Waterways Advisory Committee - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, I'd like to call the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities for the City of Santa Rosa to order. If we may have a roll call, please.

Board Member Wright.

Here.

Board Member Meisler. Here. Board Member DeWitt.

Present.

Board Member Vandenfort. Here. Vice Chair Arnone. Chair Galvin.

Here.

Let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of Vice Chair Arnone.

Thank you. Any statements of abstention by board members? Very good, we have no study session. We have minutes that were in our packet from the June 4th meeting, so at this time we'll take public comment on the minutes, assuming there's no changes that any board members wish to make. Seeing no one rise, that'll take care of the minutes. They'll be approved and entered. We'll move to the first of our two staff briefings. Director Burke.

Thank you, Chair Govan and members of the board. Our first staff briefing is our 2025 Water Quality Report Update, and Armaa Osegarra, our Water Quality System Supervisor, will be presenting.

Thank you, Director Burke. Good afternoon, Chairman Galvin and members of the board. My name is Armado Seguero, Water Quality Systems Supervisor for Santa Rosa Water. Today I am here presenting the 2025 Water Quality Report, in which turn was made available to the public on our website and other outlets on June 5th. Additionally, targeted outreach to customers and the community were rolled out last week. we have provided you with a paper copy for your reference for this presentation. First off, I would like to say, although I am presenting this report today, this was a group effort consisting of our water quality team and our outreach team. They worked together in gathering the information to put this together and made sure it was distributed properly and on time. We monitor our water system monthly to ensure safety and compliance. Each year we provide customers with a detailed report required by the Division of Drinking Water. Our routine compliance monitoring includes the total coliform rule, the disinfection by-product rule, and the groundwater rule. mandated due to our production wells on Farmer's Lane. Additionally, we test for lead and copper every three years, a cycle we most recently completed in 2025. Finally, our cross-connection control program ensures the safety of our water supply as well. The water quality report provides information required by law, but we also use it as an outreach tool to educate our customers about where the water comes from, our water system, water saving tips, and numerous tests we conduct to ensure our water quality meets and exceeds all regulatory requirements. Current legislation allows us to use other outlets to advertise and share the water quality report. We no longer must supply a hard copy to every customer as in years past. This year we'll use announcements on the Press Democrat, Facebook, emails, and e-newsletters, and provide hard copies to any customers that request them. We also supply copies to various public places throughout the city, and our sampling van also carries printed copies on hand for any customer who may request one. In a typical year, we receive 95% of our water from Sonoma Water and 5% from our Farmers Lane production wells. This is a picture of our water system here in Santa Rosa. Because of the extremes in hydraulic gradients due to the topography, it is broken up into 32 different pressure zones. So we make sure that we have at minimum one sample station in each zone. We have a total of 144 sample stations throughout the city to ensure we are getting an accurate representation of the drinking water throughout our system. Pictured on the left is one of the dedicated drinking water sample stations that we have throughout the city. These are used to draw water from for testing in accordance to the total call form rule as well as our quarterly and annual sampling. Pictured on the right is the water quality sample van. This vehicle is a familiar sight around Santa Rosa as our team travels throughout the day collecting water samples and safeguarding our water supply. This is our Farmer's Lane Treatment Plant. The facility normally operates from April to November and is currently operating at about 1500 GPM. This picture shows our green sand filtration system that we use to filter for iron and manganese. We also disinfect and then blend the water into our system. When in operation, we test for iron and manganese monthly and also perform quarterly and annual tests as well. Because we receive most of all of our water from Sonoma Water, they test for over 100 constituents annually and provide us with the data. This is an example of one of the sheets they provide. It includes the constituents itself, the MCL, or maximum contaminant level, as well as the DRL, which is the detectable limit for reporting. They provide data from their six caissons as well as from their production wells and their reservoirs. To give you a brief understanding of the terms we use on the report, PHG is the level of contamination in drinking water that does not pose a significant health risk. The DRL is a minimum level at which a contaminant must be reported to the state and the water board and is a level where laboratories are confident about the accuracy of the contaminant being reported. The MCL is the maximum contaminant level allowable in drinking water that's delivered to the customers. This is the 2025 water quality report sampling results page. We are required to include anything over the reporting limit in the report at the top right column. The top right columns are separated between Sonoma Water and the water that we get from Farmers Lane through our production wells. This is the top half of the report which contains the primary drinking water standards, which are those that have any health concerns. The bottom half are secondary standards, which are aesthetics like clarity, taste, and odor. Again, the state recommends we include these results from our production wells on the report. PFASs remain a primary focus for water supplies nationwide. While these substances have been studied for decades, the US EPA has established enforceable national drinking water standards for specific PFASs. Santa Rosa Water has proactively monitored these chemicals across multiple regulatory cycles, including EPA testing from 2013 to 2015, and in recent federal unregulated contaminant monitoring rule cycles. We are also actively testing under California state mandates. We are proud to report that all historical and ongoing sampling results for PFAS in our system have consistently come back non-detect. This concludes my presentation, and with that, I hopefully can answer any questions you might have.

Thank you very much, Mr. Osagara. I'll open it up now for any board member questions or comments.

Board Member DeWitt. Yes, thank you for the nice presentation. Some folks that I know often ask about why people buy so much bottled water. And one of the things that comes up is they believe that it tastes better because there's been an addition of minerals or some of these types of additives. I actually like our water. We're up here drinking it. Do we add any type of... amenities and ethical, no, you call it aesthetics for clarity and taste, do we do that?

We do not.

Thank you kindly.

Other board member questions or comments? All right, we'll take public comments on item number 6.1. If you wish to make a comment, please move to the podium. See no one rise. Thank you again for the presentation. Appreciate all the hard work you and your crew have done on the plan and have a good afternoon.

Thank you.

Thank you. We'll move on now to item 6.2, Director Burke.

Thank you, Chair Govan and members of the board. Our second item is our water and recycled water supply update. And making the presentation will be Lisa Quaylor, our Sustainability Coordinator, Water Use Efficiency, and Mike Prinz, our Deputy Director of Regional Water Reuse Operations.

Hello and good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Thank you for the introduction, Director Burke. I'll be providing the water supply update on behalf of Deputy Director Peter Martin, who could not be here today. So beginning with our reservoir levels, Lake Pillsbury Storage, which is located on the main stem of the Eel River, is at about 50,000 acre feet, or 60% of PG&E's operational target for water supply for this time of year. PG&E is operating under a single year Federal Energy Regulatory Commission variance for their mandatory minimum flows into the east branch of the Russian River, which is above Lake Mendocino. And that means they can reduce their minimum flows from the mandated 75 cubic feet per second to 25 cubic feet per second. As of June 15th, Lake Mendocino is at about 81,000 acre feet or 73% of available water storage for this time of year. Sonoma Water is operating under dry classification for the water year under their temporary urgency change order, which was issued in March. The dry condition classification is expected to last through the end of this water year, and that means they can reduce their minimum inflow stream requirements under their water rights in the upper and lower Russian River, which will help with managing storage in Lake Mendocino through the rest of the year. And storage in Lake Sonoma is also very healthy. As of June 15th, Lake Sonoma is at about 268,000 acre feet, which is 98% of the available water storage for this time of year. And just as a reminder, when full, Lake Sonoma stores about four years of the regional totals for water supply needs. So that's looking very good. I wanted to end with just a couple of updates. The Sonoma Marin Saving Water Partnership, which we are obviously a partner of, has a summer outreach campaign, which is launching in July. So they will be promoting our regional water smart gardens maintenance manual, so those are for accounts across our service area who have transitioned their landscapes to low water use landscapes. This is a tool to help those customers maintain them and keep them beautiful and thriving. Sonoma Marin is also promoting the irrigation scheduling tool, which pulls data from local weather stations on a daily basis and gives users an accurate measurement of the total water use needed per plants on a weekly basis. And data is curated to service areas for all of Sonoma Water contracted suppliers. So we have a tool that will look at City of Santa Rosa specifically and give customers their weekly irrigation schedule based on current weather. And then lastly, the Less Lawn, More Savings campaign will run in July and throughout the summer. And it is intended to align with customer outreach regarding the new irrigation ban on non-functional turf, which I will dive into more details later on the agenda. The outreach includes video snippets of successful landscape conversions for a variety of customer types including residential customers, HOAs, and institutional customers. And then I just wanted to acknowledge that we were at the last night's Wednesday night market at Courtyard Square. The water section had a presence there. We were promoting our water use efficiency programs, getting Encouraging people our customers to sign up for our water smart portal We had Gina Perez there letting the community know that there are opportunities for hire within the water section Hydration station was there want to just thank chair Galvin for coming stopping by the booth and saying hello as well as director Burke so this Continues to be one of our most popular community engagement activities that we host annually during the summer And with that, I will pass the mic over to Mike Prince, Deputy Director, Regional Water Reuse Operations.

Thanks, Lisa. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin, members of the board. Mike Prince, Deputy Director, Regional Water Reuse Operations with the Recycled Water Supply Update. Starting off with a new aerial photo of the plant and a good share of our recycled water storage volume in the ponds that picture actually it is our most recent aerial photo it's from april 2025 um being in april the ponds are pretty full um and that this picture actually seems to be a lot more colorful than our previous aerial photos so kind of wanted to show that to you all I also, before I get into actual recycled water storage trends, I wanted to put the UV project, a project that's been going on for just a couple days short of four years. The notice to proceed on the UV project was issued in, I think it was June 20th, 2022. The photo on the right is one of, I think, our earliest aerial photos, probably taken from an airplane, maybe a helicopter. We didn't have drones back then. Showing the plant in 1968, and as you might guess, the red prism is the footprint of the new UV system. On the right, 54 years later, shows the plant and also for context where the new UV system is located. Duplicating that picture on the right and to compare to current conditions, you can see that part of the plant has changed significantly. We have a new $70 million approximate value UV disinfection system, which is not up and running. It is still undergoing testing, but a lot has changed over the recent four years in that part of the plant. And then on the inside of the facility, these are a couple of recent photos that I took that shows we have energized the system. Again, we are in a testing mode, but these are really some of the most colorful pictures I've taken of the UV project. The actual lamps being illuminated contrasts a lot with the other construction materials in the building itself. So Jennifer allowed me to present those to you today. So moving on, this is our current recycled water storage trend. I would draw your attention to the red line as the current trend starting last October and just up through last week. As you can see, we are currently tracking the gray trend, which is the average. pretty much almost exactly, which is roughly where we were last year at this time, which is represented by the black trend. I think it's already been announced, but we did not discharge at all during this past winter, which the curve reflects. We did discharge the previous year, which shows a much more jagged trend on the black trend itself. But right now, we're tracking average levels for this time of year. I think due to the relatively mild start to the summer, irrigation hasn't really ramped up significantly yet, although it has started. So that's what I have for today. And I'm sure Lisa and I would be willing to answer any questions that you may have. Thank you both.

Open it up for questions, comments from the board. All right, we'll open it up for public comment on item 6.2. If you wish to make a comment, please move to the podium. I see no one rise. Thank you again for the reports. Take care. We have two items on the consent calendar.

I'll make a motion to move the consent calendar.

I'll second that.

We have a motion by Board Member Badenfort, seconded by Board Member Wright. This time we'll open it up for public comments on the consent calendar. If you wish to make a comment, please move to the podium. Seeing no one rise, may we have a roll call vote, please.

Board Member Wright.

Aye.

Board Member Meisler. Aye. Board Member DeWitt.

Yes.

Board Member Badenfort. Aye. Chair Galvin.

Aye.

Let the record reflect that the consent calendar passes unanimously with Vice Chair Arnone absent.

Thank you. We'll now move to item 8.1, first of our two report items. Director Burke.

Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Our first report item is our recommendation to adopt proposed ordinance mending Santa Rosa City Code Chapter 14-21, Water Waste Regulations. And Lisa Quaylar, Sustainability Coordinator, Water Use Efficiency will be making the presentation.

Welcome back. Welcome back.

Thank you again for the introduction, Director Burke. Today I will present specific revisions to the city's water waste regulations so that we remain in compliance with a new state law. Before diving into the specifics, I wanted to make clear the action item required to comply with this new state law, and that is to adopt an ordinance revising the city's water waste regulation to prohibit irrigating non-functional turf with our potable water at certain property types within our service area. For some context, Assembly Bill 1572 was signed into law in 2023, and it effectively prohibits irrigating what is referred to as non-functional turf with potable water at specific property types that are cited above. That includes our commercial, industrial, and institutional accounts, as well as common areas of homeowners associations and other common interest developments. There are exemptions written into the law for preserving established tree health, established perennial plantings. You can continue to irrigate those if they reside within areas of non-functional turf. Public parks are obviously exempt from the regulation because they provide lots of recreation, even if turf is planted there. cemeteries are exempt and there is an exemption if irrigation needs to continue for any public health and safety need. Included in the law was a requirement that the city by January 1st of next year also update city code to include this new prohibition and we are also required to notify impacted customers. So the purpose behind the irrigation prohibition was really to proactively address impacts to our water supplies as a result of a warming climate and persistent cycles of drought that we experience regionally. and across the state. It does build on previous conservation legislation, so Senate Bill 606 and Assembly Bill 1668, known collectively as the Making Conservation a California Way of Life legislation, was passed a couple years back. but is now in effect. And there are prescriptive measures in those regulations for our commercial, industrial, and institutional accounts to save additional water, both indoor and outdoors. And there are also limits water sufficiency standards, if you will, set for our commercial, industrial, and institutional counts at a service level that must be met under the new regulation. So this AB 1572 supports that existing legislation as well. And then the state has acknowledged that potable water use for non-functional turf is indeed wasteful and unsustainable. And therefore, the ordinance presented today with the modifications to the city's water waste regulations ensures compliance with the state law, and it does support both state level and regional level conservation initiatives and goals. So I often get asked, what is non-functional turf? So for the board's benefit, I wanted to offer a definition. It's pretty basic. In essence, non-functional turf is irrigated lawn that is purely decorative and not regularly used for recreation or public community gatherings. So if the only time you walk on the turf is to mow it, then in essence, it is non-functional. So the revisions today, again, are addressing the water waste regulation. The city adopted this set of regulations in 1999 with the city council's approval. They live under City Code Chapter 14-21. The purpose of the regulation was to promote the efficient use of potable and recycled water by prohibiting water uses which constitute waste. So those are things like broken pipes on the supplier side, you know, after the meter leaks attributed to failing fixtures or appliances inside the home. It's really an attempt for us to minimize to the greatest extent possible customer continuous use that is affiliated with water waste, wasteful practices. The city may enforce, there's an enforcement mechanism built into the water waste regulations, so we can issue written warnings, which we do throughout the year on occasion, issue administrative fines, which is more rare. That doesn't happen very often. And then with Director Burke's permission, we can or her designee can disconnect water service for really egregious waste where the account holder is just not responsive to our request to mitigate the problem. So I want to direct you to the red line copy in your agenda package that details where we have made revisions to the water waste regulation. Presented here is just a high level overview of what was included in those revisions. The first being 13 definitions added. Those are verbatim of statute. or they reference statute directly. We also included a new reference under water waste for potable irrigation of non-functional turf. We took language from statute to add the new prohibition of irrigating non-functional turf. And then in the enforcement section, we reference this new prohibition. We do not modify in any way the enforcement mechanism. So the notifications, administrative fees, and disconnection remain the same and could be applied to violators of this specific prohibition. It made... sense that we would revise the water waste regulation as a means for meeting the state requirement because, as I already noted, the state has deemed irrigation of non-functional turf as a form of water waste. So logically it made sense that we would integrate this new prohibition into our existing water waste regulation. Oh, and I also wanted to emphasize, too, that by using the language verbatim from the regulation, we reduce confusion for any businesses or landscapers, for example, property managers that might operate across different service areas, right? So might have some business in Marin, properties in Marin that they also manage in Marin County. So we're trying to create consistency with how the rule is rolled out regionally. It also strengthens the perception that the regulation is a coordinated statewide effort rather than a patchwork of varying local rules. So I think that's additional justification as to why we took verbatim what was written into the law and integrated it into our regs. As far as budget impacts go, adoption of this ordinance has no immediate budget impact. I wanted to reassure the board that the impacted accounts actually self-certify directly to the state, so that administrative burden does not fall upon Santa Rosa water shoulders to monitor and review and coordinate with the impacted accounts. As far as potential long-term cost go, You know, nothing extreme there. Our water use efficiency team, including our field technicians and our sustainability reps, already engage customers by providing a number of offerings, including our water efficiency surveys. So when they go out, they can just add this to the menu of items they already have. assist the customer with, so they can provide tips on how to comply with the law, offer suggestions for the customer to participate in our rebate and incentive programs that are in line with the regulation. There would be future enforcement, but that enforcement mechanism, as I mentioned, is the same as what we typically do for other water wasters within our service area. And there could be some additional monitoring, again, if there were cases of real egregious waste. And we found that that waste was attributed to irrigating non-functional turf. We could monitor sites to make sure that they are meeting the regulation. And future funding requests will follow our normal budgetary approval process. So we have a water sufficiency section budget that we review with the director and leadership and get approval for on a fiscal year basis. That would not change and we don't see any major additions being needed to integrate compliance with this new regulation. So timeline for approval is shared here on the screen. We did meet in May with the Water Conservation Subcommittee, and they did recommend that we take the red lines to the board. So we're here today to present those red lines. There's the request, obviously, that you would now recommend to council that council consider for adoption the red lines to the water waste regulation. If you make that recommendation today, we would take these revisions to city council on August 18th. That would be also the first public hearing where we would present the red lines. And then if council did approve the changes, we would have a second reading of the revised regulation on September 15th. And then the law would become effective 30 days after that. So that would be October 15th. So bear with me as I read the formal recommendation out loud to the Board of Public Utilities. It is recommended by the Water Conservation Subcommittee and Santa Rosa Water that the Board of Public Utilities, by resolution, recommend the City Council adopt the proposed ordinance amending Santa Rosa City Code Chapter 14-21, Water Waste Regulations, to include clarifying definitions, a prohibition for irrigating nonfunctional turf with potable water, compliance deadlines per affected property type, and make other clarifying changes. And with that, that concludes my presentation. Happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. We'll open it up for board member questions or comments. Board member Wright.

Thank you for the presentation. I'm just curious, how is, I mean, I keep seeing potable water, recycled water and well water, are they exempt from this?

So recycled water is exempt. I think well water is a little bit of a gray area. If... We, since private well water is not part of our infrastructure, we have no jurisdiction over that, the city, so perhaps the county of Sonoma would regulate potable well water if it was deemed, well, private well water if it was deemed potable. But again, we would not enforce at the city level. And recycled water is exempt from the regulation.

Thank you. Board Member DeWitt. Yes, thank you for the presentation. I appreciate this. During the subcommittee, I was curious and asked about school districts. Apparently, school districts can perhaps look at it like it's their way or the highway because they are a kingdom unto themselves. And I see them watering their sidewalk quite often. So we have Proctor Terrace over here off 4th Street, big lawn out front, nobody ever on it. We got Roseland over my area with big lawn, nobody ever on it. So can we somehow get them to switch over to recycled water and work up something till they don't use potable water? I think it's always important to save potable water for when the droughts do return.

So to answer your question regarding recycled water supply, my understanding is that there is not an opportunity for accounts within our service area to acquire new potable, or sorry, recycled water services. So that's not an option, unfortunately, for schools. A lot of recreation, as you might suspect, happens on school campuses. So a lot of the turf areas are exempt from this particular regulation. It does not mean that we won't approach schools if we see water waste occurring on site. So again, we have other measures within the regulation where we can address other types of water waste. But regarding this non-functional turf regulation, most of the areas, if not all of the areas on school campuses would be exempt because they are functional.

Thank you kindly for the response. I'd just like to point out, though, that those big lawns in front of schools, they have very little athletic use. Occasionally a kid might sit out there, but it's something that we should look at because the droughts will return. I really appreciate all your efforts.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Other Board Member questions or comments? Board Member Baden-Fort.

Thank you for your presentation. I do support the recommendation. Of course, as a state mandate, we're pretty limited on our ability to really do it much differently, but our staff has done a really thoughtful job, even though some of the enforcement and some of the implementation burden might be a little bit less. I think that even the work to date and potential future confusion over what actually is non-functional turf, I just encourage Director Burke to let us know in the event that implementation becomes fairly unexpectedly challenging. Just as a homeowner myself and working with different organizations, non-functional turf is just not a common or intuitive term whatsoever. In the committee, we also had long discussions around whether or not the department feels like they have the enforcement authority that they need, and I was pleased to learn that Director Burke does feel that that's in place. Because at a certain point, I think that if we're at a fourth warning for egregious water waste, we just want our department to be able to have the tools that they need. We also discussed the challenge where the account holder might not also be the person who can make decisions about the change in the landscaping. So while I appreciate all of the work, I hope that it doesn't turn out to be much more complicated and misunderstood by the people the majority of our customers because I think it's a little bit more confusing than it may sound to folks that wrote legislation at the state level. Please let us know. Thank you for all your good work on it. We appreciate it. Thank you.

Member DeWitt. Yes, thank you for everything. I just wanted to double check the phone number for people to report water wasters. Is that easily obtained?

Yes, so they can access it by Googling or going to our Water Smart Center online. We have the contact information listed there for reporting Other than that, I'm not sure where it's advertised, but it is available online for folks to look up and report waste.

You make it very easy for them to find, like make a banner right up front, stop water wasters, something like that. There used to be campaigns like don't be a litter bug. How about don't be a water waster?

It is a consideration.

She just said a water hog, don't be a water hog, yeah.

We do periodically make updates to our website, the WaterSense Center website, so that is a recommendation I can take back to the team and we can consider adding a banner or just making more obvious how to contact the city when visible water waste is being observed out in the community. Yeah, that seems like a simple, something simple we could

Through the chair, if I might, just to help out. We have a water conservation hotline and everyone can call that number, 707-543-3985. You can report water waste there. You can also go on the website. You can also go through My Santa Rosa. So we have multiple ways that people can report water waste.

Thank you, other board member questions or comments? Appreciate all your hard work on this one. I know it's all state mandated, but you still had to do the work, so thank you. At this time, we'll open it up for public comment on item 8.1. If you wish to make a public comment, please move to the podium. Seeing no one rise, I will entertain a motion. We have a resolution in our packet.

I'll move that the Board of Public Utilities, by resolution, recommend that the City Council adopt the proposed ordinance amending Santa Rosa City Code Chapter 14-21 Water Waste Regulations to include clarifying definitions, a prohibition on irrigation, non-functional turf with potable water, compliance deadlines by affected property type, and other clarifying changes. Second.

Motion by Board Member Wright, seconded by Board Member DeWitt. May we please have a roll call? Vote.

Board Member Wright.

Aye.

Board Member Meisler. Aye. Board Member DeWitt.

Yes.

Board Member Vandenfort. Aye. Chair Galvin.

Aye.

Let the record reflect that resolution passes unanimously with Vice Chair Arnone absent.

Thank you again for the presentation.

Thank you.

We'll move to item 8.2. Director Burke.

Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. Item 8.2 is acceptance of the Santa Rosa storm drain master plan. And making the presentation is Claire Myers, our stormwater and creeks manager, and Katie Hogan with Woodard and Curran. I did want to just take a moment to say just how important and impressive this work has been. This is our first ever storm drain master plan for the city. It has been a couple years of very hard work a lot of years of trying our best to scrounge together as many funding dollars as possible to get to this point. I think it's also one of the ways that we're showing leadership in the state, as I don't believe there are many storm drain master plans out there, and so I just really wanted to impress upon the board how much work and how proud I am of the team that they've gotten this really big achievement off the ground. So with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Claire.

Thank you so much, Director Burke. That was very kind. Good afternoon, Chair Galvin and members of the board. I too am really excited to be here today to discuss the first Santa Rosa storm drain master plan. Again, I'm Claire Myers. I'm the manager of the Stormwater and Creeks team, and I'm here today with my partner Katie Hogan, an engineer and the project manager from Woodard and Kern. We've been working on this together for several years. The plan is quite extensive, so today we'll be giving you an overview and a summary of what it contains. We'll talk about the background of Stormwater and Santa Rosa and how it's historically been managed, the goals of the plan, the findings in terms of what is the state of the system, what are the areas identified that most are at risk. And then we'll finish with some opportunities for funding and some next steps. So why do we need this plan? Well, as you may know, our city is 41.5 square miles. We have 100 miles of creek in the city. We have over 530 miles of both public and private storm drain pipes. and over 28,000 other storm drain features. But unlike water and sewer, we've never had a master plan for all of this infrastructure before or adequate funding. So without a master plan or even an adequate storm drain model that takes into account the full urban growth boundary, Our system, which you see on the map up here, these are the pipes, over time has been constructed in a really piecemeal way, and primarily by developers without long-range planning. And so we see a lot of undersized portions of the system that can't convey the amount of water that they're receiving. A few of the other issues we're seeing, the city over the last 50 years, 60 years, has really seen a change in the amount of impervious surface. In the last 60 years, our watersheds have transformed by 50% from agricultural into more urban environments. And this increases the amount of water that's running off from the landscape into the system And at the same time, as you know, we're seeing an intensity of storms change as we see atmospheric rivers. We have more intense storms. We have the same amount of water conveyed in a shorter amount of time or more water. And then I think one of the main One of the things we're struggling with is aging infrastructure. This map shows the age of the pipes in the city by colour. Pipes in red are over 60 years old, and the pipes in orange are over 40 years old. And because of funding and budget shortfalls, we're not repairing or replacing infrastructure at the rate that it's deteriorating. And then finally, there's actually a lot that we don't know about our system. In the GIS, actually, as an example, 98% of the pipes in GIS, it doesn't identify what material they are made of. Unlike water and sewer, we don't have CCTV equipment. We have to contract out for that. And so there's just these broad data gaps that have prevented us from managing the system in the way that we would like. And we're seeing more failing pipes, more flooding, more sinkholes. So as I just said, Stormwater does operate differently than Water and Sewer. I know you've seen their master plans, so I wanted to tee up how this one is a little bit different. They have dedicated funding that allows them to manage in a really proactive way. before it breaks. They have asset management plans that have been in place for decades and regularly get updated. But Stormwater is different. We have a small amount of dedicated funding, but not enough to maintain at this level. We operate primarily in a reactive mode. We wait until something breaks and then we fix it. Obviously, this is not ideal. So as the first master plan, this plan was developed a little bit differently. And it's more than just asset management, and it's not just a list of projects for approval. It's essentially a business plan for stormwater. And we needed to cover a broad range of issues that you see here, health, life and safety, flood management, ecological restoration, groundwater recharge, emergency preparation and response, functional roadways. This plan provides options for how the system could be managed to serve all these areas that you see. And then it's also a little bit different than what we see in some of the other master plans that it was designed to really serve as a public document to help internal staff and the public understand the state of the system and the needs and the risks of not addressing this. Many of the figures you see in here, I clipped straight from the plan so you can see the look, but it was really designed to be accessible to everybody from planners to members of the public. So with that, I will hand the mic over to Katie, and she can run through the plan structure and some of its findings.

Thank you.

Thank you, Claire, and thank you for allowing me to be here today. I'm really excited to present this plan to you. Our master plan was developed to assess the state of the city's infrastructure today, analyze risks, and then look at what it could be in the future and develop a true plan and identify those gaps from now and 20 years from now, and how can we go and fill those gaps. Understanding the city's vision, Woodard and Curran set out to develop a plan with four key categories in mind, or functions of the system. The condition, capacity, a piece of the compliance, and when we talk about compliance, the National Pollution Elimination Discharge System, or the NPDES permit, and then operation and maintenance. And I'll talk about each of these analyses that we did in a little bit more detail. The first big study that we did was a condition assessment. As Claire mentioned, the city hasn't historically had a chance to take a look at what's below the ground at their storm drain networks. And other than in the Roseland area where CCTV was conducted during the annexation, the rest of the city was largely unknown about the condition or the state of the infrastructure. So where do we start if we have 530 miles of pipe? We conducted a prioritization to try to highlight those high risk areas first. So we did a similar to how you would do a wastewater condition assessment where you look at the likelihood and consequence of failure. So pipes that are older in areas of high traffic or close to critical facilities like hospitals or schools. We were able to CCTV about 14 and a half miles of pipe. And of that 14 and 1 half miles of pipe, 4 and 1 half were found to be in critical condition, meaning they're either failing now or likely to fail soon in the future. And those are those red ones and orange ones that you're seeing here on the map. We also tried to disperse our condition assessment in different pockets throughout the city rather than one long stretch of CCTV. And that idea was to try to see if there were hot spots or locations we should focus. However, the investigation found that there are failing pipes in a lot of different areas within the community. The second large study was a capacity analysis. And so when we're talking about the capacity of the system, it's how much water can the storm drain safely convey from one point to another? In Santa Rosa's case, into the creeks. This is the first time the city has had a chance to take a look at a citywide capacity analysis for the storm drain network. So we developed a computer simulation model that mimics most of the city's storm drain networks. We modeled about 360 miles of pipe. And while it's unrealistic to eliminate all flooding within the city, you still would like it to meet a certain level of service and promote public safety. So the city's design criteria is the 10-year storm, and that's what we use to evaluate a lot of the capacity of the system. Once we developed our computer simulations, we also compared to observed conditions to make sure that our models were representing existing conditions. And this goes a long way, again, to engaging the public with the plan as well, to make sure that if they see flooding, then they know that we're looking for a way to solve that flooding as well. And we can have confidence in our models that when we do propose projects, that those will have the intended results in reducing flood risk. But this image here is the 10-year storm flooding on the right from the computer simulation on Wright Road and some flooding that observed after a storm event there. And so those conditions are matching. What we found from our analysis was that about 20% of the system modeled was flooding during the 10-year storm and not meeting that criteria. And what does that mean from a risk standpoint? Well, if the pipes aren't either operating because of condition or don't have enough capacity, then we are seeing flooding during larger storm events. This was just last year, February 4th, 2025. The Santa Rosa Medical Center had to evacuate during an atmospheric river storm. The fire department had to come out with their swift rescue team to escort patients out in bands using their boats. So while it's not always on the forefront of our minds because it's either in drought conditions or smaller rain events, when these do come, they are catastrophic and they can pose a risk to public safety. The third piece of our project was looking at a piece of the NPDES compliance. And what we looked at was the low impact development features. That's what we call them in our plan. Another term for that is the best management practices or BMPs. These are small stormwater features that collect runoff from impervious areas. They're usually for small storm events intended to capture and treat runoff either through infiltration or other methods before it discharges into the creek. And these are important not only for water quality standpoint, cleaning our creeks, but also because they're a part of the permit regulations. And here at City Hall, there's a few bioretention swales. Those are kind of what we're talking about when we talk about LID features. Since about 2012, the city has seen a drastic increase in these features, and they do require maintenance to be able to operate to their functions. The city right now owns about 135, but there are 1,400 within the city itself. While those others are privately owned and maintained, the city does have to make sure that they are meeting their compliance requirements. So that does have an administrative burden for them. We found that about $10,000 per year is spent on LID feature maintenance, but based off of the county's LID manual recommendations and proprietary recommendations for maintaining these features, we would estimate that it would actually cost about $600,000 a year to maintain this number of features. if following those regulations. And with increased development, that's only going to increase the number of features, estimating over 3,000 by 2045 and about 300 for a city-owned, and then proportionally increasing that level of cost for maintaining and renewing these features over time. And finally, the fourth piece that we looked into is operation and maintenance, not only operating and maintenance of the system itself, but managing the program too. So the activities that the O&M team and that goes into the O&M is cleaning, emergency management and maintenance, as well as the engineering admin, and then we just spoke a little bit of piece of the NPDES compliance, but there's a lot more that goes into meeting those regulations. The way we looked at operation and maintenance was one to interview city staff and figure out, you know, what activities are they able to complete. And historically, the city has dedicated quite a bit of, has dedicated staff that has been doing creeks and maintenance. However, they've been deferred sometimes and so unable to complete. meet the operation and maintenance and cleaning of the systems and what that does is leave it for more risk at one data gaps and two potentially if there's pipes are clogged or something is broken and we aren't aware of it then that can cause that flooding concern we investigating the budget compared to other utilities that the city has In 2023 and 2024, stormwater, including NPDES compliance, spend about $7,200 per mile for storm drain maintenance. If we took out the NPDES compliance piece, that's actually down on average to $3,000 to $4,000 a mile per year. versus the wastewater team has spent about $19,700 per mile on 2023-2024 for their maintenance activities. And that's excluding lift stations, so it's only items that are analogous to the gravity system or the stormwater system. And that's just to show that there is a funding gap in between there, that stormwater has just been unable to maintain and manage the subsurface system. But it's not all bad. There is a plan put in place to see where can we take the storm drain from today into tomorrow? And what do we want for each of these items? What goals can we achieve? And so we've put together some management recommendations along with specific projects and implementation plans for each of these categories. So from a condition standpoint, looking forward to developing a proactive program rather than reactive and really turning the storm drain into an asset management program. So what does that look like as far as doing regular inspections so that we can internally do repairs and replace storm drain assets as they age out or before they fail? From a capacity standpoint, expanding on the existing conditions risk assessment, And implementing future capital projects from a capacity standpoint. And then for compliance, having the staff and equipment needed to maintain the system. As well as coming up with ideas to maybe reduce that future burden on LID features. So looking at putting in regional projects rather than individual ones for developments. And then from an operation and maintenance standpoint, putting together a program that has the appropriate staff and equipment to clean storm drains, manage the creeks, and conduct minor repairs and maintenance. And all of these were used to inform the funding that we'll talk about in a minute. And some more specific management recommendations under each of those categories, I mentioned an inspection or CCTV program. Continuing to fill those data gaps that Claire mentioned, and implementing some capital projects and continuing the, I mentioned the feasibility studies, those large-scale LID projects, and continually maintaining this plan and the model so that as developments come in, new data is included, that we can use the tools that have been developed as part of this plan continuously. So all of these things do cost money. And for each of these proposed improvements, we've associated a cost estimate with that. And then we took all that worked with Bartle Wells and Associates and Claire and her team to develop a financial analysis looking at what is being spent today, what are the funding needs in order to meet the goals of the plan, And then finally, how do we close that gap? So first, taking a look at what the stormwater funding and expenses has historically been. Over the last five years, the city spent about two to four million dollars annually on stormwater expenses. That comes from a number of different sources, but I do want to highlight that it is reliant upon the general fund and the gas tax allocations. And if you think about that from a cost perspective, one capital project can cost three million dollars. And on the right there is a wheel that shows generally what the expenses have gone to, pretty much equally between O&M, projects, permitting, and engineering and administration. Next, the city has to decide on what level of service they want to provide. Like this curve here, this is called a Nessie curve, and it's called such that because it looks like the Loch Ness monster neck, so it curves over. The bottom axis there is time, or years, and then on the y-axis is ways of different, looking at how the length of pipe or the percentage of pipe that's reached its useful life. So with different levels of investment, how much at risk is the city for failure of storm drain pipes? The blue there is the current level of funding. So if we continue on the current level of funding, 100% of the pipes will have reached their useful life by 2075, 2080. Proportional to sewer funding, that's about $10 million annually. that's a little bit lower than current funding. So we get 60% or so in 2060. That bump up there is because a lot of the system we assumed was built in the 80s during the development boom at that time. And then finally in orange is the no backlog scenario. So over the next couple of years, next few years investing $9 million a year to address those high risk pipes that we saw first in the condition assessment, and then increasing to 24 million to handle that development boom from the 80s. And that really gets us down to the lowest risk, replacing pipes before they age out of their useful life. So what does that look like from a cost perspective and the difference there? You can see in 2027, 2028, based off of the recommended capital funding expenses, which include condition assessment and replacing pipes based off of condition, capacity analyses and projects, and then regional LID projects. The operating expenses are O&M and staffing for those. The yellow line there is the current level of funding, and then the gray and blue there is the expenses. So you can see from this, there's about an $18 million gap right there in 27 and 28. And so part of the plan includes recommended funding options or alternatives in order to meet that funding gap. The plan separates them out into voter required approval and non-voter required approval. But in order to sustainably and continue this program, we really need to find a sustainable and reliable funding source. And that most likely comes through a property-related charge or some kind of tax or assessment fee. Grants are great, but they are unreliable year to year. And they can provide a lot of benefit for the city. And Santa Rosa has done a great job of finding grants for the community. But again, it's kind of not a reliable source. And so what can a potential assessment fee look like? Currently the city does have a fee that's about an average annual charge of $42.46 per parcel, which brings in about 3.2 million, and the stormwater team receives a portion of that each year. An additional annual charge of $240 a year or monthly equivalent of $20 per parcel reaches that funding gap of $18.1 million. Now, it's not necessarily recommending that we go that far, but these are just the ideas of what it could look like in the future. Now, I'll let Claire talk about the next steps.

Thanks, Katie. So I think we see that the plan demonstrates qualitatively and quantitatively that City of Santa Rosa storm drain infrastructure isn't operating at the level of service that we would like for it to be. We are experiencing failures that cause damages to roads and other infrastructure, and our current level of funding is inadequate to fix this. This master plan, as we said at the beginning, it's really the first step in shifting our stormwater management to a more proactive model. shifting it to something much more similar to water and sewer. And this plan is really meant to provide that path forward that explores various options that we will be coming back to and working through the budgeting process and exploring to see which path we want to go down. I included some of the next steps, some of these Katie has mentioned, but these are some of the things I anticipate coming back to you for looking at establishing a more robust asset management program really engaging in good community engagement to make sure the public understands the value of a good storm drain system and the risks of not funding one. Securing sustainable funding is clearly top priority, among top priorities in my mind. implementing some of the programmatic recommendations that it does highlight. The plan highlights the seven areas in the city that have the highest risk currently for flooding and recommends feasibility studies for those, advancing some of those priority projects, and then really coordinating across the city and teams and departments. I think the solution to this is gonna involve a lot of folks, groups like water resources planning, so we can look at groundwater recharge, or stormwater capture, sorry, talking to parks about large-scale LID features, working downtown with planning to better integrate our models into the drainage review process that they do for developments and whatnot. So there's a lot of opportunities to collaborate here. And then finally, You know, again, we understand that the system is relatively invisible to the public, but with huge impacts if it doesn't function properly. As Director Burke said at the beginning, this problem is not unique to Santa Rosa. It is a problem statewide. It is a problem countrywide. And I think with this master plan, we're really trying to take a leadership role in addressing this issue in the state of California and advancing the needs of stormwater throughout the state. Yes, we do need a significant amount of funding to fix the system, but I would also say the city is already a leader in Creek and restoration management, and I know that our team really feels that through implementation of this plan that we can and will do the same for stormwater infrastructure. So I wanted to leave you with a few pics of some recent winds. These are stormwater problems that got fixed just last week, actually. On the left is Yalupa Drive, where we had the joints of two sections of pipe that had become very separated. And then on the right is a storm drain inlet on Lance Drive. And finally, this project included a $500,000 grant from the California State Department of Housing and Community Services, which requires a resolution accepting the plan. So I wanted to finish with by giving this recommendation. It is recommended by the Water Department that the board, by resolution, accepts the storm drain master plan. Thank you so much for listening to this presentation, and Katie and I are happy to answer any questions you may have.

Thank you very much. We know that this has been a tremendous amount of work for you and your department and the consultants and it's nice to see the actual document and know that we're headed in the right direction and we're probably gonna be one of the leaders in the state with regards to having a master plan for storm drains. So thank you again for all your hard work. Board Member questions or comments? Board Member DeWitt.

Yes, congratulations on coming forward with this, and I appreciate your fortitude. One of the difficulties we face is the City of Santa Rosa is in a budget deficit for the rest of the decade. you'll be needing water money, basically. So I'm hoping when you do your community outreach that it's, the bureaucratic term is always robust. So I want it to be really robust and that you actually involve the community in ways in which they can help you perhaps raise some of the funds for these things that are needed. I really am appreciative of the efforts for the stormwater, replacement of the things you know that are broken. And if you can show that first and foremost, then people will be more willing to step up, especially in those places where you already see the flooding. The west side of town, Lance Road, excuse me, it's Lance Drive and Jennings Avenue. Those are beat up roads. They're not going to be fixed for a while. But if you get piping changes, then they get new pavement. That's a positive. That's going to happen on McMinn Avenue, I've been told. So I'm very interested in speaking with you more in the future as you get ready to go out. Can I get permission to speak with these staff members outside of the meeting, please? Thank you kindly. And the same with Sean. Talk with you more about the McMinn Avenue stormwater replacement. I'm very, very glad you're doing this. I'm very supportive and I really think that it's important that you have a really good community outreach to raise that money because people aren't gonna know that this is gonna be probably the best investment for their neighborhood, and it's gonna increase their property values if they're not flood-prone, things of that nature. So I'll be supportive in all ways, shapes, and forms. Looking forward to getting all the nice hardbound copies, though, because a lot of folks out in our neighborhoods, they're still boomers, they're not Zoomers, they don't do a lot of stuff online. They like to see the actual color presentation. I love when you guys bring this kind of stuff. Thank you kindly for all your hard work.

Thank you, other Board Member questions or comments? Board Member Wright?

Yeah, thank you for the presentation and I am very happy to see this document in place and seeing it, I mean, all the data is there and it's the beginning of the process, I guess, because it'll get updated next five years and things like that, we'll have something to build on. I just was thinking, When I first came to work for the city in the 80s, when we went and did a project, we didn't have storm drain maps. We didn't even map the storm drain, you had to go to find a pipe, you sent a survey crew out, maybe they would find it, or maybe you would find it when you're digging up something, but that's how we found our pipes. And it wasn't until I think the 90s or mid 90s that we actually developed maps. I remember having lots of interns going through all our record plans and developing the maps. So certainly this is a big improvement over that. But what is troubling is that was, It was 40 or 50 years ago. And so I'm a little disappointed in general at the slow rate of progression that we've gone through with stormwater in general. But I'm very happy to see this and hopefully this will give us a foothold and for better opportunities for grants and things like that. But thank you very much for your hard work. I very much appreciate it. Board Member DeWitt.

Yes, thank you. Based on Mr. Wright's comments just now, the work of the city, operations and maintenance people, you've pointed out you're going to need more. And the city is going to be cutting staff. So I think it's going to be very important that you find a way to impress upon the various city council members that the staff is needed to get this done, and they shouldn't be cutting the funds from you. It should be in other areas. This will be a political sausage-making adventure I won't be invited to, but please, you guys know I'm supportive of you getting more employees, making sure you can do all the replacement of the pipes that you need to do, and basically do like the fire department and the police department do. Basically say the sky's falling. All right, I mean, they come down here and they're like, yeah, man, everything's gonna fall apart if we don't get this money. You folks need to do the same thing in a polite manner, of course, and never reference me. Thank you kindly.

If I could add to that, I appreciate that comment and something that we forgot to mention in the presentation, but that I do think is important to add. You may have noticed in our current funding sources, There's about a million and a half dollars a year from the general fund. And I think that one of our desires, given the vulnerability of those funds and the cuts that we're seeing now, and you're referencing, remember, DeWitt, is if we could get adequate stormwater resources from elsewhere, We could give back that general funding that allows it to go to other departments and then we get up a fully funded stormwater system I think we would be more resilient and we would be less vulnerable to general funding cuts So I agree completely and I think that's something that we would like to explore as part of this process. I

Based on your comments just now, is there a way to get more funding from agricultural uses of our water? I believe we should get more of the water going to ag users. The geysers guys, they can get by. They're doing good stuff. So there's ag people out there that need more water probably in the future. Maybe you can look into how we can have the ag community be buying more of our recycled water and get some revenue that helps, thank you.

Other board member? Yes, board member Battenfort.

Thank you very much. I'm curious if you have any soft timelines on when you're hoping to go and start to discuss with the community. I know it's planned and there's a lot of steps ahead, but can you share just a little bit of just kind of what you're envisioning so far?

Yeah. It's complicated I think in terms of, there's a number of different actions that I see as next actions for this plan. The plan sets up a baseline. We have this analysis. There's a lot of strategies for moving forward. Digging into funding and the public, I think that we recognize that we will need to be sensitive with other measures that the city is pursuing right now in terms of the general fund. um the timing i think you know isn't correct to immediately go out and try to get this on top of other potential funding measures that the city is looking for so i see those discussions happening behind the scenes and internally now and deciding when the timing will be right for a public campaign and kind of gathering everything um behind the scenes first In the meantime, there's a lot that we can't start doing with this plan now. The storm water, the storm drain model, we can use, we're working with PED to get them to incorporate that into their drainage reviews. As I mentioned before, we do have evaluations of the pipes, as Katie said, level of, I always wanna say risk of failure, and it's not that, consequence of failure and... Likelihood and failure. So as we're working with our asset management team in water, whenever Water and Tour is doing a project, they reach out and say, does stormwater come along? And now we have better data to know where to do that. And then as we're doing these things, then we'll be having more discussions about funding. But I hope for it to happen soon, because as you saw also in the histograms that Katie presented, We need it now.

Thank you, that helps. The city of Santa Rosa aside, locally, several of our jurisdictions, one, it's a tough time. It's kind of always a tough time, but several jurisdictions are either at their cap, and I know that that's another revenue source and another revenue line, but I just think, generally speaking, it's by no means not a political thing to be moving forward. And so I think it's worthwhile depending on the design and whatnot. I am always a fan and recommend in stakeholder engagement in particular, to not be afraid to actually talk to the people who would pay the tax in this case, in particular, the people that own the property. because it's no small feat, but public infrastructure is really important in how we make that case. I think there's a lot of good opportunity in it, and there can be some missed opportunities in it as well. So I'll be interested to see how this moves forward. Thank you.

Any other board member questions or comments? All right, we'll open it up for public comment on item 8.2. If you wish to make a public comment, please move to the podium. Seeing no one rise, I will entertain a motion on item 8.2. We have a resolution.

I'll move that we accept the storm drain master plan.

We have a motion and a second to accept it. Motion by Board Member Wright, seconded by Board Member DeWitt. May we have a roll call vote, please?

Board Member Wright.

Aye.

Board Member Meisler. Aye. Board Member DeWitt.

Yes.

Board Member Badenfort. Aye. And Chair Galvin.

Aye.

Let the record reflect that resolution passes unanimously with Vice Chair Arnone absent.

Thank you again for the presentation and all the hard work. Item number nine is public comments on non-agenda matters. If you wish to make a comment on a non-agenda matter, please move to the podium. I see no one moved to the podium. Mr. Mayor, did you have something to say?

Is the mic on? Hello, my name is Mark Stapp, resident of Santa Rosa. I just wanted to congratulate Ms. Badenfort on her new home. over in District Two, we're glad to have her over there. Thank you.

Any other public comments? Very good. We have no referrals, we have no written communications, we have no subcommittee reports. Do we have any board member reports?

Yes. Excuse me. School is out now, and I was walking down Burbank Avenue where I do volunteer work at the Roseland Creek Park and at the Roseland Creek School District, and a young man was walking down the street. I asked him about something, and he said he goes out there on his own and volunteers to help along the creek also. And I really think one of the better ways we can get some public buy-in on the needs that we have about this stuff is having the teenagers learn about it also. And the Creeks stewardship program during the summer is a good time to actually get more of these youngsters involved. So I'll be talking with somebody from the team to try to enlist more Roseland kids specifically. There is still water in Roseland Creek right now, and we're digging on it. Although it's something I should come and talk with you about in person. Thank you kindly.

Any other board member reports? We'll open it up now to public comment on item number 13. If you wish to make a public comment, please move to the podium. Seeing no one rise, that'll take care of the board member reports. Director's report, Director Burke.

Thank you, Chair Galvin and members of the board. A couple items. One, I wanted to let the board know that we will be canceling the July 2nd board meeting. We don't have any pressing items, and with schedules, we wanted to go ahead and cancel that meeting. Second, I wanted to let the board know something we're very excited about. On June 8th, we launched our inaugural Water Academy in partnership with the Water Now Alliance and River Network. We've collaborated with Latino service providers to produce a six-session series, each highlighting a different water division and related career pathways. The program aims to build trust and strengthen connections between participants, local water systems, and community resources. And we are hoping that through this experience, participants will be empowered to become ambassadors, leader, and future advocates for water sustainability and environmental stewardship. So as I mentioned, this is our very first. We are hoping that we can start doing this on an annual basis, and this first class is contains eight participants from the Latino Service Providers Youth Promotores Program. So more to come and we will update the board as this finishes and I was also thinking perhaps we might see if we can recognize the graduates at the board in a future meeting. So we'll see if we can do that. I don't know if that's possible. And then last, I had another good news item to share. So I think we're trying to pull up a picture or so. So there we go. At first glance, you might notice that this seems to be a fire hydrant knockdown, but it is not. On Monday, June 15th, around 3 p.m., while performing routine valve turning operations on a six-inch gate valve on Corby Avenue, staff returned the valve to the fully open position, removed the valve key, and the stem came with it. And so Geyser happened. I just want to recognize how great your operations team is. They did really quick thinking and rapidly shut down and isolated the valve. They called our general construction crew out to prepare to make repairs. And then as they were out there, they discovered that the repair was not possible, and they quickly shifted to replace the entire valve. And as I mentioned, that happened at three, and by 6.15, the valve had been replaced, water was flushed, and we were back in service. So again, I just wanna recognize the incredible job of the operations team. I know they're fantastic and I think you know they're fantastic and every once in a while it's great to show off the amazing work that they do. So that is my report and I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you. Any questions or comments for the director's report? Yes, board member DeWitt.

Yes, thank you, director. It was very nice to hear of that good work on Corby Avenue. Some people had let me know about it. And it's really encouraging that you're also having this water academy and getting some people from the Los Pomodoros community of the Latino service providers. This is a really good thing. The word spreads quickly and we'll get more young people involved. The man I talked about a moment ago was named Diego and he was near the creeks. So thank you so much for all that you're doing. Can we visit any of the Water Academy sessions?

We'll look to bring the students here if we can.

Good fun, thanks. Any other questions or comments? We'll open it up now for public comment on item 14, the director's report. Seeing no one rise, that'll take care of the director's report. Item 15.1 is a closed session. I'll ask Assistant City Attorney

Sorry. Thank you, Chair Goffin, members of the board. We have one closed session item on the agenda today, item 15.1, conference with legal counsel, anticipated litigation, initiation of litigation pursuant to paragraph four of subdivision D of section 54956.9, one potential case.

Thank you, City Attorney Hofstadter. Before heading upstairs, we'll open it up for public comment on item number 15.1. Seeing no one rise, we will be in recess and we'll reconvene down here once we've completed the closed session. All right, I will reconvene the meeting of the Board of Public Utilities after completing our closed session. If we may have a roll call, please.

Board Member Wright.

Here.

Board Member Meisler. Here. Board Member DeWitt. Here. Board Member Badenfort.

Here.

Vice Chair Arnone. Chair Galvin.

Here.

Let the record reflect that all board members are present with the exception of Vice Chair Arnone.

Thank you. I'll ask now Assistant City Attorney Hofstadter to report out on our closed session.

Thank you, Chair Govan. There was no reportable action taken in closed session. Thank you.

We'll now open it up for public comment on item number 17. If you wish to make a comment, please move to the podium. Seeing no live bodies, I think we're safe. So we will go ahead and close the meeting. We are adjourned, and we are not meeting on July 2nd, so we'll see you on the 16th. Thank you. Have a good Fourth of July, everyone.