. So that was kind of the disagreement on what has been noted as like the success story. And so continuing almost to the IRT and then we'll be quick through that. But the problem was our conditions. And so LANL continued to assert that injection should be authorized and did not agree to the conditions including the alternative injection location to which NMED wanted that temporary authorization to be based upon. And so based on concerning trends presented by DOE and R50 going back up after no injection occurring in the southern boundary, the Groundwater Quality Bureau allowed partial operation of the injection well on that southern boundary. And this time, instead of holding with the impasse, because we weren't getting anywhere, you guys have heard with the back and forth, We conditioned that on monitoring Well Stemmer 3 and saying that future actions on operation of this injection configuration is dependent on what those data results show. And also that we finish up that independent technical review team and look at those options and recommendations to help determine the path forward and if it aligned with those proposed by NMED. And so now moving to the other side of the coin with Hazardous Waste Bureau. Also on February 11, 2026, Hazardous Waste Bureau served LANL with an administrative compliance order, also listing violations and penalties and requesting a list of corrective actions to satisfy those violations. And the first violation was a failure to submit the revised interim measures work plan. And the second violation was a failure to implement corrective measures beyond the facility property boundary when necessary. And so what the ACO kind of lists out is what NMED's thoughts are on, How do we move forward? You know, what is a process of actions that we can require that get us out of this impasse and to a place of moving forward? And so you can see all those in the administrative compliance orders on our webpage. But for the Hazardous Waste Bureau side, this corrective action plan essentially aligns with the recommendations as we read it from that independent technical review and really supported some of those initial requirements we had in that attempt to resume injection operations. And so it just supports follow through with those actions the Hazardous Waste Bureau has been requiring with pushback since 2022. And so a little context on the impasse. I know I had talked a little bit about like when do these actions happen and the disagreement between when. And so to provide a little context on that, it resulted from this kind of refusal to act on multiple directives from the individual agency. And so, for instance, that interim measures work plan had a notice of disapproval that required modifications to the remedial measures plan. And there was disagreement whether that should occur in those modifications, like a new injection location. Is that an interim measures and is that necessary to meet the interim measures goal or is that a final remedy? Let's get through what the information we need to design and implement a final remedy for the plume that will completely remove both the soil and the water contamination. to hazardous waste bureau requirements. But our push on that is that, like, we need data. And the piece of that is that NMED issues a selection of remedial alternatives based on proposals from DOE. So information is needed to be able to be present to the public and to people like you guys that we're selecting something that is protective and a final remedy and provide some surety that as we implement a final remedy alternatives, we can make sure the whole problem is satisfied at once. And so some of these issues were just the refusal to act on the remedial measures that were required under this interim measures model. And they just continued to refuse that improvements happen to the pump and treat system at this time. So that was kind of one of our core issues that led to the independent technical review. Because we didn't even have an administrative foundation to which we see this path forward happening for us. And so that was kind of some of the big reasons why we really had to go through this independent technical review. It was agreed to by both of the parties. And we both agreed on the scope of the analysis through a series of questions that we wanted essentially answers to and recommendations to. And it's supposed to resolve differences through a huge scope of stuff, as you guys have heard. But the primary of which are important to us is the hexavalent chromium plume migration, if there's containment of the chromium plume, and the long-term remediation of the hexavalent chromium in groundwater. And so I'm not going to read all these people, but we both agreed upon the list of experts. There were people from within the Department of Energy complex. There were private industry people, people from EPA, kind of covering all of our bases to make sure we get adequate responses to the large scope of questions we had asked. And so the primary goals of the independent technical review was to first look at the hydraulic control by looking at trends, look if there's any of those adverse impacts based on the injection operation, and if the current interim measure with the goal to get to final remedy. And of course, we'd like the infrastructure developed in interim measures to become a part of that final remedy. So resources and time isn't wasted, kind of using and developing a strategy that we can take this information, move forward and pivot without coming to this impasse that you guys have had to hear about for multiple years. And the fifth one is kind of on well design, and this is relating to dual screen, single well screen in the same borehole, but this is kind of a topic under the jurisdiction jurisdiction of the Office of the State Engineer. So they did provide recommendations and did support the use of dual screen wells. All right. So now we're kind of moving forward. So now we have this data point for us at CIMR 3 on Pueblo de San Ildefonso land. This came after this kind of independent review team report. And that independent review team report supported adjusting operations based on this result. So getting this information for us highlighted the need to figure out a path forward as soon as possible, immediate action in this adaptive management strategy to figure out how we can improve remediation and get something rolling. And so some of the issues we've had that you guys have heard about is after issuance of the administrative compliance orders from NMED, LANL canceled the hexavalent chromium plume workshops that were going on. And we, of course, continue to urge the resumption of those collaborative workshops, even under the understanding that negotiations can proceed with the administrative compliance orders. Technical discussions on a path forward and feasibility towards a path forward can continue onwards from our position. So we took the lead after that and tried to reconvene everybody again and tried to get all the parties that were in it when Lana was taking the lead. And we had most of them on May 2026 kind of resume some of this discussion and analyze some of those recommendations provided in the independent technical review report on what are our short-term options for land disposition and how can we get some type of remediation moving forward. In that May 2026, we had the Pueblo de San Ildefonso and the New Mexico Indian Affairs, Office of the State Engineer, and then NMED and its respective bureaus. But LANL didn't participate, and the county had scheduling conflicts and didn't want to participate. But we, of course, continue to extend that opportunity for county members to have those discussions with us. And I mean, to date still, we haven't had these recommendations from the IRT report that came out in December of 2024 implemented. We're kind of at the same place we were. And so that kind of talks about the need for our actions and why New Mexico Environment Department kind of stepped in the way it did. Thank you. Any questions? I know. Sorry I talk fast.

Thank you, Chair Gibson. Okay. I hate to put you on the spot here because you said you didn't know much about the plume, but I'm just kind of wondering, if we didn't do anything at all, no injection, no pumping, no nothing, what... Do we have an idea? Is the plume stagnant? Is it diffusing? Is it concentrating? Do we have any idea on that?

Well, there's natural water flow. And so there's an appendices, I believe, in the independent technical report. It kind of did a bare bones assessment of when there would be, you know, potential impacts to downgradient receptors and what the timeline for that would look like. And I don't remember what they found there. But essentially we still have contamination in the soil. So what is there is going to continue to kind of go through its entry points into the water. And so what we see contaminated in the water isn't everything. It's not the totality of the contamination. And so although it's going to move and disperse with the natural water gradient, it's also going to have these continued drip points of new water. hexavalent chromium, kind of reaching that aquifer.

Okay. And I asked this last time. You mentioned in the presentation, for example, there's a pump and treat. At some point, when do you think we might be able to pump, treat, and drink? So instead of, I asked this, you know, we pump it out, put it through some ion exchange beds, and then re-inject it. But last time I said, well, well number three, for example, is already certified for drinking. It's already permitted for drinking. Could we just put the ion exchange beds in there and then use the effluent from that for drinking water? And when the answer was that this has been done other places with great success, then these conversations might be coming to Los Alamos, you know, behind a theater near you. When do you think that might happen?

That's where you kind of get into water rights issues, you know, and part of what happens here is that, like, it's designed to be a non-consumptive use, you know, and so when we inject directly back into it, that's the benefit of the system. And so when you get into drinking rights, that's when you get into water rights, that's, you know, more of an office of the state engineer and, like, the overlap between county and Los Alamos that, You know, those are details that would have to happen with them, and the proposal to the state is something that we would consider if that's, you know, an agreement on other parties first.

Yeah, that's why I say if we're already using, if it's already at a well, and that well is already permitted, because that addresses all the water rights issues, you know what I'm saying? Instead of shutting the well down, we could put filters on it and still use the well. So at some point, I guess that'll be spoken, that'll be talked about.

And I think usually we pivot on, like, treatment like that when there's contamination at the source that there could be, you know, potential for, you know, human exposure. So like you're saying, if PM3 is what you're referencing and turning that on and utilizing it, like, the plume would be there. You know, right now the plume isn't in there. So utilizing that as an extraction and treating it to that. It doesn't really help with our design of getting in the centroid of it, pulling out the best, you know, beneficial benefits for our energy used extracting it. You know, so for now it's designed we want to target those high points in the center and kind of utilizing those maybe not as beneficial for where we are now in it, you know. And so it's kind of solving the disposition of the water if we have to extract it from where we are, finding a disposition for it.

Okay. Thank you. Charlie?

Yes, thanks, Chair Gibson. Caitlin, first of all, I want to thank you for a really clear presentation. I appreciate it. Thank you for going through that with us. I think that was very helpful. I was very interested to see the new data from Summer 3. I hadn't seen that before. So you're saying it's gotten almost to 100 parts per billion in your most recent measurement there. Did I get that right?

Yes, sir.

Okay. So that's a pretty large increase. And the regulatory limit is like 50, right? So it's 2x.

For the interim measures, yeah, and the cleanup happening on land, we have 50 parts per billion as a regulatory there.

Right. And at the moment, nothing's going on, right? There's no extraction or injection. Is that correct?

Yes, sir.

Okay. I read through parts of the independent review team. I have to say I did not read through all 981 pages of it. But I did look through some of the modeling stuff, and I'm not going to go into detailed questions on the modeling. But it struck me that the conclusions of the panel seemed quite reasonable to my read, and I'm certainly no expert in these matters. And you say there's really not been any forward progress on reevaluating how the parameters in the model are calibrated or even which software set you're going to use, whether you're going to stick with FEHM or go to Modflow. That's still kind of at a standstill, is that right?

Yeah, that's one of the issues and so part of our actions are kind of trying to satisfy a path forward for these and we see it under like a regulatory document that intermeasures work plan that should propose some of these actions. It should propose a timeline for these actions and a phased approach for what are we going to do and that's kind of how we see the process and see these kind of modifications happening.

Okay, so at the moment, though, is it fair to say it just sounds like we're at a standstill? Is that basically correct at the moment?

Unfortunately, I mean, the state's taking their authority as to get compliance with what the regulatory directives as we see it are. And so that's how we see kind of finding a solution to it at this point.

Okay. Well, do you have a crystal ball? And can you look forward and see, like, you know, we've shut down PM3, of course, and that looks like it's going to remain shut down for the foreseeable future, absent any developments. So, you know, what do you think, from the point of view of, you know, the Board of Public Utilities, just trying to monitor groundwater quality and for our own customers, what do you see in terms of the landscape that might change in the near future to help inform our decision making at all? Do you see anything changing to help us out?

Well, I see the conversations continuing. And as far as PM3, I mean, the IRT report provided some recommendations on path forward for that and kind of, I think, supported the county's decision to stop using that temporarily. And so, you know, what we see is really continuing discussions both with the interested parties like we were doing in these kind of workshop groups, just so we can make sure we have everybody's information, make sure we know what all the limitations are on the table from all the different regulatory perspectives, make sure we understand what everyone's priorities are so when we make these modifications, we can make them in light of all of these interest parties, including the Pueblo de San Ildefonso, Los Alamos County, all of these people that are key players in that. And so we really hope productive conversation happens. We, of course, hope that some type of remediation through the existing permits, through the land application of treated water happens, because there's an opportunity to utilize something in the near term while we have tough conversations we have to have about long-term path forward and can we get on the same page and what that path forward looks like?

Maybe you can help me out with one thing I'm still puzzling over. I was reading through the document, the IRT report, and they said, let's see, what do I have up here? I want to read back to you. But basically said restarting the interim measure was the single most important recommendation of the IRT. And now that's stopped. So the last time it stopped was, It was definitely true, right? That the well concentrations of chromium, sorry, just went up pretty fast. So how do you reconcile that? Does that make sense?

Yeah, absolutely. And I think the IRT also has to be kind of read in light of that there was no data point south of that injection boundary that really gave us this new light of it, you know. And so when SIMR 3 comes and it's located down and we have contamination, now we have to reevaluate and we have to relook at what were our interim measures goals? Are we still feeling the same direction as far as our ability to achieve it with the existing system? And so that's where the state tried to condition that. you know, restart on that fours and fives scenario to saying, we don't have data that says anything negative is happening right now, but let's get data. Let's figure it out and let's allow us that opportunity to pause again if that data has concerning, you know, be reevaluated. And so that was kind of the path forward we saw, and we still have to have those discussions on what does this data mean? How does it change this conceptual model? that we've been operating on for this interim measures design. You know, it's another one of these R70 scenarios where we're like, let's re-look at it. Now we got new information. Now we're looking at something that might look a little different than what we thought it was. Let's take a moment. Let's get, you know, to a place where we can at least have some type of immediate action steps and some type of long-term, you know, agreement.

So my sense is there's still just fundamental disagreement over the dynamics of the plume, how it's behaving. And how well we understand that behavior. Is that a fair understanding? Did I get that about right?

Exactly, yeah. So we still got to satisfy some of these key data gap issues. We got to know where the plume is. What is the extent of contamination? How deep does it go? What's the, you know, these are all components of it that like, it matter when we make steps in remediation. And it matters when we design a strategy. And it matters how we monitor it. like the success or failure of that strategy. And so that's kind of the process we're looking at now is, you know, we have to rewrite the script moving forward. And we've had actions. We've had interim measures happen. Now we need to pivot and kind of figure out how do we write that script.

Okay. Great. Thanks very much. I appreciate it. No more questions, Mr. Chair.

Thank you, Charlie. Other questions? Matt?

First, I'd like to echo Charlie and say thank you really for this presentation. I think the way you laid it out with time really helped me understand a lot more from all the other presentations I've heard, so thank you. But it did make me realize that time is a really key piece of this. It's hard enough to get a two-dimensional sense of where the blob is, much less three, much less four. And I guess the biggest question I'm still puzzling with is, you didn't include the map, but you handed the one out, but we've seen the green and the blue blobs, and that's supposed to be the upper part and the lower part. And now we're looking at simmer three results that are at least a thousand feet south of the boundaries of those blobs that we've been sort of mentally trying to adjust to it. And so it sounds like we don't have any data south of the blobs to say, is the high reading new or were we missing this big piece? We just don't know, but is that, is that fair?

I think that's part of it is like this is kind of an uncharacterized zone. We're moving in as you guys kind of see, you know, and I know it's hard for people online that don't have a map, but there's a section over there where you're talking about like left of Simmer 3 where we don't have all these dots for monitoring wells, you know, and it really wasn't. investigating that direction at the time didn't align as much with what we thought the conceptual site model was. And so that's where I'm talking about, like, the decisions that were made is in this phase kind of approach with what we know. And so that's kind of how we've echoed this adaptive management strategy up till now. And we just want to see that happen again. So, like, what you're saying is true. The SIMR 3, that's a result that, you know, to us modifies what some of these diagrams should look like and, you know, modifies the way we present this information and, into the public to make sure people have a clear picture of it.

Thanks. And some of it could be we're pushing and pulling water and that's moving everything around. Or it could be just bad data that we missed a big part of the plume. So I guess the blue blob and the green blob that we have on there, those are sort of snapshots from 2014. I mean, that's old where we thought the blob was. And as we're pushing.

Yeah, it's pretty similar three, you know, and so the green is the upper, the blue is the deeper. And so the thought was that the deeper was only in that eastern side, you know, in the centroid out to the east. And now we're reevaluating, you know, so same as you're saying this is. It's something that we really have to look at, and we have to look at it from that perspective. Was it an impact from operations? Is there some influence from that? Is it something we missed in this initial investigation, more from a Morton dad, you know, source zone that we haven't, you know, we mostly say the primary drivers from that Sandia Canyon power plant and effluent there. But there was releases in Morton Dead. Maybe some of that wasn't properly evaluated in the early phase. And that's where it gets also really complicated, because the initial investigation is like 10 years of soil investigation through each canyon. It's a doozy to try to figure out what's going on. I think that's part of it. And those are conversations we've had is let's re-look at the historical record in context of this new information instead of kind of the eyes of this upper 50 feet lens that we were looking at at the first time. And let's re-pivot. Let's see what was there. Let's see if there's something that indicates, you know, an area we might have, you know, need to investigate further, stuff like that. So that's what we want to see in this path forward. All of this kind of coming into head. Let's put monitoring wells in that area. Let's figure out where this is coming from.

Great. Thanks. I've got a couple of quick questions on different topics, sort of. You said the state issued several violations. Are there penalties associated with those, or are they just notice of violations?

Yes, sir. There's penalties associated with them.

Okay. Thanks. And my last question, I think you already sort of indicated that one of the reasons that reinjection is so nice is that we don't have to mess around with water rights so much. what is the scope of that? Like, do we need to re-inject exactly where we pulled out or anywhere in the watershed or anywhere in the state? I assume it's not the state, but what, how far away can we re-inject?

And that's part of what OSC regulates on this. And so that's where they kind of come in the mix is that they care about where are you pulling the water and where are you returning the water and does it result in this kind of non-consumptive thing. So That's why we keep them really close when we're having these conversations about path forward and when we're looking at land application, like what's the volume of water we can expect. These are all kind of conversations we have with them in light of, you know, what are we going to do. But for the most part, my understanding is they want to know where the water is going. And when there's an injection location proposed, then they will, you know, consider the whole assessment and look at where it's being pooled and where it's being placed, like you're saying. Okay.

Yeah, I appreciate you can't answer on their behalf, but can you give us a, like, could it be two miles away, or does that, 10 miles away, or?

I'm going to throw out somewhere in the same aquifer, but I have no idea. I think there's, I don't know. I think there's flexibility in the location, and I think it's on an individual proposal that they evaluate that, but.

Okay, thanks. That's everything I've got right now. Thanks again.

Thanks, Matt. Um, I echo the comments that my colleagues have made. It was an excellent presentation, and we do appreciate it. One would hope that there are a lot more of them, but I'm unfortunately anticipating that there will be. So please keep us informed. There are two bureaus at NMED that are working this, apparently. And then we're not counting OSE and a few others, but just NMED. the Hazardous Waste Bureau and the Groundwater Quality Bureau. Are those two bureaus on the same page, or are there differences of opinion or approach between the two bureaus?

On the same page, and we hope reading the administrative compliance orders, you know, kind of reflects that, you know, satisfying violations can, you know, same actions can work towards both.

Okay. Do you have any sense, if this were to progress the way you folks would like to see, how long it might take us to get to a final remedy here?

I would love to give you a good answer to that question. But really, it's dependent on where we put monitoring wells and what we find in them. So every time we step out and then we find contamination there, we haven't really found the boundary. So if we keep making these predictive, let's tag that edge of the plume, let's find those extents, and then we're incorrect when we do that, that kind of adds time to it. Then we have to kind of figure out, are we at a point where we have enough data? So I'd love to say that right now it takes a little while to install wells. So I don't want to say it'll be a little while, but I would say at least, you know, three to five years.

Okay. So let's divide that up. Let's suppose you've got all the wells. You've got your data, which may take quite a while. We don't know. Let's suppose you've got that. Then what do you think it would take after that? to actually implement.

And so there's a process in the consent order. You know, first, and this is where it's important for the state because this is where we facilitate public input in that final remedy. And interim measures is kind of immediate stopgap, and we don't have that same involvement. But when we move to final remedy selection, DOE is going to conduct an analysis of remedial alternatives. And they're going to say, here are the ways we we can treat the contamination, and here's the methods that we recommend in order to do so. And the state would look at that recommendation and issue what they call a statement of basis on it, and that's essentially a draft remedy selection. They'd say, we saw what you proposed. Here's what we're saying your final remedy is. Then we go through the public procedure process, because the public should have input on that final remedy, which can lead to public hearings. And afterwards, if all goes smoothly, you know, once a decision's made, on that final remedy, then they would develop the plan. And they call it an implementation plan. And that's just how are they going to install it, all those kind of fine details of what exactly the system is going to look like, where we're designing extractions, how much we're pooling, how we're treating the surface contamination. These are all kind of nuances that will be designed in that. And so that's why it's kind of difficult to give you a timeline approach to it because it's this really phased approach and it's,

Partially due to how successful we are in our early phases on the time required for each of them Well, I do appreciate that it's very difficult to put a time on these sorts of things But I thought I'd asked to see what you what you might guess at Anyhow, do we have any other questions chair?

Sure fellow chair. I just had a question for Caitlin we had the presentation two weeks ago by N3B and EMLA, which I think people get confused how that structure works in the land all world, you know, there's the mission with triad and then there's the EMLA and N3B that are actually doing the work on this project is what I assume. And what was brought up was land application was removed from consideration two weeks ago. So it seems like they've done some work and thinking about next steps. However, um, I've been concerned about, you know, struggling just to contain this plume. We need to understand when it's contained. If we're ever going to consider using PM3 is we don't know where this plume is. And then we don't know if it's properly contained before we could start drawing water again. Has there been other thoughts about injection wells just take years to build and agree to where we keep trying to chase it? Is there a point downstream like R36 we could say that would be a good reinjection site? And did they think about other technologies like maybe a recharge trench? Because wells are too lengthy and timely to build, but Could they do a different alternative to get something going so that we can get hopefully some certainty of plume containment and treatment?

Yeah, so these are part of the things that IRT, Independent Technical Review, I'm going to say that all the time, but that's one of the things they kind of evaluated is in these short-term solutions, what are things we can do? So they looked at land application, they looked at shallow infiltration galleries, some of these kind of, thoughts of converting an existing monitoring well into a disposition location. And all of which are things that I think we're open to. But we need a proposal. And that's what we want to see. Our thoughts are initially in pre-independent technical review was if there's issues with the injection well, put another one. If it's issues with utilizing other dispositions like land application, although we have a different kind of understanding of whether that's an implementable alternative, at least in the short term. But there's options. And we want to consider that. We want to see a proposal for those options. And that's part of our problem is that there is no communication on another path forward that we've seen. There's been no proposal on we can operate this and do things this way to do something. And that's a piece we really need to see. So the state's kind of making what do we think is the best fit in our own kind of world of things. And I think we need to mend those two worlds.

Thank you. Ann. Thank you. Thank you, Caitlin. Just back on the restarting of the group meetings, because we were, Mr. Shelton and I were both part of that, and Chair Reidy, who's online, we thought they were very helpful. We had wanted that for a long time, to have all parties around a table, and part of the challenge with the The last meeting was how is that going to work if not all parties were there? We just had a lot of questions about that. So are there any discussions about how we can get everybody around the table again? Because I think without a critical party, time is important and valuable, and we just want to we've always had these for over a decade, these individual meetings. And we saw that that never really brought everyone together. And I just saw the value of the back and forth between the different offices or some of the gray areas of, you know, understanding each person's point of view a little bit in terms of understanding like, Collectively how we can be efficient in how to move forward rather than bring me the other rock another rock and I'll tell you if I like It kind of scenario that that's not the collaboration we think needs to happen here on this very complicated issue So do you have any thoughts on how we can all come back together? Because I know the county wants to be at the table and part of the conversation

For us, we want to keep extending that offer, and we understand, you know, things that are happening in the compliance order world of it, you know, but for us, we see that benefit, and we wanted to continue that even if DOE doesn't want to be a part of it, and we do agree they're critical players. We want to support that. We continue to, you know, extend that invitation, but in the meantime, we don't want to do nothing and take, like, a no use of the information we have, and we do have, you know, OSC. We have the Pueblo. We have important players that are participating in it and getting at least their insight on what are, like, some of these short-term options that Philo discussed. Like, how do people feel about what the existing alternatives are? How do we, you know, and kind of getting a perspective from everyone else on what those are. So when the state moves forward with kind of executing decisions, at least we have that information and we have this kind of balancing of options and what that looks like to all the different interested parties. I mean, I'd like to say we have a solution. We want to keep extending the invitation. We'll continue to meet and, you know, include DOE on those invitation lists and, of course, with the hope that they'll attend and continue those conversations. But, you know, in the meantime, we want to take advantage of the time we do have and make as many steps as we can until that happens.

Eric. Thank you. You got one more question. Are there, I'm not a fan of injecting more stuff into the aquifers, but that having been said, are there any chemicals or substances that could be injected into the plume that would react with the hexamalent chromium and make it less toxic?

They've done a lot of studies on this. And so there's a whole, like this was part of the initial strategy, right? And this is part of what goes into final remedy stuff is, These are ways people treat them. They do what they call in situ treatments. And you do put a chemical down. And in this case, you would try to promote that conversion from that hexavalent chromium to a trivalent chromium, which doesn't have the same you know, health risks. So that's a part of it, and there were multiple pilot studies done, you know, back in, I think, you know, 2016, 2018 time frames on that, and I'd have to refresh myself on the success of it, but my understanding is it's not a primary proposed mechanism path forward, you know, but Those are some of the nuances we want to hear because, you know, it could be a series of these kind of technologies that go into our final remedy solution.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your presentation.

Anyone else? Okay. Thank you very much. It was most informative. Okay. We move on. to another presentation, this one on on-bill financing program. And this is a possible action item. I see Angelica moving forward here. And Abby, the dynamic duo.

Good evening, Chair Gibson, members of the board. Tonight we're going to give a brief overview of what on-bill financing is and the potential application to Los Alamos County, particularly the utilities. We are joined online tonight by some representatives of the Climate Investment Center, as well as the Coalition of Sustainable Communities New Mexico, who will help answer questions. They know a lot more about how this might apply technically. in the long term. I also wanted to say that Councilor Haveman and Councilor Reidy have expressed interest in learning more about this program to see if it would be viable here. So we're going to do a brief concept of what it is, discuss the potential benefits to DPU and its customers, as well as listen to any feedback as to whether the board members think it's viable. We should continue developing some sort of program or that general information. So what is on-bill financing? On-bill financing, in simple, allows people to take out a loan, and they would pay it back on their utility bill. The basic concept is pretty simple. A customer would install a specific energy upgrade that we suggest, such as insulation or maybe a heat pump technology. The utility program then pays the installer, and then the customer repays the utility through their utility bill. So it's something that's familiar to them. It doesn't necessarily require a credit check, and we'll talk about that in just a second. It's much simpler for installation that they may not necessarily get financed through a primary lender, such as a bank or something. So some key characteristics. On-bill financing can solve one of the biggest barriers to electrification, that upfront cost. Payments appear already on their utility bill. We checked with JoAnn and Finance, and this is something our existing utility billing infrastructure can handle. I will give the caveat that it won't necessarily work for tenants because of the way they all receive their utility bill. That is one of the hangups right now, that if we were to go forward with this program, it would just be residential type, single family home occupants. You get the, you live at this address, you get the utility bill in your name kind of thing. The financing is tied to the property. It's not a personal debt, and it would only focus on energy efficiency and electrification measures. Some that we had talked about covering would be heat pumps, insulation and air sealing, electrical panel upgrades, water heating technology. There are a lot of programs out there that cover all sorts of different ones, but we've been guided that it's better to start small, see how it works, and then expand instead of going, oh, you can do all these things, and then you're kind of in over your head. Next slide. Oh, let me pause real quick. The reason I mentioned the credit check history part, if you're doing certain products like heat pumps or insulation, it's, there's no, there's no, oh my gosh. There, how do I explain this? So it's designed as a bill neutrality type system is the initial point of on-bill financing. So if you're doing insulation or a heat pump, you're kind of offsetting what you would be spending in having no insulation or an inefficient technology with that new technology. So that's how it's kind of that crediting and that payback is designed. But if you're doing like an electric panel upgrade, you're not necessarily saving anything, right? Because then you're spending more on electricity. So that's where the potential credit check could come into play. But if you have more questions on that, we'll let the experts answer that question. So the benefits of on-bill financing. There's several reasons to pursue this. It helps to incentivize the transition from natural gas to electric, which is one of our long-term goals. And then also provide that investment in upgrades that improve efficiency and resilience. The biggest one from my perspective is we are really limited in what we can offer our customers in terms of a financing option. Not everybody is qualified for the rebates and tax credits that the state program is offering. So this could just be another tool that helps them get those upgrades that we're looking for that is not in violation of the anti-donation clause. We'll explain how that comes into play in a later slide with who's actually funding the program. The loan interest is really low. It's 0% to 5%, depending on how we want to set up the program. And as I mentioned before, there's no increase to the individual property owners, it stays with the property. So, for example, if you do this for your home, then you sell your home, it comes out of that sale, and then it's equalized out for the next homeowner. So, the reason we're looking into this as a tool is to help support that energy upgrade financing gap, as we talked about. Those upfront costs are the biggest hindrance to these types of efficiency projects. People are often cash strapped, right? If you get a quote for a new HVAC system and it's the new heat pump technology, it's 15 to 20,000. That's really hard to upfront that cost. Even in our higher income communities here, many households don't have that level of cash to just say, hey, yeah, let's do this. And then the on bill financing just lets them pay it through utility bill that I mentioned before is a something familiar to them It's cape within our capabilities, and it's done in over 30 states, so this isn't a new concept at all across the grander scheme of things And then why it matters to us so 86 percent of our household approximately rely on natural gas for heating That's a huge Contribution to our communities greenhouse gas emissions 32% And then also looking even if you weren't looking at upgrading your heating system or your your gas appliances And I will say the caveat to this is it's got to be an appliance that can stay with the home So we're not doing stoves that people can take with them. We're doing appliances and measures that stay with the property itself Many of our homes are built between 1950s and 1970s poor insulation that wasn't a thing back then single pane windows We're not proposing windows at this time, but that is a program that people do focus on, aging gas and heating equipment. All right. I'm going to pass it over to Angelica. Thank you.

Good evening, board. I'm happy to be here. And like Abby mentioned, this all started with some encounters with the Coalition of Sustainable Communities New Mexico and some of the, they're trying to bring this program to New Mexico and and they thought we would be a good first partner. So we have some of our partners online tonight, Beth Beloff and Christian Casillas, and they'll be able to help answer any of your more technical questions. In terms of governance and capitalization, we have some commitment from the Climate Investment Center that they could provide an initial capital pool for this program. But we would also need to identify other grant funding for the administration of the program. So that would include like contractor vetting, outreach, and education for that. application processing, and then the loan servicing and inspections. The utilities role is we would not act as the lender in any shape or form, so thus in compliance with the anti-donation clause. But what we would do is provide the billing mechanism and obviously coordination with the customer. So we have that trust with our customers. Next slide. Just a little bit more on the administrative process. That would include customer intake and auditing, managing the applications and the portal, some of the marketing, the underwriting and approvals that would be required through the loan, contractor management, so vetting the local installers, which is really important, checking licensing and completing the physical on-site post installation, like quality inspections to verify energy performance and code safety. And then lastly, of course, the capital disbursement. So processing the contractor invoices and cutting checks so installers don't face cash flow delays. Next slide. So what would the repayment mechanism look like? So Abby already mentioned it would be a low interest loan. And we would like this loan to be available to all income classes, not just low income. So that's what makes it a little different than existing loan programs at the county. I think it's called the affordable housing loan. So that's what makes it different. And it could be repaid through a charge on the utility bill. Obviously it would be somewhat correlated through the lifespan of like the equipment, right? Or some variation of that. Those are all details that would need to be worked out. The programs that have states that have these programs typically have low default rates. So right now there's a collective clean energy fund. I think they're out of Colorado. They're called CCEF. And to reduce their default risk, they've created a 5% loan loss reserve. So for example, they have 200 homes that are currently enrolled in their program. It's been around for a year and a half, and they have no late payments. So there's currently no defaults on any of their loans. So the goal originally, like Abby mentioned, would be to, you know, the project would be designed so energy savings offset the loan payments. But sometimes this is more difficult, like if you're installing a whole new mini-split system and now you have to increase your electricity usage. But like the ESB mentioned at their meeting that there's a lot more benefits than just the cost savings. You have comfort, safety in your home, things like that. And then lastly, the obligation will be settled at the time of the sale of the property. That's the way we would recommend the program be designed instead of it just transferring along with the meter. So here's an example. Let's see. So a homeowner installs a mini-split system costing roughly $18,000. And after available incentives, including federal tax credits and rebates, the amount financed could be reduced to roughly $14,000. The homeowner currently spends $405 per year on natural gas heating and about $293 per year on the window unit cooling. system, assuming they have one, right? After switching to a mini-split, heating and cooling costs shift from natural gas to electricity. And based on current utility rates, annual electric costs are estimated to increase by roughly $1,700 per year. So if the customer financed this cost for seven years at 4% interest, the monthly payment would be about $200 per month. In this example, the homeowner gains a modern heating and cooling system, but experiences a net increase in monthly costs during the financing period. So once the loan is paid off, the monthly costs would decrease, right, because the loan payment is eliminated. So this just is one example of what that repayment might look like. Next slide. So as Abby mentioned, there's over 30 states across the country that have on-bill programs. There's many places across our state that offer energy efficiency loans. They don't call it on-bill financing. So just here's a few for your reference. The city of Tallahassee in Florida is like the gold standard of high-performing programs. So they've been around for many years. And overall, they've had an 18% participation rate. So that's 17,000 customers out of their 97,000 existing customers. So high participation there. Next slide. OK, so like any program, there are some barriers and challenges. And number one is identifying where that capital financing would come from. And like I mentioned, the Climate Investment Center has already offered to provide capital for this program. We would also need to make sure that it would be a sustainable program. So that's where the revolving loan fund might need to be developed. Ensuring that contractor pricing remains competitive and then program administration, right? We would have to hire a third party. I don't believe we have current capacity to manage that internally. And then making sure we have education and outreach for successful participation. And I will hand it back to Abby.

So some of the key program focus areas that we are looking at to start the program with potentially Because Los Alamos once formerly had long, cold winters, and maybe we'll return to those, but relatively mild summers. So we're looking at heating and cooling equipment would be the primary focus. More and more people are turning to air conditioning, and we find it best to promote one technology that can do both for maintenance and for efficiency instead of having people install two pieces of equipment that they then need to reach out to two people and maintain and so on and so forth. Cold climate heat pumps can provide this technology support. An additional factor would be to insulate and air seal your home as well. You can have the most efficient heating system in the world, and if it's all going out the attic, then what are you paying money for? And then further to support those, because we do realize that as people get more electrified equipment in their home, whatever that looks like, whether it's just an air conditioning, they will most likely need a panel upgrade in this community. to support that electrification effort. So our recommendation moving forward, we believe that to do this successfully and to really see if it would work long term would be to do a small pilot of some sort. So maybe 25 to 50 homes. We could evaluate participation levels, customer savings, administrative requirements out of this before considering a full-fledged program. Such components could include an energy audit, more so for insulation and air sealing efforts, less so if you're just swapping HVAC equipment. Energy audits are also intensive for staff. HEAT PUMPS FOR HEATING, FOR COOLING, HEAT PUMPS FOR WATER HEATING, THAT'S SOMETHING THAT ISN'T USED TOO MUCH UP HERE YET, BUT THIS COULD BE A PROGRAM TO REALLY KICK THAT OFF AND SEE WHAT THE BENEFITS ARE. AS WELL AS DOORS AND WINDOWS DOWN THE ROAD, INSULATION AND AIR CEILING, AND THEN AGAIN WITH THAT WIRING AND ELECTRIC PANEL UPGRADES TO REALLY SUPPORT THAT VERY FIRST STEP OF ELECTRIFICATION. SO IN SUMMARY, ONVILLE FINANCING HAS PROVEN VERY SUCCESSFUL FOR MANY UTILITIES TO IMPLEMENT. It's helped overcome a lot of those upfront cost burdens. Depending on the practice, you don't necessarily need to have all of the hoops and hurdles that a traditional financing institution goes through. And then it supports that beneficial electrification and conservation to support our transition away from natural gas or even just healthier homes in general, cooler homes, those kind of things. I'm going to pass it off to Angelica to wrap us up. Next slide.

All right, so at this stage, we're not requesting approval to implement a program, but rather permission to explore program design and feasibility. And that would include working with potential financing partners and evaluating whether a small pilot program could work for our community. So if the board is comfortable, staff would like to proceed with the next steps outlined in this presentation, so developing MOU with the Climate Investment Center and the Coalition of Sustainable Communities to explore program design and secure a capital allocation. Seek and apply for supporting grants for the administrative portion of this program. And then begin development of an on-bill financing program. So the next steps would be to return to the board with the fully developed program proposal, financial structure, and implementation plan for your consideration. And we welcome any guidance that the board might have as we begin that exploration. These next two slides, I'll just say that I presented this to the Environmental Sustainability Board at our last meeting. And they had... Lots of questions. So as anyone would. So I really appreciated their feedback. And I'm not sure if you all got the answered questions. OK, good. So I have the Climate Investment Center and the coalition answer these questions between then and when the agenda was published. I have those for you. But feel free as well to ask any of the questions you might have. And that's all we have.

I had one follow-on. Climate Investment Center offered a million dollars. Is that right? Yes. I just wanted to be clear on that. Thank you. As seed money.

Okay. Questions from the board?

We'll start with Matt. All right. Thanks, Chair. Thanks so much for the presentation and for your work on pushing this. It's really exciting. I love it. want it to succeed and go wildly successful. And so the one concern I have is why isn't this included? Why isn't this included? But I think your approach of start small and make a success and test it, I think that's the right approach. So my questions of why not rooftop solar and batteries, that's phase two. So I appreciate that, but that's kind of my first reaction. I appreciate giving the answers to the questions because I had a couple of the same questions. I might just ask one. It sounds like we are The first one to really think about this on-bill financing in New Mexico. And if you're not in, that's the case. I think it's great for the county to be innovative and lead the state in innovative financing in this case. I think that's great. It's good to see there's other places that have success with this, though. I thought you said that windows wouldn't be included, but then it looked like you are thinking weatherization and window replacement are

Did I miss? I think it's bounced back and forth, Chair Haveman, because, and another thing, I think Christian will touch on this too, is a lot of the other programs really support, are successful and supportive of their contractors. So we want to make sure we have good contractors on board installing the correct windows and, you know, even with any of the equipment too. So again, maybe starting smaller and then windows is year two and then solar panels are year three, you know, whatever it needs to build up. It just gets, we want to make sure we have good vetted contractors as well.

I think that's a key point with the contractors.

And that's what we heard across from a lot of – we talked to several of these cities to see, you know, how is it working for you? What do you wish you could have done differently? All those things. And they were like, get your contractors on board early so they know what's involved. And, you know, you're still being fair to the homeowner as well because you don't want to have the contractor come in and be like, oh, now it's $4,000 for this $2,000 window because they know they can get that difference. Right.

So. Yep. My last question – It's probably in the answers you just handed out, but I was curious, thinking through this, what happens if there's a default? Because we're seen as the billers, and is it likely that somebody would default on their whole utility bill? It's sort of weird to think through that, and I think maybe you'd have to give my thought on that, but what does defaulting on these look like?

Chair Gibson? Member Huebner. So that was one of the questions. It's on page two. And so they talked about, yeah, like a delinquency and possibly like nonpayment protocols that we already have. But we may have to develop some that are specific to on-bill financing.

Okay. Yeah. I think there's some work to do there. But, yeah, it's an interesting angle to it. Okay. I think that was all the questions and comments I had right now. Thanks. Thank you.

Others? I have a few. This New Mexico Climate Investment Center, what is that organization? I'm not sure that I'm familiar with that one. I mean, the Coalition of Sustainable Communities, yes. But this is not one that rings a bell to me. What is that entity?

Beth Beloff is online. I'm sure she would love to share.

Yes, be happy to. It is a nonprofit financial entity built on the Green Bank model, excuse my laryngitis, that provides concessionary loans for projects that decarbonize buildings, provide renewable energy, and reduce energy burdens for low-income households. We were incubated in the coalition, and that incubation took a few years. And we launched as a separate 501 organization in 24. And we started operations a year ago, January. So we are a new green bank and we're well capitalized at the moment. And we also look for innovative ways to decarbonize buildings and to provide reduced energy burdens. And so OnBuild, financing has been an area that is of interest to us because it meets some of the social obligations that we feel we'd like to participate in. And we have looked at our financial situation and feel that providing up to a million dollars for such a pilot is something that we would like to participate in. It would be for us a loss leader and likely this will not be a core kind of project area for us because of our limited capital, but we are happy to participate in the design and financing of this pilot and see where it will go.

Okay, thank you. Follow-up to that question, what is your capital source? You say you've got a million dollars you could put into this, but where does that come from? Does it come from banks? Does it come from private lenders? What's the original source?

Yeah, so originally we have received a little under a million from foundations to get us started. We have two $10 million appropriations from the state. And we have $10 million from the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund from the IRA. And we received that about a week before the program was claimed to be terminated. So we have roughly $30 million to use, and we have made a number of loans. So we've thus far spent about $5 million, and we have several other projects in our pipeline that we will be funding shortly.

Okay, thank you. Who pays the contractor? Is that a third party? Is that DTU? Who actually pays the contractor?

So, Chair Gibson, the way I understand it is so we, the Climate Investment Center would be the capital partner, and then we would have a third-party program administrator, so that might mean going out for a contractor to hire someone to help with that. They would offer the disbursements to the contractors.

Okay.

DPU's role is to collect the loan payment.

Okay, but we don't have a role in dispersing funds at all. Collecting through the utility bill correct, okay We've had some discussion already of default And there seems to be You know there seem to be provisions for dealing with that when when a property is sold But although the vast majority of our customers Pay up we do have a few that leave town without settling their utility bill who's on the hook for the funds that are not collected through the utility bill scheme if somebody actually does skip town. As I said, it's rare, but it does happen. And I know our staff's very good at minimizing that kind of default, but it happens. So who eats that when it happens?

Can I hand that to you, Beth?

Yep. So that's one of the reasons for the Lung Loss Reserve to cover losses.

Okay. That answers my question. Right. Do we have any estimate of what the administrative costs are for this kind of a program relative to the total dollar amount that flows through it. Some of the other communities that have done this should have some experience that would at least tell us what ballpark that might be.

I'm going to hand that back to Beth. And I'm going to hand that to Christian.

I wish I had somebody else to hand it off to. Chair, board members, thank you. That is something we are in close collaboration and communication with CSEF, the organization, the Green Bank in Colorado, that is managing on-bill finance program for tri-state and will soon be program administrator and lender for an on-bill program with Xcel Energy, the largest IOU in Colorado. And we are in very kind of initial stages of beginning to get all the information we need to develop a pro forma to understand the cash flow. One of the issues of kind of getting to that granularity of detail is that it's typically confidential and we I've been in conversations with another CDFI nonprofit, IDF, that acts as kind of a modified underwriter role for CSEF in these programs. And once kind of we figure out some level of a contractual agreement there, we should be able to get the details we need to have a pro forma to model some of these costs.

Do other entities not have enough experience to give us at least some ballpark? It makes a difference whether administrative costs are two or three or 4% versus 20 or 30%. Yeah.

Let's see. So, um, the typical, uh, let's see. So I think for, um,

Christian, if I, this is Abby, I'm sure Gibson, if I may interject while he's pondering there. When we talked to Traverse City, I believe their first year, I think, was 0%, and then they found that going to a 3% interest rate helped to cover their admin costs. I think that was the city that did it, but they did end up bumping up their interest rate a little bit to help cover the admin, and I think it was from 0 to 3, but I don't know how big their program is offhand. I don't remember all those big details, but if If you want to ballpark, 3% interest rate was what helped them cover admin costs is what I'm remembering from their conversation.

Okay. The reason I ask that is when you're donating to a charity, you want to know is most of what you're donating actually going to the charitable purpose or is a substantial part of it being eaten up in administrative cost? And it's kind of the same question here. whether administration is a large part of it or a small part of it.

Chair Gibson, I'll just add. So the capital funds from Climate Investment Center would go directly to loans. We would have to find additional funding for that program administration. So that's where one of the barriers and the challenges is for the program. So we would be seeking grant funding or other funding for the program administration.

Okay. I think my last question at this time is you mentioned energy audits. I thought that there was money in the county budget for energy audits last year or maybe it's for this fiscal year. Anyway, are we doing anything along those lines separate from this since I think most of us would agree energy audits are probably a good idea. But do we have a program? Already in place or do we expect to have one in place?

Gibson it was we found quite a bit of difficulty finding energy auditors But we recently have made a good connection and found a pathway that might Suit us well in that to conduct energy audits for our community, so we're working on that right now Okay, so would you?

Anticipate that if you have include energy audits in this that it might be might follow that same path Or are you expecting the same difficulties?

I Think we've talked about how they might like layer, you know how we could integrate the two programs We haven't fleshed out all the details yet.

Okay. Thank you Other questions I'll speak at once. There are three things we can do with this. Two of them are mentioned here in the staff report. One is we thank the presenters, and that's the end of the discussion for the time being. We could direct the staff to develop a program to come back to us with more details. Or we could defer and spend some more time reading the ESB question answers and come back and make a decision later. What would be the board's pleasure?

Matt? I'll offer a motion. I move that the Board of Public Utilities direct staff to pursue on-bill financing program and return to the board with additional program details.

I'll second that.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded that we Direct the staff to go forward with this, meaning that's not a final approval. That's to develop a program. I think, are there other questions? Discussion? Yeah. Actually, I think maybe I'll ask for public comment here since we're treating this pretty, even though it's under presentations, it's an action item. So is there any public comment in chambers on this motion? I don't see any. Do we have any online?

No, Chair Gibson. We do not.

Okay. Thank you, Kathy. All right. Back to the board.

Eric? Thank you, Chair Gibson. Yes, I'm going to vote no on this one because I like your first option of thanking the presenters and not taking any action. So I'm going to go ahead and vote no on this one. Okay.

Any other comments?

I think this is a great opportunity that's available, another option that's available to the public, not mandatory, not compulsory or anything, just more options for the community in pursuing our goals. So I think it's really good. So thanks.

And it looks like it could be an option for some people, and we know that not everything works for everybody. What's being proposed is to flesh out the program a little more, because I think we all have questions on a lot of details that you don't have the answers to yet. You can't. So I'm inclined to go forward and go to the next step anyway, and we'll take it from there. Kathy, would you please call the roll?

Member Stromberg?

No.

Member Nockley?

Yes.

Member Hefner?

Yes.

Member Gibson?

Yes.

Thank you.

Okay, motion passes three to one. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you.

Good luck in trying to figure out all the details of this. Well, I know it's in good hands. All right, that moves us to approval of the collective bargaining agreement with the Plumbers and Pipefetters Union. And this is Joanne.

Good evening, chair and members of the board. I have Ms. Bernadette Martinez, our human resource manager, with me up here. And she was also our lead negotiator during this contract negotiation.

Welcome, Bernadette.

Thank you. And so we started our negotiations with the union on April 24th. And we went through five sessions with them, and we reached a tentative agreement with them on Tuesday, May 19th. Their – what would he be called?

The business manager.

Yeah. He took this to the – to their – to the union members, and they did a tentative agreement on Tuesday, May 26. So here we are to bring this to you. Some of the significant changes that were made during those negotiations is that this is a five-year contract with our pipefitters and plumbers for GWS. AND SO THIS WILL START JULY 1, 2026 AND RUN THROUGH JUNE 30, 2031. OUR CURRENT CBA EXPIRES JUNE 30TH OF THIS MONTH. One of the other big changes that were negotiated is having a GWS alternate standby crew. We currently have what is called a primary crew with two utility employees that stay on the Hill and are on call during the 24-7 for a seven-day period. And so this alternate standby crew would not be required to stay in Los Alamos County, but be able to report within an hour to Los Alamos County and to start a job, especially for when long jobs and stuff like that, so we can relieve some of our primary standby crew to rest. Another significant change was rest periods. Currently, when they work a 16-hour shift, they get eight hours of rest period. And so that was extended from eight to 10 hours to give them a little more time, mostly because some of them don't live on the hill. So it'll take them an hour to get home. So it gives them a little bit more time to have some time to rest. And then we did, obviously, salary adjustments. And our salary adjustments stay in line with our biggest competitor, which is Los Alamos National Lab and their plumbers and pipefitters on that side of the bridge. So I did list the cumulative for the five-year contract for each of the different positions that are covered under the CBA. We have a trainee that's covered. They can be either in GWS or gas, water, sewer, or they can be in water production or wastewater. And then we have our apprentice one and two And then we have our operators with water production and our senior operators. And then we have pipefitters and senior pipefitters. And there were no changes to para contributions or any other things that are covered under our pensions and benefits for the general county. So did you have anything you'd like to add?

So thank you for having us tonight. And looking at the increases with the UAPP CBA, as Joanne said, it is over five years. One thing that we do look at before we go into negotiations is we do a market study, see where we are, with our competitors, where we are with LANL. Are we above the mark? Are we below the mark? So we take all of that into account when we're doing negotiations. As you can see here for the trainees all the way up to the senior pipefitters, there is difference in increase over the five years and the reason we have the difference in the increase is when we were in negotiations we did determine that our lower level positions so our trainee our apprentice one and two we pay higher than some of our competitors so We can recruit really well for those positions And then when you when you look at our operators pipe fitters and senior pipe fitters We don't pay as high as some of our competitors. So what we wanted to do is stagger the salary increases each year So our higher level positions such as the senior pipe fitters and pipe fitters will get a bigger increase as our Trainees apprentice one and two will get a lower increase And that's to kind of close the gap, make sure we're competitive with LANL for our higher level positions, but still remain competitive for our lower level positions.

We're open for any questions you guys might have.

Questions? Okay, I've got a couple. This GWS alternate standby. Was that at the county's request or the union's request that that was included in the contract?

Chair Gibson, that was on management's behalf, so the county requested this.

Okay. And is the additional funding for that included in our budget for FY27? Yes, it is. Okay. Any other questions?

Just real quick on the budget. We did not budget any of salary increases for GWS or any of these positions. So we will be bringing a budget revision to include these into our budget.

So these were not included in the budget?

No. When we created our budget back in February and March, we did not know what these were. So we did not include any salary increases for these positions.

Okay, and how about the additional older and standby personnel? Was that included in the budget?

We, go ahead. No, go ahead. Okay, so it is included in the, for the five years, it's included in the amount that we can provide for those salary increases through our current rates and structure that we have.

I'm sorry, I'm a little dense here. I'm maybe not asking the question quite the right way.

Do you want to answer, Philo?

Yeah, Chair. I think we received some budget guidance of what we wanted to see for negotiating a five-year contract and what Joanne and Bernadette put together. the whole package collectively fell within the budget guidance.

Okay. That'll do. Thank you.

Thank you. Sorry, I didn't know how to answer that.

No, it's quite all right. I'm not sure I phrased my question very well.

Thank you.

Do we have other questions or comments from the board? Since this is a proposed action item, I'll ask if there's any public comment. I don't see any in chambers. Do we have any online?

Anyone wishing to make a comment, please raise your hand. No, Chair Gibson.

Thank you.

Would someone like to make a motion? Yeah. I move that the Board of Public Utilities recommend approval of the collective bargaining agreement between the County of Los Alamos and the United Association of plumbers and pipe fitters local union number 412 for the period of 1st of july 2026 through 30th of june 2031 and forward to county council for approval i'll second that okay and seconded a ppa ben good evening chair board members i am here before you for the third time in the past few months getting a uh

request out for a short-term PPA, a necessary consequence of our ongoing ECA negotiations. I do expect to come before you at least one more time for another PPA, perhaps several more, not because of the ECA itself, but just maybe to adjust the way we buy our power in order to get the best value for the county and the power pool. So this one here that we're looking at is strictly for the month of July. We have estimated our forecast load. And based upon that and indicative pricing I have for power purchases in July, the budgeted amount as stated is, I will point out, it's higher than what we have seen in the past. I've been talking with power marketers and in the past couple of months, The market has changed somewhat. There have been a lot of short-term purchases. And we also expect it to go up in the summer just because of load increases. That's when their peak demand tends to happen. And so this is expected. It's about double. Market prices are about double what they were three or four months ago. That's not necessarily reflective of expensive power now because it's still not an expensive price. It's still a reasonable price historically. three months ago the price was unusually low so when you see that the price that I've the total not to exceed value it seems large but for this time of year it's in line with what we expect to pay anyway I don't think I have anything else to add to that so please uh give me any questions or comments okay questions comments

Start with Eric. You got his hand up first.

I beat you.

It was almost a photo finish.

Yeah, you're scaring me here because in the recommended action, I think there's a few more zeros than are supposed to be in the recommended action, so I'm not sure how you want to handle that. Did a decimal place get dropped? Yeah, we're talking like 4.7 billion, and you're scaring me. Probably dropped the decimal place there.

There's a decimal place in there.

Okay. I saw all the zeros. I didn't see the decimal point. I feel better now. Thank you.

I don't know. The tradition is to include the cents. I don't know why we do that. I'm not sure what happened here.

There is an issue I think with the recommended motion in this appears to be more of a motion for council rather than a motion for us So we need to we're going to approve this move that the board approve and blah blah blah and ultimately forward to council for approval I See you're correct.

It should be I move that the board recommend approval of yes mm-hmm

Okay. Are there any – oh, I'm sorry, Matt. It's okay. Go ahead.

I'm stubborn. This is sort of a soapbox or frustration, but you talked about how prices have gone up. And if we had an ECA and we had a PPA for six months, three months ago, how much would we be saving compared to this month-by-month PPA? So how much is kicking the ECA down the road costing us?

I can't say. I didn't price out longer-term PPAs three months and four months ago. But more than zero? Probably. Okay. Thanks. The only reference I can give you is WAPA recently did a PPA for Sandia, Kirtland, for a different time frame, not including the summer, starting September through, I think, April or May of next year to cover what they were anticipating getting from Foxtel Flats. But they won't be because Foxtel Flats was delayed about a year. So they went out and got another PPA, and I think that was about $38 and change for the purchase they were making. Again, not in the dead of summer when pricing is usually at the peak. So apples to oranges, but at least something to give you some context.

Thanks, that's everything okay anyone else Any public comment in chambers Seeing none online anybody wishing to make public comment, please raise your hand No chair Gibson. Thank you.

I Think we're ready for a motion See if I get it right I move that the board approve a power purchase agreement on with a yet to be determined provider competitively selected not later than June 26, 2026 in an amount not to exceed $4,725,000 plus applicable gross receipts tax for the purpose of supplying power and energy to the Los Alamos Power Pool for the month of July 2026 and forward to council with recommendation for approval. I'll second.

Okay. A slightly modified recommended motion has been made and seconded. Any further or final comments? Kathy, did you capture the motion?

Yes, I did. Okay.

Now, would you call the roll, please?

Member Nockley?

Yes.

Member Stromberg?

Yes.

Member Hefner?

Yes.

And Member Gibson?

Yes. Thank you. Okay, motion passes four to zero. Thank you. Thank you, Ben. Hopefully, you don't have to do too many more of these short-term things, but.

As many as needed.

Well, as many as DOE forces us to do, but anyhow. We'll move on to the annual review of the Utilities Assistance Program. And this brings Joanne back.

Good evening again. So I'm going to go over our utility assistance program. Go ahead. I don't know if that works. Okay, so our utility assistance programs has three ways to get assistance. We have our winter assistance, which is October through March. We have our year-round assistance, which gives them 12 assistance payments per month, and these are to help our fixed-income residents that have supplemental Social Security income. And then we also have our one-time assistance. And that's to demonstrate a hardship. And it's up to $350 per year. And all of these are applied for once a year. So our current median household income that we're going to be using for this next winter is $71,594. So if their income falls at that or below, they qualify for winter assistance. So the next slide is showing our winter assistance and donations. And this is starting July of 2025, so this current fiscal year, through April 26. I didn't include May, because when I created this, we weren't done with the month. So it's only going through April. And you'll notice that the orange is our donation. So that's coming several ways. It's coming through the utility bill. Some people have where they pay their bill. and they add a little extra and we put it into the utility fund. Some of it's coming from, we had our penny drive a few months ago and then we also have the Zazzle store that some of money comes into that as well.

GO AHEAD AND GO TO THE NEXT PAGE.

SO THIS IS OUR UTILITY FUND BALANCE FOR FISCAL YEAR 2026. WE STARTED THE FUND WITH $26,013. AND CURRENTLY WHEN WE ENDED, I DON'T KNOW HOW THIS, OH, IT TOOK IN MAY AND JUNE. I SHOULD HAVE TAKEN THAT OUT. AT THE END OF APRIL WE HAD $27,011. IT KIND OF CARRIED IT OVER TO MAY AND JUNE. I APOLOGIZE FOR THAT. The next slide is showing the utility assistance fund by fiscal year. So at the end of each fiscal year, this was our fund balance and how we started the next fiscal year. You'll notice the peak in 2021. We did get a lot of donations during that COVID time. So that's kind of where that kind of peaked. This next slide is kind of showing how each type of assistance that we provide was given to our households in our community. So 36 customers since July of 2025 have received year-round assistance. Five customers have applied and received assistance. UP TO $350 FOR ONE-TIME ASSISTANCE, AND THEN WE HAD 29 CUSTOMERS DURING THE WINTER THAT RECEIVED WINTER ASSISTANCE. THROUGH THE 70 CUSTOMERS THAT WE ASSISTED SO FAR THIS YEAR, WE HAVE ASSISTED THEM WITH $23,138 IN UTILITY EXPENSES. SO HERE ARE SOME OF OUR ADDITIONAL RESOURCES THAT WE you know, tell our residents that are struggling. There's LawHeap. We have local agencies like Self-Help, LA Care, and we also do a lot of referrals if necessary to Los Alamos County Social Services Department, and they have other access to different assistance that we don't. We also receive some assistance like LawHeap since July has helped us with $6,184 in assistance, and our local LA Cares has helped us with $23,000. Well, not us, our customers, I should say. $23,288. So this next page, I'll bring back to the board, but I kind of wanted to introduce increasing our current minimum and maximum allowable amounts. I took what last year's average use, and I did use for the gas. I used what we found was about 126 therms of gas per, you know, is the average household usage. So I used that to calculate the difference between last winter and this winter, and we do have several rate increases coming into effect. Our electric, gas, water, and sewer all have some type of rate increase coming in the next fiscal year. And looking at that, it's about 11%, 10.91% difference. And so we took our current minimum amount of $20 and increased that by about 11%. So I rounded everything up so it's $22. And the maximum is $158 now. I'll be asking to bring that up to $174. And when I was doing this, I kind of thought, well, how does the middle people, the people that don't fall in middle or maximum? And so what we will do is we'll take last year's, because we base their assistance on last year's winter usage at that household. So we'll take that usage and increase it by 11% and then base their winter assistance based on knowing that we're going to have all these increases. Oh, and I should say, when we calculate the assistance, we take all their winter assistance, and it's 30% of their winter average. So we take their winter usage for electric gas, water, and sewer. We don't include refuse. And we take that average, and 30% of it is what we will assist them with for the six months in the winter. So we have a couple of ways to donate to our assistance. We have like monthly support, which I kind of mentioned, you can opt in through your utility bill and it shows up on your utility bill. So when you pay it, it automatically goes to the fund. You can also do a one-time donation by adding it to your current bill. There's a little line on your remittance and you can donate that. And when we post the payment, it goes to the account. And we also have our Zazzle store, which is the next page. And so I added the link. If you ever come in on Fridays, most of my customer care staff wears their t-shirt with our little blinky and toasty emojis. And so I'm open to any questions you guys might have.

Thank you.

You're welcome.

Matt. Sure, just one question. Sure. It sounds like you're just using last winter's utility usage for estimating what the benefit is this year. Maybe it overcomplicates things. I don't know if you've looked at instead of using one year, last year was nice and warm. This year we're going to have a super-duper El Nino, right? Right, that's true, yeah. Would it be better to do a three-year average to try to estimate people's needs?

We can look at that. I haven't really decided how we're going to do that. Normally, we just use last year's, but as I was creating this, I'm like, there's some unfair disadvantage of the people who kind of fall into the middle, right? Because if we're only using their average from last year, it's not including any rate increases or possible... Yeah, temperature differences and stuff like that. So I'll definitely do some more. I kind of was just thinking, how do we make it a little fair across the board for everybody? Because we do have several customers that just get the minimum because they're only paying electric. So it helps them. And then the people that I don't have anybody really on the far end of it. I have zero people on that side of it. only would help if I'm only doing the percentage increase to the minimum but if you have more than one utility you will be above that minimum so how do we meet that that gap of weight increases so yeah I can definitely look at different options and come back to you guys and how when I come back with this Rate or increase in the minimax I can kind of discuss what we think will work a little bit better for those in the middle of that frame Thanks for Trying to make it good for folks. Yeah, thanks. You're welcome.

That's everything.

Thank you other questions I Have one I thought that there was some Concern about LIHEAP continuing I Is it in fact still an ongoing program?

As far as I know, yeah, we've been working with them and we've been getting some. We usually see the majority of LIHEAP payments more like when it starts getting colder and during the winter months, but we still are seeing, you know, a few payments a month through LIHEAP.

You haven't heard anything about it going away?

I have not.

Chair, I've heard about it after the midterms when it goes away. So it will be a next year's problem.

Okay.

Okay. All right.

And if that happens, we can look to see what more, if there's more we can do, too, as well, collectively. Okay.

How much, I think you've given, oh, wait a minute. You've got it right here. Disregard my question. I was going to ask how much assistance came from LIHEAP, but it's right on that page.

Yeah, it wasn't as much as in past, but LA Cares is really good at helping our residents here. And, you know, they did about 23,000 in this last year alone since July. And so they're a big supporter and help our customers.

Okay. Any other questions? Comments? Thank you very much, Joanne.

You're welcome. Thank you.

That takes us on to TPU's quarterly report for the third quarter. And is that you or is that Abby?

Chair, I asked Abby to make a run for it. This is her first report. She assembled herself and herded all the cats that helped contribute to the report. I wanted her to give it a shot, so here you go. And I'm here, obviously, to answer questions, too.

Well, I thought it was the other way around. She backed you up. Yeah, yeah. It's a team effort, believe me. Okay, Abby.

Thank you, Chair Gibson. I'm going to stay over here if that's okay so I can control faster. Sure. IN HIS UTILITY MANAGER REPORT, HE DISCUSSES THE OVERVIEW OF THE RATE PROCESS AND WHY WE NEED TO CONTINUE INCREASING RATES AND THEN ESPECIALLY SUPPORTING UAP TO REFLECT THOSE RATE CHANGES. OUR SAFETY EMPLOYEE OF THE QUARTER WAS MICHAEL SALAZAR. HE WAS PART OF THAT TEAM WITH MYRON WHO SAVED THE FAMILY FROM THE TIPPED OVER CAR. SO WE FELT IT WAS REALLY IMPORTANT TO RECOGNIZE HIM FOR HIS HEROIC EFFORTS AS WELL. Enjoy the Sadie now. I'm going to say that. It looks really great. It's going down. We'll just move on. Here's page 17. We're seeing a slight slowing of residential solar with a total of 3.1 megawatts of distributed generation in quarter three. That's going to be expected with the disappearance of the tax credits, but we'll see where it goes from here.

Can I ask on that? Yeah. Do you want interruptions or will that disturb you?

Sure. Then I don't have to scroll back so far. That'll work.

Are many of these including batteries or storage as well, or is it all just PV?

You know what? Dennis, I'm looking at you. I don't know if the list I look at, if it does include battery, there aren't many?

Yeah.

Okay.

There's some batteries I've seen because I signed the applications, but not. The majority.

It would be interesting to start watching that if that trickles.

Yeah, we can see if there's enough to put another bubble because there's space for a bubble. We could certainly see if that's added. I haven't looked for it, so we can look for it.

Okay, thanks.

Clay, in his report, really caught – It discusses the progress with the various booster station projects, as well as the belt replacement that was very successful in this picture. And there's a couple other pictures throughout the report that it talks about as well. Let me go back when I skipped. Ben's report here. They installed the new draft elbow tube at the Abiquiu plant. That was really neat to see. They took me down there to see it. A lot of big stuff in a tight space. So the crew doing it did a really good job. THIS ONE IS NEXT, RECLAIMED WATER. IT WAS FAIRLY SLOW FOR QUARTER 3 BUT WE DID SEE A LOT OF STORM WATER ACTION FROM THE RESERVOIR THAT WAS BEING USED AS WELL. WE ANTICIPATE QUARTER 4 TO ALSO HAVE HIGHER NUMBERS AS WELL, RIGHT? WE'RE IN THE IRRIGATION SEASON NOW. GO. IN ENGINEERING, JAMES PROVIDES A REALLY GOOD SUMMARY IN HIS FIRST SECTION AS WELL AS DEPUTY MANAGER. COVERING CURRENT PROJECTS, THERE ARE A LOT OF THEM. SO IF YOU GET A CHANCE, DEFINITELY READ THROUGH ALL OF HIS UPDATES. for sustainability and public relations. Let me get to that page. We've been including a rep performance report. That's the program that Kathy really spearheaded. I'm gonna go over staffing, then I have one correction to make sure we're aware of. For staffing, we brought on three new employees. We promoted seven employees and we celebrated a 20 year work anniversary of Kathy before she retired. YEAH. AND THEN THE ONE CORRECTION MEMBER HAVNER POINTED OUT TO ME EARLIER TODAY IS ON THIS GRAPHIC HERE, THIS IS EXPLAINING OUR GAS RATE AND HOW IT'S BROKEN DOWN. LET ME MAKE THIS BIGGER. SO WE ARE GOING TO BE ADJUSTING THIS JUST A LITTLE BIT MOVING FORWARD. THE COMMERCIAL EXAMPLE THAT'S POINTED OUT HERE IS A SMALL METER COMMERCIAL EXAMPLE, WHICH DOESN'T REFLECT ITS USAGE. So in this usage, the amount should be 500. So Kathy had this set up that each quarter it would be reflected to a certain amount that would typically be used by one of these either residential or commercial entities within that quarter. UP ABOVE, YOU'LL SEE THAT THE RESIDENTIAL USED 18 THERMS AND THE COMMERCIAL USED 135 THERMS. THOSE ARE ACTUALLY NUMBERS THAT ARE USED IN QUARTER ONE, SO THOSE ARE CARRY-OVERS FROM A QUARTER ONE REPORT. FOR QUARTER THREE, THE RESIDENTIAL, IT WILL BE UPDATED TO, SAY, 150 THERMS BECAUSE THAT'S HOW MUCH THEY USE IN THIS QUARTER'S EXAMPLE, AND THEN THE COMMERCIAL WILL SAY THE COMMERCIAL USED 500 THERMS IN THIS EXAMPLE, BUT I WANTED TO POINT OUT THAT For the meter size section in the number one area over here, just because they use 500 doesn't bump them up to that larger meter because it's just they used more, but they're still at that small meter customer. And we wanted to keep it between a small residential and a small commercial and see the difference in usage from there. So that's one clarification that will be made post tonight in addition to anything else you all found. With that, I will stop.

Thank you. Good job for first time at bat.

Thank you.

Good job, even if it wasn't your first time. Thank you. Questions, comments? Eric.

Thank you, Chair Gibson. So I'm back on page 13, it looks like, and this is, I think, for Dennis Astley. It says here that the tie line was finished between Landau and the White Rocks Hub.

The instruction of the overhead line is complete.

Our audience online can't hear, so.

The overhead construction is complete with the exception of the programming of the recloser control, and that's going to be done at 10 o'clock in the morning. But all of the major construction is complete.

So the tie lines come into the sub through air switches, or how is it switched in?

It goes into a switch at the corner of South Monterey and Highway 4, and that is also constructed as well. The only thing pending is the recloser that LANL wanted us to install, and we got the coordination information from them, and the consultant did the coordination of the programming of the and rather than send me the program, they're going to come by in the morning and program it, then the crew can install it.

So I'm guessing that closing this would require an open transfer? You don't have synchronization checks on this thing, do you?

No, we do not. It's only for emergency.

Yeah, so it's an open transfer.

Yeah, I would not recommend that we try to synchronize We're going to be in phase, and we're going to measure phasing to make sure that everything lines up. But I think it would be a little bit hazardous to try to do it where we do it hot. It would be a drop and pick in my recommendation.

So since you're up there.

Sure.

there's another statement here about bad cable between Oppenheimer and Timber Ridge Apartments. Did that have something to do with the underground failure, or is that a different issue?

No, that is a different issue. That's something that we've been working through a DOT permit to get replaced that was approved last year. And because of winter, the contractor wanted to wait until spring, and we spent all spring working with DOT engineering to get a permit. Thank you. You're welcome.

Dennis, before you leave, follow up on Eric's question there. This tie line, once it's actually operational, is there any practical way of testing it, or do we just have to believe that it's operational until we hopefully never need it, but how do we know? What gives us the confidence that a live test would give us that it will work?

We're going to do a phasing test on each of the three phases, and if those match up, then I would consider that a positive test because it would have the same rotation on any three-phase service, such as the AC systems at the school and maybe Smith's if they have a three-phase air conditioning system. But the whole point is to be able to pick up load in White Rock. And we feel that even at peak, if we took the wastewater treatment plant and put it on its generator, moved in the generator from the other wastewater treatment plant along with what we have FEMA money to now buy, we should be able to pick up all of White Rock for a few years at peak in the summer or winter. But it's truly speculation, but with the additional generation capacity that can synchronize with the line from LANL, it would do the job.

So to support all of the loads in White Rock, if we lost the whole White Rock substation? Would we need both the tie line and the auxiliary generators?

At peak, we would. Probably in the spring and fall, we would not. Okay. But we could also drop the wastewater treatment plant and put it on its standby generator, and that would drop a significant load of a few hundred kW.

Okay. Thank you.

You're welcome.

Other questions on the quarterly report?

Matt? Mine's just a quick comment, and you don't have to scroll to the page, but on page 30, there's a note that the Jemez Fire, the acceleration of the contractor's work on the Jemez Fire project resulted in about $1.2 million savings, and I think we should highlight that maybe in a PowerPoint to the council. I think that was awesome. That needs to be highlighted in the report.

Okay. Any other comment? Thank you. Thank you. Good job, Debbie. All right. That takes us to, let's see, approval of budget revision for the FEMA grant. And that is James and Joanne.

Board and members of the committee, I'd like to happily announce that we've been awarded the FEMA grant. It's been a long time coming. You know, my predecessor, James Allred, and Steven Mares, Dennis' predecessor had put a good amount of effort into applying for the grant and waiting. along with Philo. So more recently, there was some adjustments that needed to be made with Dennis and myself and Philo readjusting the numbers in order to reflect the current electrical work that remained. What I bring before you tonight is the approval of a budget revision for 2026-80 for the FEMA grant to fund the Jemez Mountain Fire Protection for the electrical undergrounding. We have a federal share amount of $2,632,000. Sorry, let me repeat that. $2,632,000. thousand seven hundred and forty six and eighteen cents which is through the hazard mitigation grant program under the FEMA dr four six five two dash nm and a non-federal match requirement of eight hundred and forty two thousand seven hundred and seventy and twenty seven cents for total project cost of $3,475,516.45. I just would like to mention that there is $104,435.36 that is a part of the federal share. It's a subrecipient management cost, and that portion is specifically to cover the internal staff salary and contractor payments. that's related for supporting the work or relating to this grant. An example would be to cover the procurement staff time in order to order the materials that would be utilized for this project. So yeah, what I bring before you and what I'm recommending is approval of the budget revision tonight.

Okay, thank you. Questions? I've got a nitpicky question. In the recommended action, it appears that there are two different numbers for this grant program. The DR4652-NM in one case and DR4652-006-NM in the other case. Which one is correct?

Let me pull to my document here. So subgrant number, what I have here on the attachment is listing DR-4652-0006-NM.

Okay, so that should be included in the motion, I believe. Is that correct?

Correct.

Okay. Are there any questions? Abby, I'm not seeing Charlie anymore on here. Is he still here? Okay. So I can't see his hand if it's up. Oh, there he is. And he's still awake.

I'm following in rapt attention.

Chair, I do. Okay. It was at least a couple million dollars. We had put in all the conduit with the joint trench for the water line and electric fiber. But, you know, the opportunity while the trench was open, we had to make that investment. Yeah.

Easy come, easy go. Okay. Thank you.

All right. Just to get back to your pedantic point on the phrasing there, it looks to me like the hazard mitigation grant program is without the dash 0006, and the 0006 is the subaward. I'm looking at page 182 in our agenda.

That's correct.

Okay. So I think we do want the motion. So you want the motion as is? Because it's under the grant program and then we're approving the sub-award.

Yeah, there's a letter that shows the scope of work so you know what they're covering. And that's the FEMA grant attachment A. Then there's sub-award. recipient grant agreement and that's the one request county manager signed that will go to council next week and the budget revision to bring the grant funds into our budget so we can do spending okay so do we have is the recommended motion correct in that the board is recommending approval of the budget revision

And then we're also recommending approval or acceptance of the subgrant agreement and authorizing the condo manager to sign. Are those all correct? I think there are a couple of twos before and after council in that second sentence that are necessary. That's down in the weeds. Okay, are we, does anyone have any other questions or comment before we look for a motion? All right. Who would like to make the motion?

I'll give it a stab. I move that the board recommend approval of budget revision 2026-80, which is attachment C, for a FEMA grant to fund the Jemez Mountain Fire Protection Project electrical undergrounding in the federal share amount of $2,632,746.18 available through the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program, HMGP, under FEMA DR-4652-NM. The non-federal match requirement is $842,770.27 for a total project cost of $3,475,516.45. I further move that the Board recommend Council accept New Mexico Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management, DHSEM, subgrant agreement DR4652-0006-NM, and authorize the county manager to sign this agreement in attachment B. Second.

Okay. It's been moved and seconded. We recommend all these approvals. Any further comments?

Yeah, just for the record if we make sure that in the motion and in the minutes that it's zero zero zero six instead of oh oh oh six All right Kathy member knockley Yes, number Stromberg.

Yes, remember Hefner. Yes, and member Gibson.

Yes. Thank you motion passes four to zero I Thank you for your diligence in continuing to pursue this. Even though we lost money on the way, but at least we got some out of it. That takes us to initial review of our annual presentation to council, which comes up next month. So this is a work session type discussion, and the final Approval of this will be at next meeting in two weeks the regular meeting this month I Can go through this page by page or I can let people ask questions or how would board like to do this I Don't think we need to go page by page, okay It's late enough In my basic philosophy here, it's a little different than previous ones. Everybody on council has been here for a while. They know what we do. They get reports on what's been done. So what I've really concentrated on, what the major issues are in place now are coming up that we see sort of a heads up. That's the basic philosophy that I've got here. And you'll see a few places where things won't yet need to be updated as things develop, like Elk Ridge and the third transmission line and ECA, et cetera. So those may even need to be updated right before the presentation next month. We'll see. So are there questions or concerns or suggestions? that we can incorporate into this.

Matt. Sure. I had two suggestions for the board and us to consider. First, I already gave away was just highlighting the savings because of the contractor efficiencies on the HMIS fire protection project. The other was on, I think, your slide eight, which is the electric supply part.

Yep.

And I just thought maybe adding a bullet around the electrification study that showed that the upgrades that are required for electrification are predominantly covered in necessary upgrades and maintenance anyway. And so the actual cost, the additional cost in upgrades by 2040, I think we had a percentage or 10% of the entire upgrade cost. Something capturing that idea. Just to add on slide eight. Those are my two suggestions.

Okay. I think your first one is, at least my intent was to cover that two pages later, where we talk about renewal over the next 20 or 30 years. The goals are extend the lifetime, increase reliability, and increase capacity. Does that cover your first concern?

It does. I guess I was just thinking of capturing the electrification study, maybe referencing that.

Which is, that's the Burns and McDonald study. That is, okay.

Perfect, you got it then.

And you had a second point that I may have missed.

Oh, this was just the efficiencies, the $1.2 million savings on the Jemez Fire Protection Plan. Oh, right.

Gain $1.2 million, lose a little over $2 million.

Okay.

We want to have kudos to the staff and the contractors who saved us money.

Yeah.

We'll throw the feds under the bus. Exactly. The feds get thrown under the bus.

We couldn't fix Washington, but I don't know anybody who has succeeded in doing that yet. Let me make a note here before I lose that completely. Okay. Other comments, suggestions?

Mr. Gibson, does the goal phase out natural gas by 2070, does that include the legally required standby? Is that all-inclusive or is that an exception? We talked about that a couple meetings ago.

Our stated goal doesn't have any exception like that in it.

And I guess that's kind of my question. Should it or no?

Well, this wouldn't be the place to consider that. Okay. But we will be reviewing all of those goals at our strategic planning meeting at the end of August. Okay.

Then the only other comment I have, and it probably wouldn't be for this presentation either, is in the electric transmission. You know, you talk about a third transmission line into L.A. County, and I'm still hearing that the lab isn't thinking that we're getting any of that. They want all of it. And that's what I'm hearing anyway, but this presentation may not be the right place for that.

Okay. Do we have anything official one way or the other on that?

Chair, nothing official yet, so.

Okay. Okay, anything else? All right, I'll tweak this a little bit, and you'll see, you'll have a final crack at it in two weeks. All right. Okay, that brings us to public comment again. Do we have any other public comment? We're starting with Chambers, and then online.

Anyone online wishing to make public comment, please raise your hand now. No, Chair Gibson.

All right. I thank everyone for your patience this evening. I think a fairly productive meeting. And we stand adjourned. Thank you.