>> good morning supervisors. i have been politically active since i was a child and my concern was for the populations that are left out of many of the things that this country prospered on into war, after the war and things going on back then that were not able to afford the medications necessary to keep them going especially diabetics. the legislation that prop d brought forth i thought was a marvelous thing

for the city to be doing because of the population involved who have extraordinary needs for prescription drugs and simply cannot afford them whether or not they are insured. many times the insurance co-pays are tremendously costly and and various companies say you can't get our drugs because your insurance doesn't cover this particular drug and you have to get another type of drug and that doesn't work. i would hope that this legislation goes forward. i noted specifically the last next to the last further resolved you mentioned transparency and pricing for health care and prescriptions. they need to go hand in hand starting with the prescriptions. the health case -- care issue is tremendous.

>> thank you. i want to call up a couple more folks. if there are any other individuals who wish to speak on this topic, please lineup. ms. kelly. >> hi there. my name is kelly. i take drugs. i take drugs to help me walk. i take drugs to help me with my blood pressure. and when i see farma do you agree is helping to raise my blood pressure. because there is a difference between being ridiculously rich and very rich. and without transparency drug makers become ridiculously rich and our people become at risk, ridiculously at risk.

i'm very proud for san francisco voting 80 percent for proposition d. many of san franciscans can afford, but we stand here to tell you, we want everybody to be able to have drugs. we believe that you can work on this. the transparency is a very difficult thing and we learned about that today. i believe that we can work on ways to making a transparent what the markup is on drugs and what we can bargain for. i used to work in a jewelry shop and pawnshop and i know that the only thing that has a higher markup than jewelry and luggage is drugs. maybe i should have sold drugs. i didn't. i believe that you

have to help our seniors, you have to help our poor, you have to help our homeless. you have to help our immigrants, and you have to help people like me get the drugs they need to survive. >> thank you. >> good morning supervisors. my name is lee. i spend thousands of dollars or asthma medication. the reason is we can't just have one inhaler or one neb lieser. it's his life, it's children's life. these fair pricing is crucial

because of the skyrocketing cost. i'm going to kaiser to spend $200 on a breathing treatment. working class people can't pay this and they are struggling and they shouldn't have to choose between paying medication and someone's life. san francisco has always stood up for families and this resolution supports this type of family to help the families and make a difference in their life and no one has to choose from their health and their lives and this will help make life affordable. thank you. >> thank you. next speaker. >> hello, supervisors. my name is jessie brooks. i'm an

hiv/aids advocate and also hiv positive. i have seen the impact that high drug pricing has had on patients. i have seen pricing co-pays where have to decide whether to pay the co-pay or to eat. those situations. i was very active on prop d and so glad that san francisco passed it. this drug traffic is a run away train. how do you stop a run away train? you stop it. before long if we let it keep going it's going to collapse our system. it's one of the issues that wasn't taken care of in the affordable care act. it should go hand in hand with drug cost. also i have seen patients, i'm one of those lucky patients where the city

and state are paying for it. in the end, many are paying and there are a lot of people that don't qualify just by a margin for city and state help. so they are struggling each month to pay for their drugs, life sustaining drugs and in 98 they created hiv medicine that help people live. these are drugs they have to take everyday. as someone said earlier they created a hep c pill but it's $1,000 a pill. if federal insurances try the old treatment which is harsh and doesn't work like the new drug first and then maybe offer them the new drug. in the end patients that are poor are going to suffer. thank you.

>> thank you. let me ask are there any other members of the public who wish to speak on this topic? is there any additional public comment? seeing none, public comment is closed. >> i want to thank those who came to speak today and i appreciate you come here and show casing our voices from our disabled community, senior communities and individuals living with hiv and aids and representing their families from every part of our diverse city. i also know that we have a lot of work to do and i want to thank the staff and the department of public health for your creativity and attorney staff to move this topic forward. this is a topic that has been around for many many years and there is not head way at the state level that we want to see. my guess is i share the perspective

that support proposition d that we hoke -- hope that san francisco can lead the way to the counter parts around the state and country. i want to thank my aid catherine russia who has attended lots of meetings for understanding this topic and john, thank you. with that, colleagues i ask for your support that we move this out to the full board for a positive recommendation and move this issue forward. >>supervisor london breed: colleagues, can we take this without objection? the motion passes with positive recommendation. thank you all for coming today. >> madam clerk call the next item, please. city clerk: [hearing - drought preparations] sponsor: breed hearing with the public utilities commission and department of the environment to review their plans for preserving water, and protecting san francisco's watershed from

drought and fire, given we are in the midst of the worst dry spell in 100 years, and governor brown has asked all californians to reduce their water use by 20 city clerk: [hearing - drought preparations] sponsor: breed hearing with the public utilities commission and department of the environment to review their plans for preserving water, and protecting san francisco's watershed from drought and fire, given we are in the midst of the worst dry spell in 100 years, and governor brown has asked all californians to reduce their water use city clerk: [hearing - drought preparations] sponsor: breed hearing with the public utilities commission and department of the environment to review their plans for preserving water, and protecting san francisco's watershed from drought and fire, given we are in the midst of the worst dry spell in 100 years, and governor brown has asked all californians to reduce their water use by 20 okay. give me 1234 -- give me one moment. i call for this issue with the department of environment and we as a board and city are facing a biggest drought in many many years. 2014 is projecting to be even drier. it's funny that it reigned for almost a week straight after i called for this hearing and maybe even yesterday. maybe this hearing was designed for good luck. >> keep calling for more hearings. >> unfortunately even with those rains we are still way below average. the necessary levels at hetch hetchy. at the february levels in february 2014, water shed was at 40 percent of the snow level and

snowpack was 22 percent of it's normal level and we have some of the best tap water in the country. it can be easily forgotten and the water has to come from somewhere. the hetch hetchy reservoir system through a marvelous civil engineering is still dependent on the river and the snowpack in the sierra nefd nevada and 2.6 million people depend on this. and it's going to make the state vulnerable to fires. as you know the rim fire burned for 69 days and threatened the hetch hetchy reservoir and was saved

thankfully tourette fire -- to the fire departments. governor brown declared a state of emergency and called on californians to reduce their water energy by 20 percent. the sf puc is asking can ustomers to voluntary reduce their water usage by 10 percent. the department is outlining actions to reduce the water and develop alternative sources of water. today i would like to ask puc and department of environment to address the topic. no. 1, the current water supply and projection for 2014 and 2015. and the plans how we will meet the puc's goal of a 10 percent usage reduction. no. 3, and overview of city water unl by

the department. what are the departments doing in terms of consumption and conservation and who is doing well and not. no. 4, how are we protecting the water system, maintaining and updating and improving the water structure and guarding for fire and funding for immediate projects. no. 5, long-term planning. how are we planning for population growth. what are we doing to find sources water whether it be desaulization and i know puc grant was putting a proposal on hold and i would like to hear more about that. what are the departments doing to educate water customers, no. 6, to educate customers about the needs to previous

and the methods to preserve. those are my objections today. thank you all for being here and with that, i want to turn it over to richie, assistant general manager for water. >> thank you, madam chair and supervise ofrments -- supervisors. the last time we called for reduction it rained. when people start paying attention, we get somewhere. i would like to start off with this slide that will answer your questions but i will answer those as i go along. what i'm basically going to talk about in the water supply condition and outlook for us our volunteer 10 percent reduction effort. what the departments are currently doing as well as our users in the city itself. our recent water system improvements to get to that

reliability system that you talked about and state and federal legislation that are in the works that hopefully can provide funding for some of the activities that we need to engage in to really save more water here. first, on the water supply conditions, the current water supply in our reservoir is 98 billion gallons which sounds like a lot of water but when you need about 32 million gallons per day, it's not a lot of water. we have 12,000 acre feet in our system which is a back up water supply. i will talk about how we plan to access that if we need it. and we have water basically is what

we used to supply the irrigation districts with water to maintain water in hetch hetchy reservoir. that water depends on the reservoir. it didn't look like much in flow and that water wasn't worth much. precipitation has been normal for february. more is needed. we basically need this weekend storm to be strong and one or two more series of storms so i will be able to sleep throughout night. until then, we have to worry about the water conditions. we'll continue to evaluate the water conditions on weekly basis. the graphs are what we update on weekly basis. this is cumulative precipitation at

hech hech eechlt . this is normal precipitation. anything above that is wet and below is dry. what we have included on this well is the green line which was 2013. that was last year last water year. as you pointed out calendar 2013 was one of the driest years ever but water years run from october 1st through september 30th. we had a wet november in 2012 that kept last year from being as bad appalachians this -- as this year was. the blue line was in 2007 was a time when we called for volunteer reduction in the in the system. the red line which is this year which is tracking below that line and the recent storm has gotten above 1977.

so what great cause for celebration to being the second worse. that is still bad and we need to deal with that problem. the next slide shows the snowpack which is more dramatic. 1977 doesn't appear on this because we don't have reliable data at that time. that black line shows our snowpack basically an accruing up until april 1st. it's how usually it snows. you get a peak snowpack around april 1st. that black line is the percent of median april 1st snowpack. that is normal. anything above that is wet and anything below is dry. in 2013 it was below that, water year in 2007 was even further below that and the red line at the bottom shows how little snowpack we've gotten up there and that is a great cause for

concern. that is what led us to the government issue throughout the state and we have a better system but it became clear back in the end of january that we needed to call for volunteer reductions by amount of 10 percent. that's earlier than we normally call, but the dry conditions we felt dedicated that we should call for that and that's for san franciscans but all of san francisco. that is a system wide level of reduction we are aiming for and we are calling on san franciscans on that and the need to achieve that. we average a demand here in san francisco about 73 million gallons a day. our use is low here in san francisco, approximately 49 gallons per

day per residential use. it comes to 88 gallons per resident if you factor in industrial . that is lower than most areas. the key that we have found is really educating people to the need to conserve and really to get meaningful conservation is replacement of plumbing fixtures such as shower heads, toilets, installing faucets and plumbing fixtures and useless water and whether it's through a rebate program. we have some of those as well. those are the ways to get more out there. i think you will be doing a lot of that in the coming months.

regarding state departments the mayor issued directives on february 10th to further reduce consumption by 10 percent. since 2008, city departments have reduced their consumption by 22 percent. they have been good conserveers just like the city of san francisco has been. they have to be given credit for that and like everybody else, more can be done and there is a program here to move that forward. the departments including the puc all have to develop their own water conservation plans by august 1st. why it's taken until august 1st? it's to literally target those fixtures that are older that use more water and we have to

replace those old plumbing fixtures. the department is also directed to educate staff on water conservation practices. we have a lot of contact with the departments already and signage to put out there to tell people to save water in their facilities and that is a good thing and exploring with dpw the use of non-potable water. there is a lot of building basements that have to have water pumped out from around them to keep the basements dry. that water goes to the sewer system. we think that's a potentially good source of water for street cleaning. we will explore that in the near future. and we have also directed water supply and conservation. three things in particular for us in the puc one lower cherry

aqueduct rehabilitation to access cherry lake. our local ground water outside of san francisco just approved by the puc and by the planning department. we'll be breaking ground on that to add ground water to our supply so we are not completely reliant on the mercy of nature and what falls from the sky. we are also looking at other non-potable sources including foundation drainage and plumbing fix -- fix fixture replacement and we started to provide materials and assistance. we are focusing on it now, indoor and outdoor conservation and information to staff regarding the drought and plans submitted by august 1st to us and we are identifying how to put the information together and get

it to us. and assistance with identifying what are our old plumbing fixtures. working with all of them and they have been pretty good with a couple of the departments already. dpw and recreation and parks have already issued their own directive already to cut down on water use. that's a great step and we've had contact with the other departments. however all important things people can do to reduce to go ahead. what other things can departments do? replacement of plumbing fixtures that are over 20 years old. the graph here showing water consumption, one of the things we've been trying to deal with are old fixtures in st city hall. we do that throughout the city but we do not have funds to use for the installation. we got a federal grant and used that money and

paid dpw to install those new fixtures and water usage has already dropped. that's what we are looking for is appropriate fundings to help us replace fixtures around the city. we have grants to help us make that happen. we hope to make best practices for irrigation and fixing leaks appropriately. and parks and recreation and dpw are starting to control their irrigation as well as the puc because we have a lot of land scaped areas. people are working on this quite well together. one of the things about the system again that is old that we've been actively working on the 4.6 water system improvement program and i'm happy to report that's 80

percent complete to address current and future system needs. those are aimed at increasing reliability. during the rim fire, for example, our improvements at the snow valley treatment plan is more reliable in case we have to filter the supply. if we had to filter it we can do it reliably at the treatment plant. that's what we are doing now going forward this year if we need to filter the cherry lake supply. these kinds of things are what we are doing going forward. on the state at legislature fund, there are three areas we are funding one is the cherry lake canal and we can bring it over and put it into the

hetch hetchy aqueduct. that is last used in 1988, the last drought we had. it was the water supply. a lot of it was burned during the rim fire and we are developing a project that we want to get done by october 1st this year to rehabilitate that to put it into a pipeline to make sure that water can stay as clean as possible if we need to bring it into our system here and if things change dramatically, we very likely will need to bring that into the system. we want to make sure we can keep up with the demand. the san francisco water project has just been approved and we want to get more funds to pay for that and will start to add to the supply later this year early

2015. lastly the program that will need funds to provide installations of fixtures to help support that. there were four bills introduced in the state legislature a couple days ago, two in the assembly and two in the senate. they are identical bills trying to fast track them to make them available statewide $680 million for different kinds of drought relief. those were passed out yesterday and said to go to the floor today and hopefully those will be passed which will be administered through the water and state resources. also senator feinstein has

just introduced federal legislation for drought relief. looking ahead in the short-term, we have been covered extensively in the media regarding the drought conditions and we'll do that more in the months as we start to get into the summer, a major outreach campaign in san francisco and outside of san francisco to reinforce that we need to achieve those reductions that we have aimed for at 10 percent. we have arranged a contract with our customers we have revise estimate of water supply. we probably won't issue that until monday or tuesday of next week because we want to report on the outcomes of the precipitation with that to get a truer picture going forward. we need to provide

information to our customers and at that time that's when the puc may or may not declare a drought emergency. it could declare a volunteer or mandatory rationing. mandatory rationing involving a bigger precedent. when we call for voluntary rationing our customers respond. they responded very well in 2007 and we expect the same this time around. one of the other areas i didn't touch on here is moving forward into long-term future, we will get through this drought. we will deliver sufficient water to our customers. what are we doing in the long-term? for san francisco we see substantial growth through plan