Airport Commission - Regular Meeting

Transpiration environment. Commute to order. Let's start with roll call, please.

Salas. Here. Campos.

Present.

Ortiz.

Present.

Vice chair Foley.

Here. Chair Cohen.

Here. You have a quorum.

Thank you. We, the first item is a change in the work plan. We're going to defer from today's meeting to the April meeting our tow tow services update. So we have to have a motion and a a vote to do so. Do we have any public comment on that?

We have no public comment.

Move approval. Second.

Okay, let's vote on the work plan. Did everyone vote? It's weird the numbers here not. It says three zero with one not voting but there's five of us here. So, I don't know. I assume everyone voted yes though. Yeah. Alright. So, that motion carries. We'll see if it works the next time. Okay. We do have one item on the on consent today. This is the work plan for the climate advisory commission. Do we have any public comment on the consent calendar?

We have no public comment.

Alright, back to committee.

Move approval of consent.

Second.

Okay. Let's vote. Alright. All good that time. It's five zero. Okay. We're starting with our first report today. Item D1 is the San Jose Clean Energy Roadmap Status Report. Zach, kick it off.

Good afternoon. Zach Streich. I am the acting director of the Energy Department joined here by Kate Ziamba who is the senior environmental program manager and leader of our programs team and Josh Shannon, senior carbonization program specialist team lead for our transportation electrification efforts. And today with our annual update on the status of our programs roadmap. We're going to give a background on what is the programs roadmap, then talk about our current programs briefly, talk about how we score potential programs and solicit community input, and then finally finish with recommendations for programs for fiscal year twenty five-twenty six.

First a word on what we mean by programs. So it's an overused term and apologies for that. Sometimes the whole San Jose Clean Energy Community Choice Aggregator or CCA, sometimes we refer to that as a program. And so this is not, we're talking about, and the bulk, I'm sorry, and the main majority activity for San Jose Clean Energy is the supply of clean electricity for most of the city. This today we're talking about the everything else, things that we do for energy efficiency and pushing for electrification of a lot of the city.

So without further ado, San Jose Clean Energy began developing programs when we launched service in 2019 and we then embarked on a two year stakeholder engagement process to develop the program with a roadmap which guides the types of programs we'll offer over the next several years. It's always a looking forward several years. Our programs focus on six areas as you see on the slide, improving equity and affordability underpin all of these areas. And vehicle electrification and building electrification in particular correspond and align with the city's pathway to carbon neutrality which identifies the highest impact areas for greenhouse gas reductions.

So we are currently implementing eight programs for San Jose clean energy customers. We recently sunset three programs which are shown in gray including two energy efficiency programs funded by a grant from the California Public Utilities Commission,

and we're set to launch three more programs by the end of this fiscal year.

The city council approved a budget of up to 12,000,000 for customer programs in fiscal year twenty four, twenty five, and about half of the program's budget this fiscal year comes from external sources. This is our first big year for programs expenditures and we have launched or in the process of launching our foundational programs like Eco Home Rebate and we are learning a lot as we scale up. Here are some of the impacts of our programs through the 2024. So we've saved 35,000,000 kilowatt hours, which is the same as the annual usage of more than 7,000 homes. We've avoided 19,000 metric tons of CO2 and achieved 14,500,000 in lifetime savings for customers.

Switching gears now to how we arrived at our program recommendations for fiscal year twenty five-twenty six, so we want to create energy programs that our community wants and needs. We have a staff member who's dedicated to community engagement and conducting needs assessments, and we also receive input from the climate advisory commission and collaborate with other CCAs and utilities to understand their most impactful programs. So we take the program ideas from these sources and put them through our scoring framework to help us prioritize. And we so we calculate scores for program ideas using five metrics that map to our council approved guiding principles. Greenhouse gas reductions, prioritizing electrification in areas with low adoption,

and

customer savings carry the greatest weight. And our recommendations for fiscal year twenty five-twenty six reflect these highest scoring programs. So for fiscal year twenty five-twenty six, we recommend offering 15 programs for SJC customers including four new programs. We recommend spending a maximum of 14,000,000 and about $1,500,000 of that would come from external sources. So this represents an increase in ratepayer spending of $6,000,000,000 compared to fiscal year twenty four-twenty five.

And implementing our program recommendations in fiscal year twenty five twenty six will result in avoiding an estimated 65,000 ton metric tons of carbon dioxide, which is equivalent to about 1.3% of total community wide emissions in 2021. And our recommended 14,000,000 programs investment is estimated to create 37,000,000 in lifetime customer savings. And for context, 37,000,000 is roughly the same amount of savings project from our rates this calendar year. And now Josh will go over each of our recommended programs in detail.

Hi all, thanks for having me. First up, we'll go through our vehicle electrification programs. We're recommending to continue implementing three programs and provide two new programs. First up is the DC fast charging hubs pilot, which was approved by city council in 2022 and would provide allow a developer to come on to city properties and install four to seven fast charging hubs, own and operate and maintain those to offer low cost charging in charging deserts in San Jose. Next up is a multifamily EV charger incentive.

This pilot was launched this past fall and was designed to stack on top of an existing PG and E program and other state programs. It incentivizes level one and level two charging properties to make multifamily charging more affordable and get projects to the finish line. Next we have our EV education program. This is an award winning program for San Jose Clean Energy and provides experiences like riding drives and other education to communities with low EV adoption in the city. And next we have two new programs we're proposing and recommending.

We have the residential EV incentive. This is an incentive for customers to purchase or lease EVs. It's a point of sale rebate which means a customer would receive the incentive at the time of sale at participating dealerships. This would reduce the initial cost of purchasing an EV specifically for low income customers and customers in environmental justice communities. And lastly, we are recommending the EV advisor.

This is an advisory service for customers looking to make the EV transition, and would help them find and use public charging, along with provide technical assistance for those looking to install EV charging at home. Next up, we have our building electrification programs. Similarly, we're recommending to continue implementing three programs and offer programs. First up is a suite of programs that we launched this past December, that's the Eco Home Rebate and Eco Home Payment Plan. Eco Home Rebate provides incentives for customers to install heat pump water heaters and heat pump HVAC systems and other electrification upgrades.

And the eco home payment plan offers zero interest financing and on bill financing for customers looking to do home electrification. Next we have our workforce development. We are currently wrapping up outreach with the electrification workforce figuring out the suite of programs that we'd want to recommend to council and we'll be doing that at a later date. And finally we have two new programs we're recommending for building electrification. We have heat pump education which similarly mirrors the EV education program providing workshops and working with CBOs to get the workforce ready for building electrification and specifically heat pumps.

And lastly we have advisor, similar advisory services to the EV advisor providing support for folks looking to install electrification technologies at their home, providing support for technical assistance, and even going as far as electrification plans for their home. Next, we have our distributed energy resources programs in which we're recommending to continue offering four existing programs. First up is solar access, which right now provides a 20% discount to customers and is 100% funded by the CPUC. Next is our Peak Rewards Virtual Power Plant program. This program pays customers for shifting their electricity use off peak or shifting during grid emergencies and helps our procurement.

So it makes electricity procurement cheaper and we pass those savings on to customers. Next is our residential battery storage incentive program. We're looking to launch this in the next couple of months and it would provide incentives for customers to install a home battery and link that up with their residential solar. We'd then be incentivizing those customers to enroll that battery in the Peak Rewards program to further their savings. And lastly for distributed energy resources is our residential super off peak pilot which is also known as midday super saver which incentivizes customers to shift their EV charging or other electricity use to off peak times from 9AM to 2PM with lower electricity rates during those times.

And last up is our program specific rates, our Electric bill relief pilot. In 2024, electricity bill relief reduced the risk of over a 100 electricity disconnections for vulnerable households. This is done through an innovative partnership with the county's homelessness prevention program and Sacred Heart. We are recommending to expand this program for fiscal year 2526, and use, lessons learned from 2024, to bring that forward. And this brings us to our recommendation. Our recommendation is to accept this update and cross reference for consideration by the full city council on April 8. And with that, we are open to questions.

Alright. Thank you so much. I'm very excited to see this update. It's great to be at the point now where we're fully able to fund the programs. I think this is the first year where we're at our full funding level since we started San Jose Clean Energy. So thank you for bringing that to us. Do we have any public comment on this item?

Yes. We have one comment card. Diane Solomon, please make your way down to the podium. You will have two minutes to speak.

Good afternoon. I'm here on behalf of your bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee. We appreciate our city's climate smart goals for energy, water, transportation and local jobs. We wanted to remind you of the following in November 2021 our city council set a goal of community wide carbon neutrality by 2030 thereby accelerating our city's climate smart program. At this meeting our council members also approved the initiative called pathway to Carbon Neutrality by 2030 and 2030 is five years from now, please enable our city's budget to fund the clean energy program as well as the city's programs that have a proven record of reducing carbon emissions, that improve air quality, reduce other pollutants and reduce the gasoline and electricity that's used to power motorized vehicles.

These programs are the Vision Zero program, the Annual Bikeways program, Better Bike Plan 2025, Transit First, Vehicle Miles Traveled goals and the programs that maintain our ways, trails, pedestrian safety accommodations. These programs not only get us closer to carbon neutrality, they enable individuals of all ages to walk, jog, wheelchair and bicycle safely within our city. Thank you for your attention and thanks for making San Jose a great place to live.

Back to the committee.

Alright. Thank you. We'll start with vice mayor Foley.

Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. I have some questions regarding the distributed energy resources page, page 10. Can you tell me how that really works, the Peak Rewards Virtual Power Plant? How does someone benefit from that program as well as the others?

Sure. Thank you for your question. So through Peak Rewards, customers have a couple different ways to participate. So, we have what's called the behavioral pathway, which means they can sign up for our program, and then when we send them a signal that it's an energy saving event, they can turn off the lights, not use their appliances, and any energy saving during that time period that we call the event usually one or two hours, we are tracking their usage just like we do as their provider, and we give them a credit on their electricity bill for any power that they saved of $1 per kilowatt. For some events, it can be higher, as high as $2 per kilowatt hour.

There we are set to launch some new ways for customers to participate, specifically with automated devices. So for example, customers in April will be able to enroll their smart thermostat for their home and give us permission during those same events to wirelessly adjust it up or down a couple degrees depending on if it's summer or winter. Customers will always be able to override and not participate in events, so they always remain in control of their device. Other pathways that and then backing up and then we will pay them for any any kilowatt hours reduced during those events. Other devices we will enroll in the future include EVs through the telematics system onboard the EV, so we'll control we can stop charging during event, customers can override, or we can adjust it to a different time of the day if they're enrolled in that offering for us.

And so what we'll do is aggregate either the customer choosing to reduce electricity or any kind of automated reduction into this flexible demand, and that saves San Jose clean energy on procurement costs, and we pass those savings back to the customer by compensating them for participating.

Thank you for that explanation. So how initially does a customer get signed up for or how do they find out about the program?

So we are undertaking a big marketing campaign for this with digital digital ads, emails, also working with CBOs to individually help folks enroll. They can go onto our website to sign up. For smart thermostats, some of the marketing will be done by the manufacturers of the smart thermostats. So for example, Google Nest will outreach to folks in San Jose who already have thermostat installed. So through these different pathways, folks can get signed up.

Okay. So if someone already has a smart thermostat and they're already they have solar panels and they have a EV charging in their home, they're going to get notification from us about this benefit. And then on certain circumstances are gonna be notified, now is the time to reduce your energy. What would trigger that notification to them?

So we are calling, estimate one to six events per month, typically during the summer months, and the what we're looking at before calling them are power prices. Also, when the state calls what's called an emergency watch, they're looking at on the grid supply and demand more generally, and so these are some of the triggers that would cause us to call an event.

Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Chair, would you like me to move?

Go ahead.

I'll move acceptance of the item and cross reference to council on April 8.

Alright. Thank you. Do have a second? Second. Alright. We have a motion and a second. Council Member Salas.

There we go. Are you retiring the energy efficiency program? Is that what I saw? You went pretty quickly.

So we received funding from the California Public Utilities Commission. It was for a three year cycle and that cycle ended on 12/31/2024. So we are currently doing the final reporting for that.

So the answer is yes? Yes. So energy efficient is probably the most effective form of saving energy and dollars, right? I'm surprised you're not picking that up if we're funding these other programs.

Yes, so we are currently taking the learnings from those programs and looking at whether we should apply to the California Public Utilities for a new round of funding. There are different application pathways you can undertake. We do have some energy efficiency measures in our eco home rebate program, for example attic insulation, and so we're looking at ways that we can increase energy efficiency either through external dollars or our ratepayer funds right now. And so we expect to incorporate that into next fiscal year programming.

But that's not in this year's fiscal year. You've definitely retired for this fiscal year, is that Yes, what you're

sorry, fiscal year 2016. Do you

want to

add something?

No, it's not impossible that over the next six months, between now and next year that we find a great program and we come back to council with a one off. I'll also add that it's a crowded field out there for administrator existing programs and energy efficiency programs operated by others. And so I think for the next twelve months probably we'll do a lot of trying to elevate those to get more participation in those.

Okay. Then you mentioned we put the chargers at the libraries and community centers to be low cost chargers. What's the is there a fixed price that you've negotiated with the provider or what?

So this is for our direct current fast charging hubs pilot program. We're still in the beginning of that. We're in the RFO phase, but this is a tolling agreement contract structure, so a developer would install, own, and operate the chargers, and we would pay them a monthly fee to have the chargers there with liquidated damages if reliability fell below 97%, and because don't own or because of this contract structure, San Jose Clean Energy can set rates, and so we would use this opportunity to test different pricing structures. Things like 9AM to 2PM, unlimited charging, lower rates for low income customers for example, but we would collect all of the revenue and be able to set rates accordingly, according to our priorities.

Okay. And then last question, kind of, and it's I have a couple of

non

statistically relevant things to share with my colleagues and you, and Zachary, I told you about this. I have a friend who opted out of San Jose Clean Energy over at The Villages, and so I called him and I said, hey, go to one of your neighbors and check, get their bill, who's in San Jose Clean Energy, because I was curious, we got briefed the other night, and I was curious to look at how much the difference in bill was, and I was staggered to find out that San Jose Clean Energy's bill was 37% lower than the PG and E bill. I was really struck because the presentation you gave us was that it was averaging like nine or 8%, so it wasn't apples to apples, it's not statistically relevant, but it was fascinating to me. Was really impressed. So the other non statistically relevant sample I have is that I have batteries, solar, plenty of solar, 5.7 kW, and heat pumps I put in my house.

And it's great, but in the wintertime my energy bill is much higher even with solar because the electricity is so much higher on a relative basis, you guys know this, than natural gas. And I just can't help but wonder as you're going towards electrification, especially when you're looking at equity, I keep wondering about using some of this money to drive down the rates even further, so that San Jose has a reputation of 37% lower as opposed to having some of these programs, which I believe PG and E offers anyway. I would just ask you to just consider that as you come into council and even meet a briefing, but I'm not sure how many programs you have that PG and E offers anyway. I'm not sure if you have a requirement to have these programs, but boy, the more we can drive down rates, you talk about equity for everyone across the board, and that's why energy efficiency, was sorry to see it go because that really helps everyone across the board. So if you could look into that I would really appreciate it.

All right, thank you. Thank you for those comments and that's the balancing act that we have to discuss going forward about where we apply the excess revenue from clean energy. And I'm excited that we're beginning to have more programs than we had before. Obviously the question of gas versus electricity in the long term roadmap we anticipate gas prices are going to be escalating at a much higher rate electricity which will obviously close that gap as we move forward. I have a few questions.

On the multifamily charging, I brought this up at past meetings but there are obviously we have new developments where we're requiring charging stations for all the parking spaces. This program is specifically to help companies help develop or developments retrofit their buildings with charging at certain number of spaces. Is that the way it's set up?

Yeah it's set up for existing buildings so not for new construction.

Right. Okay. And then I have seen, I think I've mentioned the type of technology that's out there now. We had a company called Joule Labs present to us. I don't know if they've come and talked to your department yet although I recommended that they did.

They provide an automated robotic service where you have one they only need to have power to one parking space and then they charge their roving charging vehicles that then can go and charge other cars. It should be much cheaper and more efficient than having to put in charging at every parking space existing garage. So I'm hopeful that we'll start to talk to them about how they could implement in our city and also how we might be able to use our multifamily charging incentives to support that kind of program rather than the traditional installation of charging stations. Do you have any have you had any interaction with a company like that yet?

I have not. One thing that's on my mind as we continue forward is a new protocol from PG and E called virtual sub metering which I think is going to continue to reduce costs at multi family properties without the need of directly hardwiring a charger to a unit in order to get billing on their PG and E bill. So we are continuing to explore other options through the multifamily charging program that will reduce the cost per port on these projects because it can be quite pricey.

And the nice thing about this kind of program is that the company which provides the charging the roving charging station would obviously then be able to charge the customers directly for the charging service and it wouldn't have to be we wouldn't have to have this concern that we've had about how parking garage to individual meters within the within the building. So certainly, I think something we gotta keep our eye on and potentially, add to the portfolio of options. Thank you for answering the vice mayor's question about how we're gonna promote these programs. That was one of the key things I've always asked about. We hear about these great programs but I don't know that I throughout the year ever really see ads and things that tell people how they can take advantage of these programs.

So I'm glad we're gonna do a kickoff promotion. On the appliances side, we we just saw a scare story in spotlight from the realtors who who one of their their guest columnists mentioned that the state's gonna not gonna let you buy gas appliances anymore and it's gonna be expensive. And it didn't really have a perspective from the other side or any kind of response from the city about the programs that are available to help offset the costs of making that transition. How can we start doing some PR to help people understand that there's assistance out there so that it's not people aren't going to be on their own when the mandates from the from the Bay Area Air Quality Management District come in and we can't buy gas appliances anymore?

That's a great question. So as part of our huge promotion plan for eco home rebate, a core part of that message is all the other stackable incentives out there,

and

so we're hoping that we're also doing a lot of outreach to contractors, and actually contractors customers have heard about our program the most. And contractors, so we're doing a lot of contractor education to make sure that they're aware of that. But we could definitely look into doing more PR and connecting with journalists to help tell that story.

Yeah I think it would be important to get that story out that we're not we're our role is to help people achieve the goals that are being put in place by the state and other agencies. We're we're here to be a facilitator and help not be in the way and help make it more affordable. The One things we talked about in the past is people being ready for this change. Right? So that people don't have their water heater die and then have they an emergency situation where they have to get a new water heater in twenty four hours and they're more likely to just buy the same kind of water heater again because it'll plug right in.

We we have I think in the city permits for people when they install their water heaters and we know water heaters have a certain lifespan when they're before they're going to expire. Have we thought about any kind of program where we might proactively send a mail to people at the time that their water heaters are about within maybe a year of expiring to say, hey, your water heaters are expiring, you should consider this new technology and here's the grants that are out there to help you make that transition?

That's a great idea.

Okay, thank you. That would be really nice because again we don't want people to be stuck in a dire situation without hot water for a week because they have to now upgrade their electrical panel or something else. And then the last question I have is about understanding what the need is out there because some homes will be ready to switch to an electric appliance and some are not. Are we thinking about a program where we might go around and do an inventory of what the needs are in various homes so that we would know what the overall readiness is for our residents to make the transition to electric appliances?

A few years ago, the city led by the Environmental Services Department, worked with the Building Electrification Institute to do a building electrification framework that really dives into the building stock, but you're right in that as more homes electrify, getting some of the highest hanging fruit is going to take some assessments and really get into the data. So we do hope that customers will take advantage of our home electrification advisory service which will can get really granular in terms of giving them a home electrification plan, and we hope that from that data we'll learn a little bit more about the building stock.

Okay great I think we ought to keep that in mind as we move forward. And I'm really excited to see in your appendix the continuing investigation incentive program to help our small businesses phase out their gas leaf blowers and bring electric leaf blowers online. Forward to having that come back to council sometime in the next year. I think I don't see any other hands up. So, let's move to a vote on the motion.

Alright, that motion carries five zero. Thank you so much. Now we are on to item two which is our integrated solid waste program status report. I don't know, Laurie, are you or This is our opportunity to talk trash.

Good afternoon council members. Lori Mitchell, I'm the acting environmental director and really happy today to be joined by Valerie Osmond, she's our deputy director over our garbage and recycling services as well as Jenny Loft who is our public information manager. And with that, I'm going to turn it over to Valerie.

Great. Thank you, Laurie. Good afternoon. I'm Valerie Osmond, deputy director with environmental services. Integrated waste management oversees solid waste collection, processing, and disposal for all residential, commercial, and city facility operations.

We manage an annual bud program budget of about $300,000,000 and oversee contracts and agreements for the services provided by various haulers and facilities located within the city and county limits. This reduces transportation related greenhouse gas emissions from having to transport material long distances for processing disposal. We have an enforcement team that ensures solid waste related municipal code compliance. We maintain over 1,300 public litter cans throughout the city, primarily located in business districts. San Jose participates in Santa Clara County's household hazardous waste program, and the city's permanent household hazardous waste drop off facility is located at the Environmental Innovation Center.

It's the primary drop off location for county wide residents and small businesses. Residents can make free drop off appointments at the facility or drop off items with retail partners located countywide. Small businesses can also drop off household hazardous waste at the facility for a nominal fee. Our programs provide essential services to the entire community, servicing homes and places of business at least once a week, and our customer satisfaction survey results remain consistently high. Our programs also surpass solid waste mandates and provide ease of use and exceptional value to our customers and serve as examples to other jurisdictions.

When we talk about diversion, we're talking about material in the waste stream that is kept out of the landfill. This includes recycling and organics such as food scraps and yard trimmings that are sent to compost. In fiscal year twenty three twenty four, our citywide diversion rate was 63%. Our program goals surpassed the state's 50% recycling mandate. Our residential program has a diversion rate of 65%, and our commercial program saw an increase from 47% to 49%, which was mainly due to program sorry, improvement projects at the green waste renewable energy digestion facility, which allowed for better recoverability of material that's organic.

Recycling right is a really important part of diversion, and while our report covers all of our amazing solid waste programs, we'd like to highlight some of the significant work that we've been doing in this last year in the area of residential recycling and reducing recycling contamination. So with that, I'm gonna introduce Jenny Loft, our public information manager, who will talk about our extensive Recycle Right campaign.

Thanks, Valerie. Hi, I'm Jenny Loft, public information manager for ESD. Since July 2019, ESD has conducted a robust Recycle Right public education campaign. Previously, outreach was conducted by our solid waste contractors. Here are a few examples of our Recycle Right campaign which has over 80 tactics ranging from traditional flyers to digital platforms to provide recycling tips and how to recycle right to our our diverse communities.

We also partner with the San Jose Sharks and use their imagery on digital platforms and buses, as you can see here. For the Spanish speaking audience in San Jose, the campaign has targeted tactics, including digital and radio advertising, television commercials, and interview segments. We also deploy tactics designated for the Vietnamese speaking audience, including digital and newspaper ads, television interviews, and radio spots. All of these efforts have actions that we ask our residents to take, and for more information, to visit sanjoserecycles.org in English and our two other websites in Spanish and Vietnamese. All have over 400 recycling items to help residents learn what is recyclable or not.

Once they have that info, they can recycle right. As of January 2025, we had close to 1,600,000 users on sanjoserecycles.org since the launch of the website in 2019. We have consistently seen a median number of visits of about 25,000 users. However, in January, we saw a jump of almost 300% increase from December to January. Next slide please.

ESD's outreach efforts also include engaging directly with our diverse communities. We table on average at over 20 events a year including the Tet Festival, Niva Kaya, and Silicon Valley Pride. Last fiscal year we also presented at about 50 neighborhood associations. We continue to partner with the San Jose Library System and Parks and Recreation Neighborhood Services to look for additional ways to connect with our community. For instance, we had a successful event in December 2024 with the bike giveaway event in conjunction with the Tully Library's Winter Holiday Festival.

Our Vietnamese speaking staff spoke to over 300 people at that event. All of these efforts help us hear directly from our community on how we are doing, how we can improve, as well as provide professional recycling tips to recycle right. Thank you. This ends my portion of the slides.

Back to you, Yvali. Thanks, Jenny. Okay. So as Jenny mentioned, we're working to inform residents to recycle right and combat recycling contamination. Contaminated recycling is costly, generating a lot of cost and effort in additional sorting and disposal.

Here are a few of the specific efforts that integrated waste management has implemented to help reduce recycling contamination. On the upper left part of the slide, you can see, our larger garbage cart study. It's a recent study that we launched, and, over the last couple of years, we deployed larger garbage carts to about 8,500 single family homes at no additional cost to homeowners. We conducted this study to measure the impact to recycling contamination to see if additional garbage capacity resulted in better resulting in better recycling sorting since the thought was that some residents may place extra garbage in their recycling carts don't have enough capacity. Results have been somewhat inconclusive.

In this study area, recycling contamination reduced minimally, and overall contamination was still around 50% or higher. On the top right, you can see our in mold lids that have been installed in approximately 11,000 recycling carts. These have bold graphics, minimal text, and are in three languages. These help provide useful information at the point our residents place items in their carts. These will continue to be installed in carts as they are replaced.

In the 2024, we mailed nearly 340,000 residential garbage and recycling guides to all single family and multifamily households. You can see the cover of that on the bottom right. This 12 page guide provides useful information about our entire program, and that includes household hazardous waste, junk pickup, appropriate set out of of carts and piles. It's in three languages. And while the results are not as measurable as some of these other things that we've been doing, we believe that this outreach has had a positive impact.

As of January, the contamination and recycling tagging team pictured on the lower left visited about 75,000 single family homes, leaving oops and good job tags. Both of these versions of the tags include really helpful information about our program, and carts were still collected unless they contained household hazardous waste, which happened pretty infrequently. This appears to be one of our most effective outreach tactics in reducing recycling contamination. During our contract extensions a few years ago, we worked with our two recycling contractors to develop a process to measure single family recycling contamination. Starting in 2020, our first set of results came in at 51% contamination.

That means that about half of what was in recycling carts were nonrecyclables, either in the form of garbage or they could be good recyclables that were contaminated with food and liquid. We attributed some of this to the many residents who were working and attending school from home. And although we'd already began implementing many outreach tactics in 2020 and 2021, such as the larger garbage cart study and the in mold lids, the 2022 study results came back at fifty seven percent. So now our results, after deploying several additional tactics multiple years, we're very pleased with the results of the 2024 single family curbside study. It shows a 28% decrease to 41%.

We really do applaud our residents for doing a great job of recycling right. And at 41%, we still have some work to do to continue improving the quality of our recycling, but we're very pleased with the results. We saw the most significant improvement in the areas of the cart where the cart team visited, and especially when there were overlapping strategies of the CART team and or the larger garbage cart study and or the LIDS.

Alright.

Actually I'm gonna step in if we could go one slide back. Kip Harkness, deputy city manager with the overall responsibility for the city's infrastructure utilities and emergency management function. I'm stepping in here because staff is not doing a good enough job telling you how amazing this is and how important this is to the city and how great their work is. So I'm gonna lean into this a little bit. Back in 2019, we restructured all of our contracts with our haulers to clarify kind of where some of the responsibilities were, and to incentivize each other to move in the right direction.

As part of that, one of the main changes in the way the contract formed, and Valerie was very much involved with all of this, was to recognize that when the haulers have a higher level of contamination, they have a higher level of cost. And so, in recognition of that, we pay them more when there's a higher level of contamination. Significantly more when there's a higher level of contamination. We also clarified that since it was now in our incentive to lower that cost, the entire responsibility for the education, outreach, enforcement, and tactics were entirely on the city team, and by the city team I mean Valerie and her crew, to think citywide across all of these different languages, cultures, and users, how we can help people reduce that contamination rate. And she took that challenge, and her team took that challenge, and they used data driven results, they used qualitative research as well as quantitative research, they used the best thinking in behavioral change, and they managed to get what is one of the most significant swings in contamination rates that I have ever seen across the nation.

The resulting savings for this, Valerie, do we have a sense of roughly what this might change in terms of order of magnitude, how much this might save the city?

I will say roughly several million dollars.

Probably over several million dollars because I think it's gonna be more close to $10,000,000 or so, but that's me. So these shifts that they've done with this innovation are resulting not only in a less contaminated waste stream, which helps us meet our regulations, it's better for the environment, but dramatically reduces the costs that are being passed on to the ratepayers. And they did all of this in house while doing all their other work. So I just wanted to pause for a second and acknowledge that.

Thanks so much, Kip. Alright. Moving on to the not as nearly as exciting world of regulations. The city's solid waste program complies with multiple solid waste regulations centered around waste reduction, recycling, organics diversion, and climate change. Staff worked with the city's intergovernmental relations team to track major recycling bills introduced in the state legislature during the legislative session.

We wanna highlight some of the significant and exciting updates from the 2024 related, from 2024 related to plastic packaging and new legislation. Senate bill 54 is the Plastic Pollution Prevention and Packaging Producer Responsibility Act. It is a landmark extended producer responsibility law passed in 2022 that will reduce single use nonrecyclable plastics, increase recycling, and place less burden on cities and ratepayers. Assembly bill twenty three forty six expands local jurisdictions' options for meeting the recovered organic waste product procurement targets set by SB thirteen eighty three regulations. It will assist us in working towards complying with this requirement of SB thirteen eighty three.

Senate bill ten fifty three closes the loophole in the city's plastic bag ban, which was established by SB two seven zero in 2014. Currently, non recyclable thicker plastic bags are classified as reusable under this law, and therefore allowed to be provided to customers by stores. SB ten fifty three closes this loophole beginning 01/01/2026, where grocery stores, convenience stores, large retail stores with pharmacies, and other stores covered under the existing law may only provide paper bags to customers at the point of sale. Senate bill seven zero seven requires companies that produce textiles, such as articles of clothing and towels to establish collection sites for customers to drop off textiles and conduct outreach to the public on these collection sites and information on textile repair. This will help extend the life of textiles and give consumers an accessible method to recycle textiles, which will result in reducing the amount of textiles disposed and reduce contamination in the city's recycling stream.

Moving on to s b thirteen eighty three implementation updates. S b thirteen eighty three is one of the most significant waste reduction mandates to be adopted in California in the last thirty years. Environmental benefits associated with it include fighting climate change, improving air quality, donating edible food to those in need, and diverting tons of organic material from the landfill. Most importantly, SB thirteen eighty three aligns with the city's climate smart program by reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and it helps the city achieve zero waste goals through waste diversion and by supporting local recycling markets. The city was awarded $1,450,000 in CalRecycle grant funding in February 2024.

It was an awarded an additional 2,490,000.00 to support ongoing implementation efforts. We've used these grant funds to cover things like cart and bin labeling, bin lid color changes, outreach and education. And we've also used these funds to launch a compost hub, which provides free organic mulch and compost for city projects available for pickup by city staff and contractors. We've also added a wet receptacle assistance program, also called WRAP, which reduces costs to city or I'm sorry, to San Jose businesses by providing up to $500 worth of inside receptacles, making it easier to separate and collect organic waste, also known as wet waste. Integrated waste management's zero waste element is intended to be part of San Jose's climate smart plan.

While the integrated waste management programs currently do an excellent job of reducing greenhouse gases, there's always room for additional improvement. The zero waste element will help engage residents and businesses on things they can do in the realm of solid waste so that they can also work towards reducing greenhouse gases. Last year, the draft zero waste element was presented for stakeholder feedback and is due to be presented to city council later this calendar year. Okay. So wrapping up here with our next steps.

As I just mentioned, we're working towards finalizing the zero waste element. We're undertaking some significant program enhancements in our program that oversees solid waste generated from construction and demolition. We will assess the work of our contamination and recycling tagging project, which has appeared to be highly effective. We've just launched our compost hub for city projects, and we're looking to expand that to the community and to our residents. We continue to actively monitor bills for impacts on San Jose's programs and, ratepayers.

We're engaging multifamily dwelling residents to help inform them about proper sorting of garbage and recycling, and we'll be distributing tote bags for in home collection of recyclables and installing new bid enclosure signs as we continue to track and we'll continue to track and pursue grant opportunities. We request the approval of our annual report, and we are available for questions.

Thank you so much, for the report. Let's start with public comment. Do we have any on this item?

Yes. We have one common card. Diane Solomon, you can make your way down to the podium. You will have two minutes.

Good afternoon. I'm here on behalf of your bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee. One, last March, we had a meeting with Valerie Osman and her team, and we know that our city is working mightily on identifying the waste problem areas that are dangerous for cyclists, pedestrians, and everybody in our city. Two, we appreciate that this department plans to place reflective materials on the bigger waste carts, but for streets that are consistently blocked, that have poor street lighting, and are otherwise more dangerous for cyclists and pedestrians like the Vision Zero Quarters, we respectfully point out that maybe these should be given special attention. And four three, might the city issue non collection notices for garbage and recycling carts that are placed in bikeways by both residential and commercial customers?

Four, we understand that inappropriate leafy waste pile collection is only enforced between May and October, and in the fall when leaves are falling. These piles are difficult to see in the dark, and we respectfully request that you extend enforcement to November when many more leaves obstruct our our streets. And please note that the the three eleven app doesn't have a category for reporting bikeway, crosswalk, or sidewalk obstructions, and this prevents integrated waste management from identifying other serious problem areas. And lastly, we respect that our city conducts special outreach to landscape contractors who place yard waste on our streets with bikeways so that they learn, know, and will follow our city's set out guidelines on these streets. And we also appreciate the new ers that have come out that are really clear on what to recycle and whatnot and everything they're doing.

Thank you for your attention and for the integrated waste solid waste program, and we thank you for making San Jose a great place to live and work.

Back to the committee.

Alright. Thank you for the public comment. Let's start with council member Campos.

Thank you, chair, and thank you, staff, for that presentation. I just wanted to ask a quick question to help me understand about e waste. Is that contamination found often in in the analysis that was done?

Yes. It it is unfortunately found quite often in both garbage and recycling carts. Thank you, council member Campos. There are places that do e waste collection. There's drop off events. You can drop those off at the household hazardous waste facility if you just make an appointment. So there are quite a lot of other opportunities to dispose of e waste, but we do see that in our recycling carts as well.

And is there any messaging strategy that's working on addressing the issue of e waste or any other strategy that's that's going to help drive folks to, you know, dispose of their e waste products in more appropriate settings?

Most of our e waste outreach falls under the household hazardous waste outreach in general. There's not I can't think of any specific e waste targeted outreach. I want to add also that e waste some e waste can be collected as part of the free and unlimited junk pickup program that we offer to all of our single family and multifamily residents.

Thank you. I know residents get very excited about dumpster days and the e waste you know in a very tech driven society is something that we'll have to be mindful of. So thank you for your response to my question. Thank you.

Councilor Morales.

I just wanted to second what Kip said. Kip, thanks for speaking in. You have one of the most unglamorous jobs in this, except for the people who handle the sewer and storm, right down there, but you very much for what you're doing, the way you're doing it, this is highly appreciated. I have two questions. One, there was some legislation you mentioned about single non recyclable plastics, single time one. There's this feeling out there, a lot media about the fact that most plastics don't get recycled. What do we know about that? And I've heard that it's 7%. All those recycled plastics, barely 7% actually get reused.

Thank you, Councilmember Solas. That's a good question. It's a tough question. I will not claim to be an expert in the world of recycling. So our recycling haulers, the ones that collect the recycling, they are also responsible for sorting and then marketing those recyclables as as commodities.

So they they are able to market them, at least here in San Jose, and they do a great job of working with their their partners on getting those those items recycled. Yeah. The the single use plastic items are are challenging right now. There's some existing legislation that requires customers to request utensils and straws and and condiment packets and things like that. And then this this new legislation is going to take that a little bit further.

Okay. And then next question. There is this this may apply more to my district, tends to be downtown, but I think my colleagues in their commercial districts possibly. There's a proliferation of dumpsters from the restaurants and things that that have just they get put out and they never get taken back in. I was in New York, Manhattan recently, and they've completely got rid of all dumpsters, and they have this plastic bag situation they've set up. Have you have you or would you consider looking at that as the years evolve? Because it's really interesting what they've done to get rid of all the dumpsters from all the commercial, especially the restaurant people in New York.

Thank you for your question. I'm not really familiar with how New York processes their waste. I know it's typically more in bags than in bins. I think for our our commercial hauler is Republic Services, and and for ease of collection, the bins make a lot of sense. The other is very labor intensive of having to get out of the truck and lift those bags. We have been working with the downtown association and working with the local businesses downtown and trying to navigate how to put those bins out and get them back off the street in a timely manner. That's an ongoing conversation with local businesses.

Thank you. And then one last question. Where can I get one of those tote bags? I love the artwork. Are they out yet or not?

They're not. Those tote bags are great. The artwork was by, I think, a a local youth during one of our youth art contests that we did. And so it's it's gonna be a fun a fun item. It's got education and outreach on all sides of it, I think even on the bottom. They are intended for our multifamily residents. So we'll get those out to our multifamily complexes. They're intended for residents to be able to use them in their in their homes to collect recyclables and then take them out to their bins to dispose of their recyclables in the in the correct bin, hopefully, or to take them to redemption centers to to get their money back on cans and bottles.

Well, if you get me, mean, I'll I'll go out to the multi families in my district.

Thank you.

Thank you. And and that's a quest one of your questions, Councilor Morales, is one of the ones that I've asked about a lot, which is what happens really happens to the plastic that's separated at the recycling facility. I know our it's always good for me to get a refresher on this because my understanding is our hauler is responsible for telling us what diversion rate they have. But we don't necessarily get an idea of whether once they divert it and send it somewhere whether it gets recycled or not. Do we have any kind of feel for I know there's some proprietary elements of this where they don't have to tell us and the people they supply it to don't want to tell us.

Do we have any kinds of numbers that we can say to people about what our plastic diversion rate and actual recycling rate is?

Thanks, council member Cohen. I I don't have any numbers on plastic in particular. We know our general diversion rate in our different programs, and that's you know, we reach those numbers in different ways. Again, there are recycling haulers. The way those contracts are set up is that they they take the risk and then they reap the reward.

So as they are able to market material, they make profit off of that, and then likewise, they they take the risk. So I think the best way to look at it is they are selling commodities. And unless the person purchasing the recyclables, the commodities, if they're not able to use those, then I don't think that there would be a market to purchase them. So we like to think that because those recyclables are being purchased then they are in fact being recycled.

Okay. Thank you. I just again also want to thank you for the improvement in the contamination rate number that when I saw that in the report, the 16% improvement, that's just an incredible number over a two year period. I will tell you when I went out to my cart in the fall and and had one of those tags on my cart, my first moment was, oh my gosh, what did I do wrong? But it was great. I had one of the good job tags. So I feel proud of myself that that that I actually must be recycling correctly. So I'm I'm was very happy to see that, and I'm glad that it's that that program is working. I did and then one last comment for for those of you who are new and haven't had a chance to visit or or haven't yet had a chance to visit the the MRF, the

I was sure what that stands for. Material Recovery Facility.

Material Recovery Facility. It's an amazing place and it's great to see actually what happens to the garbage and how it's separated and how it's handled. You know, I think there's a lot of skepticism in the public that when they throw things in the recycling bin or they put their compost into the garbage that it actually actually ends up getting separated and going to the right place. And and I know that there's videos online even from green waste with their MRF. You can that you can share with people and show them how it's all separated and where it all goes. And I know I've showed that to several people who told me, oh, it's not really happening. And I was able to show them that video. But if you get a chance to go see it in person, it's definitely worthwhile. Don't think oh, we did have a do we have a motion yet? We didn't have a motion on this item yet.

So who wants to make a motion to accept the report?

I'll make a motion to accept the report.

Second. Alright. We have a motion and a second. Don't I

had a couple of quick yeah.

Did. Sorry.

Thank you for this presentation, and thank you for the success that you have experienced by educating all of us. I have a couple of questions. First, the card that you send out that says these are plastics that you can recycle. Really helpful. My husband has it sitting up next to our recycle bin, and he checks and makes sure that it fits the category.

So he just started using that, although we've been recycling a long time, probably wrong in some cases. But one thing that strikes me is we go to places that say, land there's several garbage cans. Landfill, recycling, and trash. It's really hard to know the difference. How do we Starbucks, for example. Do I put the cup in the landfill? Do I put the cup in the recycling? Recycling? Or is it trash? Or compost.

Sorry. Which one do I put it in? Can we educate our restaurateurs to who have that process to put up those cards about what works and what doesn't. Even up in our break room, the trash and the recycle bin is very confusing, and I see a lot of mix of dirty of trash going into the recycle bin and vice versa. So how can how can we educate first our employees and other, including me, that includes me, and other business businesses around us to recycle better or recycle right.

Thank you, council member Foley. We'll start first with city facilities. So we have been rolling out some improved signage and different cart lid colors to try to help with that that messaging and getting people to recycle right. And while recycling at city hall and all of our city facilities is important, and we do sort all of that material as well. So it does get sorted.

I think we've now got some separate paper bins to try to help keep that paper dry, but both the garbage and recycling streams at city facilities is sorted. Businesses in San Jose, we have a very unique wet dry system. So our businesses can work with our commercial hauler, Republic Services, to develop the system to meet their needs. So they have wet bins, which is for any food scraps, food soiled or liquid soiled papers and cardboards that all goes in the wet bin, and that all goes to an anaerobic digestion facility that turns all of that into energy, which which is amazing. And then there's the dry side.

So we've got wet and dry, and dry is kind of garbage and then recycling kind of everything else that it doesn't fall into the the first category that I mentioned. For businesses that have a lot of one type of material, like a lot of glass from a bar or a lot of paper from an office building, then they might have a separate we call it a customized bin where they would put most of that one type of material. It keeps it nice and clean and separated. And so kind of a three bin system, and then our businesses can opt in. For businesses that you mentioned like Starbucks or other big chains, they likely have receptacles that are designed and used nationwide.

So their signage may not necessarily align with with our wet dry programs, but again that material does get sorted if it's in the garbage or or the dry side of things, kind of the everything else bin, that material gets sorted at a materials recovery facility, and then all the wet material before it goes into the anaerobic digestion facility, they do sort through that as well and try to pull out any material. You mentioned cups in particular. Those cups have a liner in them that unfortunately makes them not recyclable, but it does help keep your coffee from leaking out.

Thank you for that explanation. I really appreciated that. So so what you're saying is I can't go wrong because it's going to be sorted at some level. Still it's still nice to make

make the effort and

I do. I do the best I can. Thank you. I appreciate that. That's all I had.

Thank you. And for the city for for city parks and other places, we have one can. We don't have multiple cans in our public spaces. And and what most people don't know is that that because the city does separation, it all is separated and sent to the proper place. I I'm hopeful that it'll get implemented sometime soon, in three two or three years ago, my office had a budget document that was approved as part of the budget to put lay put signs on all those garbage cans across the city parks that says everything in here will be separated, please throw it all in one container just because people don't know.

And I think a lot of people are skeptical. I know people carry their cans out of the park or put their can on the side because they're afraid to throw it into the garbage can. So I'm hoping that we'll get that signage sometime to help clarify for our residents and park users. Alright, don't see any more hands so let's move to a vote to accept this item. Alright. Motion carries five zero and we're on to the third item. Thank you so much. This is the annual report of the San Jose wastewater facility capital improvement program. Laurie, you're gonna get us going?

Yes. So again, Laurie Mitchell. I'm the acting environmental services director and very excited to now be joined by Kapil Verma. He's our deputy director over our CIP and David Olson, is our Principal Engineer. And I will turn it over to David.

Good afternoon. David Olson, Principal Wastewater Engineer with RWF CIP. I'm here to present the annual status report for the period covering January to December 2024. As a quick reminder, the CIP is based on the Plant Master Plan that was adopted back in late twenty thirteen by the cities of San Jose and Santa Clara, which recommended more than 100 capital projects to be rehabilitating and modernizing the RWF. In early twenty fourteen, staff completed a validation process that prioritized these projects and formed the basis of the CIP that we have been implementing over the past eleven years.

Through the December 2024, we have completed 36 projects and committed over $1,100,000,000 for the planning, design, and construction of critical rehabilitation projects at the facility. We've also received numerous awards for our program as well as our projects, including the more recently completed Headworks project. The adopted five year CIP is $544,000,000 program for construction projects with roughly a quarter of that allocated for the current fiscal year. During this reporting period, six projects reached substantial completion or essentially the end of construction phase. The blower improvements project replaced and rehabilitated aging equipment to boost the reliability of our aeration system.

The Fire Life Safety Project upgraded the fire alarm and monitoring systems across multiple buildings at the facility. The Outfall Channel Project upgraded our water quality monitoring system to ensure compliance or ongoing compliance with our discharge permit requirements. The storm storm drain project rehabilitated pump stations and pipes across the facility to protect critical infrastructure during severe weather events. And finally, the yard piping improvements phase two project rehabilitated several large diameter process pipes to mitigate the risk of failure. As mentioned, the original master plan was adopted in 2013 and outlined a vision for the RWF through 2040, addressing aging infrastructure, regulatory compliance, increasing flows and loads, sea level rise, and community values.

With these factors remaining critical, significant changes over the past eleven years have necessitated a formal update to the technical portion of the plan. The technical update will incorporate projects completed since 2013, assess the impact of recent changes on previously identified drivers, reevaluate and update recommendations for future improvements, and extend the planning horizon through 2050. In June 2024, a staff engaged Jacobs Engineering to perform the technical update. The outcomes will include a detailed assessment of all recommended capital improvements for the next twenty five years as well as update project descriptions, scopes, schedules and costs. The technical update is expected to be finalized this spring.

During this reporting period, we had 16 active projects. This chart shows that 14 of those projects are being delivered using the design build delivery method. The projects highlighted in green have advanced a stage in our project delivery model during the last calendar year. The other two projects are being delivered using the design build approach. We had two projects during this period that were in feasibility and development.

For the additional digester facility upgrade project, our project team hosted an open house event for potential design builders last September ahead of advertising a request for qualifications this March. The Building 40 VFD room HVAC project was initiated last April to construct a new system to protect the variable frequency drives that control the blowers in Building 40. Last year the consultant developed design alternatives for the new system and the 50% design is expected this May. We also had four projects in design or bid an award last year. For the camera and card reader project, the consultant completed the conceptual design report and started preliminary designs.

And for the yard piping improvement Phase III project, the design was completed and the project was advertised in December. Bids were opened in early February and a recommendation for construction award is anticipated to go to TPACK and Council in April. At various points last year, there were 10 projects under construction across the entire facility. By the end of the year, six of those 10 projects were completed, leaving four active construction projects at the start of 2025 as shown on the next slide. Of the construction projects shown, we expect the dewatering project shown in blue are number one and the filter rehabilitation project shown in green or number three to be completed this year.

And those are the two projects we would like to highlight for you over the next few slides. The dewatering project began construction in 2021 and is expected to reach substantial completion this fall. The project is constructing a new mechanical dewatering facility and support structures that will change the way that the facility processes biosolids. The completion of this project will allow the RWF to begin transitioning out of the existing open air lagoons and drying beds. We now have a short drone video of construction to share which was taken in December.

The building you first see is the new main dewatering building that houses the sludge feed pumps, polymer injection system, the dewatering centrifuges, cake conveyance system, and operation offices. The smaller building in the back is the truck load out building where the dry cake is conveyed from the main dewatering building and is hauled off by trucks. This building contains the cake bins and load out bays where trucks can enter and receive the dry cake from the bins. The four photos on the left show the dewatering building in various stages of progress. This facility needs an incredibly robust support or needs to be incredibly robust, excuse me, to support the massive centrifuges and other industrial equipment it contains.

The photos on the right show a small portion of the infrastructure within the building. The second project I'd like to highlight is the filter rehab project. Construction began in 2021 and is expected to reach substantial completion this spring. The filtration process is one of the final steps in the wastewater treatment process. The RWS tertiary filtration system was built in the 1970s and 80s and consists of 16 granular media filters and ancillary equipment.

The project is rehabilitating structural, mechanical, electrical, and instrumentation elements of the system. Now we wanted to share a video of the process for the backwash cycle here. So this is one of the tanks that we're rehabilitating, and air is pumped from below to dislodge sediment that has built up. That sediment is filtered up to the top, overflows into troughs and is removed. Each backwash cycle moves between 7,016 gallons of water and the backwash is needed to preserve the efficiency of the filters.

And then here are just a few construction photos of the project. On the left, a staff is performing tests of new equipment as part of the standard startup process. And on the picture on the upper right shows the serpentine chlorine tanks undergoing rehabilitation and the bottom right photo shows welding work on a backwash pipe. And finally, over this upcoming calendar year, we are expecting to reach substantial completion as mentioned on the dewatering facility and filter projects. We plan to advertise both the RFQ or essentially the request for qualifications as well as a request for proposals for design builders for the additional digester facility upgrade project.

We are anticipating obtaining council approval to award the construction contract for yard piping Phase three and the design build contract for additional digesters. And we are also anticipating obtaining council approval for the Plant Master Plan technical update. And that concludes our presentation. We are available to answer any questions you may have.

I'll just weigh in with one thing again. This is Kip Archness, deputy city manager. Two things. One is the drone footage you saw is not just because it's fun to fly drones, which it is, but we use the drones to do inspections that would otherwise be difficult, dangerous to do with humans and cranes, and it also gives us a real time and continual understanding of the construction site in a way that can use for improving safety and improving the construction process. And then second, and I know you've had the study session so I won't spend too much more time on this, but one of things I want to highlight is if you look across construction projects, right, and you think of them from a data standpoint, and you think about the types of construction projects that are likely to come in on time and on budget, versus those that are likely to come in over schedule and over budget.

There are characteristics that are common on each set. If you look across the international database of about 16,000 different projects that just analyze this deeply. And the most complicated projects, and the most likely ones to be on time and on budget, are where you have very modular, very clean site to start with, very few unknowns, and very lightly regulated. Things like actually solar, where it's modular and you're clicking the panels together and the regulations are well known and understood, one is of the most successful. The most complicated environment to deliver a project on time and on budget is where you have a highly regulated environment, you have a complex set of technologies that have to be bespoke developed for this particular situation.

You have to do that when you have an existing ongoing operation ongoing, and you have a constrained site with lots of unknowns because it's been in existence for a long time. That describes exactly the regional wastewater facility. Yet, despite that level of complexity, this team, especially under Kapil and others' leadership in the last five or ten years, has been more and more consistently been able to deliver these projects on time and within budget, in a way which I think is very impressive. But they remain the most complicated kind of environment to deliver this type of work, and I want to be just respectful of that and really clear and appreciative to both David and Kapil for their leadership in this. Thank you, and that's all that we have.

Alright. Thank you team David and Kapil for the update. Do we have any public comment on this item?

We have no public comment.

Okay. Coming back to the committee. I don't see any hands. Let me just thank you. Oh, sorry.

No, I was just going Okay.

Let's just thank you for bringing the report. And again, thank you for the January study session. We got a lot of more detail there. So I don't know that I certainly don't have any more questions now except for one, which is the location of that upgraded entrance facility. I was there were two there's two entrances. There's on Zanker and there's on Los Cicero's on the North Side. I thought that we were upgrading the Zanker side up entrance. Are we is is the is the entrance still gonna be the main entrance still gonna be the Los Cicero side?

Good question. Yes. We do have two separate entrances with the main entrance being on the Los Estero side. Our Zanca Road entrance is primarily for construction access as well as chemical deliveries. We are upgrading that as well.

We were talking about moving some of the administrative offices over to the Zanker side. Is that still happening? There's already a lot of office on that side.

Currently, no. Our Admin Building will remain on the Los Osteros side. We are upgrading the administrative offices for some security down in the Zanker side.

Okay. Thank you so much. And I will always refer to it as the largest wastewater treatment plant West Of The Mississippi even if it no longer is true.

Good question. We're the second now.

I know. I was very disappointed to learn that. Councilmember Salas.

Well, just wanted to take the time to say the same thing. Kip, I didn't know that. I thought they were just doing that great stuff in an unglamorous industry, but also coming in on budget really is hard and stuff, things like this. It's thank you very much for what you do. Real quick question. The the recycled water still comes back to the city, but you you're completely disconnected from that other than the pipe hooks up down at your or do you actually get involved with the recycled water?

Good question. The facility produces the recycled water and actually one of the videos and projects that David highlighted, the filter rehabilitation project does that. So there are Title 22 compliant filters there that are the source of the recycled water and then we convey it to outside of our fence line.

And how many million gallons a day roughly go out to recycle water versus what you process every day?

Order of magnitude, let's say we process about 100,000,000 gallons a day at the facility, roughly 10% of that we'll send to our South Bay water recycling supply.

Thank you.

Jeff, could you just add a little bit to that because it goes outside of your fence line but we still have a partnership around that that's pretty intimate. Jeff Provenzano.

Thank you, question, a good question. Jeff Provenzano, assistant director, environmental services Yeah, and thanks to Kapil to that answer. It's about 10% of the product water goes out to recycling. We also have a partnership with Valley Water that produces an ultra pure form of recycled water and we blend that. It improves our water quality and better customer service, better for cooling towers and for outdoor landscape and irrigation. So we do have a partnership with them, we're pushing out about in the summertime about 28,000,000 gallons a day, that's our peak usage of summertime, so a good chunk chunk of water about somewhere between 57% of San Jose's water supply now is coming from recycled water throughout the year.

And you've got some expansion plans on the Purple Pipe I think, right?

That's correct, yeah. The system was built with sewer rate payer funding back several years ago and we are still expanding and increasing the use of that to maximize that benefit, approximately another double in size from where we are now from a water supply perspective. We just finalized an agreement with San Jose Water Company a couple months ago to allow them to purchase another 5,000 acre feet of water that's right now on average are about 13,000 acre feet of water we're selling a year, another five to San Jose Water Company. And we're also working with Valley Water on a purified water project to use the remaining of that effluent for drinking water. A bunch of projects going on right now, both recycled water expansion and further use of wastewater effluent.

Alright, now we're ready for a motion.

Move to accept the report. Second.

Alright. Thank you. Let's vote. Alright. That motion carries five zero. And we're to on our last item today, which is the, oh, the storm water discharge permit report, one of our favorite topics.

Alright.

We'll be talking more trash, okay. Chair, just so you know. Good afternoon, Chair, members of the committee, and members of the public. My name is Regine Nair, deputy I'm director of environmental services department. I'm also here with my colleagues, deputy directors Matthew Nguyen from public works, also Jennifer Sagan from department of transportation, and assistant chief Williams for Fire Department.

We're all here together to provide an update on some of the current status and next steps with the storm water regional storm water permit. So just as a reminder for the committee and also members of the public, the storm water permit actually stems from historic federal regulations dating back to the late 1940s, which eventually led to the creation of the Clean Water Act in the early 1970s. Essentially the Clean Water Act states the prohibitions of any pollutant discharging into the waters of The US, and just for bring that home to us in San Jose, that's actually Coyote Creek and Guadalupe River for reference. So as you may be aware, this is the third iteration of the storm water permit, which came into effect July 2022, and it has expanded in each iteration. So the latest version that we see is 22 provisions, which are essentially chapters that you can see in the slide that's incorporated in several of our departments, almost about 10 departments that manages any potential discharges that could enter into our storm sewer system or into our waterways.

Looking ahead, there are critical milestones that the city will still need to continue to deliver until the end of this particular permit term, which is scheduled to terminate at 06/30/2027. My colleagues here and I will go over many of these milestones in the subsequent slides. So I'm going to start off with Matthew.

Thank you, Rajini. Matthew Nguyen with Public Works. As Rajini mentioned, there's a few areas of focus that we are working on. One of it is to make sure that the city is in compliance with provision C3, where we have to provide and build GSI device and facilities in the city so that we can capture and filter all of the storm water runoff before we can release it to the surrounding water body. Picture that you can see here on the lower right corner is one of the project that we probably deliver and just complete.

It's the River Oaks stormwater capture project. On this project, we convert the flood detention pond into a bio retention facility, where now we can capture all of the runoff from the surrounding area and we filter it, and then we clean the water before we pump it into the Garaluppe River. So this is a one of a kind project that we built in the city. And it's basically it's going to help us to meet the requirement from the permit. Beside this project, staff also working on planning for new GSI projects in the city.

And also, we are working on developing and creating a new alternative compliance program as well as the in lieu program so that private developer now they can come to us and they can have an option to either build it off-site if they don't have room to build it on-site or they can pay into the in lieu program so that they stay in compliance with the permit. Besides this, the city is also required to track and evaluate all of the GSI device and keep track of all of the projects that we have in the city. So Rajni will talk about that later in the presentation. So another area of focus is the trash capture reduction program. This is under the provision C10.

Basically, the city is required to reduce the trash load by 100% by the end of the year. And in order to meet the city staff put together several programs to try to meet this target. One of it on the capital side is to build new transcapture device and also it include large trust capture device and small trust capture device to bring down the trust level. So far, with the support and funding from Caltrans under the large transcapture device Phase seven, we were able to install three device due to construction challenges. The other three have not been installed, but we are working on evaluating the alternative options to figure out what's the best way to deliver these projects and to meet the requirement.

Parallelly, we also award the small transcapture device project last year. And as of to date, half of the device has been ordered and been delivered. So we are on track to complete the project by August or September of this year. And now I will pass it on to Jennifer to discuss about other programs that we have in place.

Thanks, Matthew. Jennifer Sagan, Deputy Director, Department of Transportation. So, as you can see on the next bullet, as part of the direct discharge program, the phase two waterway surge count will be conducted in the spring to identify where there are individuals experiencing homelessness in waterways and in lift in vehicles in the public right of way, especially near storm drains. Rajani will talk a little bit more about this later in the presentation. And then shifting to private lands, there's a new requirement in the permit to identify parcels that are connected directly to the city's storm drain system and rate the amount of trash on those sites.

The city has inspected over 2,400 parcels and determined that about 1,300 of them have potential private laterals connected directly to the system, the city system. And of the 1,300 parcels, about 80% of them are considered clean or low trash generation for the permit requirements. More than 200 sites still need to be further inspected to address trash, And these inspections must be completed by the end of this year. And as you're probably aware, an EPA grant which supports our nonprofit partners will be expiring in June 2025. The city is seeking new grant funding opportunities to support the nonprofit partners so they can continue to engage the community in education and trash removal in our creeks.

Really popular activities for the community. Lastly, city staff will be expanding the Adopt a drain program that was piloted in Council District 1, which will help increase the threshold reduction scoring through the city's on land visual trash assessment program. Expanding citywide will help address trash found in the public right away because staff will be conducting targeted outreach in areas that experience high amounts of trash per the permit and how it can also support the city's focus areas in cleaning up our neighborhoods while meeting a 100% trash load reduction compliance. So I'm now going to pass it to Chief Williams. Oh, actually I have one more slide.

Okay, let's keep going. Okay, shifting gears to c 10 and c 12, the mercury controls and polychlorinated biphenyls controls. They focus on removing these items from the storm collection system. These provisions focus mostly on old industrial areas in the city and our ongoing efforts to monitor, investigate and enforce requirements for properties that contribute PCBs called source properties or may have the pollutants on-site due to an outside source and those are called moderate properties. The Department of Transportation will be implementing some additional enhanced cleaning, which could include storm cleaning storm sewer pipes, which we traditionally don't conducting additional storm drain inlet cleanings or additional street sweeping in the areas that are identified.

And the city will continue to determine any buildings built before 1980 that are planned for demolition that could contribute to PCB pollution. And now I will pass it on to chief Williams.

Thank you. James Williams, assistant fire chief San Jose fire department. So in terms of the efforts of the fire service and the fire department here in San Jose, we've actively been engaged with departments throughout the region, working on what will be the first regional firefighter discharge response report, and that'll be due in September 2025, and so we're working through that process actively. And then once that is submitted and approved, we will continue to work on training for all of our staff, both the hazardous materials team as well as all of our firefighters. We have started efforts with treating discharge at a 108 incidents this past year, about 53% of those incidents we ended up using dechlorinization tablets as part of that process.

So we're actively working and training on that, but again looking to enhance it further once the report is submitted. And then of course we continue to evaluate large industrial sites to ensure how those sites are managing their firefighting discharge on its properties to meet storm water permit compliance. So as they go forward, they experience a fire, there'll have to be methods for them to utilize to treat the water, contain the water, address any potential hazardous runoff. So with that, I'll turn it over to Rajani.

Thanks chief. So as Jennifer shared in the earlier slide for provision c 10 about the waterway surge, just for the committee's awareness and the public, you know mapping where encampments and lived in vehicles reside is actually a requirement under this new provision C17, which focuses on the discharges of unsheltered homelessness and populations. The city did submit a base map or a baseline map back in 2023, And each agency or a permittee that has a stormwater permit was required to submit an updated map. And so that's what we're in the process of doing. Overall, the intent of this provision is to implement best management practices to address trash and sanitary discharges from individuals experiencing homelessness, and evaluate and assess the effectiveness of these practices.

And lastly, the city is partnering with Valley Water to help remove a lot of these large trash objects that are within our water channels along city owned properties. And this is going to be within the perimeter of where the direct discharge plan focuses. This is critical to meet not only just the storm water permit, but also to complying with the Clean Water Act. And last few provision updates with regards to C20, which is a cost reporting. This is the first time ever the city will be required to submit a summary of the total cost for staffing, capital, operations and maintenance, costs for publicly owned water quality devices.

And as Matthew described, some of this are the green infrastructure and full trash capture for example. And currently staff is compiling this and as you can see we're dealing with 10 different departments. So it's quite an exhaustive effort to submit as part of the annual report in September. Also the C21 which is asset management plan. As Matthew mentioned, know this is where we are trying to compile, develop the plan and create that inventory.

And also just ensure that we're analyzing the full life cycle costs of all these devices because you know it's the water board has been finding that many of these devices are not maintained and a lot of agencies don't have funding for these things. And so that's part of the reason why this provision was created. So, need to submit the plan 06/30/2025, and we need to start implementing 07/01/2025. So, in closing, ultimately the goal of the storm water permit is essentially to ensure that there that agencies have programs in place to address actually all the human behavior that could potentially impact water quality. And the photo that you see here courtesy of keep Coyote Creek beautiful, these are before and after photos, which highlights the importance of protecting our waterways and ensuring this precious gem, we have 130 miles of them can be enjoyed by all.

So, thank you and this concludes our presentation.

Thank you so much for the report. Do we

have any members of the public wishing to speak? We have no public comment.

Alright. Let's start with vice mayor Foley.

Thank you. Thank you for that presentation. Really important work. We we learned last year how important the storm water permit was and what we need to get to do and be in compliance with it. And so I appreciate the briefing that we had earlier today.

So I don't really have any questions other than to say we were cleaning up the Guadalupe this weekend with trash punks and found, some, shopping carts again and other things, but mostly it was pretty clean condition. We hope it to be pristine because it truly is, they're beautiful waterways, and we need to restore them to their natural beauty. So thank you for this report, and I look forward to the progressing as we move forward. With that, I will move acceptance of the report and cross reference to the council meeting on the March 25. Alright.

We have a motion and a second from council member Campos, and now council member Campos.

Thank you chair and thank you staff for this report. It's it's really good way to understand the needs that we have as a city to address what our responsibilities are with our waterways and I want to echo vice mayor Foley's remarks about the beautiful job that's been done to ensure our natural resources are protected, preserved, and and that, you know, this work that sometimes goes unnoticed is celebrated because it is truly remarkable work that's being done. And I did just have one question. So we're looking at a list of 21 activities that need to come into compliance. What is necessary to breach compliance?

Staff time, resources, is there you know anything else that is needed?

Thank you for the question Councilmember Campos. Each of these provisions are very unique and have various requirements, but I will say the ones that we highlighted that Matthew highlighted on C3 with the green infrastructure and Jennifer talked about with C10 on the trash load reduction. I would say that's the most critical one for the city to comply achieving that 100%. That is a legal requirement that needs to be achieved and it's documented very explicitly. So I would say those are the most important, and as you can see all the activities that are happening around trash with what's happening in the waterways with our partnership and housing and parks and recreation and so forth.

So I would say that's more important. So Kip, if you want to follow-up.

That's correct. I'll just add on, is Kip Archness, Deputy City Manager. The One of the structural difficulties for us is that these demands have been increasing over time from the regulatory agency fairly dramatically, but we have no source of funding that is adequate to meet these new regulations. So our existing funding that relates to storm water allows us to do some of this work, but even doesn't actually cover or or is eligible for most of the new regulations, and the amount that we get is far below what we need. So we have a a gap and a deficit that we're having to fill with general funds and other funds, whereas in most utilities, for example, the regional wastewater facility, when there is a requirement for that facility, we might have to increase the cost, but we're able to translate those back into payers and directly recover the cost directly from the rate payers.

Here we're in an odd situation where we're having to recover from the larger taxpayer base, which is pushing it on services like police, fire parks, which are normally paid for with general funds. So one of the key pieces that we need to unlock in the next year or so is exploring alternate means of taxes or fees or financing that are more directly connected to this so that we don't have to keep coming and looking for these broader funding sources beyond what the utility requires. And again, these Regini and team have done a remarkable job on this, but these expectations in the most recent permit have dramatically increased from previous years.

And C-ten was noted that had some construction delays.

What

has happened? What are those delays that we're looking at?

Yes. Right now thank you for the question. Right now, we're still working with our city attorney office as well as the contractor to try to resolve the issue that we have at hand. Basically, is a very complicated issue relate to high groundwater table and the way the contractor interpret the plan and spec. So it's still in dispute right now.

And that's holding up three large trash capture devices, right?

That is correct, yes.

Okay. So then my last question, and I think you've been helping to answer this, but I'm understanding that there are activities that need funding. Can you help us understand if we are funding all of the activities appropriately to meet compliance on time?

I'll take my initial. So, last year we did allocate enough sufficient funding to start the process in addressing particularly the trash in the waterways was one of the biggest, and also bio waste that from lived in vehicles that are residing on our streets, know because there could be a potential of discharges within our storm drains. Is it enough? There's not quite enough, but our regulators at least understand that this is a systemic issue. This is not something that can be resolved overnight, and as we proceed to keep addressing this, I would say meeting a 100% is the most critical and where those investments can go, but then there's opportunities where economic impacts right with our developers with building green infrastructure.

These are other necessary things for us to ensure that we're meeting compliance, but also supporting our community. So I'd say that's where the investments really are critical. And Kip, if you want to add more.

Yeah, it's correct. I think we have have every belief that we are to to be in compliance with the amount of funding that we have. That has included over $27,000,000 of additional funds last year alone, plus an extraordinary amount of funding through grants and other resources that we've been able to secure. So the question of sustaining that level of funding and sustaining compliance is a big one. But, at the moment, the team has a solid amount of funding. In fact, one of the biggest challenges this year is absorbing that amount of funding and making sure it's spent well response to the, in particular, the C-ten and supporting the homeless folks along the river. So at the moment, we we have thanks to your direction and hard choices that you made, we have adequate funding for this year. We will be coming back this year again and asking for a very large amount of funding to continue this work.

Thank you for the response. These are some big numbers that we're working with and so definitely need to make sure that we're on track and distributing in a way that's going to help us reach that 100% compliance. So thank you.

Thank you. Councilor Morales.

I was also at a creek cleanup this weekend on the Coyote and it does look a lot better, but are you getting traction and actually once an area is posted and no encampment, are you getting traction for follow-up with either PD or I guess our housing department that it's actually working? Because I know I've done creek cleanups for years and it's starting to get better I think because they're posted, but I don't know if you're able to get any traction on that with PD like boom when someone moves in.

Well I believe we have representatives from Parks Recreation who who have been tremendous in really leading this effort in establishing no encampment zones. So I'm gonna defer to both Olympia and Cupid, so from Housing Department.

And as Olympia and Cupid come down, I'll just frame it with, know, this is actually one of the things that we have been building into and is new. Previously Olympia and her team have been in the literally dis sufficient task of cleaning up, going out, cleaning up again. So we have a five part strategy now that is really to engage with residents, to make sure that then we offer them alternative sheltering, that we actually clean up the area, and then hold it clear, and then restore it. And those those that is new, and it's just starting to be implemented at scale. And so with that, I'll let Olympia give me the real real deal here.

Hello. Good afternoon. I'm council member Salas. Olympia Williams, deputy director of parks recreation neighborhood services. When we started the work on our waterways, you know, this year we are clearing 12 miles that are in the direct discharge area of encampments. As those areas are cleared, we are turning we are implementing our no return zone policy. So if people do return, you'll see new signs go out to let folks know you can encamp in these areas. We've spoke to everyone, educated those folks, and we're coordinating closely with our housing department, and I'll have Cupid tell you about that. But our goal is once we clear an area, we don't allow encampments to return. And if they do return, we abate them immediately so that people don't get established in those zones once again.

Good afternoon council. Cupid Alexander, deputy director of housing. As Kip had indicated, what we're doing is we're coordinating with Olympia's team, but as we hold the areas where and absorbing them into our current housing portfolio, The extended opportunity that we're going to have is through the production of what's coming online, so you've heard of the Taylor Street navigation center, and then we're looking at the hotel motel strategy, that should be online we're hoping in July, and it would allow us to hold and redirect people towards longer term housing opportunities.

And then I would say

You didn't

exactly answer my question, I'm just curious because a lot of my constituents will call and say okay, you got it all cleared, and I saw, I worked on one this weekend, it's been restored actually, to a large extent. But the next day if someone moves in, how does my constituent really get, is able to call PD or housing and know that it's gonna happen right away, because once unhoused has moved in there with a tent, and it goes longer than a day or two, it's really hard to move in them. That's my experience anyway. So again, specifically, someone just cleaned it, it's the next day, one of my constituents says, hey what do I do? There's someone who just moved back in.

Yeah. Council member, we actually have dedicated staff as part of the $27,000,000 that Kip alluded to. We have dedicated staff that manage our no return zones, and they are actually out on routes. So a resident can definitely report that they see a person. We have staff on our no return zone routes. We have staff to provide trash service on those encampment routes. We have a RVP three team, provides services to folks living in vehicles. So several eyes on these areas that are no return zones, so we can make sure that we quickly get to those areas so people don't reestablish. And as we see a person that we encamps, we also make sure that we reach out to housing so that we know that someone has come back into that area.

And we can get you those maps so that you'll know what areas are officially the no return zones. Because we are still cleaning up some areas that are not yet no return zones. We're being very strategic though in linking together like pieces of a puzzle, these no return zones. And our experience has been, and please correct me Olympia if off on this, if we are to your point, if we are frequently in there, especially with somebody who's able to be humanely interacting with folks but clear about this these facts, we have been feel like we have some success in preventing the reestablishment. But to your point, if we look away and let a couple of weeks or a month pass and let one or two folks get in there, then then they're more likely to to entrench and stay.

So we wanna do this this in a humane way and not have to abate folks, and the best way to do that is to be really clear with them before we get a larger encampment reestablished.

And I'm really starting to belabor this, but but my constituent says, how do I who do I call? You say you have people who are going around, the best thing is the eyes on the ground and people who live right there. Who do they call?

I'll make sure that we

know. After they call me, yeah. Or call Olympia. Don't call Olympia. So

what they can do is I'll send you information. We have a reporting form that people can report or they can call our office or in their Okay. Call one

of you two then.

Thank why you.

We needed you. Alright, thank you so much. Just quickly, you mentioned at one point the waste from RVs going into our storm sewers. It's important as we move into this year's budget discussion again to be considerate of how we are going to make sure that we are cleaning up after the RVs that are on the street because that is another source of some of this contamination. And I wanna invite everybody here to come up to North San Jose on April 1 for the ribbon cutting of the GSI infrastructure at River Oaks, beautiful facility along the Guadalupe River and really important part of our of our strategy. So, that morning, April 1, will be the day. Alright. We have a motion and a second, so let's vote. Alright. Motion carries five zero and we're on to open forum.

Do we have any hands? Any cards?

We have no comment cards for open forum.

Alright, great. We're on to adjournment. Before I adjourn, I just want to thank our staff member Kipp who's here for his last time unfortunately. I've spent a lot of thought in the last month about how I prevent this, but but I haven't been able to come up with a good plan for that. Kip is Kip is one of the most knowledgeable and approachable and useful people in the city, and it's gonna be, in my opinion, a waste of his incredible intellect to be out in the middle of ocean on a boat. But, but I do I'm very, excited for you, for your, plans, and thank you for all the work you've done with the, with this committee and for the city. Alright. And with that, we are adjourned at 03:22PM.