City Council - workshop

Good morning I'd like to call this meeting to order. Miss what would you please call the roll?

Mayor Paulette Guajardo? Present. Council members Roland Barrera?

Here.

Sylvia Campos? Here. Eric Cantu? He's absent. Gil Hernandez?

Here.

Kaylin Paxson? He's absent. Everett Roy?

Here.

Mark Scott? Here. Carolyn Vaughn? Okay. Miss Vaughn is here. I think she just stepped up in the back. City manager Peter Zanoni?

Present.

City attorney Miles Risley?

Here.

Mayor and council, a quorum of the council, and the required charter officers are present to conduct the meeting.

Thank you, miss Huerta. So this morning, we are going to have a presentation and discussion regarding the city council approved drought contingency plan to include policies that address water supply, water availability, demand conditions, and drought stages. Excuse me. What we're going to do, if you'll go to your workshop agenda, is we're gonna go through the FERT without questions. We're gonna go through the presentation of drought contingency plan history and overview.

The second bullet would be surcharges. The third one would be baseline usage allocations and curtailment. So after that bullet, then we'll do question and answer, and and each council member will have two terms to speak at five minutes, time. So, mister Winkelman, please start your presentation.

Thank you, mayor and council. Nick Winkelman, chief operating officer, Corpus Christi Water. Thank you for the opportunity to be here to present this, important and critical subject. Presenting today will be myself. We will have Michael Dice, interim assistant city manager, presenting.

One slide as well. And then also in support, we have Jeff Stovall and Michael Pinckney. They are with Corollo Engineers. They are heavily involved in our dashboard modeling and supporting our efforts in establishing baseline amounts for each of our customer classes. Before I get into the presentation, I do want to just take a moment and thank the Citi team and CCW for all the hard work that they've done throughout this last year.

The team, staff continues to work six to seven days a week. Tremendous work is being done on our new water supply projects, and certainly many city departments were involved in this presentation as well. With that, so we thank all of them. Let's go ahead and get started.

Today

we'll talk about a little bit of history on the drought contingency plan. We will review surcharges, baseline usage determination, allocations. Then we will go into new water meter connections. We will briefly discuss car washing and swimming pools, and we will discuss, as well as some updates to the definitions in the drought contingency plan, and we will conclude with next steps. The history of the drought contingency plan, we would like to point out Corpus Christi, our city, was the first city in Texas to develop a water conservation and drought contingency plan as a combined policy that was done in 1986.

In 2013, our council decided to separate these two plans into two distinct documents, of course, one being the water conservation plan and one being the drought contingency plan. This drought contingency plan was last updated and approved by council on 03/18/2025, so just a little over a year ago. The overview and the purpose of this plan, it's a business tool for managing operations and water supplies in drought situations. The plan absolutely calls for minimizing the use of nonessential water, during drought conditions. It serves as a framework to manage times and water supplies during a water emergency, and It also defines triggering criteria for the initiation and termination of drought stages.

This plan applies to all customers of CCW and all customer classes. Those customer classes are residential, commercial, wholesale, and large volume users. There's a lot of information in the drought contingency plan. The next two slides is certainly just an overview of the table of contents, so that we can just refresh our memory, what's included in there. Overall it's a small document, but it contains quite a bit of information, and certainly quite a bit of important information.

A little bit of history. So stage one, drought restrictions stage one was enacted 06/14/2022. Stage two drought restrictions, 03/12/2024. Stage three was enacted 12/16/2024. The next step would be the date of a level one water emergency.

If you recall a couple of weeks ago at council, I submitted a number of different dashboard scenarios to help us understand when the date of level one water emergency might take effect. Just as a reminder, level one water emergency is when we are projected to be one hundred and eighty days away from supply not meeting demand. Back to those scenarios. As you know, we had a number of different scenarios, and the date of the level one water emergency had a wide range. The day after we presented those scenarios, we certainly got some good news from LNRA managing Lake Texana and also from the state regarding our Ben and Banks permit for the Western Wellfield.

Information has changed in those scenarios. We are working with our modeler, Corollo Engineers, to update the scenarios and provide this body an update to that in April. One of the reasons why is we wanna determine and see how the water from the Western Well Field, how the supply and the production is affected or not affected by the operation protocol as determined by TCQ. When you think about the drought contingency plan, we need a team to implement that, to work with our community, to work with our stakeholders, to work with areas both within the city and outside the city. The leaders of this implementation team are, of course, Peter Zanoni, our city manager, chief Wade, the chief of our fire department, and Jace Johnson, our emergency management coordinator, as well as myself, the chief operating officer of CCW.

Who are our stakeholders? Who are our critical facilities? So we've had a number of stakeholder meetings, but the things that we of course we all think about are hospitals and healthcare, our schools, both higher education, and also grade schools and middle schools and private schools, Catholic schools. And then we also have our commercial users, our large volume users, and we shouldn't forget our wholesale users either. We'll go into detail on each of those customer classes, but all of those customers of CCW are critical.

They're all critical stakeholders into dealing with this situation. What the team has done is we continue to reach out to them, to meet with them, to help answer questions, and we're committed to continue doing so, so that they understand the efforts the city is taking to not enter in a level one water emergency, but also to ensure that we are prepared if the city does enter into a level one water emergency. And again, it's important to note, level one water emergency is when we are projected to be one hundred and eighty days from supply not meeting demand. That doesn't mean at the date of level one water emergency that supply doesn't meet demand. It means we are projected to be one hundred and eighty days away from that.

The plan, the drought contingency plan, calls for the actions to take effect at the date of the level one water emergency. With the city manager's recommendation, council shall approve the applicable provisions of the DCP, and I've got a slide on that later to go through the decisions that this council will be asked to make and decide. I'll probably say it a couple times in this presentation. If we do enter a level one water emergency, the goal is to ensure that we always have enough supply to meet demand. So the actions taken during a level one water emergency are all meant to ensure that we always have enough supply to meet demand.

Essentially, the efforts taken are meant to push back that one hundred and eighty day mark until we bring on new water supplies, until reservoirs refill, until we have more availability for water. Some of the key terms that we talk about quite a bit, and I just wanna take a minute and do my best to explain them. So baseline usage, when you talk about allocation, curtailment percentages, we need to understand what the baseline of each of our customer classes are, because then we know how much we can cut back from that baseline. Baseline is the determined water usage of each customer class. The determination of that is meant to establish the allocation.

Curtailment is the required water reduction from that baseline. So when you think about curtailment, think about And it says it in the drought contingency plan, curtailment, the minimum amount is 5% from your baseline. Of course it can be more, but we wouldn't do anything less than 5%. So if you have established baseline and the curtailment is 5%, then the goal is to utilize 5% less water from that baseline. That amount then results in what we call an allocation.

So if you have your baseline, you deduct your curtailment amount, and you end up with your allocation. The allocation is simply put, that is the amount of water that each customer has been given the opportunity to utilize. Under level one water emergency, of course the goal is, I said I'd say it a couple of times, but it's to reduce that demand curve so our supply always meets our demand. There's been a lot of efforts that CCW and city staff are doing. So a couple of things.

We're bringing on new water supplies. That helps. But we're also working to reduce that demand curve in terms of effluent reuse. Those are items that will reduce our demand curve. Again, the goal is to always have enough supply to meet demand. We are working hard to increase communication, working with Chief Wade and his staff. We're establishing emergency contact numbers. We're understanding how each of these stakeholders, the measures they're taking, and what the pain points will be in their operation. I like to tell, we had a great conversation with the schools and the ISDs the other day. I don't know how to manage a school.

It was great to understand what key points are important for them in managing school operations. Level one does increase mandatory conservation measures. We will go over that later in the presentation. Again, goal is to reduce the total water demand, and then curtailment percentages will be established. Staff working with our professional consultants will establish those percentages, and then those will be brought back under the city manager's recommendation to this council for approval.

And then all of that allows us to implement the true water allocations. The required city council actions are the acknowledgment of the level one water emergency, authorizing the customer class baselines, and the review of the curtailment percentages. Optional measures that can be taken by city council would be adopting surcharges as established in the drought contingency plan. Council could implement service connection moratoriums. We a detailed slide on that, so we will go over that.

And council can also expand restrictions if needed. So when we talk about the drought contingency plan, what are the measures that immediately go into effect? Irrigation of all landscapes landscaped areas is absolutely prohibited. And again, I'd like to point out this is just taken verbatim from the approved route contingency plan. The use of water to wash any motor vehicle, motorbike, boat, trailer, or other vehicle is absolutely prohibited, and associated uses of water not related to business processes which are discretionary, such as equipment washing shall be deferred until the water emergency has been terminated.

This is taken from page 16 of the drought contingency plan. One of the items that this council may approve are surcharges. Surcharges are a temporary temporary rate to help manage the supply in times of drought. They are an economic incentive for people to utilize less less water and to decrease that total demand. They are meant to encourage further conservation behavior, and the other effect of surcharges is they do offset revenue loss from reduced water usage as well.

The surcharges that are established in the drought contingency plan, again, this is is taken directly from the plan. For a residential customer, the surcharge would be $4 per thousand gallons over 7,000 gallons a month. So if a residential customer utilized 8,000 gallons, they would see an additional $4 per month on their bill. So it's not $4 for the first 7,000 gallons, it's an additional $4 for water above and be per thousand gallons above the 7,000 gallons. Commercial customers are the same way.

It's an additional $4 per thousand gallons over 55,000 gallons per month. And again, these totals are identified in the drought contingency plan. Large volume users that are nonexempt, they would pay an additional $12 per thousand gallons over 12,800,000 gallons per month. Wholesale customers is an additional $4 per thousand gallons, over 25% of the twelve month average prior to March 2024. This is how the plan is laid out in the current drought contingency plan.

I mentioned the drought surcharge exemption fee in the previous slide. We do have a number of customers who participate in the drought surcharge exemption fee. Participating in that plan means that those customers provide funds to the city to support water supply projects. Those funds are provided when we are in drought and when we are not in drought. What those payments allow is for them to be exempt from surcharges.

So a level one water emergency, those paying into the drought surcharge exemption fee would be exempt from surcharges. However, I wanna clearly note this does not exempt them from curtailment measures at all. The drought surcharge exemption fee is only about surcharges. So if we go into curtailment and allocations, that fee does not exempt any customer class from those allocations. Now I'd like to just talk to baselines a little bit.

Our residential customers, and we have approximately 90,000 residential customers within the city of Corpus Christi. This does not include residential customers that are customers of our wholesale providers. This includes direct residential customers of Corpus Christi Water. Working with the team, the recommendation is for a baseline amount for residential customers to be 7,000 gallons a month. That is consistent with the surcharge total as well.

This includes all meter sizes for all residential customers. Some residential customers may have a threefour inches meter, some may have a one inch meter. This includes all meter sizes. What you can see, the graph on the right, is very telling. It's telling, but we all know it.

The residential customers have continued to reduce their usage. We can certainly see it. The dotted orange line at the top is at 7,000 gallons per month. And then we have different curtailment percentages on the graph. The green line is a reduction of 10%, the blue is 20%, and then the purple is 30%.

As you can see, our residential customer class has certainly done their job over the last couple of years since our drought restrictions been in effect. Talk about commercial, our commercial customers. And CCW has 8,931 commercial customers. One thing to note about our commercial customers is the amount of water they utilize varies depending upon their business. You could have a retail business that uses small amounts of water.

You could have a different type of business, like a Walmart or a large store that may use more water. Restaurants use more water, bakeries and such. The baseline for commercial class will be established per meter size because of those variances in usage. In other words, unlike residential, where we can give one number, we recognize that commercial businesses are all different, so we're going to establish a baseline on their meter size. The graph shown on the right is an example.

It's an example of a commercial customer that has a threefour inches meter. Oh, and the other point, and excuse me, I didn't wanna go too fast, but the other point is we also recognize there's seasonality with commercial businesses as well. Certainly water usage change, We all know that from the dashboard. Our high usages for the entire system is in the summer. Typically in the winter, we have lower usages.

So we want to recognize that with our commercial businesses, so we've built in seasonality. So let's go through the example on the right. Again, this is a threefour inches meter size. The dotted orange line is what would be the baseline. The black line, just like residential, that's billed usage.

So you can see where commercial businesses have also decreased their usage. And again, this is just for threefour inches meters. That's the one example we have here. The green line would be a 10% curtailment, the blue is 20%, and the purple would be 30% curtailment. One thing to note, those steps might not be exact.

For instance, the drought contingency plan calls for a minimum of 5% if we do curtail. Doesn't mean we wouldn't do 15. I've got examples for ten, twenty, and 30, but working with our modelers to ensure that we have enough water to meet demand, it may be 18%. It might be 21. I don't want us to think that these examples shown would be the only curtailment percentages that might be recommended.

Large volume users. So this is a complicated class. The graph on the right is the aggregate of the large volume user class. So this is all of them combined. Again, we recognize, just like the commercial businesses, that the large volume users have seasonality in their businesses.

So we're working to set up seasonal allocations. One thing that I wanna make sure I clarify, and same with commercial as well, that we will look at the usage from 'twenty two to 'twenty four. Over those months, would withdraw the lowest month in that period, and essentially come up with two years' worth of data to establish baseline. In other words, the goal is to eliminate the anomalies and to provide a clear direction for their baseline data. As you can understand, there's variance in our large volume users.

So with those users, we will develop individual baselines for each of them so that we can track them properly. So when you look at commercial customers, there's 8,931 large volume users, there's 23 total. So that includes those in the drought surcharge exemption fee and the ones not in the drought surcharge exemption fee. What we wanna do and what we have done is set up baselines for each of those customer classes. All of you know that's a huge volume of water.

We've got to track that very carefully. You can see, again, the same format on the graph. We've got 10% curtailment shown, 20% curtailment shown, and 30% curtailment shown. Another major customer class of Corpus Christi Water is wholesale users. Slide,

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metric half is taken directly from the drought contingency plan. When we think about our wholesale customers, there's 10 of them total. Those include Nueces County, WCID number four, which is in Port Aransas, Violet Water Service Corporation, San Pat Municipal Water District, South Texas Water Authority, Alice, Mathis, and Beeville as well. Enforcement is also clearly defined in the drought contingency plan. Violation under this article is a class c misdemeanor.

Any person who violates any provision of this article shall be subject to a fine of not more than $500 per violation per day. A second conviction results in authorization to discontinue service for at least one billing cycle. Again, wanna clarify, it provides for authorization to do that. It doesn't say it's mandatory to do it. This is what is established in the drought contingency plan.

The process, if someone has issued a citation, think about we issue citations for illegal irrigation today, citation is issued, they go to court, they present the facts, and the court, the judge makes a decision on how to proceed. There are requests for exemptions as outlined in the drought contingency plan. Per the plan, the application is to be submitted to CCW, and the applicant is to provide as much supporting information as possible to clearly state their situation. The determination is based on an emergency condition adversely affecting public health, sanitation, fire protection for the public or person requesting such a variance. Those exemptions can be submitted, and CCW would then review for a determination.

That brings us to our stopping point for, as the mayor said, for questions before we move on to the second half of the presentation.

Thank you, Nick. And we're gonna do two opportunities for those who didn't or weren't here. Two opportunities each council member at five minutes per opportunity, if you will. So questions? Councilman Hernandez.

Okay. Maybe it was my misunderstanding, but I thought the drought exemption surcharge or dry exemption fee was only through stage three, did not include anything to do with stage four, what we're calling water emergency now. Is that incorrect?

That question has come up quite a bit. We've had our legal staff look at it, and the determination is that the drought surcharge exemption fee is applicable during level one water emergency.

So were we misinformed or misled the entire time as a council that it was only through stage three?

I I can't answer that. I know that, personally, since I've been COO, we've even the last meeting or so, we've talked about that it is still applicable during, level one water emergency. Previously, I I can't speak to that councilman.

Okay.

Well We we've gotten in Let me just say department.

Let me just say, I was under the impression that it only applied through stage three

Understood.

Not through water emergency. Miles, can you kind of speak to this?

This what's your what's your question, councilman?

Okay. So I was under the impression that the water drought exemptions fee was only through stage three, not through water emergency. Is that was that miss is that something that was intentionally lip done to mislead counsel, or was that some or was that just an oversight? I we

I never said that to you, councilman.

Okay. I'm not saying you said that. I'm just saying this this was the understanding that the the drought exemption surcharge or I don't wanna call it surcharge. The drought exemption fee was only through stage three. It did not apply to water emergency.

I'd have to look at the communication by which you get that understanding from. I I I know that it's not been our communication.

Councilman, we we looked at the this came up yesterday it's come up before. And yesterday, in one one of our weekly meet or biweekly meetings with the large volume users, it came up again. So in the in the drought contingency plan, there's no there's no language in here that would lead one to believe that. So it have been from people talking about

What was the original language from the agreement when the the drought exemption fee was first initiated?

Yeah. Esteban would have to help answer that.

Wasn't there a specific agreement associated with that?

Yes. There were specific agreements put together for the drought surcharge exemption fee that was each of the industries signed or gotten to an agreement with. Yes, there was individual agreements, if that's your question.

Okay. What did it state in those individual agreements is what I'm saying? Because we're talking about the agreements, not the drought contingency plan.

That's where I wanna make sure the legal counsel weighs in on that because it has to deal with the contracts.

Mhmm.

Or the agreement. Excuse me.

K.

Yeah. I'm asking Miles to what extent has he looked at all looked at he and his team Okay. I'll I'll

I'll back come to the question. Please review that back with us. Just you know, I'm not I don't want to beat up on anybody or anything like that. And if that's the case, that's the case. I just from my perspective, it had always been that this information with the dry exemption fee only applied to stage three, not to stage four, now water emergency. I just wanted some clarity on that. Can you look at the contracts associated with that?

Just so people, just so listening public and the council can follow this. In the drought contingency plan, it says that a surcharge could be applied in the three stages, stage one, two, and three. Then we know there's a level one and a level two. There's nothing in the book that says that that goes away with a level one and level two. So that yeah.

Well, no. The surcharge can be applied at any time based on your recommendation on whether we vote on it. I understand that. We've chose not to do that for through stage three.

Right.

But I was unaware that there was an exemption for I understand there was exemptions through stage three for that drought exemption fee. Mhmm. And I understand that. That's what what was kind of

Yeah.

Portrayed to us. Right. I just wanna make sure that this was not this is how it's portrayed to us based on those agreements. I just wanna verify that that's the case.

Okay.

Okay. I'll let you go back and look at that, make sure you provide that information to us. Yeah. You said that the commercial was gonna be based on the meter size, but you did not provide the like a a graph to say what that was per meter size on your commercial So do you have that graph that you could provide us, or a spreadsheet or something like that, like a chart?

Sure. What we've shown is just an example. The workshop is meant to provide input on the methodology. With our consultants, Carollo, we are working to put that together, and that would, of course, be provided to this body when we bring back recommendations, the city manager's recommendations for curtailment numbers, so that the baselines can be reviewed and everyone has good understanding of it.

Okay, and you're treating multifamily as commercial?

No, we're looking that as a little bit differently, because it's not a commercial business, so we're working under the recommendation to look at those more as residential. We've got to account for that a little bit differently than a commercial business.

Okay, so I'm assuming it's going be by per unit, or is it square footage? What are you looking at for multifamily?

At the moment, I can't answer that right now, but we'll have that information.

Okay.

And that's great point, and I'm glad you brought that up.

For wholesale, it seems like on your graph, are the ones that are not doing as well in terms of reducing their usage versus reduction of requests, I guess. Just based on your graph there, what's the plan there to try and address that?

We have been and we continue to work with our wholesale customers so that they can understand the methodology, but then we need to be cognizant of, they are their customers, so the wholesalers will have to work with their customers to ensure that they meet the required allocations.

Okay, is the baseline wholesale customers going to be individually done based, you said from time from 2004? Now you have some COVID years during that timeframe. So are you looking at just a specific period of time or?

Per the drought contingency plan, and again, for wholesale customers, it clearly spells out how to calculate their baseline. So it's a five year review and then a monthly average per month over that five years.

Okay. And then you have a 25%. But looking at drought contingency plan, it had certain levels shoot. I just lost my page on that.

There's a couple of tables in there. I think that's maybe what you're referring to.

A pro rata surcharge enforcement, two times normal level, 5% above monthly allocation. And that's on the wholesale side. Is that no. I'm looking at the wrong thing.

There are there are target demand reductions for each of the each of the levels.

Okay. If you can be a little more specific of when this comes back, I'm assuming we're going to have to vote on something on what the wholesale is going to look like in terms of how you're going to manage to reduce the volume there and hold just as much as any other customer class as to what that looks like?

Yeah. As I said earlier, the wholesale customers are a large water user. Absolutely.

Okay. Also, what I've been finding here, and this might be something we may need to modify within the drought contingency plan. I've experienced a lot of contractors damaging pipes and causing water loss. But we make them pay for certain things, but there probably should be an escalation of that during a water emergency. That if there's damage to a pipe that makes us lose water, that there should be heavy fines associated with it.

To clarify what's currently done, if a contractor would damage a city pipe causing a leak, and say it's a leak that CCW could repair, we would keep track of our man hours. We would estimate the amount of water that was, lost out of the system, and then we would bill that contractor for the man hours and the water. It's more of a legal question is whether if we can increase that by a percentage or not. I'm Well, not

let state that I have AT and T contractors putting in fiber optic cable, and they've at least broken at least four water lines in my neighborhood alone. And that that includes the the street aspect of it. And, you know, honestly, it's frustrating that we have we're losing the water and water drought, and they continue to just, you know, not have any kind of semblance of understanding that we're in this water situation. K?

Miles Miles just said that we could charge more if we elected to. We could increase it. Yeah. You know, pay

Well, I mean, it's continuing process, then not

a penalty.

What is it then? No penalty but increased fees?

Yeah. We have a tort right to sue for all the damages that are attributable to the damage caused by the contractor. And to the extent that the water can be sold more, that becomes more valuable because of the application of surcharges, that absolutely would be passed through to the damaging contractor. Okay. Thank you.

Councilwoman Campos. Thank you, mayor.

Okay. So, again, can you clarify about the surcharge when or when we declare an emergency as far as the large volume users? Because on your page 11 or page 16, it says large volume users nonexempt, dollars 12 per 1,000 gallons over 12,842. So are you saying that even when we declare an emergency, the ones that are already into the that are paying for the drought exemption fee of 31¢ per 1,000 gallons will be exempt? Is that?

The legal opinion is that they are exempt from surcharges. They are not exempt from curtailment. So the allocation, they would be allocated water just like any other customer clients.

Okay.

So

I also noticed that in one of the months, January 2024, it looks like there was a drop by industry.

Yes. So that's on page 20.

Yeah, 20. So I just kind of quickly checked to see what was going on during that time?

I can tell you what was going on. One of our highest water users was in the middle of a plant turnaround, so they weren't in production, so their water demand was diminished.

Okay. Well, the other thing that I also read is that it was during a freeze, and Flint Hills had an oil spill during that time, during January 2024. So so they they do the right thing, which is to shut down when there's an oil spill or when there's an act of God, you know, like this. A drought is an act of God that we can't help. So they can continue, you know, after a while, can can can come back.

So all I'm saying is that we keep excusing these large volume users for everything else, but what we're going through is really an act of God. There's nothing we can do at this moment. We're trying, of course. We're doing all that we can, but I don't think that we're me, personally, are going to be able to meet demand. I know that we have a lot of projects in the way, but at the same time, we also need them.

And that's the other thing. I keep saying that we go to all these cities and have these meetings, and we want to say that we're transparent, but they're not being transparent. Why is it that they're not here to tell us, I don't need to know what they need to do to cut back, but I need to know that they will be cutting back? And you have been assured that they will be cutting back when we hit the emergency level one?

So as the city manager said, we are meeting with them about every two weeks because they have significant preparations they need to be able to do to accommodate the allocations that we will be recommending. All of them, I can honestly say, they are changing their business plans and working towards meeting that. I've always said, Councilwoman, I know how to run a water plan, I know how to run a water operation. Just like the schools, I don't manage a refinery or understand the specifics of how that operates. They are working through all of that to make sure they meet all of the requirements.

Okay. And so when we're talking about curtailment for our residents, we're talking about 7,000 gallons per month, which we already are using. We have already are below, which we're at 30% below from the 7,000 that we are allowed. Is that correct?

That is correct. 7,000 is the baseline. Then if we said an example, curtailment was 10%, so it would be 7,000 gallons minus 700, which is their allocation would be 6,300 gallons per month.

Okay. So just so that we can appease our residents that we are already doing just about everything that we can to conserve water. And if we were to have to go to curtailment, I don't think it would affect most of us, because we're already using 30% below what we are allowed to use, the 7,000 per gallon per month.

My comment would be the majority of residents certainly achieved that, and they're doing so today. As in any class, there are outliers, those exist.

Well, and as you pointed out, and I'm glad that you've got You can see where our industrial customers are not. They're not able or they're not willing or they're not doing what residents have been able to do.

Well, the data showed for the large volume users, that's the aggregate of all of them together. So I don't want to paint a broad picture, right, because there's a lot of specifics going on there. There are a lot of details.

Right. So, all right, well we'll continue to have that discussion. Now, I guess later on we're going to decide at what point do we decide if we're going to do a water emergency. Do are you going to are we going to decide that today?

We won't decide it today. So we'll decide it together, but it'll be based on a model, based on those scenarios. So the most recent were the five we showed, that A through E. But given the governor's intervention, which resulted in the bed and bags permit for the Westinwell Field, and resulted in the Lavaca Navadat River Authority not curtailing us by 10%. We're updating the scenarios to have a more accurate timeline.

We need a little bit more data from the Western Wellfields to see how much can we put into the river before we violate the management program or plan. And so hopefully by mid April, we'll have an updated model, and that'll guide us so we won't call a level one water emergency until we can see clearly when that six month time frame kicks

And I really do hope that Lake Navidad is able to get more water because we're affecting them as well. I mean, you know, we were they were supposed to cut us off at least by 10%.

Right. By 10%. Yeah. The only way they can get more water is through rain. So this rain is it. So June is when we would go into a reduced use according to the general manager yesterday that we spoke with. So June is when it fell to 40% Lake Texana. But right now, we're in reprieve. Can I just add a couple of things to Councilwoman Campos and Hernandez? So the percentages of curtailment would be equally applied across all customer classes.

So if we recommend, say, a 20% curtailment, that means all classes, the residential, the commercial, the large volume, and the wholesalers, it's 20% across the board. So to Councilwoman Campos' point, you can see the residential customer is already there today. And you can see also then that the water savings essentially would come from large volume users and the wholesalers. And the wholesalers, just as a reminder, we have Brian Williams is here in the audience from San Patricia Water. And some of their biggest customers are large volume users.

So just to point that out. And as Nick said, on the wholesale side excuse me, on the large volume user side, each of the entities has a customized, if you will, baseline. Because their water use is so divergent and they use so much. So we've worked with them for the past couple of months to develop modeling that shows what their baseline will be. The graph here is an aggregate of them all, of all 23 large volume users.

But they have business predictability, they know what their baseline is individually, And they know if they have to apply a ten, twenty, or 30. Not to say those are the only percentages. And so they know what they have to do. We're also mindful that today, 70% of our water comes through the Mary Roads pipeline. And if something were to happen to the pipeline, there would have to be some type of almost a forced reduction in water use if there's a prolonged disruption in the pipeline. And so they're hard at work analyzing what would they have to do so they know what they have to do, Councilman. We just can't speak to it because we don't know what 23 businesses would do, but they know they would have to do something. And they're not waiting around to figure that out. So they have their plans. They just haven't disclosed them with us.

Okay?

Alright. Councilman Valletta.

Thank you, mayor.

Nick, thank you for the for the presentation. So of the 23 large volume well, first off, let me back up. I can't remember. There's three senior citizens living in my household. I'm including myself in that one. I can't remember the last time we used more than 4,000 gallons. I'm going to curtail if I curtail 20%, that's 800 gallons. What's my penalty? Is there a penalty for me? Is there a surcharge for me? No,

because if you're using 4,000 gallons a month, you are under the the baseline or the surcharge totals. So you wouldn't surcharge would not be applied to

your office. Okay. I just wanna make sure. I mean Yeah. And of course, I'm not up for reelection, but I just think 7,000 is high. You know? I don't think anybody else would say that here. Maybe Gil. But, I mean, yeah. Okay. Yeah. I think 7,000 is kinda high, because, I mean, I I yeah. I I I don't think even when I had a household of five, I I don't think we we were probably six. So just, you know, something to consider. I mean, and I know I I agreed to it when we when we when we put the plan together.

So just to be cognizant of that. And I've never had a pool either. The other thing now you said of the high volume users, there's 23 of Does that is that 23 other than does that include San Patricio? No?

No. They are a wholesale customer.

Okay. So do how how well, a couple of things. But yet from some of their customers from some of their customers, they're assessed the drought exemption fee. Correct?

That's correct. Some of their customers contribute to the drought surcharge exemption fee.

Okay. So I guess that's the thing. I don't have a clear understanding of how I mean, are they gonna assess the same or who's gonna determine the baseline for San Patricio's customers?

So the wholesale provider will have to work with them.

Is that going to be under their policy, our policy?

San Patricio Municipal Water District is going have to work with them to that, to set It'll those

be their policy, but we've said it several times in meetings with them that they should follow the guidelines of our policy. They should have already adopted a drought management plan that's pretty consistent with ours. So what will happen, just using the case, the specific case of San Francisco Water District, we would reduce, we would give them an allocation, we would have a curtailment and an allocation, and then they have to determine how does their customers fit within that allocated water amount. So we're not going to tell them exactly how to do it, but they have guidelines from us that say this is the reduced amount as your allotment.

And I'm confident that they're going to

be team players. I'm not trying

to assess if they are, But that's some ambiguity for those of us that are sitting over here

Right.

To be able to state what it is that they're gonna do. Would appreciate if we get that calculated right away. Because I'm sure even the high volume water users are nervous. As I've said before, we want to provide certainty and a predictable regulatory environment. And if we don't know where we're at, so I think we need to get that done right away.

So there's the narrative that paying this nominal fee, and I and I'm just being facetious by saying the word nominal, allows exemption from a penalty, is and maybe we do it and, you know, if if we were to calculate what would that penalty be? Because right now we have what? I know we have more than $30,000,000 that has been accumulated through the

Yeah, approximately 30,000,000.

And so I don't know. I think from a perspective because that's the argument. Oh, well they're paying not to which I think is really kind of an oxymoron. They're paying now so they won't have to pay a penalty. And so I I think there's a way that we determine what the delta is, that there are responsible partners who pay the exemption fee and go into and and follow through with curtailment. Well, then they're still paying a fee of which they were never assessed a penalty. Do you know where I'm going?

Yeah. I mean, so it's important to note that they're paying that all the time.

I agree. I'm with you.

Whether the whether the reservoirs are full or empty.

I I agree. I I just wanna be able to argue to the naysayers, they're still paying more money. I go back to it, I've said it ad nauseam now. I've said it to somebody yesterday. I understand, Gil says, my mother is subsidizing Valero because we pay $35 a month. And a high volume water user is paying upwards of $1,000,000 a month. So I don't get that math of how a high volume water user paying more than $1,000,000 a month, and how I'm subsidizing it for $30 Especially when there's only 23 of them.

Yeah, and those are it's 23 connections. I do want to clarify that. Camille, correct me. It's 23 connections.

Okay. Provides clarity. And then if you could let us know how many of those also or somewhere or another, a footnote of how many of those are since San Pat. And then of all those connections, how many of those are exempt from the surcharge? I I guess I'll have to wait for my other questions. Thank you.

Councilwoman Paxton. Thank you.

So if I look at pages ten, twelve, fourteen, and sixteen, they each indicate a target percentage that is triggered by each stage of drought for a reduction threshold. For instance, stage one is 5%. Stage two on page 12 shows 10%. Stage three is 15% goal reduction. And ultimately, a level one, which previously was a stage four, is a 5% target.

And then you flip over to page 28, 29 I think the table's actually on 29 it tallies those percentages and then ultimately says under a level one or level two water emergency, our target reduction is 25 to 50%.

I'm glad you asked that because I had that same question. It was baffling me earlier. So the 5%, it's a minimum of 5% curtailment. So we couldn't enact a curtailment of 4.5% or 3%. And then the percentages that you mentioned are listed as targeted reduction levels.

So in other words, those are essentially goals. And then that 5% references a minimum curtailment. So we can always do more, and in times we will have to so supply meets demand, but we can't do less if we implement any curtailment.

So I think there's two to three very concrete items here that need to be if we're gonna do an amendment, then we should clarify this. The first being if you add up on each of those pages, those respective stages or percentages that we're trying to reduce, that's 35 total percent reduction in our water system by the time we have arrived at a level one. Because you don't go into a level two and say, we're already reducing 5%, now we're going to try to reduce 10%. Or you don't go to level one emergency where we just came out of trying to reduce 15%, we're only going to try to reduce 5%. So these are meant to be assumed to collect, to add on each other.

So that would mean by the time we're at the point where we're declaring a level one, our total system reduction target has been nearly 35% if we're to follow these stages accurately.

I under I I understand that, and and I'm taking notes. I think it's one of the things to to to clarify is under drought stages one, two, and three, there's recommended measures, which which everyone's following, but there's optional measures to achieve those goals. Like the city manager said, council could have chosen to enact surcharges in those other drought stages, and those measures would have I think they may have provided more incentive to hit those goals or those targets. I just wanna clarify that.

From what I see, our drought contingency plan is written very It's articulating all of the principles mainly through written communication. What I discovered was a lot of other states across Texas actually convert each of these sections at the end of their section, or maybe there's one area where all the sections are consolidated, and they're put into tabular form. And so it takes something that's very paragraph structured and adds a clean, concise table. This is the stage, this is the target, these are the means of reduction, and here's how we're going to follow through on those, and these are the exemptions. So it's a very clear format to arrive at each of those goals.

I think that, while we're opening the drought contingency plan, if we can put things a little more linear and more precise, then that helps all of us. God forbid. But if we go back into a situation like this, this is something that I think would be very meaningful in our weekly updates is, as you know, in stage three, our goal is 15%. Here's how we're doing on that based on actuals from billing. And so can you tell me from that 5% on page 16 jumping up to the twenty five and fifty percent on page 29 in the table, can you help me find the source for that?

I see that on page 27, there's a little bit of description. But I guess what I'm trying to say is if I'm not from Corpus and I'm not familiar with the drought contingency plan and I'm trying to make way in the book and I know we're going into level one. What am I doing?

So on page 16, the quote is, during a level one water emergency, curtailment will be required and may start at 5% or greater reduction of total water demand. So again, when curtailments, that percentage reduction is approved, the goal of that is to ensure that we have enough supply to meet our demand when we reach that one hundred and eighty day mark and beyond. So on page 16, they're saying that curtailment may start at 5% or greater. And that's where I go back to we really couldn't enact it to start at 4% or 3%. It's a minimum

of I five guess I'm looking for citations on where we got this 25 to 50% in the table associated with the level one emergency. I I don't seem to find the citation. I just see a percentage there, and it doesn't add up to the collective.

Yeah. I'll let Estiman speak to that, councilwoman.

Thank

you. So, yes. So, when we were developing the amendments or the drought contingency plan, we worked with different different consultants to look at different cities across the state of Texas, Austin, SAWS, San Antonio Water System, Dallas Fort Worth, and we working with our consultants, came up with those targets, and they are targets. And those targets have existed in the DCP or the drought conceived Plan for many, many variations of this plan. And again, there are targets to try to achieve, and depending upon the conditions, they may change.

So and it also adds to wanting to get compliance from our residents, compliance from our different customer classes to achieve those goals, and those goals are we establish, again, by looking at different drought contingency plans throughout the state.

So reviewing the other contingency plans around the state, which I'm all for, that's how you come up with a good plan is you look at what's working. What did we use within our system as data to drive those numbers as realistic targets to prevent a loss of pressure, etcetera? What did we use in our system so that it's in here?

What did we use in our system? We looked at previous demands. We looked at different demand graphs. We looked at how many connections we had. We then, talking with our consultants, they had all the information from previous variations, the DCP.

They had connection or data from our demand usage or customers to try to make sure that we fit in those targets and they were reasonable and that we could achieve. And what we could do with the other requirements, meaning the restrictions, both the optional and the the restrictions within the DC within different stages to achieve those goals throughout the different stages.

So two questions. First, what was the trigger point that said that these numbers is what's gonna accomplish our goal? And two, confirm for me that these were numbers that you professionally can say confident they're attainable from all of our rate payers, all the classes?

Again, going back to what we're looking at best management practices to try to make those setting out those restrictions to achieve those goals, both within the DCP at different stages and adding additional optional measures if counsel choose to try to achieve those different targets.

It's Nick, you can jump in. I think this is very water system specific questions.

Yeah. And I I do councilwoman, I like where you're going with this. So, there there's there's a definite, difference between what's going on at level one water emergency with curtailment allocation and what's going on previously with demand target reductions. When we're at a level one water emergency, We're working with our professional consultants. We're identifying what an appropriate curtailment percentage across all customer classes would achieve a result where supply always meets demand, because that's the goal.

And that's why earlier I said specifically it could be 18%, it could be 23%. We don't want to overstate that, and of course we obviously don't want to understate it either. When in the early stages of drought, those are demand targets and reduction levels. I think what Esteban was saying, that's just best management practices to establish those levels at each of those stages of the drought.

And I appreciate you. Thank you, Esteban. I my I just I'm trying to be very specific because as as policymakers, and and that's what this book is, is a policy on how do we protect our water system, I need to see the citations. Show me where the number you're asking us to deduct or to certify. This is our this is what we're looking for for our curtailment amount. I need to see the citations that say baseline, our goal, and this is that percentage, and this is why we're bringing it to you. One, it's attainable, and two, it's going to fix the problem.

So curtailment, absolutely, you'll be able to see the data and how we come up with those curtailment percentages so that we avoid a point where our supply does not meet our demand. So again, that's a specific calculation.

Councilman Rory.

Okay. Thanks for the presentation so far. I've got my head around a couple things here, but I just have a real simple question first. Is that traditionally, what month is the highest rainfall that we've normally experienced?

Sure, I can definitely answer I'm gonna talk in our watershed. So it's May and June. June typically we get three inches in the watershed. And then after that, historically, highest month is September, so it's the tropical weather season. Okay. But that three inches, that's not much at all. But that's up there on some of the highest.

And even if we had tropical depression or whatever you wanna call it, we're down so far right now. It'd probably take more than just one tropical event.

Multiple events, and the experts have told us they really need to be sequential. So the first one would saturate the ground, because remember, the soil conditions are so dry, would saturate the ground, and then a follow-up one would provide more inflows into the reservoirs.

So my my next question, I'm trying to follow this, is when you take a look, and I think this is what I've seen that the residents and industry have already lowered, their water intake as a whole. Wouldn't you say that? I mean, if you take a look at and you go back pre COVID, and I I'm just going, and you kinda look at what our consumption was there. I don't wanna use COVID numbers just because I think that's an outlier. But if you if you go ahead and you kinda track where we're at overall.

I mean, we've got people on the residential side that have certainly cut back. I mean, if you're not watering your grass, you can't water your foundation, you can't do this, you can't do that. You you know? And as long as you're having increased your population in your house, most of us have already cut back. Isn't that a fair

I think the numbers show it. Yes.

Okay. And I think industry also, because I mean, looking and tracking it in terms of where industry was at overall, when you look at pre COVID numbers and you look at some of those other outliers, and then you look at now, overall, there has been a reduction over with with industry. Was that correct?

I I would say within certain industry are are are certainly working very hard to reduce. And you you could look at the numbers and and show that that downward trend.

There has been a downward trend. It hasn't spiked up, and it hasn't maintained. So my my question is that when we look at when you talk about the minimum of 5% or whatever, are you talking about so if I'm first of all, it's hard to compare industry to industry because there's some of our industrial partners, depending on what product they're producing, number one, they take less water. Number two, overall water affects the way they operate differently than somebody that is really tied to water based on their the product that they're producing. I mean, like, you know so when we do this and we take a look at the baseline, just like with residents, are we gonna say, okay.

What if they're already meeting? What if they've already what if you have somebody that has reduced their water intake by 35% already? And are you gonna come back across the board and say, okay. Everybody's gotta now do 8%. Are you gonna hit even residents? If if I'm sitting at 4,000, and it sounds like we've we've got an answer on the residential side. If I'm sitting at 4,000 and you're allowing me to go up to 7,000, I'm not gonna take an additional hit. Right?

That's correct.

Okay. Are we gonna do the same thing on industry side?

So so if you look at your at the large volume users, so we're looking at a period of 2022 to 2024. It's it's a three year period. So again, there were a number of measures that we know were taken into account in 2025. So we're looking at those preliminary numbers to help determine the baseline.

Okay. So then so I'm just I wanna understand that if you have somebody, if you have an industrial partner that has already done a really good job, and you and and let's just say we set the first goal at 8%, and they've exceeded that, would they have any additional financial

Right. So it goes it goes back to the to the baseline, which is one reason why we're meeting with the customer classes, to determine the the fairest approach. And and and the industry has agreed that if we look at the years of 2022 to 2024, that that would be a a pre water reduction approach so that no one's being penalized for the great work they've already done.

So I understand that. So I guess I'm asking you to answer the question. If they've already exceeded that, would they have any additional financial burden?

The answer is no, Councilman. They wouldn't have to reduce any more water. Similar to the residential side, that example there, if they're already below 7,000, they don't have to cut any more usage.

Yeah, I'm talking about industry.

I know, just using that as an example. So industry, same thing. Once they have their baseline, the baseline is already below if their use is already below that baseline, then they won't have to cut anymore.

Okay. Thank you. That's my biggest thing I was trying to wrap around my head. And

I'm sorry. I didn't understand your question, councilman. Thank you.

That's it. That's all I had.

Okay. Councilman Scott.

Good stuff. Thank you, Nick. Thank you, Peter. Hey. If if there's is a way in the industry is in the back of the room, have a great story to tell about their reduction in water usage over the last twenty years.

They don't calculate it based on total consumption, right? Because if the total is 10,000,000 gallons a day and then a new entity comes on at 10,000,000 gallons a day, then it just looks like nobody is conserving. You know, it's twice as much usage. But they can articulate, especially the oil and gas industry, how they profoundly reduce the amount of water it takes to create a barrel of oil. And it's actually a a very good success story that we should share with the world that not only we're supplying the world with, with, gas and and and, airplane fuel, but we're doing it it, caring about the industry.

I mean, caring about the the environment. So and they're in the back of the room. They can probably provide that to you. I'm I'm I'm sensitive to the conversations with their wholesale water providers. I would think there'd be a way to go. If I'm a wholesale water provider and all I'm doing is supplying water to residences, then that's one model. Right? That's But if I'm a wholesale water provider and 50% of my sale is to industry, then that has a very different impact on how we treat them. And I would give them the opportunity to come back to us and use our model with our large water users and say, hey, woah, wait a minute. We have 50% of my sales are are the same industries that you all have.

And then we wanna plug that model back in. Because I think I think we treat, especially San Patricio municipal water district. I think this might burden them in ways that we're not burdening local large water users. Does that make sense? If it doesn't, be nice to me because it's a poor name.

Yeah, certainly understand what you're saying. The approach is what was outlined in the drought contingency plan, and then of course, if we look at, we could look at a million different

Okay, thanks. Because I do think that we're working with the local large water users and we've come up with this concept, this would you say '22 to '24? Yeah. I guess based on quarterly usage because it's you know, and if we took that model and allowed our friends across the county line to to plug that in and then come back to us and say, realistically, using the model you all are using, here's what we think our allocation should be. And I don't know, can we do that if it's if if you're telling me it's written in stone in our current DCP? Can we can we ask can we have a conversation and change that if they come back with a different number?

So so we'll we'll certainly have the conversation and continue to have the conversation with with, San Pat Municipal Water District. And I really appreciate Brian being here. I didn't know he was here.

Well, I'm just thinking about how how how hard they've tried to help us in other areas. And you know, I I just think it's a fairness issue. So thanks. Thanks for trying. If you if you'd have that come and if you can't, then I would let us know. And if you can, let us know. I just think that's the way to go. I appreciate the use the concept that COVID's COVID was an outlier. My question is, should should we do some of this before we reach level one? Some of our allocation or surcharges and I guess you can't unless we amend the DCP. Right? You'd have to we'd

have So you you you could enact surcharges because, as the city manager said, that's applicable in other drought stages as well. That council could make a decision on that and move forward on the surcharges. The curtailment is legally not recommended until we hit a level one water emergency.

Alright. I get it. It's probably good public policy, terrible politics, but I get it. Also, exemption fees, if we have this conversation again, would it be possible I wrote exemption fees go up closer we get to further along closer to level one emergency. Is that a negotiated agreement? I guess they'd have to negotiate that, open up the exemption fee agreements, or they're voluntary, I guess. Right? My point is that it's 31¢, but you could have a conversation that when it gets closer to level one, it goes from 31 to 35 to 40. I just Yeah.

Right now, there's nothing there's no policy that says they go up, councilman, the fixed. We updated the 25¢ to 31¢

Correct.

Recently. But that's not a it could be if the council if we wanted to do that.

Yeah. Just I'm sure someone

Fixed rate.

Just fill out a chair. I just I just thought it's an interesting philosophy.

Actually, it can go up by CPI that's built into the agreements.

Well

And we haven't increased

it from 25 to 31¢ by CPI. Alright. I'll move on. But it doesn't go up by by drought stage. And I did wanna since I got asked the question, I would I wanna address councilman Hernandez's question real fast, and I think it's kind of relevant to what you're asking here.

Is that since you're looking at councilman Hernandez, since you're looking at the at the agreement, the I think I I think why I know where you've got that misimpression from. The last in paragraph three of the agreement, the last sentence says, however, this agreement does not prevent the city from allocating water supply in the event of an emergency water shortage condition as defined by TCEQ regulations or by city ordinance o three one three five five or as may be required by Texas Water Code section 11 o three nine or required by any other state laws and regulations. And that provision specifically allows us to sit down with the the large water users and directly cut them back potentially, maybe even going so far as just to cut them off if they exceed if if they don't exceed water usage or if necessary to be able to comply with DCEQ regulations to maintain system pressures throughout the entire system. So what it does recognize is that the exemption fees are not going to apply during the emergency. However, when you only have 23 connections, you can sit you can work individually with that smaller number of users and restrict their usage on an individual basis, which you can't do with a group of 30,000, and individually under 11.039, which it says pro rata reduction, directly reduce.

It's a you have more hammers that you can use with that smaller number of users.

Got it. Okay. Last couple of questions. So the residential reduction in usage was really because of what? What do you think? Just not watering yards? It's really interesting that because we're all still taking showers, you know, we're all using the restroom. Yeah. Is that what we think it is?

Yeah. Sure, Esma.

I I gotta give a shout out to our communication and working with the council and working with the people through this drought that we're in right now, getting the communication out. We've been hearing it through council and multiple councils that we needed to get more out there to the people. We're at Earth Day Bay Day. We're at different events, passing out water conservation, drug contingency information. We've had ads on TV, radio, billboards so that we can get compliance, we can get actions. And yes, it's coming from a lot of the best management practices that we promote through the city and our entire community.

And and all of our rate classes had to do the same thing. Right? Commercial, industrial, large they all had to stop watering Yes. The landscape. Yeah. So everybody's playing by the same rules. Should be. And I think they are. Alright. In commercial, same thing, I guess, that they just quit. Cause their their usage went down. Right? And so I guess the same thing. They're not watering the landscape. That's interesting how how impactful that that is. It just tells me how much water we use watering landscape.

I mean, there are there are a number of landscape accounts and landscape meters. Of course, they're no longer in use, but when they're in good times, there's a lot of irrigation and landscaping happening. Think about ball fields and large things like that.

Last thought. Shout out. I'll throw this at our at our state and federal friends. It would seem to me that some of the stuff that we would like to happen doesn't happen, especially in our industrial base, just because of sheer cost. Although we're making we're getting ready to make it cost effective.

But it would sure be interesting that the state of Texas has some sort of grant program recognizing the water impacts and the impacts on the environment to allow our industrial partners to retrofit some of their operations to reduce water usage, the concept of closed loop systems. I'm not saying we should be the grant, but it would seem to me that if I'm in Austin and I care about our industrial base, but I also care about reducing water usage, they would set up some sort of grant system to help help our industrial partners spend the money necessary to reduce usage. Thanks, Mayor.

Thank you, Councilman. I think thank you for bringing that up, Esteban. I think that it is a lot of everyone doing their part that really moves the needle, and that proves it. Because a lot of times people don't realize maybe not washing. I know that's I'm very cognizant to it. Not washing as much, right, clothes and what have you at home. I mean, some of the things I've seen that y'all have put out or that yes. Our our communication department has put out. I think it really, really does make a difference. But I'm gonna add one thing.

And that is, and it kills me every time, go to a restaurant and and the water automatically comes. We we need to instill and instill something. I don't know what needs to be done, but let me know because I'm ready to bring it forward for restaurants to hold off on water. If you want water, especially if you go to a a bar, some people just they want a glass of water with their glass of wine or what have you, and some don't. Or if you know you go to a restaurant to eat, some people don't want that.

They want their soft drink. And so I know it's an automatic in terms of hospitality. But I think, to Councilman's point, it would make a big, big difference if everybody did the restaurants kind of did their part. And I asked them one time. I said, what do y'all do with this water? That there are four glasses that are basically full. And he said, throw it out. And I said, would you please put it in a bucket? Put it in plants or the grass outside or whatever. But but that goes to show, you know, the mindset and I understand they're business owners.

But I don't think we have emphasized enough and I really believe that it would make an impact. I really, really do. It's a lot of glass of water. So so what how do we do that? Number two, how does this plan integrate with our long term supply strategy regarding desalination, groundwater, etcetera? And then third question, what do you see success looking like six months from now if this was implemented and implemented correctly? And I know that's kind of a tough one, but just give me a best shot there. Those are the three.

So so first, the in regards to the restaurants, that is a recommendation in the water conservation plan, which that committee is working very hard. We had another good meeting, last week. We're we're working hard to complete that plan and bring it to council for approval. Upon adoption of that plan, it certainly would allow for enhanced communication for things like not serving glasses of water at restaurants. That's the best management practice.

Your next question was how does this plan integrate into our overall water supply strategy? So just to reiterate, our strategy is to diversify the portfolio. We feel strongly, and we've been making significant progress in that manner with the addition of groundwater supplies, the use of reuse in seawater in addition to our surface water supplies, that our supply portfolio will be sustainable going forward in the future, so as a way to better handle five year droughts, significant droughts of this nature going forward. I'm not sure if that answered your question, or if that was the intent of your question. Yeah.

And then what does success look like in six months? My answer to that question is that we avoid level one water emergency. We continue to bring on our new supplies. That's both our groundwater projects, the reuse projects, of which we're so glad to have great partners like Valero and Flint Hill involved in that, that that reduces our demand, and then we're moving forward with seawater projects so that we, again, we get to that point where we have a diversified supply that we can properly manage.

Great. Thank you. Councilwoman Campos.

Thank you, mayor. Well, back to some of the statements that council member Barrera and Council Member Scott said about it being more or less equal to everyone, I totally disagree with that. For one, we have this dropped exemption for the $0.31 per 1,000 gallons for heavy water users, heavy industrial water users, yet that's not offered for residents. So anyway. So, no, we're not equal.

The other thing that I wanted to say was it had been brought up before by Doctor. Arisa on that $0.31 exemption fee and how much it's collected. Mister Councilman Barrera touched on that. That with the exemption on this one particular customer, I wanna say it was Gulf Coast Growth Ventures, but I could be wrong. That we would collect $116,250 per month on the $0.31 exemption surcharge.

But if we were to just approve this surcharge that we're possibly considering, let's say, the $12 or the $6 in stage three, we actually would be collecting $2,000,172,600,000 I'm sorry, 2,000,172.6 per month without restrictions. Sources. If we were to eliminate that and we were to just go with just the regular surcharges, we would actually be gaining more money and plus that money would be available for all projects, like fixing leaks, fixing infrastructure, and things like that. So I just wanted to point that out. Other is

Councilwoman, if I could just speak to that. Sure. Because I think you made some important points. So we need to remember that we're only issuing surcharges when council approves surcharges. So when looking at totals over periods of months, this body has never approved surcharges previously. So it's hard to the drought surcharge exemption fee is all the Okay. Time

Well, meant the drought exemption

surcharge The surcharges, which would be other times to collect surcharges per this book, the council has to approve surcharges on all customer classes.

Right. Okay. So I meant the exemption surcharge drop fee. So we're clear. The 31¢ dropped exemption surcharge.

Right. But I I think some of the other totals for comparison, you're utilizing, the numbers in the book, which is only when council approves surcharges

across all classes. If we were to go

yes.

For classes.

Yes. For all classes.

Right. Where the other exemption fee is is continuous.

In place. Yeah. I know. That's why we wanna end it. And that's why we have a fair water amendment petition going on.

Okay. So then the other was someone asked, can you point, let's see, to a specific part of the DCP that incentivizes exempt large volume water users to curtail use by the percentages set in the DCP plan? That's one question. The other is also, is there an enforcement mechanism in the DCP to ensure large volume users are curtailing the amounts that we need for them to do so? So those are the two questions.

The first question, I think the question was incentive regarding curtailment. Yes. In my opinion, the evidence there is the agreement with Valero and Flint Hills who are expending significant amounts of capital money supported by their executive branches of their businesses to be able to reduce their demand. I can't speak enough about those contracts. Those contracts are gonna help our situation long into the future.

We're very proud of them. In regards to enforcement, and I didn't say this earlier, but I wanna say, across all classes, our goal is compliance. It's not citation. That's how CCW works. We wanna ensure compliance. We talk. We've been meeting with those users on an every other week basis. Of course, the number of their connections are much more limited. There's a smaller amount of numbers, so we can review them more closely. We've opened up lines of communication.

In other words, I know who to call, I know who to talk to, staff knows who to call if they're seeing trends that aren't meeting, what we expect so that, adjustments can be made to ensure compliance.

Can you point that out in the DCP plan where it states all that? Where it states about the enforcement?

Well, is an enforcement section in there. And then Miles quoted, he provided an ultimate enforcement reference to where just earlier, when answering councilman Hernandez's question about shutting about shutting off water, that would be the ultimate enforcement.

Okay. And it is part of the DCP plan? It is in there, Miles?

I think it's it's part of eleven point o three nine. Is that, Miles? Right?

Let me see. What page is that on that?

Pro rata distribution? Pro distribution. Eleven point o 39 of the Texas Water Code.

Yeah. So that's that's the ultimate reference is the Texas water code, which is 11 o three nine, which is referenced on page 33 under pro rata allocation, councilwoman.

30 page 33?

And then the other thank you, Esteban. The other enforcement section is page 25. I

see 20 wait. 21 of 23.

So on on page 33 under pro rata allocation, it references Texas Water Code 11 Is and

it the at the end? Okay. Okay. Rata the triggering criteria. Okay.

Then enforcement is on page 25.

Okay. Good. All right. Well, thank you. I just wanted to make sure that that was clear and everyone is on the same page. How much time do I have? Oh, forty something seconds. Okay. And a moratorium. How would we implement a moratorium? I mean, obviously, we don't have water. And I constantly hear about the car washes and things of that nature. I also wanted to touch base on what are we going to do, like, during the summer for our residents that use the splash pads and things like that to cool off. I don't know. Is that further down

the Yeah.

It's in next

segment. It's actually the very next slide once we get through the this period.

Alright. Thank you.

K. Councilman Hernandez.

Okay. And Miles, I I wanna kinda understand this a little bit better because I'm I'm not opposed to the drought exemption or drought surcharge exemption fee. We've made that deal. It's important. It's also in line on section 12.1, paragraph k.

It says, the large industrial the large volume industrial customer paying the dry out surcharge exemption fee established by section 159.1 is exempt from city curtailment of water during reservoir system stages one, two and three, except where curtailment is required by Texas Water Code section 11,039 or required by applicable state laws and state regulations. So when I say state you know, and it's the way our drought contingency plan is written, there's no curtailment for them anyway. Right?

There is under level one water emergency.

No, no, I'm saying under stage one, two, and three.

That's correct. Yeah, you're correct.

So whether they pay the exemption fee or not, there's no curtailment on their part because it's the way our our drought contingency plan is written, it doesn't really matter. Okay? So that's that's one aspect. So the reason why I had this understanding that in section four underwater emergency, there is no penalty for them not doing curtailment. And I understand that you have phone numbers and that you could call them and say like, but are you are you looking to cut them off if they don't follow your rules?

Are you gonna shut off their water? I don't think so. Right? I want and I'm not saying they're not gonna be good partners or anything like that, but there's always some outlier. Know, that it's kinda like it's kinda like me paying for a monthly fee, so if I get pulled over speeding, that you know, okay, I paid my monthly fee, I'm not gonna pay this fine because I was speeding.

Kinda like In stage four water emergency, or level one water emergency. So I just wanna make sure you understand the there is no penalty for not meeting the curtailment requirements. So that's why I was surprised when you said that there was that it ex it this included exemption into stage four, or water emergency. Because that's when you really need the curtailments. That's when you need the penalties.

That's when you need the the the not only the the front end, the carrot and the stick. But I'm not saying they're going to do that. I'm just saying it looks pretty stupid on our part, as a city writing regulations, that we exempt people from when we actually need it in stage four, or water emergency.

I understand, Councilman. Miles, please correct me if I'm wrong, but the key is the reference to 11.0391, which provides the water supplier many authority to do things such as cut back provisions for water. It provides for curtailments, allocations. Essentially, if things get really bad, it will allow for the water provider to close valves.

Okay, but we don't I understand the state regulation, and we're probably going to have to have it you know, lined out what those state regulations apply to, because I don't have it in front of me to to read it out. But you're gonna have to have those in there so we have a clear understanding of what those are. I just think it look, you know, by the way this reads, it states it states stages one, two, and three, not water emergency. And if it's a play on words, maybe we need to make the adjustment on that. I'm not saying our our partners are gonna do that.

I know they've been working really hard. Know the contracts for the wastewater reuse from Valero and Flint Hills are important things. I'm just looking at it from the perspective of how we maintain a certain regulation. And to say that those things only apply to water emergency when it doesn't call it out in paragraph k. You know, if you're gonna have that kind of gray area that you can ride a bus through, I think you you need to rewrite that.

Does that make sense?

Yeah, I understand what you're saying.

Okay, so like I said, this is more me chastising you guys, not industry, it's not their fault. You understand what I'm saying? We did this.

I guess so. I know what you're saying with the gray area.

You can drive a bus through that

gray Another way to look at it is it clearly says in stages one, two, three, leads to level one water emergency and level two water emergency.

Exactly. Then, also the way our DCP is written

understand that.

Right. And all the way our DCP is written, it doesn't even matter if we get charge them that surcharge anyway, or not. They're gonna it does, they're still exempt.

I do want to separate surcharges from curtailment.

Well, says route surcharge exemption fee. So I'll use that specific word. Whether they And it's voluntary, and I appreciate that they're paying for it, honestly. I really do. I just think, you know, whether they paid it or not, they would still have the same privileges. Am I wrong?

No, don't understand the last statement. Whether they paid it or

not they Whether they paid paid it or not, the way the DCP is written, there's no curtailment on their part through stages one, two, and three.

The large volume customers paying the exemption fee.

No, No. No. You're missing what I'm saying. I know. Whether they pay it or not. Let's say there's no drought exemption surcharge exemption fee. By the way the DCP is written, they do not have to curtail in stage one, two or three.

Right. Nobody does. Exactly. No customer classification does.

Because we

have we're we're not putting curtailments in there. Right. It's just rec you know, the only I I take it There is one thing. Yeah. Anything that where you're watering outside the property, that is a curtailment.

Yeah. Okay? Yes, sir. Yeah, you're right. We need to look at that section. I'm not sure why it's written that way, that section k on page 24. It doesn't really add much value because as you said, there is no curtailment for any customer class in stages one, two, and three. It's generally confusing, I think. So we might wanna look at just striking that out, just FYI. We'll work with Nick on it in the council.

Yeah. I've got I've got the notes.

Councilman Vaughan.

I wanna clarify something really quick. I wasn't here when they called the role, and councilman Cantu is not here because his father had a stroke, he is on life support. So we need to know that because he would not have missed this meeting. One quick question. I was really concerned that there's nothing in there, Gil bought it up, about multifamily because we've got so many apartments. Is there nothing in this whole thing? I read it. I didn't see it. Why would that be with all the apartments we've got?

Oh, in the in the document itself? Yeah. I can't speak to why there wasn't mention to

So what are we gonna do?

So what we're gonna do is we're working with Corollo, our consultants, to address multifamily differently than the commercial class.

Okay.

Typically, currently, in terms of our billing situation, multi families are part of our commercial customer class. So we recognize that it's a different situation.

So you're gonna bring something that shows us different. Just making sure.

Yeah. The baseline would be

different. I think we've had some really good questions.

Absolutely.

They've covered a lot. So thank you.

Yeah. There'll be Councilwoman, that's a good point. So apartment complexes are included in all these measures. It could be they have a commercial meter if it's a big complex, but some of these apartments have individual meters, and that could be a residential. They have individual meters, I guess. Right?

Some do. Yeah.

So some are treated as a residential customer classification, others are commercial. But there is we might need to put it as just something in just so people know they're included as well.

Okay. Councilwoman Paxson, then we're gonna go on and finish the last three, I think, sections, is it? Mhmm. Okay.

Thank you. Nick, can you tell me what percentage of overall volume is the residential customer class?

Overall volume of our water usage? One second, councilwoman. I'm gonna let Camille answer it as I can't find my notes right now. Sorry.

Camille Tarris, assistant director of CW. 14%.

14%. And approximately how many million gallons a day do you think that is?

Million gallons, I can't calculate. It's around 5,500,000,000 gallons a year. I would have to do the conversion. I can't do that.

So if our peak use is January? So if our peak use in the summer is January, how much of that would be residential at 1414%

of 1 35. So you're looking at

give me one second.

18.9.

18.9. Yeah.

And that's A month? Assuming the average of about 6,000 a day, 6,000 gallons. There's there's outliers, there's less, but about 6,000.

Yes.

And that's 18.

18 MGD.

So at 100 use, they're only 14% of our system use?

Yes.

Right? Okay. So to me, the six to 7,000 parameter for that class, I I apologize if I indicated that incorrectly or inaccurately, but what I was trying to communicate was six to seven is fair to me. That's that's about quality of life. It's such a small percentage of our water system that we should be invested in finding ways to enable our ratepayers of in our residential class to have a good quality of life. We gotta remember, they were watering their grass. They were washing their cars at home. Their kids were playing with the with the garden hose. Like, that's quality of life. So I think that those numbers are still fair.

Our community has really, really gotten behind reducing use, and that's why it's so low now. So I wouldn't I wouldn't favor reducing that at all. The multifamily, I agree with the other council members. I think that needs to be per unit on a residential base or something of the equivalent, and then I'll leave that on that. As far as the slide that said that there's provisions that repeated use to repeated use to not meet curtailment amounts could result in discontinued service, I don't think that should ever ever apply to a residential.

I think that's a health and safety issue. That's my 2¢ on that one. But I I what I don't see in any of this and, Peter, this is a little bit directed to you because we have had so many conversations on it. What I don't see in any of this presentation is a table form of baseline information. So we have what? 23 connections in our large volume user class?

Mhmm.

That's it. 23 connections.

A large volume.

So even though they're in a customer class, they're such a small number.

Yeah.

What I don't see is what I was told would be at this workshop is this is their their water consumption demand. This is their alternative source efforts. This is their immediate versus long term realistic cutback amounts. And those slides considered, this is our real and new attainable baseline. I don't see that in this presentation, and I'm a little frustrated that after all the discussions, it's not here. So if I could call up slide 22. No, I'm sorry, slide 20.

Yeah. We have the aggregate, councilwoman, but we do have individual that we can review with you for the 23 taps, for the 23 connections.

I would like that to be a slide for public Mhmm. Access, please. Mhmm. And I can give you those breakdowns of items if that needs to be specific. Slide 20? Are they queuing that up? 20? I'll wait. The

slide is ready if you could share it on the screen.

Thank you so much. So the reason I was asking earlier about how did we define the percentages of when we reach water emergency based on two factors. One, what is our actual solution percentage? How do we know what that number needs to be? And two, are these realistic reductions that we can ask our customer classes to actually apply?

It it doesn't make any sense for us to say reduce by 50% if they cannot. We have to look for other solutions if that doesn't work. So you asked us in this presentation to not consider anything 2024 and 2025. Luckily here, you said we had a user go offline, so they made a nice line for us on the chart that separates '24 before and after. So if we cut that off and we look prior to 2024, I don't see reductions in those uses.

We were not in a drought where we were requiring that, so that would make sense. So if I look '24 and '25, what I what I still don't see is overall system reductions. I'm not picking on this customer class. I'm trying to be very realistic with the policy document. If I look at this whole chart together, there's lows and peaks based on the three seasons defined.

Going from '21 to '25, I don't see a steady reduction. I actually see a slight uptick in each of those seasons. I realized last year in the spring when we were looking at this, we were all celebrating and saying, man, there's been a big reduction. But now, based on these season definitions, I see seasonally, we should have anticipated there to be a drop in that demand. So I am not picking on this category, but I think we have to be very realistic with this document.

If we're not going to if we're gonna request somebody cut back by 25%, can they do that? Does that make sense? That's why I'm asking that question. So if we go back to your statements on how did we come up with the 25%? How did we come up with the 50%? You said we looked at best practice. It has to it has to be quantifiable in the Corpus Christi water system for for that to make sense. Does that does that resonate?

Maybe. Perhaps. What what I can say, councilwoman, is when we look at curtailment percentages, we've gotta look at we're forecasting where our supply is gonna be and where the demand is. Both of those are projections and forecasts. And the curtailment percentage, and it's the same on all customer classes, has to be a number that will provide us, that will lower that demand curve so that our supply won't be outpaced by the demand. That's what we're looking at, and that is for across all customer classes. That is to the benefit of all seven counties that we serve.

I completely agree with you, Nick, and I love our industrial large volume 100%. I'm saying for this policy procedure, we have to be realistic and accurate. I don't want to sit up here and make policy on information I don't have. So I find it frustrating and disingenuous that what I've asked for weeks is not presented here today.

Well, it is, constable. And we have it just an aggregate form.

No. I asked for it in detail.

Yeah. We have it, we're gonna give it to you. We didn't wanna show it here today. But let me just let me just, also answer the question this way. When we these are targets in the in the contingency plan today because we don't know how much water we need to generate. I'm gonna talk about it a little bit differently to see if we can because it's an important topic. So when we forecast out the the scenario of where we are in a calendar year and where we see that supply is not gonna meet demand, that six month forecast, we're gonna work with the council to say we wanna stretch out that six month to maybe twelve months or seven months or eight months. And then we're gonna know how much water we need to come up with, and that's gonna be in the form of less use. So we're Right. Yeah.

Yeah. We don't have it yet because we don't know where we are in the calendar year. It's gonna be real time.

You're gonna look at my house and say, Mark, you used too much water? But Everett, I'm gonna let

you know. Councilwoman, let me let me just finish. So the Corolla's here because it's not just these are best practice numbers that we could pick from any country or any state, I mean, in America, but it's gonna be real time data that we're gonna show the show the council. The term reverse engineer is something we've used in our staff meetings. And so we have to see where are we in the calendar, how much water do we want to save, how much do we want to prolong, not having enough supply.

And then we say, okay, this is how much water we need. So to get to that amount of water, there's going to be percentage that we don't know right now because we don't know where we are in the calendar year, how much water we have to generate. Corolla's going to help us with formula based analytics to say across all customer classes, you'd have to reduce this same percentage to up with this much water. And then we're going to have an actual percentage. That's why right now these are just goals in there, the targets, because the real scenario hasn't happened yet. We don't know where we are in the demand time of the calendar. We don't know how much water remains. We don't know how much we have to cut by to generate more months of making sure supply equals demand. Does that make sense?

Peter, when will that come?

Well, it's gonna come when we We'll have it when we have a better idea of the model that we're gonna recommend to counsel, the scenario. We have A through E. And so as we work on the Western Well field, we're gonna have a better understanding of where. It won't come until we're close to calling the level one emergency. Cause factors can change. You could have a rain event that could throw off the whole reverse engineered scenario. Because you have more water, more supply. So it's gonna be real time and data. The DCP is just a guide. The actual real percentage is gonna come from modelers with real time data, real real amounts of water.

But industry, everybody will have to cut. So the the notion that they might not be able to reduce water, they're gonna have to because there's not gonna be enough to supply if we don't. And that's where that enforcement thing comes in. So they'll have to turn down operations. They know that. And that's why in our meetings, they're talking about it already. Mhmm.

Okay. Mhmm. Thank you. Okay. I think Everett has a quick

Yeah. Just have a quick comment on that. Sure. Because it goes back to what I was saying earlier. I don't believe that you can sit there and try to implement this model across the board based on you have to be able to look at the baseline.

It's the same thing even on the residential side. I mean, if I happen to believe that a strong family unit is 12 kids, and I decide that that's my goal in life is to have 12 children, and I'm gonna have my mother and father live with our unit also to help out, that's a whole different model. And the challenge is is we're trying to make blanket policy across the board. When when you take a look at industry, you got 23 different sources of the industrial users that have different business models altogether. And so that's the only thing.

I I wanna go back to that and say that we have to make sure that, number one, we look at the baseline, and then we put policy or we put things in place that affect those that are are not doing their job in terms of conserving based on their baseline? Because I keep hearing us. We keep basically blanket No.

It's not. Yeah. So the for the the for the 23 large volume users, they have individualized baselines. That's what councilman Paterson was talking about.

And I think that's part of the information. That would be nice. Even though I know to a degree also that it could be proprietary Yeah. In terms of

Well, we're gonna show it. Mean, it's public information at this point. So at our next workshop, we'll show you the 23

Yeah. Because we need to understand, okay, who is doing a good job

and who maybe needs to

do a better job and what are the factors that determine based on their business model Yeah. That could deter them from doing that. And maybe they're okay with saying, okay, then I'm gonna have to in the event that we make the decision that we're either gonna operate or not operate, we'll be more than glad to to whatever have to pay additional money.

Right. For the large volume users, they have individual baselines. Everybody's is different.

Think that's part of what we're looking at to try to have that information.

We'll show that to you, no problem. And then for the residential, though, we have to talk about this if we don't wanna do it this way. Right now, all residential are the same, 7,000. There's no exception for the unit of family you just described. We could. We could we'd to figure out how to do that. But right now, for residential, it's 7,000 Zatar.

I mean, that might be hard. I'm just saying we have to be practical also.

Commercial, we broke it into meter sizes. So there's eight different categories in commercial.

The other thing is when we're talking about multifamily, there's a big difference between you're right. If you have a four unit or a five unit, you have individual utilities and each unit is responsible for the utilities, or if you have a two eighty unit multifamily unit with one big meter and and the owner is responsible for that. And I know that there's a difference. But anyway, I just wanna keep going back and making sure that we remember that this that's a challenge. This is a challenge here. Yeah. So yeah. Thank you.

Yes, sir.

Thank you. Councilman Scott.

The I I apologize. I was snippy. But I guess my point was I I don't have the ability I get that each individual large water user has got their own number. But I don't know if you should cut 15% because you use an open loop and you already use a closed loop, so we're gonna let you stay 10%. Mean, that No. They're out No.

That so the percentage reduction is the same across the board. That's the same. This is by law. Classification, every customer has the same percent that they have to reduce by. But what are you reducing from that's their target amount? And for large volume users, they have individual targets they're very different.

And I I get that there's a reality that that that some could do more than others. Yeah. But I I'm not, you know, I'm not I don't understand or or can pass judgment as to who should do more than that. That's all getting at is that you get that granular, then we're passing judgment on on what you do compared to what you do. And and I I just don't and it sounds like maybe that's not what we're doing, but because I don't even you make oil and you make widgets and you make aspirin. Yeah. I don't know what the water requirements for that are, I don't think we should be involved. I appreciate what

you said.

Yeah. Thank you.

Alright. Okay. Nick, go ahead. We're gonna go ahead and start on page 23 and go through page 28, which is the last slide, and then we'll have question and answer again.

Thank you, mayor. I'd like to introduce, Mike Dice, interim assistant city manager, to talk about new water metered connections.

Good afternoon, counsel. Mike Dice, interim assistant city manager. I was just brought up earlier about moratoriums. And as Nick stated on slide 13, there could be a proposed council action on moratoriums, but that would need to follow state law specifically under Texas local government code two twelve. As you see in the slide that was amended, in the last legislature, house bill twenty five fifty nine in the last legislature further clarified the existing rules that were already in place for moratoriums.

What it is, it specifically mirrored the existing commercial rules to include residential. It requires multiple public hearings before implementation, and you'll see that timeline across the middle. Before any implementation for any type of moratorium, you would need a thirty day notice for a public hearing. That public hearing would require an additional thirty days for a second public hearing. It would require an additional after that, within twelve days, an actual vote would have to happen from council on the moratorium.

That vote would require three quarter affirmation from council. And then twenty eight day no sooner than twenty eight days after that would be a second reading, so we kinda have some timelines there. It would take one hundred and one days to get into any proposed moratorium. Specifically within House Bill, 2559, this limits to two ninety day moratoriums. So your first action at after that timeline is is ninety days of moratorium.

Within that ninety days, you can have an extension, which would require a three quarters vote. Would also require city staff basically saying in the council affirming that certain items had been met, that the moratorium actually has shown a reduction. Is it is it improving this the situation? Again, another keynote of 2559, you cannot limit or have another moratorium within two years after the if you do the extension. If you have a hundred and eighty days ag aggregate of moratorium, you cannot do a moratorium for two years.

So that's something to consider. Again, these require three quarter vote for each vote of council, and it has to follow state law, Texas local Texas local government code two twelve.

Thank you, Mike, for being here and helping us through that and the legislative information. Another topic that we know that comes up a lot is car washing. As I stated earlier, the use of per the contingency plan, the use of water to wash any motor vehicle, motor trailer, or other vehicle is absolutely prohibited. This applies to use of water from the CCW water system. Auxiliary water sources may be used. So that may be at at your house. It might be rainwater. We know some of our customers have wells. It's important to note that this DCP applies to the CCW water system.

Nick, can you just this is a big topic for the council and the community, so just talk a little bit more about the car washes.

Sure.

There are numerous types of car washes. There's the quick quack type car washes. There's the wand car washes. You see them at gas stations, the red HEBs. But if they're hooked up to the city's water system, then you can't operate the car wash. Is that correct?

Yeah. So how it's stated is that car washes are prohibited, which means the actual act of washing the car is prohibited.

So that means, if they're hooked up to the city's CCW's water system and that's their only water source, they won't they won't be able to operate?

Correct. They would need an additional or auxiliary water source.

Okay. A car wash facility would have to bring in some water from some other location.

Do we know how many? Are hooked up to the cities.

We don't have it here with us, but we've done some general analysis on usage. So car washes, if they don't have water from some other source, like a well or they truck it in, it it will be prohibited to be in operation.

Right.

I think it's important to know which how many are we talking about.

Okay. We'll get you the number.

Which would be simple to find out.

Yeah. Yeah. We I've got that.

Alright. Okay. Thank you, Ned.

K. Thank you. Swimming pools is another topic that comes up. The drought contingency plan, page eight nine, states the filling and refilling or adding of water to swimming pools, wading pools, and Jacuzzi type pools and hot tubs is prohibited except to maintain structural integrity. So one thing that I think staff has done a good job in instructing the community, there are measures to take for swimming pools, shown in the pictures of pool cover, to limit the amount of evaporation.

Additionally, know there's chemicals to put in the pool to limit evaporation. One thing that I would like to say is we've been working with our parks department. We've asked them to prepare a plan for the city pools, city owned and operated pools. They are working on that, and they are gonna come back with that information, including splash pads as well. We do know, splash pads, the rate of evaporation is very high, of course. But we've asked the parks department to develop a plan, and they'll they'll come back to, all of us with that.

Okay.

At our last council meeting, there was a request to look at the definition of essential water usage. Staff has been looking through that, and what we are proposing is in the DCP to define essential water usage as water use necessary to sustain public health, welfare, safety, sanitation, and fire protection. This would be added to the definitions of the drought contingency plan. Additionally, it's important, and we talked about this in the previous slide, a true definition of auxiliary water supply or alternate water supply. It's a water supply from a source that does not originate from the Corpus Christi water supply system, whether treated or raw.

So when you think about that, we should be thinking about potentially a well, a home well, thinking about rain water capture, rain barrels, thinking about the effluent reuse program, where residents can come to the Oso wastewater treatment plan and pick up reuse. There are times when people actually truck water in from another system. One of the key points I just want to make is that this DCP is entirely focused on the Corpus Christi water system, whereas the water conservation plan focuses on water conservation in a more general aspect as well. I do want to We are talking about wells. There are specific requirements and ordinances for wells.

It's just a reminder to the general public, if you're planning on intending to install a well, please reach out to the Corpus Christi Aquifer Storage and Recovery Conservation District. Additionally, there are cross connection measures that are required to ensure that our water supply system remains safe. Definitions, to be included in the drought contingency plan, there would have to be an amendment. But we've asked staff to work through this, and this is what our recommendation is. What are our next steps?

There is a staff recommendations with city manager recommendation on essential water usage and auxiliary water. That's what I just talked about. We're forecasting that to go forward on the April 14 council meeting. The April council meeting would be city council approval of surcharges and allocations, a reminder that those would not go into effect until the date of level one water emergency. And then the next city council workshop is April 28. And then of course, next steps, we also have other potential recommendations as well.

Okay. Nick, thank you. Do we have any questions or comments? Councilman Scott.

Hey. Are we talking to the tourism industry about potential impacts to to them? Just thinking about all the fishermen,

fishing people. We are. Yeah. So Brooke Kaufman, the the CEO of Visit Corpus Christi, and I and and the executive team, in the last monthly executive team meeting spent the entire time talking about this situation. They are going to hire, and we're going to partner with them, a consultant that'll help on messaging.

And so that's underway. I'm thinking just about all the recreational and professional fishing guides who who are out of Corpus Christi that Yeah. I think you have to flush your motor. I I don't own a boat, but I think you have to flush your motor anytime you're out in in saltwater. Mhmm. Under this rule, you couldn't use city water to flush the motor.

That's correct.

So I guess the answer would be they'd have to I'm just curious, have you thought that through? So they could apply for a variance? So

yeah, it's important to note that there is a variance provision in the trial contingency plan. Part of this workshop today was to make people aware that that did exist.

So if I own a boat and I go out fishing, I I apply for variance to be able to flush my boat at the house, I guess. That's interesting. Just not sure how that works, but I get and my response, by the way, is, okay. We just run out of water. So I'm not I'm not picking on any of us here, but I think that, the fishing industry is a big part of our tourism economy. And I don't know that individual I guess professional, I could see where professional fishing guides could ask for variances because they're doing that every day. I I don't know how much water it uses, and I don't know if you could use you know, you could bring in other water sources, you know, and flush it that way. I just think that's an issue that we should think through.

That's all.

Okay. Councilman Hernandez.

Okay. On the residential tap moratorium, I was a little surprised to see that in the sense that I'm looking at page 18 of your presentation where it says residential usage has dropped significantly or has met requirements. So I'm I'm I'm thinking how many residential accounts do we have, and has that changed over time to where because I mean, if you look at our population, we haven't really increased that much. So I'm I'm trying to get the correlation here.

So there are 90,625 residential connections.

Has that been consistent over the years?

I I'll get you the exact information, but I would say it's fairly consistent. Mean, it goes up typically, I know when the housing industry was doing well, it was about a thousand new homes a year. I don't know what the current date is, you know what, but Mike Dice might be able to answer that. Yeah.

Well, I'm talking about in terms of like, you you have migration from one area of the city to the other. So there may be a tap, but it might not be an active account. So I want to understand, not from just adding new taps or new permits, but also what is our total number of accounts year over year to see if we're having this increases or not? Because we're talking you shutting down mobilization businesses by doing something like this, when I want to know if it really has impact considering the usage of residential usage.

And again, Mike Dysen. I'm assistant city manager. So the permitting trend that we've had over the last five years has been anywhere from 1,000 to at one point, we're about 1,500 new residential permits. So those would be new accounts coming online. In addition to commercial accounts, we do about 180 new commercial building permits a year. So that's the thing for council to decide if a moratorium was what council would want. Those are the steps as laid out by state law, how that would be done.

Okay. I understand your point on what you have to deal with. But what I'm asking is on him is the amount of accounts, and are they increasing or decreasing at you know, because if you have something close here and open up over here, and this isn't using water anymore, you've like for example, I'll use Hillcrest as an example. They had a lot more houses there back then before the bridge, right? There's less taps over there. So there's less accounts. So but then there's more on the South Side. So I want I wanna know the balance here before we make a decision to stop something if I if if you don't see the whole picture.

We we can get you a historical look back on active accounts yearly. And then Yearly is what you're

looking for. And then then I'm also looking at this. Average use per household. Right? So I mean, I don't want to stop something that they're doing what we're supposed to be doing in terms of getting this stuff done. And and, you know, make a decision just based on where we're trying to do something instead of looking at numbers. I wanna make sure we have information information informed decisions. Okay?

Can get you that, councilman.

And just to repeat, was said here, but there's no rec the staff is not recommending that we put a moratorium on new meters. We're not recommending that today. Okay. Yeah. Just so they're public.

Alright. Well, I'm I'm just saying you brought it up. I just want when make sure that we you do if you do decide to do that Right. Make sure you bring us the information as to the number of accounts.

Correct.

Not just the taps, but the accounts. Yeah.

That's good.

And then also want to have some more detail. I know it's in the DCP, I but want to have some more detail on these car washes, especially the ones that are supposedly recycling in terms of how they're used as a commercial in terms of commercial business and the size of the meter. And, you know, just you know, to councilman Scott's point, I mean, there's there's certain things that you do that you have to protect your equipment with by by washing stuff out. I wanna make sure we're we're looking at it holistically and not just have, oh, we're gonna stop this. I wanna make sure I understand the numbers. Okay. Thank you.

Councilwoman Vaughan. That's a good point about the boats because they do have to clean their motors. And this is an opportunity just like the ones that are watering their lawns. I mean, have these big trailers. They've got the big hose because I use them. That's just an opportunity. If anybody's listening, hopefully, we won't have to use it. My question is this or comment. One of the big things we have to do as our city, no matter when we get out of this, is conserving. And I don't think we've showed a conservation to the public to try and help them on the things that they can do. A lot of people citizens have good ideas out there, but one of the things is those rain barrels. Do we have the rain barrels?

Yeah. Are available at CCW. You can purchase them at City Hall, and then you go to CCW 2726 Holly to pick them up.

How much are they? Do we know?

They're $50.52 dollars or something.

40?

47. $47. I bought one two weeks ago, my second

really pricey.

That's cost, and I I've seen other rain barrels charged 65 to $70. Okay. But it's only cost.

Okay. It's $27.26. Holly, is that what you said?

Correct. What you said? But but you purchased them at city hall in the central cashier's office.

And then you have to go pick them up yourself.

That's correct.

Because we do have a possibility of brain. Wouldn't be bad to have them as in through the road too. So that's my my biggest issue here is I just think we have to come up with the ways for them to conserve during the because we're gonna be in a drought again. We know we'll get water, but we're gonna be in a drought again. Just there's no way that we could buy in bulk and get those things cheaper.

We do buy them.

Do buy both?

Buying them and ask them if you can talk to how many we order at any given time.

At any given time, we order approximately 300 that fits in in a large 18 wheeler.

Okay.

And it's a very popular program. My team is talking to customers all the time about it. We're promoting it. It's a very good deal compared to you go to if Lowe's, if you go to different places online, it's it's it's affordable. I know councilwoman Campos has has purchased rain barrels from us. I continue to promote it. We have we we help with the master gardeners to promote it also. So it's a it's a great program.

Well, and you know, there's a lot of people that absolutely cannot afford them. So maybe we might come up with something to help some of the ones that can't. Just a suggestion. Okay. Thanks.

Councilwoman Paxton. Thank you.

So with the recommendations on establishing what we want to do for what's your last slide? How did you word it?

The the next steps, counsel?

Under your next steps. Basically, approval of surcharges and allocations. That would be page 16. That's what you're saying would come before us next after the update on these, definitions?

So right. So 16 is the surcharges. So if if this council, move to approve the surcharges But

also allocations. What's that? But also allocations?

Right. And then there's allocations. We also recommend the surcharges and then recommend the baseline, the curtailment percentage resulting in the allocations.

And that's what's in the table on 16?

Well, 16 is just the surcharges. It's not the baseline or the curtailment or the allocation.

And so when we look at each of the three slides where we have the graphs of the different customer class, there's a clear answer on the residential slide, and that's 7,000. But there's kind of averages on commercial and large volume, which I understand those accounts vary greatly. But do you see what I'm saying? There's not really a clear definition on those two allocations?

You're absolutely correct. So with commercial customers, it'll be based on their meter size. Admittedly, we only gave you an example of a three quarter inch meter size, but there's one inch, there's two inch, there's four inch. So all of that information will be presented so you have a chance to review it. And then again, with the large volume, there are specific baselines set up for those entities.

Okay. So what we know based on the facts of pulling billed information, that is our best, fastest answer to say what is our actual demand, how much has reduction, and and what over time shows us patterns? Based on those actuals, it's our residential customers that that even though they're the smallest slice of the pie, they are making the most noteworthy changes. I would argue that, sure, they have a little bit more flexibility because their actions are not tied to operations as much as, you know, a business may be. But what what's not here is, you know, we have a a surcharge where our large volume partners can say, we may not ever need to go into surcharge and curtailment, but but I'm gonna go ahead, and I'm gonna pay a percentage over years as a partner.

And and should that ever come up, I've been paying into it so many years, I'm exempt from it. We can tweak that. You know, we've had some good discussions on it, but there is a provision there. There's nothing really here that says, what about our residents who make up such a small portion that we can be cognizant of the sacrifices they have and continue to make and and also say, how are we protecting their quality of life while they live with us? I mean, we don't have a city to operate if our if our citizens are unhappy.

You know what I mean? And I get it. We have to save water, but some things that come to my mind is kind of like, one, we have we have a a fund set up for individuals who may need utility assistance. They can come and apply, they can get some assistance. Maybe there's something along those lines as far as the rain barrels, like Councilwoman Vaughan was saying. It's like, hey, dollars 50 may be a lot to a lot of our partners, a lot

of our

residents. Put it into a system kinda like that. $50 is not so much when it's absorbed into an organization of this scale, but maybe we can still get it out there so that they can do our part. If we can kind of turn that conversation to to say, you know, less of, hey, make sure you're not watering your lawn. Make sure you're not washing your car.

And more of, if you utilize these auxiliary water sources now that they're defined, you can get these many ways back, and here's what we could do to help you, or here's how how that looks. I'm not gonna come out and penalize you when I see a well sign. I'm not gonna come out hey, the grass looks green. We're looking for ways to actively help you meet those needs through a fair process. You know what I mean?

Does that make sense? I think that we I think that we could stand to really be impactful by adding that message. Because what I what I really would like to see from all of this is a little bit more how do we embrace our residential customer class who has been bearing so much personal sacrifice for the region? Even though they're the smallest slice. Does that make sense?

It it does, and I I think the there's generally, there's been some comments here that we we can take back with staff and try and work on something.

Okay. Think that

would very helpful. We talked about the rain barrel and everything. I remind all of our many people every day, again, CCW, we're an enterprise fund, so all of our operations and capital expenses are covered by the ratepayers. Certain and I and I just wanna to bring this up. So any beneficial programs that are done at no cost, we still have to recover those costs of services, and that's borne by by all of the ratepayers.

How much is left in that $90,000 fund?

You know, the last councilwoman, the last time I checked, which admittedly was about a month and a half ago, I think there was between 35 and $40,000.

Okay. So maybe we say a percentage of that could maybe help offset. Maybe we ask some other partners like, hey. You might not have a billion dollars to put towards a new water supply, but do you have a couple 100 which would supply some rain barrels? Just like we took initiative for this, if we're saying that we're gonna prioritize auxiliary water use, let's do this as well and get some more water barrels out there to people.

And and I see on here that there's some adaptation to those definitions from when we brought it last week. What I would like us to do, what I'd like to see is a specific engagement session with our hospitals and health cares and showing them how they could do those variance requests that match precisely that discussion last week. I see a nod from Chief Wade.

Yeah, right. We had an initial meeting with them, and thanks to Chief Wade and his staff, we're very appreciative of their work. They have the connections, and we're committed to those continued meetings with those customers, such as hospitals, such as the schools.

I can count on you for a follow-up to go over that specifically.

Got it. Thank you.

Mayor, can I add one thing, please? We are acknowledging the work the residential customers have done, as evidenced by the baseline of 7,000. We could have set that lower. We could have said, you know what, we're gonna try to squeeze the residents even more and have even a lower baseline. But it's high, 7,000, and they've already made that up.

The average is in that 40,000 to 5,000 per month. Most residents won't have to do much when we go into curtailment, when we go into allocations. And so we're kind of rewarding them, and we'll do more, but we're rewarding them with the baseline at that 7,000. The average residential customer uses about 6,000, and we're saying we'll bump it up a little bit as acknowledgment that they've done a lot. They've sacrificed a lot. They have. They've been in curtailment, as Councilwoman Campos talks about it for over a year. They've been in curtailment. You can't waddle your lawn. So there's some recognition there, but we can do more, to Paxton's point. So I just wanna highlight that in the curtailment amount.

Okay, thank you, Peter. Council Mervoy?