>> yes, actually the people talked about a range from 5-7 and 7-9 and we're looking at the whole range of 5-9 city datum as the op operable range for the lake. we have actually been able to keep the lake for the last seven years, i think it is, between about 6 and 8'. so it's relatively stable right now and i think it's working well for us. again, we'll go through that analysis through the daly city eir for you to take as a responsible agency, this is what you think about it and grant a permit to daly city that will build facilitis to help manage the lake levels. >> if we're talking about 27' and that corresponds to 12' of city datum, is it true that we are not looking at that anymore? that it looks as though that is a standard that we set with one set of

knowledge and that today, we're thinking in different terms, is that right? >> yes. >> so if there continues to be an expectation that 27' is an achievable number over the long-term, that is something that we need to clarify? >> yes. >> and that the real number is something less than that? >> yes >> okay. >> just to finish that, so the way we're going to get up to that optimum number, in addition to cirr, wouldn't there be additional factors that would play into why the lake should be at a higher level? >> the eir will be basically analyze and the ceqa analysis

will be done through their document of the impact of keeping it 5', 6', 7', 8'. >> through the process we should get the optimum number of what the lake should be? >> yes and it should probably be a range we ended up. >> have you received an answer to your fish question? >> i have not yet, but it's probably coming. >> oh, okay. >> on water quality, there is a number of things to point out. we have been monitoring the lake regularly since 1997. lake merced is officially designated as "impaired" for dissolved oxygen and high ph and that is a listing pursuant to the section of the clean water act, and as "impaired," that carries particular consequences with it. and so it's significant because a, we need to solve the problem. but b, it constrains the

ability to get a permit for the vista grande project. putting the vista grande water back in the lake constitutes a new discharge under the clean water act and you cannot permit a new discharge while a body of water is impaired and we have to come up with a solution of the impairment of lake merced. we're looking at lake mixing and potential runoff controls as potential ways to do that. this will be a responsibility that san francisco has as part of the lake, we own the lake. the problem is ours. so we'll be bringing a project forward to deal with the water quality issue in lake merced. the question that came up, particularly at the hearing out in lake merced was impacts from the pacific rod and gun club and lead and in the water column we have not detected any lead. lead itself is not taken up

through the other mechanisms that you see, mercury, big fish eating little fish over time and in the case of lead, the effects where it's actually ingested directly. so we have no evidence that fish are accumulating lead. but as part of the clean-up action out there, we're going to be performing an ecological risk assessment of any effects that lead in the lake might have to make sure that we're all quite confident that either it is or it isn't causing a problem. and if it's causing a problem, we have to do something about it. at least our evidence so far it's not causing a problem. so in conclusion, lake merced is central to three key water supply projects west side recycled water project, local groundwater and the groundwater storage and the vista grande will help improve the system and moderate the effects of the

project and again, all of these things tie together and hang together or sink together. >> any other questions? >> thank you. >> thank you, mr. ritchie. mr. decosta, you wanted to comment on item 7? >> commissioners, i wanted to comment on item 7 on the digester timeline, as well as what was spoken about lake merced. because of the time constraints, i am just going to be talking about the digester timeline. so on this website, where all the timelines will be posted we would like to know the benefits to the community when the oakdale was built and

all the certifications that were available? like being a registered nurse, being a certified chef, and so on and so forth? if these were available at one time, what happened over the years? and what plans are sought by sfpuc to have some certified programs in the future? no. 2, a lot has been spoken in a very superficial manner, we would like to know really state of the affairs of the outfalls, the old ones and the new ones. we have an outfall that goes stark center of pier 1, where the watershed is. the guy doesn't know, but the force main is under his building and we want to know the state of that force main. some years ago, some stupid people dug threw conduits under that main and comprised it and

we want to know what type of mitigation and evaluations have been done over the years, so we can find out the real state of that that takes over 300 million gallons of what we call secondary affluents to the pipes. and find out what are the states of the wheels? and how are they impacting the bay? how are they impacting the air? we also would like to know all the necessary factors over all the years, where gas was spewed into the air, linked to the digesters? one time methane gas was 2 tons of carbon dioxide

and who was affected and we want to know finally about a precautionary principle. i have stated this before and you should read about the precautionary principle and how do you all attempt to use the precautionary principle? especially your assistant general for external affairs? thank you very much. >> commissioner courtney. >> thank you, president. >> francisco, could you come up again? i want to hear again, because no. 1 i know you were trying to get an exhaustive list in there during the allotted time. can you restate no. 1 for me again? >> no. 1 is as part of the mitigation, we built the 1800 oakdale facility. and at that time, when we built it, we had certified courses. you could be a registered nurse.

you could be a master chef. you could be a master tailor and so on an so forth. that is part of the history that your staff should give to you. right now, we have very little of that, because everything is mickey mouse. very few of the courses that you take there can give you a career. so that is no. 1. and included in that, a lot of the people that went to those courses joined the unions and a lot of our strong union membership came because of the 1800 oakdale facility, something that is lost, because history has not been very kind to those years. but we are very lucky, like your chair and some others -- mr. anson moran and others know

a lot about the community. and so indirectly and directly, they can connect the dots. so we have lost a lot of really savvy people, who benefited a lot from that institution; that today does not produce the caliber of once that institution was very proud to produce. i am off to the port authority. thank you. >> you are off to where? >> port authority. >> where are you going? >> the ferry building. you are just going to leave us like that? [ laughter ] >> thank you, mr. decosta. i believe mr. allen wanted to comment on the lake merced report by mr. ritchie? >> thank you, commissioners, dick allen, lake merced and first i'm sorry that my colleagues couldn't be here today, because this is a great day.

i mean lake merced is getting the recognition that it deserves. it is obviously central to key 3 water supply projects, just to quickly summarize, which we have all been working on together and i want to thank mr. ritchie for this presentation. thank you. but this does raise some questions that we can think about in future, because now that lake merced has come to central court, so to speak, we would like to know what is the storage capacity of the west side basin aquifer? as you know we're now referrings to the west side basin aquifer as north and south, north of lake merced and south of lake merced. so we don't know what the capacity of this aquifer is and it's been studied over and over and over again. you have spent millions of dollars studying this aquifer. what is the current water content of the west side basin

aquifer, both north and south? is it 50%? 75%? 90%? we don't know. it's not on your website. the big question is at what percentage level would pumping be suspended? and what would be the protocol? who is going to have that switch that goes "stop?" we need to know that. i mean the community needs to know that, because lake merced now is a really an expanded community water resource. how many wells can presently pump water from west side aquifer? are these wells metereds? how much do they pump monthly and annually? and how do we know that the west side basin aquifer can support the 16 additional wells? as was stated in the slide, the

vista grande project depends on solving water quality problems in lake merced and how are we going to do that? we are really interested in that. and on page 10 in the report, it talks about lake merced is identified as "impaired." and this we're all aware of and this is significant because it con strains the ability to obtain permits for the vista grande project? does this compromise the project, because we're not sure how constrained fits into the process. my colleague dick morton has two pages of questions here, and he is sending them to you. unfortunately i have run out of time, but thank you for your patience, commissioners >> sure. commissioner vietor. >> yes, thank you so much for

staying on us with the lake merced issues and i would encourage anybody through the eir process, that is really an opportunity to continue to watch and submit comments, and to help develop alternative scenarios. all of that, that is what the eir process is designed for and i would really encourage you, if you have an interest in lake merced to participate and continue your submitting comments in that way. thank you. >> any other comments? all right. any other comments from the general manager? >> that concludes my report. >> thank you very much, mr. manager. consent calendar, does anyone want to remove anything from the consent calendar? you want to read it. >> thank you donna. >> item 18 a consent calendar, items 8a through i constitute the consent calendar are considered to be routine by the san francisco public utilities commission and will be acted upon by a single vote of the

commission. there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of commission or the public so requests in which event the matter will be removed from the calendar and considered as a separate item. >> all right. i see no removal requests. any public comments? there is one. yes, please come forward. i think you wanted to talk on the garden? mr. blair randal with the garden for the environment. >> my name is blair randal, the executive director of garden for the environment and speaking in support of the 8a, this license replicates the -- replaces the revocable permit we currently operate under, approved by the commission in may of 2008 >> our organization has switched from its previousy

fiscal sponsor to a new fiscal sponsor, the san francisco park as license, necessitating the reissue of this license. since 1990, the garden for the environment has taught the community gardening skills in which they can reduce water use at the parcel project at 7th and lawton street. for the last 230 -- 23 years we have taught these skills to more than 2,000 individuals each year. our organizations offered workshops to adults and fieldtrips to 1100 san francisco schoolchildren. we have partner with the sfpuc for this work since fiscal year 07-0 and each year we meet with water and wastewater enterprise staff to draft the work.

it complis with the national pollution prevention discharge elimination system permits. we are extremely excited continue our extraordinary collaboration under this new five-year revokal vockable permit. thank you, commissioners. >> thank you for your work. >> so moved. >> second. >> all those in favor, signify by saying aye? >> aye. >> opposed? consent calendar is approved. comment comments on those issues we relegated to closed session? >> mr. president, item 9. >> i'm sorry, item 9. i'm ahead of myself. >> item 9 authorize the general manager to executive agreements with applicants for grant assistance for floodwater management.

>> mr. president, members of the commission, emilo cruz, i have a very short slideshow for you. if we could have the visuals on the teleprompter, please. it will assist property owners that might be subject to flooding during large storms during the winter years. our opening picture is to show that we're better off than we used to be, giving the flooding that exist in the city. the flooding that does happen in san francisco is contributed by three things in particular, by the natural topography of the city, with natural high

points and low points and the size of the contributing drainage or watershed area that we're looking at and the downstream box and tide levels and to the extent that the water starts in the high points and comes down through the valley and has no place to go, it starts to create localized flooding problems. this particular map shows one of the area where we have repeated flooding at 17th and folsom tv street. as part of the sipp 20-year program we'll be putting in gray and green infrastructure in order to abate the program. one of the projects at folsom is to put in a basin underneath a park being bottle built by rec and park to minimize the flooding that exists, but in the interim, we're proposing

that grant program allowing homeowners to protect their homes during a storm. the backflow preventer would prevent backup and add to doors to prevent water from flowing in at low points in the property. we request your permission to move forward with the program, administer and again, it's available to all city rate-payers, who have experienced flooding as a result of a backup in our own sewer systems. >> what is the remedy that we're offering to homeowners? >> again, we're looking at midterm -- we're looking at immediate, this is this program that the homeowner would implement. we would reimburse 100% of the cost, which would prevent the flooding into the build during the storm. >> what is the usual average cost for such a procedure? >> i don't have that number immediately available, but it's a relatively small amount. the flood barriers we're

looking at about $6,000 per doorway for large commercial and garage doors and $2500 for doorway for pedestrian doorways. the backflow preventer is a $2500 unit. installation costs on both of these combined would probably be in the neighborhood of $2,000 to $3,000, so in general, each property has a different number of doors, different sized doors, but probably in the neighborhood of $10,000 per household. again, we would evaluate each grant and look at historically whether or not these properties have shown flooding under previous storms and work with the property owners and dbi in the actual implementation, so we're sure that they are putting their systems in and preventing that flooding. in the midterm, we're looking at short-term capture, as i said at 17th and folsom, one of our largest areas. we're working with rec and park to build an 800,000 storage tank under the new park at 17th

and folsom, so as the sewer system backs up, before it starts to move onto the streets and private property, we would be able to capture it into the 800,000-gallon tank and after the storm passes, deal with it post-storm after we have the capacity at southeast. of course, we're look at long-term and looking at green infrastructure projects. as an example, valencia and mission is a project that we hope to be able to remove millions of gallons of stormwater per year, which prevents it from ever getting into the sewer system. therefore, reducing flooding that occurs at that point. and then finally, we're looking at capacity increases in the actual transport as part of our long-term 20-year program. so we kind of have an immediate program, a midterm program, a 10-year program and a 20-year program. again, these are primarily to address storms that exceed the

5-year storm, which at this point, we do seem to see more frequency than we have historically. >> so is $250,000 enough? >> we do believe it's enough as a pilot program. because we only have evidenced localized problems 17th and folsom in particular, on a number of properties in that immediate area. we have seen a couple of other localized areas. we don't anticipate a strong need at first for this program, but if it's widely successful, we may come back to the commission, but we do believe this is sufficient as a pilot program to get through next winter and see the positive effects. >> okay. comments? >> yes. $6,000 per mediation, per protection and i know the importance of this, knowing how

much we pay out when flooding occurs. i would like to see review on the green system in addition, to the gray. if there was a little planting done at somebody's house? i know there is a big push to the cutouts in the streets and if some of the water could be controlled via, either a compliment ofry complementary green program, seems like that could be a viable option? i would be okay with this as a pilot, but if you come back to us with the request for additional funding to also have some data on whether a green option might be available for some of these homeowners in particular? who could then choose and say well instead of having to fully subsidize storm barrier, i would like a fully subsidized green cutout in front of my house, that would then be able to mitigate the appropriate -- >> yes, i think that is something that we're really looking at, is placement of green infrastructure. i think what we really want to focus on is you are looking at

two to three-foot of water penetrating the threshold. and so, this is just a barrier to keep the water from entering the house. looking at green, it has to be holistic, to keep that much volume of water from the streets to the curbs, on the sidewalk, it's a lot. so that is why we have to look at a lot of green to capture that, or a large holding tank. because that is a lot of water. i think we need to model, and figure out what is the best approach? so i think it's probably have to do a combination of a lot of stuff. so i just wanted to put it out there, that we're talking about a large amount of volume, that is raising the threshold of the houses entering into the houses. so maybe it's a combination, you know, for the next one, once the pilot is conclude to be able to say we could mitigate a few inches of that with some green solution.

i had one other question on the system, and is that going to go, if 800,000 is collected, it's going to go directly back into the system? is there a plan for reuse? it seems like an opportunity to collect and reuse? >> we looked at the capacity of reuse and the challenge that we would have, if it were strictly stormwater collection, it would be much more viable to reuse it in particular with the adjacency of the park. we get an overflow of the system at 17th and folsom and what we would be collecting at a certain point in the storm would be a slight mix from the sewer, as well as stormwater, which then changes all the regulations associated with reuse and we would have to do an entire filtration on-site to reuse that water. we have analyzed it and at this point, it looks like we have

both financial and space constraints with that particular reuse, but the overall benefit to the program and putting it under the park is the transition from what it is today, which is a concrete parking lot to a grass park, adds a certain amount of infiltration in and of itself. so as the storm collects, we collect in the actual sewer, storm off the street, but the grass itself adds a permeable pavement that doesn't exit today, which then will also reduce the localized impacts. >> [inaudible] >> i think the challenge is when flooding happens it's typically at a low point and all the flow is from up above and as the sewer collects, combinations sewer, where you have stormwater and sanitary flow combined and it hits to a point, where it's a low point and the whole system, you know, kind of backs up. so if we

separate the system in that area, it really doesn't help. you really have to have a separated system upstream. and so, that is when we're looking at -- >> what street was that that we're looking at? we had the conversation of cesar chavez, when we had that whole conversation, because we're doing work at the bottom? and we talked about having separate systems, but really to make an impact, you would have to do it way upstream and start doing it way upstream. so maybe we can talk about what we can do is to have a separate -- or look at ways to start separating that system and have maybe two storage tanks or something? so we can look at certain options >> that would be great, before that comes before us to see if there are some options there, because it's a lot of water and if we can reuse it some way would be great, even for park irrigation would be interesting. >> yes, yes.

we have vetted this process, with members of the public there, who have been impacted by the storms and they are very supportive of this, as well as supervisor campos' office has indicated a strong support for this moving forward as well. >> okay. thank you. >> any other questions? commissioner? >> a couple of questions on the eligibility. one of the requirements is that the property have a history of flooding. >> yes. >> how do you demonstrate that? do you have to file a claim with the city? >> that is how we would demonstrate it, that they would have filed a claim. >> if a homeowner has paid for repairs and has a record of those expenses, and hasn't burdened the city with a claim, would they still be eligible? >> any rate-payer is eligible to apply, and so certainly that would be reviewed, and be analyzed on a case-by-case basis >> so failure to have filed a claim in and of itself is not a bar? >> correct.

>> whoa, whoa, it has been a bar in other instances and one woman didn't file a claim, and was hit in the head and the city attorney denied her claim and i'm not sure. it may be different, because this seems like an administrative request. >> this is structured as a grant program. and is not a "claim" per se. >> i see. okay. well, that resolves it. >> one of the things that we request in the application, in the grant is to request proof of flooding. >> is from a deadline for this? >> treasan it's an ongoing program and we're working with dbi with the backflow preventers that need to be approved by dbi and we'll be working with dbi to process