Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

Thank you. Thank you.

the January 15th, 2026 Planning Commission hearing. I'll call to the meeting to order at 1 p.m. Ms. Carman, can we please have roll call?

Thank you, Chair Boss. I will begin with Chair Boss.

Present.

Vice Chair DiLuccio?

Here.

Commissioner Barnwell?

Here.

Commissioner Peterson?

Here.

Commissioner Wardlow?

Here.

Commissioner Wiscombe? Here. We have quorum. Thank you.

Great. We'll get started with preliminary matters. The first topic on our agenda today is request for continuances, withdrawals, postponements, or ex-agenda items. Ms. Arseniega, do we have any?

Thank you, Chair Boss. We do not.

Okay. Do we have any announcements or appeals?

Thank you, Chair Boss. We do have one announcement for an emergency coastal development permit for dredging at Firestone Ditch in Los Caneros Creek near the airport. So that has been issued in response to the flooding at the airport.

Thank you, we are now on to item C review consideration action on the draft Planning Commission minutes and related resolution from the December 18th 2025 hearing and I understand that we have some edits from staff to one of the resolutions We do I'm gonna speak a little bit while Jasper is pulling that up so I just wanted to draw your attention when we were doing our final comb through this is a sensitive project and

We want to make sure we got it right. We noticed a few typos in the resolution, so we wanted to make sure we correct those now. In the environmental review guidelines, we wanted to make sure that not just the show, so this was an appeal of a staff hearing officer decision, so your packet included the show packet. So we wanted to make sure that the reference not only for the environmental findings, not only reference the show packet, but also the findings that were reiterated in the PC staff report. So just a correction to include both those references. Same for the coastal development permit findings. We wanted to just make sure it incorporated both references. And then the other thing that we noticed got inadvertently left out was that the staff hearing officer had had additional conditions to kind of add additional measures to the project. And those were reflected in the show resolution that was attached and included as part of your packet. But due to some processing, those were inadvertently left out in the draft reso. So we're just putting those back in so they match the show reso.

Thank you. Appreciate catching those before they were approved. Are there any Planning Commissioner comments on the minutes or the related resolutions? So their resolution numbers 01425 and 01525. Are there any comments or questions? Commissioner Peterson.

I'm excited to sit next to you. No? Okay. Apologies. Any comments or questions?

If not, can I get a motion to approve the December 18th, 2025 Planning Commission minutes? I'll make a move. And resolution number 1425 and 1525.

I'll make a motion to approve the minutes and resolution 1425.

I'll second that and 1525.

Great. Ms. Carman, can we please have a roll call vote?

Thank you, Chair Boss. I'll begin with Commissioner Wardlow. Yes. Commissioner Peterson.

Yes.

Commissioner Barnwell.

I'm not voting. I wasn't there.

Commissioner Wiscombe? Abstain. Vice Chair DiLuccio?

Yes.

And Chair Boss? Yes. Motion passes. Thank you.

We'll now move to item D, comments from members of the public pertaining to items that are not on today's agenda. Due to time constraints, each person is limited to two minutes. Ms. Carman, I don't see anybody in person, but do we have anyone remote who would like to give public comment?

Thank you, Chair Baas. Yes, at this time, I don't have any speaker slips for in-person public comment. We do not have anyone online with us, and we did not receive any written correspondence under general, so I'll give it back to you.

Great. We'll close general public comment, and we'll move on to item three, a request for comments on the draft wastewater and water systems climate adaptation plan. We have a couple staff here to provide a presentation. Please introduce yourself during the presentation. The floor is yours.

Thank you, Chair, boss, and commissioners. I'm Melissa Hetrick, Adaptation and Resilience Manager in the Sustainability and Resilience Department. And with me today are two staff from Water Resources, so Wastewater System Manager, Thomas Welch, and then Principal Project Manager, Bradley Ware. And then also with me, part of our Adaptation and Resilience Division is Timmy Bolton. So I am here because we released publicly in December for public comment a draft wastewater and water systems climate adaptation plan. And just quickly, I wanted to quickly go through how this plan ties into our overall program to start. So the Adaptation and Resilience Program helps our community prepare for current and future climate-related hazards, so things like sea level rise, increased flooding from changes in rainfall patterns and wildfires. So when I say that we're an adaptation program, while we do have an adaptation division within sustainability and resilience, I really mean the adaptation program for the whole city. I am not implementing all aspects of this adaptation program. We are merely coordinating them. In fact, most other departments are our partners in implementing these throughout the organization. So when we look at the citywide adaptation program, we're really talking about a multifaceted approach. So we're incorporating climate changes now into planning documents. So for example, in our last long-term water supply planning, we incorporated longer droughts into those calculations as part of that. We're looking at flood reduction, so flood control projects and reducing erosion risks. We're adapting city infrastructure, so actually looking at flood proofing and moving city infrastructure. We're looking at building standards. Do we need to be flood proofing to higher base flood elevations and things like that? And then we're providing the community resources to adapt. As we know, some of the areas that flood the most in the city are also low income areas that have a harder time adapting to hazards. And then, very importantly, we're working with our regional partners, but also a lot of this adaptation work is going to require quite a bit of funds. And so, one of the things we're really focusing on in the next two years is planning for future permanent funding sources. So, as part of our adaptation planning, we are tearing off some core documents, such as the 2001 Sea Level Rise Adaptation Plan. They really did put one cohesive vision for climate adaptation, not just to sea level rise, but also other changes and hazards. It prioritizes actions based on guiding principles. And then importantly, it really sets forward an approach for the entire program of phasing adaptation based on changing conditions. So actually seeing how conditions change, and then when certain triggers are reached, taking action when that trigger is reached. So these are our active major projects. We've obtained over $5 million from the Coastal Conservancy and the Coastal Commission. And I am just going to... quickly highlight a few that interact with the wastewater plan. So in August, we, BEACON, released the Regional Coastal Adaptation Monitoring Program. And essentially what that does is provide local management agencies information they need on changing shoreline conditions to make phased adaptation decisions. And so that plan recommended a number of parameters for the region to keep monitoring. We've launched a pilot, and that's basically a baseline conditions report, how much changes have we seen to date. And then we're also partnering with USGS to work on a tool that uses satellite data to track changes in the future. We are about to launch a big second outreach effort on our waterfront adaptation plan. This plan really focuses on the next 30 years and bringing our waterfront through the wave hazards that we're already seeing now and storm surge hazards. And we're at the point where we're looking at alternatives for that project, things like a raised beachway in areas and moving some assets. And so we'll be coming back to the public and the planning commission in the spring timeframe to review those alternatives and then from that point forward we'll be doing technical analysis and cost benefit analysis on those alternatives. And then we're just launching now the city's first stormwater model. The pilot area is the Laguna watershed. And this will not only model our stormwater system but look at Flood extents and depths of smaller level storms. So we already have data for the 100-year rainfall event, but what we don't have is the 5-year event, the 10-year event, the 20-year event that we see much more frequently now and that we're seeing very frequently in the last few years, those type of flooding events. This project will also identify capacity improvements and flood options for Laguna Creek. So now moving into the wastewater and water systems climate adaptation plan. So this plan was developed with adaptation and resilience as the lead, but we had a core staff team that met regularly on this for almost two years, including water resources department staff, public works engineering, and city attorney. Our consultants on this were water systems consulting and environmental science associates. And as I mentioned, we released the draft public document on December 9. And public comment closes, I believe, February 10 on this document. From there, we'll go to Water Commission for a final recommendation and then go to Council for approval. So just the overall approach on the plan, we did analyze all climate-related hazards. So think rising groundwater levels, changes in rainfall hazards, sea level rise, increased wildfires, drought on all aspects of the wastewater and water systems. Then we performed a risk assessment that really prioritized the risks to these systems. And when you hear about this plan, you're pretty much mostly just going to hear about the wastewater system because the highest priority identified or highest risk identified in the plan was to the wastewater system and in particular flooding into the wastewater system. Again, this plan presents a phased approach to planning for sea level rise. based on monitoring and identifying triggers. And there's two important assumptions regarding this plan. So there's an assumption that our wastewater system is so critical that even one big failure is a very big deal and not acceptable. And so when we look at our lower level, our low-lying area south of Highway 101, the assumption there is that No matter what flood control measures we put in there, there is always going to be some level of flooding there. We can't control, say, the 100-year storm, things like that. And so as we are looking toward more citywide flood control measures, that will potentially delay the needs for some of these adaptation measures with the wastewater system. But because of the trajectory of climate change and sea level rise, the adaptation measures we're talking about in the wastewater plan will eventually be needed. So it's just kind of, that's why we'll be tracking the effectiveness of flood control measures, how flooding is happening in order to implement this wastewater plan. But everything you hear about now will eventually have to happen, if that makes sense. So as part of this assessment in our larger program, we have updated our hazard models and analysis since 2021. So these are the new projections from 2024 from the federal and state government of sea level rise in Santa Barbara. We're really focusing on the orange line, which shows 0.8 feet of sea level rise by 2050, 2.5 feet by 2075, and about five feet by 2100. To date, these numbers are from the base year 2000, and to date we've experienced about three to four inches of sea level rise. So as you can see on the graph, noting two things in the near term, while there's different ideas of how sea level rise might happen, in the near term you'll see that the lines really are very close together. There's not a lot of speculation about the amount of sea level rise that will occur in the next 25 years. But the range becomes a lot bigger as you move out into time. And in addition, you'll notice that all the lines show an acceleration in rate of sea level rise. So it's not a linear increase. So just going through the new coastal hazard maps, we did refine our previous assessments based on very particular wave conditions and sediment movement in our area. So these are the new maps. This is current flooding risk. In the aqua color, you'll see flooding from the regular high tide. And again, this is only showing risks from the ocean, so storm surge and waves, not from rainfall. And it's also showing what happens if we do nothing. So, yeah, the blue is the flooding from the regular high tide. The yellow is an annual storm event. And by storm event, I mean wave event. And the red is 20-year event. And then the purple is a 100-year event. So this shows our current risk. You'll see some purple areas on the north side of Cabrillo Boulevard, particularly in the Cabrillo Ball Field area. That tracks with what we see there now. That's a very low area where we do see salinity in the groundwater there that's actually starting to kill the grass there. So this is an accurate portrayal, a more accurate portrayal of what's happening now. So by 0.8 feet of sea level rise, we see the annual flooding crossing Cabrillo Boulevard in the East Beach region. By 1.6, we see the annual flooding extending up to the railroad tracks. By 2.5 or 50 years from now, we begin to see larger storms reaching Highway 101 and more regular flooding up to the railroad tracks. And then just moving forward to the end of the century by 2100. And again, this is if we do nothing. We start seeing flooding from the regular high tide north of Highway 101. And for those of you that are history buffs, you might recognize this map as being the location of the old El Estero wetland that was filled after the big earthquake in the 20s with all the rubble from the earthquake. And it remains a low-lying area that is subject to both rainfall flooding and in the future sea level rise. In addition, we took a close look at erosion rates and what this shows is a long-term shoreline retreat with different amounts of sea level rise. So this is Leadbetter Beach. Leadbetter Beach benefits from the harbor breakwater which essentially acts like a groin to hold up the beach there. So while we see some retreat here in the future, it still holds up pretty well. And so this is an area that we're looking in the future for opportunities to maximize use of Sandy Beach as we lose other beaches in the area. On the bottom of your screen, you'll see West Beach. You'll see that that currently is an accretional beach, so it's getting bigger. And over time, it really holds up. So this is another area as part of the waterfront plan that we're seeing a lot of opportunity. We're going to have a beach there for a really long time. Let's go ahead and make it a great beach. And then on East Beach, we're currently seeing, even with beach nourishment, we are seeing about erosion of five feet per year right now at East Beach. Anybody that was out there during the recent high tides would have seen the water all the way up to the bike path and sloshing over the bike path. So you can imagine it's not that much later that we start seeing the water reaching Cabrillo Boulevard. So as you can see, we see... a lot of erosion on East Beach and so this is an issue that we're closely looking at as part of the waterfront adaptation plan. And then just to remind you, this is our current FEMA 100-year flood map from rainfall and wave hazards. I think you guys have seen this information before, but we are seeing an increase in intensity And the reason that happens is that as our upper atmosphere gets warmer, it can hold more moisture. And so when it rains, it rains in much higher intensity rates. So if you look at our overall average rainfall in a year, we're getting about the same amount. But it's happening in these events where it's coming down really fast. And as you know, when rainfall comes down that fast, it's really hard to get into, it quickly overwhelms any storm drain system. So that's what's been happening, say, in the storms in November, December, and January of this year and the last few years is these really high rainfall intensities that are overwhelming our limited stormwater capacity. So when you look at that and relate it to past storms that we've had, Something like the 100-year storm, which we saw in 1998, is now about seven times more likely to occur. So it's essentially more like a 15-year event. In addition, something like we saw in January of 23, which historically would have been considered a 10-year rainfall event, is now considered a five-year event, if that makes sense. So this is something that really points to the need to look at stormwater improvements and really be planning for more flooding in the future. As part of this project, we also modeled the 100-year rainfall event with sea level rise, which is really a very worst-case scenario. This is just to illustrate. This is showing El Estero Water Resources Center, our wastewater treatment plant. And it was intentionally built on a higher piece of land, or actually we raised it as part of building the wastewater treatment plant. And so when you look at existing flood map on the left, what happens now is it essentially floods all around the wastewater treatment plant. So even in the current storms, we had limited access to the plant. We have issues for several hours getting to the plant. And that's been a condition for a while, but it's getting worse. With sea level rise by about 2.5 feet of sea level rise, we start to see in really big storms, potential flooding on the actual site. And so we'll be talking about measures to address that. So moving into adaptation strategies. So just, this may be a repeat for some, but just in case, This is our wastewater collection system. It is separate from our stormwater system, or it's supposed to be. Some jurisdictions do have combined systems, but we don't. And it's predominantly a gravity-fed system with a few pump stations, which means that essentially the sewage is collected and it goes downhill. It goes into several mains, one of which is located on the beach, and then it goes to El Estero where it's treated, and then it goes out the outfall. So when we look at threats to this system with regard to flooding, there are two. One is during high rainfall events, especially the flooding events we've seen. Water can unintentionally get into the sewer system. and cause the system to be overwhelmed. And when the system becomes overwhelmed, you start to see sanitary sewer overflows. And those can occur offshore or inland where sewage gets backed up into the streets. The other issue to consider is that any seawater or saline water that gets into the system is a really big deal because the treatment plan treats the sewage with freshwater bacteria. And so when enough salinity is put into the system, it will actually kill all the bacteria, and it takes almost three weeks to get it back. So what happens when salinity gets very high is that we have to shut down the plant. So that is a very big deal. And so our wastewater staff works really, really hard now to limit what's called inflow and infiltration into the system in order to avoid these situations. So with a gravity-fed system, though, there's a lot of potential for inflow, including people just opening manholes manually during flooding events to try to drain streets. they'll open a sewer manhole and things like that. But there's other, and this slide shows other potential inputs into the system in a gravity system. And so when we look at El Estero treatment capacities, so this is the amount of sewage coming through El Estero, the flows on showing the flow at different points in the 23, 24 year when we had our big storms. You'll see big spikes in flow of sewage going into, sewage flows going into the plant. And those spikes directly correlate to the big storms we had. So what that tells us is that we're seeing large amounts of flood waters entering the sewer system. And so because of this, and our wastewater staff can certainly speak to this much better than me, but we have had a very, and continue to implement, a very aggressive inflow and infiltration reduction efforts. This includes multiple studies, one of which was just completed, trying to identify areas as shown on the map where we've had a lot of inflow. This is also looked at with our hydraulic model deployment of smart covers that can show flows. We're sealing collection pipes and manholes. And then we're also smoke testing. So part of the recommendations of the adaptation plan are really to ramp up these efforts, particularly in the low lying areas. Again, though, wanted to bring up the issue of salinity and how much that matters for the decisions in this adaptation plan. Once we start getting a lot of salinity into groundwater that's surrounding these gravity-fed pipes, and when it starts becoming flooding on our streets, that's really where we're going to start seeing salinity levels unacceptable to be brought to El Estero. And so what this means is that as part of the adaptation plan in the next 20 to 50 years, we need to start looking at what's called pressurization of the wastewater system. So a low pressure system is just what it sounds like. It's pressurized. It's effective in keeping out inflow. It's very common throughout the nation in low lying areas. There's one in Rincon Beach areas where you might see a lot of groundwater or coastal flooding. It's very common to have these systems. It's just not the system that we have right now. And so Before the city can actually pressurize the sewer mains in phases, customers would need to add pressurization into their infrastructure in their homes and businesses. So they would have to add what's called a grinder pump that's shown on this slide before we switch over and pressurize the mains. And so one of the recommendations coming out of this plan is that in the next five years we need to come back to you all with an ordinance and plan and incentives to require in that low-lying area new connections to be pressurized, to be designed to be pressurized and have the grinder pumps so that as we get new connections going, they start to set up the pressurization. And then that will have to move into an incentive program to switch over. So that will be part of an implementation effort. We don't have the details of that entire ordinance now. But basically, we need to start seeing people move things over so that when we go to pressurize the lowest areas, we're ready. So this just summarizes adaptation recommendations by time period. So in the near term, again, we're going to really ramp up sealing flood-prone manholes and pipes. We're going to look at code changes for new sewer laterals able to support future pressurization. We're also going to be looking at potential storage opportunities, increasing the capacity to store sewage during storm events at El Estero and throughout the system. And then in the midterm, initiating that pressurization in phases on the lower system. So with regard to the area around El Estero, Right now we kind of have informal plans of how we deal with lack of access during big storm events. Our wastewater team does a great job of planning for that now. So really it's just a matter of formalizing those operations and making sure that our staff and the plant has everything they need to not basically not have access for a period of time that's more frequent. And then we also need to start looking at some access road improvements. And then long term by 2100, we would have to look at major access road improvements to keep access to the site. So those are things like new off ramps from Highway 101 and things like that, major road infrastructure in the long term. With regard to flooding on site, we really don't see that much flooding on site now, but because of future hazards and increase in rainfall, the plan does recommend installing a flood wall system at El Estero now and raising critical infrastructure. We are already starting to do that, so we have some electrical upgrade and other projects at the plant where we are raising that infrastructure just to MAKE SURE WE'RE FLOOD PROOFING IT. AGAIN, IN THE LONG TERM BY 2100, BEFORE THAT IN THE MIDTERM, THE CITY WILL REALLY HAVE TO THINK ABOUT WHETHER TO CONSIDER RELOCATION OF THE PLANT OR INVESTING IN THE PLANT ON SITE. AND SO THAT'S A CONSIDERATION THAT WE'LL HAVE TO LOOK AT COMPREHENSIVELY AS WE SEE HOW FLOOD CONTROL MEASURES WORK AND ET CETERA. The plan, we were required as part of the plan to look at potential relocation sites that the city owns that are not impacted by sea level rise. And there's just very few sites that the city owns that are that big. We need about 13 acres. And so the plan does identify the municipal golf course, or at least a small portion of the municipal golf course as a potential location. But I would just caution that as we move into this decision, first of all, it's not even set that we would relocate the plant. Second of all, all the other jurisdictions in our region are going to be experiencing the same situation. In particular, Gleda Sanitary is in a very tough spot in their location. And so really, as we move into a decision like that, we would be looking comprehensively with our regional partners at regional sites. So I don't want the storyline from this meeting to be removing El Estero to the municipal golf course, but I did want you to know that that is in the plan. And then the plan did look at shoreline erosion hazards, and this identified needing to protect or relocate the desalination weir box that's already been on our capital improvement list. making sure that we protect the utilities under Cabrillo Boulevard and Cabrillo Boulevard, that we relocate a potable line in Chase Palm Park, and that we seal manholes in the West Beach sewer main, which carries about 40% of the at the city sewage. And then the long term, it's possible we may need to relocate the sewer main, but as I mentioned, West Beach really holds up pretty well, and so that's pretty far out, and probably by the time we need to relocate that, we'll be pressurizing that lower system anyways. And so just wrapping up the recommendations for the next 20 years, so the things we would start planning for now. In the low-lying areas, we would again ramp up those efforts to seal manholes, line pipes, implement the inflow and infiltration master plan, plan for that eventual system pressurization in the low-lying area. For El Estero Water Resources Center, we'd be planning for a flood wall system there. managing the access issues and studying capacity improvements. And then on the waterfront, we'd be looking at options for the desalination into your wear box and Cabrillo Boulevard, which we'll be looking at as part of the waterfront adaptation plan. So the plan is to update the plan every 10 years with new information, closely monitor system conditions and salinity levels that we're starting to see into the system. Doing the stormwater modeling project, that is actually key for a lot of the decision making associated with El Estero because it's adjacent to Laguna Channel. And so for the next 20 years we're looking at about two to three million dollars in studies and design and then depending on what options are chosen, between 50 and 130 million in infrastructure modifications and additional staff resources needed to implement those. And right now, we do have some funds in the water fund and wastewater fund, very little of that. And so this is a delta that we'd be looking to fill. So we do have a new adaptation and resilience website, and it includes this plan. And again, the comment period ends the 10th. And there's my contact information. So with that, I will open it up to questions and comments.

Thank you, Ms. Hedrick, for the really sobering report. We'll turn first to public comments. Ms. Carman, are there any public speaker comments for this item?

Thank you, Chair Boss. At this time, we do not have any speaker slips for in-person public comment. We do not have anyone online with us, and we did not receive any written correspondence for this item, so I'll give it back to you.

I think today you're just looking for general comments, so I'll ask commissioners if you have questions and comments, you're welcome to combine them. So we'll start with Commissioner Barnwell.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Thank you very much for the report. It's just both exciting and scary, particularly when I look at the timeline and it's not really that far away. I mean, you're talking about a lifetime of my kids and my grandkids who will see this ocean level rise. So I'm glad you're planning for it now. It's exciting to plan for it, although there is some, like I said, there's some dread almost in some of the aspects of it. Specifically, I wanted to ask you things like this. You said that the bacteria takes three weeks to get up enough a bunch of bacteria to handle the sewage. As we expand the facility, can we create a space where we have a backup set of bacteria already growing?

Commissioner Barnwell, I'm Thomas Welch. I'm the wastewater system manager. That would be something we might be able to look into. Another opportunity would be potentially bypassing flows during that kind of event so that you would The challenge is, do you treat all the flow and then not be able to treat for a month? Or do we bypass potentially and have an upset for a short period of time, but we recover quicker? So that's something that we'd have to look into in the future.

I'm sure you're thinking about it. A couple of other quick questions. This is going out to all the departments in the city, of course. So they're looking at things like the underpass at Castillo Street, for example, which always gets wet even when it's in a drought. What are the other... What about the options of raising the water bill? Is that one of the options that we're looking at to get some additional money so that we can do these things?

Commissioner, we would... build this into our capital planning programs, and we would need to take that to council to fund these future projects for each utility that we're trying to protect. So for water and wastewater infrastructure, they're separate bills, separate capital plans, and they are enterprise funded, so we would need to use those funds specifically for We wouldn't be able to use water or wastewater rates to do like a beach berm or something like that at the waterfront, if that makes sense.

Yeah, so I think it really depends on which asset we're talking about because water and wastewater rates are very tied to those systems legally. And to a certain extent, that may be appropriate for certain improvements, but for more like larger flood control projects. There we have to look at state, federal FEMA resources. And then we are going to have to look at some kind of permanent funding source locally eventually. And that is something that we are really investigating in the next two years how to do that. Other jurisdictions that are already having to do a lot of this work. Santa Cruz, um, city of Oceanside are doing things like combining bond measures with sales tax increase, you know, things like that, that. So really that that needs to be studied further. And that's something that our team is looking close at in the next few years because it's.

And so thank you for that. And just two more questions. Cause I know my commissioners have a lot of things they want to ask. I don't want to, I have a thousand things I'd like to ask, but I won't ask them. Um, because I'm sure you've covered them. This is a very kind of a broad topic here. For my own edification, is the pressurized system designed to keep the rainwater from coming in? Is that the reason we propose a pressurized system?

Commissioner, the pressurized system is very common, like Ms. Hetrick mentioned, in low-lying areas. Florida has been converting a lot to this, where... When you have a hurricane come through, they move the sand, the manhole frame and covers, the access points to the sewer system will be completely demolished. And so you could have sand, water entering the sewer system. Having a pressurized system eliminates all those access ports. So you have a sealed system similar to our water distribution system, underground, completely sealed. And every home has one pumped connection into that system. The only entry point left would be what gets pumped into the system. So if the house is pumping, you have the new wet well, that new wet well could flood, but the amount of water that could enter that one section is limited by the amount that they can pump into the system, if that makes sense. Okay. I don't know if we can pull that graphic back up. Yeah, I can show it.

Because inside the pump is much higher pressure than outside, it essentially pushes anything that might be trying to seep in.

Right, okay. It isn't designed as many pressure systems we think are designed to move the flow along. It isn't designed to move the flow along. It's designed to move intrusion from outside the system.

It depends on what you're needed for. Okay. Yeah, in some cases.

And then lastly, Are we also on parallel tracks working toward getting the Coastal Commission approval for all of this revetment work that we think we may have to do, which could be soon, right? I mean, you sound like we may be losing some sections of sidewalk, et cetera. But do we have a blanket approval from Coastal Commission to be able to put rocks up wherever we want to put them up?

No, and we wouldn't even be proposing that, but that's part of our waterfront adaptation project. So the idea behind that is to propose a comprehensive idea for the whole waterfront, and out of that is coming immediate projects where we'd be permitting them. So in order to... address those projects and the bigger version of that waterfront adaptation plan, we'd be doing an LCP amendment for it that you all would see after we get the waterfront adaptation plan. And then maybe coming in for permits for the individual projects on that. So that's what I mentioned is going to be coming to you in the March timeframe is we're starting to look at adaptation options. So what are we proposing to do? So we've been in this vulnerability stage of looking at doing the modeling. And now we're trying to propose solutions. And right now, we're just identifying the suite of solutions that we'll do technical analysis on in the plan. And then so at this juncture, we're just looking at adaptation options to investigate. The next time we would be coming to you later in the year would be actually for the draft plan. This is what we recommend should happen here and the cost of that, if that makes sense.

Do you want me to pull up? I guess my last comment would be every chance you had to do a bunch of stuff in one fell swoop, I think it would be a good model to follow. For example, I don't know if the Coastal Commission does this kind of thing, but if we know that we're going to be making coastal adjustments with revetments and rocks and raising things, It would be nice if we could have just a blanket approval from Leadbetter Beach to the bird refuge and say, all along here is where we're expecting things to happen, and then outline that. Because it looks like there's all sorts of little things we could be doing at any given time, because the plan is a big plan, right? And so the approval of it, it would be nice if it could be a big approval rather than piecemeal. That's all I'm suggesting. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Yes, that's a great comment, Commissioner Barnwell. We're definitely considering that, and it's a very good input. Next up, Commissioner Peterson.

Thank you, Madam Chair, and thank you all for presenting today. You all are keeping us safe for years to come. You're the often invisible hand that's going to prevent disaster, so thank you for this. The pressurized system is what jumped out at me when I was reading the staff packet, and I appreciate you all touching on that today, and especially the customer responsibility part. I know we're in draft conceptual stages here, but you mentioned that we have five years to create incentives, plan, ordinance for folks to be pressurized. Do you know how many people, households, buildings we're talking about?

I don't have an exact number for you. It's probably the whole, you know what, I don't want to speculate, but it's in the thousands. It's in the thousands. But I would just say we have five years to come to you with a plan for pressurizing these customer connections not to actually do the pressurization. We have about 20 years on that.

Okay.

So the idea is to start with new connections because those are easy, you know, It's easy enough to put in the pressurization instead of the gravity if you're just putting something new, right? Actually transitioning existing ones that aren't already going to be changing over, that will be a harder task. And that will come later and require incentives and all kinds of programs. So the next step is really putting together the plan of what are the areas we need to do? How many connections are there? What's the first phase? What's the second phase? What's the third phase? Doing all of that identification work. And again, it will also depend on what time frame we're planning for, the number of connections.

We want to make sure we don't give conflicting direction to homeowners. So we have an aggressive sewer lateral inspection program. If somebody's going to go in and retrofit their sewer lateral and they're thinking they're installing a 50-year asset, we don't want to come back 10 years later and require them to replace it. So that's why we are trying to be a little more aggressive on getting the plan for the new connections, rehabilitated connections, so that when people install an asset, they're installing it once, not having to retrofit it again in the future.

All right, and that's your focus right now. But eventually it'll be everybody in the identified area.

Yeah, we won't be able to switch the system. So as homes convert to pressurized systems, a pressurized pump can pump into our gravity system, but a gravity system can't flow into a pressurized system. So we're going to need 100% conversion to the pressurized system before we can put the new pipe in the street. So there could be a mishmash of pumped and gravity systems in the interim period. And at some point, there will be a deadline to convert so that we can pressurize that entire section.

Okay. And on page 19, you talk about $50 to $130 million debt. that we're estimating now anyway, not 20 years later, in infrastructure modifications, does that include the customer responsibilities or just the city's infrastructure?

That includes the city's infrastructure. Yeah. And that would be part of planning the next implementation phase in the next five years, identifying the cost to customers and how can we help with that and things like that.

And so not knowing what the incentives we have today are? So it's not the final price, but is there any general estimate of what this is gonna cost per household that either we're gonna have to figure out how to pay or seek funding for?

So currently the responsibility of the sewer lateral is the homeowner is responsible for the sewer lateral from their home connection to the connection to the city sewer with that said that is a private asset and we there need to be a discussion of using public funds for that that purpose there could be potentially like a similar to like a business improvement district that's something that has been discussed where We might be able to fund that and reimburse, but there's lots of possibilities that have been thrown out. Nothing is written in stone yet. Does that answer your question?

So if you're putting in a new system, it really depends on the length of your lateral and condition and all kinds of things. A pressurized grinder pump is a little bit more, but it's not like... outrageously more. And that's part of what the detail, I don't want to give numbers that are going to be wrong, but again, these are very common systems. This is not, um, this is very common in other parts of the, of the United States. It's not, um, like new technology or something like that.

There's actually a lot of benefits to the pressurized system. It's, it's a much smaller hose because it's pumped. So right now most homes have a four inch lateral. You're, your sewer depth and the house depth, you know, it has to be able to flow the right way. If it's pumped, it gives you more flexibility for routing. So, um, there might be, um, price offsets where, where if you're digging a gravity sewer, you, there's some sewers that are 10, 15 feet deep and sewer laterals that are that deep. A pump system would not need to be that deep, uh, because of the flexibility of not needing to flow by gravity.

But certainly in, in our planning of all of this, we're going to be thinking about not just how to foot folks with a giant bill, but how do we bring everybody along? How do we create these incentives? How do we make this doable? That's what I'm understanding from you today. The second, my final question is going back to the 50 to 130 million that the city infrastructure might need. Where are the funding sources for that? Like, do we have thoughts?

For things like flood control and flood walls, we can investigate FEMA federal and state sources. Again, I think for any source we are going to need matching funds and some local funds. the goal of this plan was to identify the kind of funds that we might need so that we can start planning for them. So I don't have an exact answer now, but we would be looking at all the avenues possible. And there are definitely opportunities. The climate bond that was passed in California is providing a prop for quite a bit of resilience, money to flooding. And because many aspects of this plan are protecting water quality, so preventing sanitary sewer overflows. There is a nexus there, and so we're hoping to get some grant funds, but I don't think we can entirely rely on them.

So eventually we're going to need some local funding for this. Yes.

We will be integrating this climate adaptation plan into all of our capital plans, specifically for the collection system, where we've been doing significant condition assessment, using what was mentioned with the I&I, our infiltration inflow, excuse me, all those investigatory measures, updating our hydraulic model. We are investigating capacity restraints, so we don't want to WORK IN A VACUUM, WE'RE GOING TO BE INTEGRATING THESE INTO FUTURE OTHER CAPITAL PROJECTS. AND SO WHEN WE LOOK AT THE TREATMENT PLANT, WE'LL BE INTEGRATING ANY IMPROVEMENTS, LIKE MEETING CLIMATE FLOODING PROTECTION WILL BE INTEGRATED TO ANY IMPROVEMENTS THAT ARE MADE IN THE PLANT. SO IT WILL BE HOPEFULLY BE GETTING FUNDS FROM OTHER SOURCES, BUT THOSE COSTS WILL BE BORN BY THE CAPITAL FUND. And we'll have to adjust rates to meet those requirements.

Okay. Thank you. No more questions.

Thank you. Commissioner Wiscombe.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

And thanks to all of you, Ms. Hetrick, for your excellent report. It was really great. I just have a few questions. I wanted to ask about the storm we had over Christmas, the that was nine plus inches. Did that qualify as anything, was it a 10-year storm, five-year storm?

I haven't actually heard, Commissioner, what level storm that is. It's also one of these things where if you ask any given scientist, they'll tell you a different answer depending on what you're asking. So are you talking about the total rainfall, the rainfall rate? whatever parameter, the amount of flooding, those are all different levels.

The total rainfall and the intensity of the rainfall.

Yes, so I actually don't know the answer to that.

Okay, I was just curious if that weighed into anything. I mean, I know it didn't weigh into this report because you've been working on this for a long time.

I would just say, Commissioner Wiscombe, though, as part of coming out of the Regional Coastal Adaptation Monitoring Program, one of the recommendations was was to start cataloging all these storms and the resultant impact and really documenting that so that we can answer those questions for ourselves. How many times has the 10-year event happened in this amount of time? What is the area that it impacts? That is one of the recommendations that has come to our division and that we are hoping to put together something to be able to do that in the future.

Yeah, because I think you said somewhere in the report that you're going to start really looking at these five and ten year storms, and you know, and the frequency of them, and yeah. Okay, so let's see. We've kind of answered the operations plan for El Estero, so I won't go there. So I wanted to ask a question. You say in the report, For coastal erosion mitigation, the report recommends protecting or relocating utilities on both Cabrillo and shoreline. And then the report later on, like on page 42, says that the city could conduct inspections of buried infrastructure opportunistically when exposed for other reasons. And I know that there was a lot of work done on Shoreline recently. I have no idea what they were doing, but they were trenching. And I just wondered if that was an opportunistic event for, do you know anything about that?

I'm not familiar. There was no wastewater or water infrastructure work on Shoreline that I'm aware of. There's wastewater. There is wastewater infrastructure there, but I'm not aware of any work on our system.

Yeah, it must be something else then.

There's been a lot of trenching for communications and other...

utilities maybe that was it i'm not i'm not 100 sure okay because they did several months of work so i was wondering yeah if we're x if we would excavate our system we'd want to inspect it um right when we're near there yes okay good um okay um and then just i think this goes to um one of commissioner barnwell's questions it says that the plan states that The plan states that the plan satisfies permitting and planning requirements for the Coastal Commission and the city's, the NPDES permit. So what kind of permit did you get from the Coastal Commission or what satisfies the requirements of the Coastal Commission? What requirements did they have that this would satisfy?

In general, they have, our LCP includes policies requiring incorporation of sea level rise and climate hazards into development review. But really on this project, for the waterfront project, there are definite requirements for permitting looking at these issues. The bigger driver on this one was the NPDES permit, but we were actually proposing this project before that requirement even came about, but now as part of all NPDES permits on treatment plans, the regional board is, or the state board is requiring analysis of climate hazards, so we were kind of ahead of the game.

Okay, okay, thank you for that. So this Coastal Commission project, requirement, then it doesn't give you any permitting ability. Everything that you do that's a project will have to go to the Coastal Commission or get issued to CDP.

Yes, and nothing in this plan is at odds with anything in the LCP or changes anything in the LCP, so we'd be able to permit. anything in the coastal zone with our existing LCP, so that's why we have not done an LCP amendment. With the waterfront plan, we will have to do an LCP amendment, because that will change our whole approach for that area.

Okay, thank you. And then the the staff report mentions the 2021 sea level rise adaptation plan and monitoring changing conditions. So I just wondered, has our monitoring you, I think you mentioned the beacon report was done in August. So is there monitoring revealed anything that's alarming or better or worse, or have there been changes in the, in, in the sea level rise levels based on the monitoring we've done so far?

So we are awaiting that pilot baseline conditions report. The report that came out in August was just identifying the parameters and the methods we should use to obtain information moving forward and to get a baseline on. And so the pilot is really setting up that baseline. But just anecdotally, because we've had to do a lot of modeling with our waterfront project, Again, we've seen about three to four inches of sea level rise. It's hard to tell actually the average, because sea levels rise and fall so much even just annually. To see the actual long-term trend, you have to actually wait a few years out to be able to see that. I think our biggest eye-opener as part of looking back at our waterfront was the erosion rate at East Beach, even with our dredging and and nourishment of East Beach. We have all experienced that that beach has less sand, but I don't think we had noted that that level of erosion was happening.

OK. Thank you for that. So this beacon report gives you a baseline. Is that right? The pilot will. The pilot will. OK. OK. OK. Oh, so on page 24, this is ES2, mentions coupled model intercomparison project six is used. Can you tell me what that is?

Commissioner Wiscombe, I am going to admit that that's a technical detail that I don't know. It's probably part of our modeling that ESA did. But I can get back to you on that.

Okay. And then, so I'm trying to understand. So the baseline year that we used for the 2021 plan was 2000, is that right?

So all the projections that come out of NOAA and the federal government and then also through the state use a baseline year of 2000. I actually don't know why. I'm sure there's a reason why for the projections. And so when we look at how we're tracking with those projections, we compare to 2000. There has been sea level rise before that. But usually it's described in that way before the 2000 and after just because Somebody decided that that was the year we were going to start. OK. Yeah. Good.

OK. And then, let's see, what else do I have here? I think I have many more questions. Oh, the plan states that groundwater data is limited and future updates are recommended. So are we working on this now?

Commissioner Wiscombe, the groundwater issue is really hard. So USGS, the COSMOS model, does take a really broad look regionally at changes in groundwater levels from sea level rise. There's a lot of assumptions in that. And the reason is that our drinking water, groundwater, the geologic structures that that comes from are well documented and modeled and things like that. those are different than surficial groundwater, which is not well studied because it really isn't, there's not a water supply need for that. I mean, anecdotally, we know that there's high groundwater levels in certain portion of the city. We do have some monitoring wells and things like that, but we don't have a great understanding about the geologic structure of those systems. And so to really, to be able to look at that issue, we need to establish more monitoring of the surficial layer. And to really, really know what's gonna happen, we would have to do a big geologic study. So I think the first thing to knock off there is to get more sampling of our surficial groundwater levels so that we can see some more trends.

Okay. Are we participating in any sort of regional data collection on that?

Yeah, there's a number of, in particular, state entities that have groundwater wells, and we have groundwater wells, and they're all reported to a central database. It really is a matter of taking out those wells and figuring out where samples or elevations are being taken from this particular groundwater system. Mr. Welch, do you want to?

Yeah, there are USGS wells around town as well that are being monitored. There's one, I saw USGS at El Estero yesterday. So we have a monitoring well on site. But like Ms. Petrick said, these are different layers of the underground geography than our drinking water wells.

Okay, thank you for that. I appreciate that. Okay, and then... Oh, okay, and I think this is my last question. I'll have a couple comments, but the plan says that a relocation study will include regional partner opportunities to share a wastewater treatment facility. So are you talking conceptually at this point, obviously, to Goleta about this or any other regional jurisdiction?

We are having very super specific conversations about relocation because we haven't even made the decision to relocate. This is our first kind of look at this. But yes, we are starting to, we'll be presenting this plan to other wastewater treatment entities starting, and we already are talking to them about other issues and climate issues. And so this kind of starts that conversation of, What's the long-term plan? But again, we have some time on that, and I think we are really out in front of other jurisdictions who are soon going to be required to look at these issues but aren't really thinking about them as much as perhaps we are.

Well, that's great. I'm glad you're out in front. So we can go out and tell everyone it's going to be moved to the municipal golf course. I'm just teasing, though. Okay. Okay. Well, that's the end of my questions. I really appreciated, Ms. Hetrick, your slide on the adaptation program approach. I thought that was a great slide, and I hope you continue to show that because that's, I think, really important. And kudos to you for getting the $5 million grant from the Conservancy and the Coastal Commission. Looking forward to the waterfront adaptation plan, definitely, and the launching of the first stormwater model at the Laguna Watershed. I think that's going to be good. You guys put together an excellent report, and it was clear. It's very technical, but it was well It was, for laymen, it was easy to understand, because it went in steps, and it was logical. So thank you for all your work on it, everyone. It's great. And I'm glad that you're all working together. I think that's the important thing, that you all work together on this. And I think it's going to help people solve problems and deal with sea level rise. So thank you very much. And that's all I have, Madam Chair.

Thank you. We'll move to Commissioner Wardlow.

Thank you, Chair Voss. And thank you to my fellow commissioners for all their questions. And comments. So first, thank you so much for all of the work on this. I'm very happy to see that the city is being proactive in how we're planning for the future around climate. I think this is really important. My questions are more on the costs, which I think a lot of my fellow commissioners have already gone through. So on the moving into the phase where we start requiring new developments to have grinder pumps and that, how much just on average would, for one, built like one house to, well, how much is that going to cost?

I believe the quote that we recently got was something between like 15,000 to 20,000. Okay.

And you think the timeline that when we have to do that is within the next five years?

No. We're not going to be starting the phase main pressurization for another 20 years. It's more just getting it getting the new connections going so that we have time to have people turn things over and it's not, you know, a last minute.

And then we'll start to build this kind of into our ordinances in terms of like as we're doing new developments in the future and that's part of this. Okay.

Yeah.

And then when you talk about a business improvement district, I think that's a really interesting idea around this. So then we would do like a public education campaign to the areas that we would want to pursue that in and get folks interested and provide some type of incentives that would also come from the city.

Those are the type of things we'll be looking at as part of the plan. We've heard loud and clear from council, you, and pretty much every public stakeholder that we really want to be looking at incentives and helping out and not just requirements. So that's something we'll be looking at. Okay.

And then in terms of when we're talking about Cabrillo and the kind of infrastructure that's below that we're thinking that we're going to have to move or re kind of

So to be clear on Cabrillo and Shoreline Boulevard, there's an assumption both in the adaptation plan, the 2021 plan, and also our waterfront adaptation plan that we will protect Cabrillo Boulevard and Shoreline Boulevard, at least for the foreseeable future. We're not going to just let it erode. And so that's a base assumption in all of our planning. It's more just figuring out as part of the waterfront adaptation plan how to do that. So effectively.

So we'll keep the infrastructure there because we're going to protect it, the ones that are existing underneath.

For now, yes. If there's certain very critical things that are out in front of that is really what we're looking at right now that could be at risk from erosion before you hit Cabrillo Boulevard. Okay. Yeah.

And so you talked about the 2021 plan in the year 2000. It kind of uses the baseline. in year 2000 and like in the early 2000s when we were making projections around sea level rise, have we hit or exceeded those marks that we originally thought?

You know, it's really interesting. I haven't gone all the way back to the original projections, but just in the time that I've been, I've probably been through three cycles. They update them every five years. If you look at the middle assumptions, so the one that is like the most likely scenario, It has not changed that much. And we are on our amount of sea level rise is on track with that projection. What you hear about in the news is the big range of assumptions. So sea level rise and the amount it rises is based on a number of different things. One is global emissions. So what you assume about decreases or increases in global emissions. And then one of the other biggest factors is how the Antarctic ice sheet is melting. So how you science about that, so is there going to be a catastrophic failure or not, is really where you start seeing those really high curves. And the likelihood of those are very low, but it's possible. And so what you hear about are these more extreme scenarios, and those have been changing over time with as science changes, but if you look at the middle of the road projection, it really has not changed that much.

When you say not changed that much, meaning we, like the rises that have occurred have been aligned with the middle of the road projection? Yes. Okay, great.

So the rises that have occurred, and again, we're not that far along on the lines, and also it does, as I mentioned, it takes many years of sea level rise to be able to see the trend. because of the noise of the different seasonal changes. But if you look at our track so far, we are on the orange line that I mentioned. And that orange line does assume continued admissions at the levels, if not a little more than we are doing now. The lower level lines, and there's actually lines below this that aren't even on here, drastically reduce greenhouse gas emissions immediately. And one of the reasons that they're not on there is not the trend that we're looking at. So we don't feel like that should be what we are planning for. Well, that would be great to slow down this process and have more time. I would encourage that. But as far as planning our critical infrastructure, we can't count on that.

Well, thank you for just the background on that piece. On the kind of short-term investments, I think it was 2 to 3 million for immediate studying and more work, more on staff to kind of make this plan actionable in the next steps. When there was a slide that was up earlier that talked about, I think it's the, hold on, like the immediate infrastructure needs that we're hoping to do. Could we go back to that slide? I think it was like manholes and things like that. I just wanted to understand is the 2.3 million that we're looking that we're gonna need to invest into this in terms of just ensuring that we're prepared, is that all going towards kind of the studying and planning and that aspect? What is the additional kind of cost that we're looking at for like the covering of the, I think they're called manholes or pothole? Pardon, yeah, sealed manholes in vulnerable areas.

So the two to three million is for the plans that I mentioned. So looking at that low-lying area, what are we moving forward? Planning, doing a plan of what kind of flood wall system we should put in at El Estero. The implementation money is doing the project. And so a lot of that is like the flood wall system and other improvements that might have to happen at El Estero and with the collection system. And we can start the studies, now because we do have built into our wastewater and water rates about a million dollars annually for these types of studies and designs for this issue. So that's the only reason we separated those monies because those are things we could fund.

But the investment, like the actual doing the work part, we don't have the budget for that yet.

Not at this moment, yes. But I would say in general, EASIER TO OBTAIN PARTICULARLY FEDERAL AND STATE FUNDING FOR CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS RATHER THAN PLANNING. PLANNING IS MUCH HARDER. SEVERAL YEARS AGO, JOSHUA HAGMARK, THE DIRECTOR OF WATER RESOURCES, DID SET UP THESE RECURRING ANNUAL FUNDS FOR CLIMATE ADAPTATION, SEEING THAT THIS PLANNING LEVEL WAS NEEDED TO BE FUNDED.

I WOULD ALSO JUST LIKE TO POINT OUT THAT A LOT OF THESE IMPROVEMENTS AREN'T STAND-ALONE IMPROVEMENTS. When we're rehabilitating pipes, when we're prioritizing wet areas we're working on, this will get folded in to our normal work. We are regularly doing rehabilitation replacement of the sewer system. We're regularly maintaining manholes, replacing frame and covers. So the framing covers are actually the manhole structure on the street, the round metal circle that you drive over. And so we'd want to be sealing, instead of replacing them with an unsealed manhole, we'd be putting in our plans that manholes in the flood areas would get locking covers with gaskets that are sealed. So it's not necessarily going to be... strictly additive, it'll be a change in scope for some of our normal work that we're performing.

Okay, great.

And then you mentioned a couple other coastal cities that are facing similar challenges and are investing in similar ways. In the scheme of things in California, are we in the middle of road of being proactive on this? Are we ahead of the curve on being proactive on this? Where do we kind of fall, given our community is so, you know, wants to be first on very forward thinking on environmental issues?

On this wastewater side, we are very ahead. We are the first in California. But this is the first of the plans in California. On the coastal resilience side, there's been jurisdiction. We are also very ahead. But there are jurisdictions that experienced a lot of damage in the last few years. So for instance, Santa Cruz lost a portion of Cliff Drive. So they are funding... repair projects and adaptation projects, rerouting cliff drive because there's not a cliff drive anymore. In a portion, yeah. And so the other one that's quite ahead is City of Oceanside, and that's, again, they've lost all the sand on their beaches. Serving reactionary. Well, no, I mean, they saw it coming. It's taken many years, but they are much farther ahead in proposing... something because of that, because there's really a public outcry at this point.

Okay.

Yeah.

Well, thank you all for your substantial work on this, and the fact that we are being proactive in this space is really exciting, and I really appreciate everyone's collective efforts on this, so thank you.

That's the remainder of my questions. Thank you.

We'll move to Vice Chair DiLuccio.

Thank you. I'll just put my comments and questions together, if that's okay. Thank you for the, my fellow commissioners, for asking questions. the questions I would ask some of those. And thank you for all the work you've done on this and continue to do on this. So that makes us really proud as a city for all you've done and keep us safe. I love this presentation especially. I did read the executive summary, a little technical, but I found this one really easy to follow. Is there any way you could put this on the website or something?

Yes, that's a great idea. And in fact, maybe we'll put the video of it, too.

Yeah, that'd be really good. It's also, when you look at next 20 years, that's when the $50 to $130 million is going to kick in, and we need to be realistic. The residents are not going to be able to afford to pay for that, so we're going to have to come up with the funding, and I'm hearing that you're already thinking of outside sources where we can get the money, grants and FEMA, et cetera, so that's good. And I really like the idea of the low pressure system. So basically the cities have to do infrastructure for that also. You have to put the pressure sewer in first, correct?

So a pressurized home can be connected to our gravity sewer. But a gravity sewer can't go into the pressurized system. What will end up happening is we have to wait for all the homes to be converted to pressurized, and then we would install the pressurized pipe in the street. There's potential that we'd be the... So right now our sewer mains are between six and eight inch diameter, the majority of them. A pressurized main might be two or three inches for a small... Depending on the size of the street. So we might be able to use our existing sewer as a carrier pipe to connect to hold... hold the new pressurized system is one of the thoughts that's been discussed. That, you know, we have potential areas, you know, the home laterals could connect in. So there's a lot of opportunities there that we're discussing. But the homes would need to convert before the public system converts.

Could it be done in a section? I mean, we may be talking about thousands of homes or... It's also not homes, it's businesses also, commercial and residential. Is there any... Can this be sectioned off in any way so it doesn't have to wait for everybody before you can turn it on?

Yeah, you kind of have to start at the outside and work your way in depending on the area of town. So you need to start on the most upstream section. So you could have a pressurized system that flows into a gravity system and then work your way down.

Okay. And I like the suggestion that... within maybe the next five years or so, obviously we're going to have ordinances and et cetera, one that as new homes are built or businesses built properties that they can start putting this infrastructure in even before they have to turn it on. Is that doable?

That's one of the things we've been discussing internally is not only putting an ordinance, but one of the things we have IS WE HAVE STANDARD DETAILS, DESIGN DETAILS. AND SO I THINK THERE'S SOMETHING SIMILAR WITH THE ADU WHERE THERE'S LIKE A STANDARD DESIGN. SO OUR GOAL WOULD BE TO BE ABLE TO PROVIDE A STANDARD DESIGN FOR A SINGLE FAMILY HOME UP TO THIS VOLUME AND THEN BE ABLE TO PROVIDE THAT STANDARD SET, STANDARDIZE THE THE PUMPING SYSTEMS AND HOPEFULLY THAT WOULD INCENTIVIZE THE CONTRACTOR COMMUNITY AND THE SUPPLIERS TO HELP US WITH COST AS WELL.

JUST ONE FINAL NOTE, I DO LIVE OPPOSITE THE GOLF COURSE IN A CONDO BUILDING. probably won't be around then, but whoever will be, maybe have a different view with a partial view of a WRC, correct?

Just think of the design opportunities. It is a 107-acre site, and we need 13 acres of it, so it wouldn't be... And one final thing, I like the regional approach.

Anything you can do for a regional approach, that would only help the cost, perhaps, as well as the implementation and the brainstorming of the whole project as we go forward. So thank you very, very much.

Thank you. Commissioner Wiscombe?

Did you want to go first, Madam Chair? Okay. I just have one. We didn't really talk about the water system at all, but I'd just like to go over, I think the two main things, if I'm correct, are the potable water pipeline in Chase Palm Park and the desal intake system. So can you just go over those a little bit and

YES, JUST QUICKLY, I'LL LET MR. RARE ADDRESS DECEL, BUT THE WATER PIPELINE, IT'S NOT A BIG DEAL. IT JUST NEEDS TO BE PUT ON THE CAPITAL IMPROVEMENT LIST AND WE WANT TO MAKE SURE IT'S IN THERE.

IS IT TOO CLOSE TO?

IT'S IN THE PARK. IT WILL BE SUBJECT TO EROSION. in our capital as we start looking at, especially as part of the waterfront plan, if we are gonna do any work out there, we should move it.

So eventually you're saying it will be, if it's subject to erosion, eventually it will be uncovered. Is that what you're saying?

Yes, and so that's part, all the erosion components of this, we are also addressing as part of our waterfront adaptation plan. So if we're already gonna be putting in protection or whatever it might be in that area, maybe we wouldn't move it But we just wanted to note that it's exposed at a certain timeframe, and so we need to propose some kind of option for it. It's easier, much easier to relocate water infrastructure.

Okay, yeah. I think the proper term is probably daylighted, but yeah, okay. So then can we talk about desal intake and anything else in the water system that is really concerning?

Absolutely Commissioner Wiscombe so Bradley rare principal project manager. I oversee the desal plant We have here for the city and I'm also filling in for Joshua Hagmark our director who couldn't be here today Like miss Hedrick said at the beginning of the presentation we did analyze all the elements of the water system And to the degree there at risk or that we have more challenges with relocating them like mrs. Hedrick said We're building that into our capital planning and long-range planning when we go to do our 2% replacement a year for our water mains. On the desal front, you really can't relocate the desal plant. It's located across the street from Alistair. And so you may be familiar with the surface landmark is that concrete structure that is on East Beach. That is already subject to high tides. In fact, the king tides last week, water was going around that structure. And that has been on our capital list already to basically remove the structure itself and realign the pipeline there so that ultimately it will be hardened for the life expectancy of the desal plant. In fact, we have a mitigation project that's already out on East Beach in order to line us up to do that work in the next five to ten years. So it's sort of on the short end of this planning horizon. We're already kind of working through that.

Okay. And do you have any other big concerns with any other... Commissioner Wiscombe, there were very few...

high-level concerns for the water system, especially since the groundwater levels and where our groundwater wells are located are not impacted by sea level rise in the near or mid-term. It's really limited to these things. And with desalination, you know, in the marine environment, the lifespan of a of that type of structure, it's probably going to be, would have to be redone or changed to a different type of facility in the next 20 years anyways. And so this would all be factored into that. But really when we looked at the highest risk, almost all of them were in the wastewater system. And we did look, take a very close look at water. I would just note that on the water supply side, it's outside of infrastructure. So things like the actual groundwater wells and the actual intake and the actual but the actual water supplies, would they be affected or do we have enough of them because of climate? That was analyzed in our last enhanced urban water management plan and so that was done as part of that effort. They did look at prolonged drought and diversifying our water portfolio for climate changes.

I remember that report and we have a very diverse water portfolio, which is great. And thanks to the water department for that. Okay, so that's pretty much it then. And what is the life, what are you saying that the life of the desal plant is now, what do you anticipate it to be?

Commissioner Wiscombe, we generally plan for a 40- to 50-year life expectancy for these facilities. Like Ms. Hetrick said, our water supply planning document sort of governs what stages we would go into other facilities, like potentially direct potable reuse in the future. But managing the plant we have now, we plan for 40 years of operation.

Okay. That's great. And I loved it. I came to the public event you had where we – tasted your water and we got an overview. I hope someday you do that again. I think that's really great for public education to know and for them to also know the diversity of our water portfolio because I think that's made our case a big success. So thank you for that.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. Commissioner Barnwell.

Thank you, Madam Chair. Just one or two last questions. So when we dredge the harbor, we dumped that sand on East Beach, right? Isn't that what that big black pipe is doing?

Yeah, so when we dredge the harbor, the dredge material goes in that black pipe, and then it's let out in the tidal zone by East Beach. So when we don't dredge, so we did not dredge in the last year, and you might have noted during summer that there was not sand on portions of East Beach this year, and part of the reason for that was that we did not dredge and we did not put the dredge material in the tidal zone because that kind of refills all the beaches down the coast.

So we actually get a false understanding of how much erosion is going on because we're giving that dredge sand we're putting that dredge sand over there correct?

Yeah so the way to think about it I guess though is before the harbor was put in sand would just go down the coast right but the minute we put in that breakwater it traps sand So really, you can think of our dredge operations as continuing the downflow movement of sand as it would otherwise happen. And in fact, when they estimate how much movement of sand we're seeing, they look at our dredge amounts because they're wondering how much. Because so much of it gets trapped. And so the Army Corps of Engineers does most of the dredging. And the lapse in dredging was actually due to federal funding. But that's a very important operation for our waterfront and our down-coast beaches, not only to keep the harbor open, but to keep sand on our down-coast beaches.

And one last question regarding, was there a dredge operation going on for the outflow of one of your pipes just off of Stern's Wharf? Because I asked a couple of harbor rats down there, and they said that that's what was going on. What was that dredging?

Yes. Commissioner Barnwell, we recently in November had a barge off of the coast hardening our intake structure for the desal plant.

So we have two intake structures.

And since the structures were put in with the original desal plant, there was some significant undermining of the structures. And so that project was completed in November in order to harden those and commit longer life expectancy to the offshore infrastructure.

Okay.

Thank you.

Thank you, Madam Chair.

All right, thank you. I think I only have one question left. I'm hoping you can talk a little bit more about vulnerable populations. I know they're called out of it in chapters one and two, just as needing strategies that benefit or minimize impacts to vulnerable populations. And so my questions are, one, where are vulnerable populations defined? I think they're somewhere else in the cap. And then can you talk about some of those strategies?

Sure, great question, Chair Baas. So our 2021 plan did the big programmatic look and identification of vulnerable populations. And that was really based on a number of parameters. I'm trying to remember them all right now, but it was based on census data. So low income, non-English speaking, elderly. There was a number of parameters identified populations that have a harder time of adapting to risks. And so those are really outlined in the adaptation plan. I think as you know, the plan, some of our efforts have focused on our own infrastructure as we move into this next phase of needing to have customers in the population make changes that it will be a key component of any plan that we develop is what is the population of the area we're talking about and what resources do they need. So further analysis will need to be done on that.

Okay, thank you. I was really thinking about our unhoused population and then lower income seniors and thinking what can they do to help when they're especially vulnerable. So looking forward to that. I think my only other comments were just I really appreciated the distinction between sea level rise and rainfall events that you made during the presentation today. I know it was called out in the documents that were in our packet as well, but just That was helpful for me to really hear, so I encourage you to keep making that distinction. The outline on the webpage was really helpful. I appreciated the acronyms that were right at the beginning of the plan, too, instead of on page 312. And then the timeline, it was ES8 or page 45 in our packet. I think that's helpful as well, but thinking about drafts going to council and other stakeholders, if there's any way that you can call out anything that you think is especially important for folks to know, I think that would be useful. Those are my questions and comments. Do we have any other questions or comments? No, and I don't think there's a motion today. It was just our general comments. Well, thank you for your time over many, many years and for the next 100 years. Thank you, Chair, Boz, and commissioners. All right. We'll close that item and move on to our administrative portion of our agenda, moving on to committee and liaison reports. Do we have a staff hearing officer liaison report?

It was in a meeting.

Okay. Any other committee and liaison reports? I see Commissioner Barnwell.

I WAS TALKING WITH STAFF ABOUT THIS, AND I'M NOT EXACTLY SURE WHAT THE MECHANICS OF IT WOULD BE, BUT IT SEEMS TO ME THAT THE PLANNING COMMISSION MIGHT WANT TO HAVE SOME LARGE DISCUSSIONS ABOUT, FOR EXAMPLE, THE ONE THAT COMES TO MY MIND IS HOUSING AND HOW WE CAN GET SOMETHING LIKE THAT ON THE AGENDA. APPARENTLY, WE DO JUST WHAT I'M DOING RIGHT NOW, AND THEN MAYBE NEXT TIME WE HAVE A VOTE ON IT OR SOMETHING LIKE THAT. legal would tell us. One of my reasons for this is we have always been such a leader in everything the city of Santa Barbara has. I have recently heard that the county of Santa Barbara is giving some consideration to moving the administration building that's there now in the five-story building

I'm going to have you pause there because we're going to get into a little bit of that discussion in the next item on the agenda.

Okay. That's all right?

Sure, go ahead. But I'll come back to you in just a minute. So we'll stick with any other committee or liaison reports.

I can give a brief one, if I may. It's on the Historic Landmarks Commission yesterday. They looked at 320 West Carrillo Street. That had come before us as conceptual review, and that's when a commission enlarges on our commission. And the joke was make a tower there taller. And they're going to also take the Victorian building in the back and move it to the front. It was that project. So they went back for more an in-progress review. So they haven't gotten final approval on that yet, but it's getting close. And then Franceschi Park, that came before the commission also. Eventually, they may be demolishing the house there, but the discussion had to do more with the design of what will become of the site in memory of the house. What's so fascinating about that, and everybody was saying the views up there, it's like whatever they do, put trails and roads and et cetera, it's still to preserve the view and also pay recognition to the house. That's what what occurred yesterday at HLC.

Thank you. Any other committee or liaison reports? Okay, so I'll move on to the discussion on subcommittees and workshops. So the intent of that agenda item was to make space for discussion about active work products, programs and policies, so not specific housing projects that are under the purview of Planning Commission and that have to be agendized. To that end commissioners can request information for future items and discussion immediately prior to adjournment And my understanding is that the Planning Commission will also begin or restart having more lunch training meetings immediately prior So I'll ask now if folks have items that they would like to be considered for to be agendized under discussion on subcommittees and workshops Again, not specific projects But items, programs, or policies that are under the purview of Planning Commission and know that they may already be coming to the Planning Commission during the year and that there is limited time.

Chair Boss, if I may, when you request, if there's anything you were requesting to bring forward, A brief summary of why you'd like it to be brought forward, but just for the Commission, we can't have that discussion here, but it is helpful for staff to understand why the Commission may find that helpful or beneficial. Thank you.

And some of the subjects that I think we've heard are general legislative updates, and this could be the legislative platform. The annual progress report or housing element update is coming to us, I think, in a few weeks. Brown Act, CEQA. Are there others?

Madam Chair, if I may. Please. To condense, I think it would be wise if the city of Santa Barbara could do an inventory of its city-owned property and what may have a potential for housing. The county is doing just such a thing, and I think it would be nice to be able to match them in terms of progress in that regard. So maybe a discussion of what properties does the city itself own what potential is there for housing there and then a wider discussion of housing in that category.

Thank you. And I think we'll hear that during the annual progress report. So are there any other subjects?

No, I would, I would echo what commissioner Barnwell said in terms of city owned property.

Okay.

For the purposes of housing.

All right. Um, well, uh, we'll make space during each of the, the meetings in case there are requests or, um, subjects that, we should add. Any other comments for today?

How do we get the lunch meetings back? Are we talking in general, or how do we move forward on this?

I think I'll turn to Ms. Arciniega.

Thank you, Commissioner Chair, boss. So the lunch meetings are in your PC guidelines as they're used for administrative or training items, and we can do them the first meeting of the month. It's prior to this meeting. It would be agendas of what that discussion is, either training or discussion item. It's intended for not actions or anything like that, but just a training or report out item. So we will give the Brown Act training. If there's other requests that kind of fall within that, we can do those. So we'll schedule those out as needed throughout the year, I think. If there's a request or a need, then you would bring it up at this portion of the agenda that there's a request for a training or information around something. And if it's appropriate as a lunch, sorry, yeah, one of those training or admin items, we would bring it there. If it's a further discussion, then it would be more appropriate as a full Planning Commission hearing. those earlier meetings are not intended for discussion or action or anything like that.

Any other questions or comments? Okay. It is now 2.40 p.m. That concludes our January 15, 2026 Planning Commission hearing, and our next meeting is tentatively scheduled for Thursday, February 5. Thank you all.

Thank you.