>> good afternoon. now like to call the january 24 meeting of the public utilities commission to order. secretary, would you call the roll? [calling roll] i expect vice-president torres to be joining us shortly. >> we will go into closed session at the beginning of the meeting. any public comment on the items listed in closed session? he none, can have a motion? >> so move.

a-- seeing none, can i have a motion? >> conference of legal counsel anticipated litigation is council of bill legal counselor. conference with legal counsel existing litigation as defend iant fontana v city and county f san francisco. government code se >> we are now live. [inaudible] president moran: we are back in

open session. the commission met in closed session and took no action on items 5, 6, and nine. the commission did approve settlements on items 7 and 8. can i have a motion as to whether disclose discussion during closed session? >> motion not to disclose. >> second. >> motion carries. -- president moran: motion carries. mr. secretary, if you would call item 12. >> item 12, approval of the minutes. approval of the minutes of the january 10, 2012, regular meeting. president moran: any revisions or corrections to the minutes? could i have a motion? to go so move. >> second. -- >> so moved. president moran: all those in

favor? motion carries. >> item 13, public comment. this opportunity is members of the public may address the commission on matters that are within the commission's jurisdiction that are not on today's agenda. i have no speaker cards so far. president moran: mr. acodecosta , welcome. >> happy new year. i think 2012 is going to be a very challenging year and a good way. i am here to talk about the san francisco redevelopment agency, and at some of the changes that are being fostered.

not because the city needs it, but because the state demands that somebody take charge of the assets and a one ever has been grandfathered in. so they have to do it rather quickly. after the martin luther king holidays we did not get sufficient time when the meeting was held for some sort of resolution being presented. today that same resolution will be before the board of supervisors, and if they vote on it, then all of the details will be taken care of. and whether you like it or not, and i am talking about the san francisco public utilities commission, with all that's happening with the america's cup, this, that, and the other,

the larger properties of mission bay, hunters point, candlestick point, comes under your jurisdiction or one way or another. whether it is you wersewer, clen water, and also, energy. even transportation effects you in one way or another because of the infrastructure. so because every development has gone away, other large parties are primed to come in, if they have the money some of which they do in some cases. in so i am here to say that with a sewer system improvement project, which is in our backyard, and with whatever else

is happening, sfpuc is poised to have san franciscans, because we know the training was done and a lot of money came from the redevelopment and other enterprise agencies are going to have changes there. and so i am here to request that the southeast sector is taken care of so that we have people with skills to do the right thing when the right time comes. thank you very much. president moran: and you. any additional public comment? -- thank you. seeing none, communications. we have a fairly rich set of communications that have been provided to the commission with this agenda. faugh foon item three, a quartey

report on the waste water improvement projects, i know it does combine the interim cip and anticipated ssip. that is something we requested, and i appreciate you doing that. that is something we were asked to develop under recent. that is something very positive. i appreciate that. >> on the same topic, page 10 of that report, ongoing construction. i wanted to ask about the cost variants, which is almost 11 percent signed. -- 11%. that would be the figures on page 11.

>> page 11 is blank. >> let's see. capital improvement programs. that is quite a bit. why is it so much? >> do you have this report?

item 14, 3c and under tab 2, page 10 and 11. i think i can answer it. and there are two big things. the single biggest thing is $7 million. originally we were going to do this in two different phases. we record to do an underground portion, and then we were going to do a trench on another portion of it, and this came to the commission two or three meetings ago where we said this micro tunneling went so well that by continuing to continue to do micra tunneling and bringing in a new contract would save us time and money, so we amended the old contract, which is the reason for $7 million. but we figured it would probably

cost us 8 million or $9 million to have an outside contractor do that, and we would have to stop the entire process. that is the major portion. >> see, we do look at these things. [laughter] president moran: it is a format that point out things like that. where things are happening, and makes it clear they are happening. >> for that one change, the real variants stake here is more along the lines of 2%, right? -- the real variant figure at stake here is more along the lines of 2%, right? president moran: any other comment on the communications?

>> thank you for catching that item. this is a really comprehensive projects under way. it is very helpful. i assume it is on the website. perhaps people >> any other public comment? commissioners, is there any other commission business? >> without any, the report of the general manager. >> good afternoon. we have two items today. first is a short update of where we are. >> as part of today's agenda,

we're going to seek your approval for the clothes out of two regional project. i would like to give you a progress update on the challenges that have been encountered in the last two weeks, starting with that eastern segment of the pipeline currently on my radar screen. there are two issues that could lead to potential schedule delays. one is the potential delay of fabrications -- fabrication of the pipes and the other is the need to secure a missing environmental permit from fish and game. we have a project tracking these issues and i am confident we will be able to mitigate these issues and the overall project schedule will not be delayed,

but i wanted you to be aware. i want to keep you apprised of two of the most challenging progress issues. it continues to average 40 feet a day, which is projected in our schedule. we are not falling back schedule-wise, but we are not able to make up with those rates, leaving us what about six months behind schedule. the good news is that in the last two weeks, we have had to use less ground water and this is a good sign we may be able to start making up time. at the dam site, the deep soil mixing work that was needed to stabilize one of the areas where we will be disposing some of our

soil, that work is going well and will be done the first week of february. the actual excavation of the dam will begin in earnest the second week of february, and this is what we will start blasting. for your information, we could be blasting several times a week for a couple of years. bade division pipeline no. 5 -- they were continuing to make good progress on all remaining change east bay segments so that we can declare a final completion in march. on the peninsula segment contract, we are 85% complete. welding repair work is progressing as planned. on monday, we will issue an order for the tunnel under a large archeologist -- archaeological site.

this will proceed in the next few months and it is projected to be completed at the end of april. we had a record day last week and we were able to make 160 feet advanced and one day. we had to go through a curve and we have the entire trailing year, we are very optimistic in our ability to achieve great production rates. yesterday was the first major day of the shutdown. while it is not operational, we wanted to use the opportunity to show you the photos that show the extent of work taking place. it's hard to see -- we want to actually go the other way.

that doesn't count for my five minutes, does it? maybe we will forget about this. it's better for us. this whole area is where the wall is built and where we will be building the treated water reservoir. in this area here is where we are going to be building new filters. this does not do it justice, but these are like little bulldozers and they look like ants on these photographs. this is another photo of the basins which are now totally demolished and getting ready to add new filters installed. watts of work taking place.

i wanted to close by giving you an update on the project -- we're going to finish the design of the connection that failed in november by the end of this week. we have yet to schedule the work in the field but a new connection should be installed by the end of june. all lot of efforts have been spent trying to clean up the area in south san francisco. that work will be completed by the end of this week. that's all i have. >> commissioners, any questions? >> the second item the public utilities commission gets involved --