out that there is something wrong or contamination or whatever we need to stop and we need to go into investigation mode and see and he talks about our life, not only human life, every type of life. anyway, i am looking forward to the deliberations today to see how you interact on substantial things, viable things, holistic things. thank you very much. >> thank you francisco for being here. >> thank you, i'm looking forward to the presentations and the public from the feedback as we go forward to the next item. >> madam secretary. no. 4, please. city clerk: item 4. presentation and discussion of sf puc and sf environment shared responsibilities and plans to advance the city's

environmental goals in toxics reduction and environmental safety, water conservation, wastewater management, clean vehicle adoption and renewable generation and energy efficiency including a discussion of opportunities, challenges and potential future collaboration in pursuit of environmental objectives. >> speakers for toxic production and safety. not yet. >> you can jump ahead, that's fine with me. i'm michael carl in the chief operating officer for the san francisco public utilities commission to give you a level of what we do and david will be presenting some unifying point and we want to get into discussion with the

staff because that's where the real meat is. this is education for those who don't understand what we do. we are a water and power and sewer agency. we are about 1800 employees spread out over 160 miles. our primary businesses you will hear a lot about today. our water system, a lot of people talk about the hetch hetchy system. when you look at it, it's not just hetch hetchy reservoir. we have others in the sierras. lake elsinore and -- we have hydroelectric power which we do transmit to san francisco. we also deliver water to 6.2 million pl -- people and provide services. for the light in this building, and water and sewer service is

hetch hetchy power. we serve 2.6 million people. most of our water can ustomers are not in san francisco. in fact we have a water supply agreement with can ustomers that define our relationship and they make-up two-thirds of our water sales. we deliver 220 million gallons of water per day from hetch hetchy. water leaving hetch hetchy travels to one of our reservoirs. it's a high quality water source. we do not filter the water. we just disinfect it. we have from the environmental protection agency and public health. we have 1 billion kilowatt hours each year on average. our sewer system is a combined sewer system. we take in both our storm water and our sanitary sewage into same

system. we are only two cities in the state of california that has a combined system and the other is in sacramento. you will find most of the older cities in the united states has a combined sewer system. new york, philadelphia and others, chicago. we do have a system that's own 100 years old. the city has been around since the gold rush. we have about 1,000 miles in the city. what are our core priorities: there are three, deliver high quality and reliable services. that's what our people do 24/7. we need to maintain our critical infrastructure. we'll talk about that and last but not least, we have to be afford avenlt ---ible. we don't want people to leave town. >> what have we done? it's the water improvement program. we are going to spend $4.6

billion to you -- upgrade our water system and we should be very proud of that. there are still several key projects under way but hope to be completed in the next several years. we are moving forward with the $7 billion sewer improvement program. this is important because it will update the sewer treatment plan for the first time in several years. we are the first to recover from the third largest fire, the rim fire. the recovery efforts are still under way. if you have not been there, it is quite remarkable how much damage that caused. that fire was seven times the size of san francisco. we are in a middle of a drought. we are asking people to reduce their consumption by 10 percent throughout our service area and we are monitoring that closely and we'll hear more about that later. last but

not least on the affordability index we are setting our rates for the next 4 years. that's important for both the water and sewer system because it creates financial stabilities and allows us to move ahead with our large improvement programs. today we'll cover a number of different things. this is for the viewing audience at home and include toxic and water safety and wastewater management, clean vehicle adoption and newer energy and efficiency. i will turn to my counter part. >> thank you. david as -- acting director for the department. i want to go over the goals of sf puc. i looked at one of our primary goals to keep waste of the landfill and

reduce toxins. that interest twiens -- inter twines with sf puc. we try to keep them out of the landfill and wastewater. or energy and climate renubls are our energy efficiency work and renunl -- renewable work and climate work, we address the public sector. we who, with residents and businesses and the if 123 -- sf puc works with the department. two can be linked to fire. the rim fire and the drought. neither would be severe if we with respect to dealing with a long-term clierment change that is affecting a whole variety of what we deal with everyday on

this environment. our issue helps all of us. our work and energy efficiency on the adoption of more renewables and greenhouse gas emissions, sits on well. we work together on a variety day-to-day programs like our green business program which is a citywide business program and the department of sf puc and other departments in the business program. we work together on urban forestry. puc is with the urban council and agricultural issues and environment issues and they are all part of the agency working group. we have a common goal of providing justice and common goals of providing transportation and increasing the number of the electric vehicles infrastructure for this city. we have lots of room for

growth as well in terms of projects where we can work together. our outreach efforts are already partnering with sf puc and other areas and a lot more. for example, for the past few years, our school education program has carried water conservation message to children on behalf of sf puc. we have departments now that reaches people door to door throughout the city, it's an area where we can cooperate and work together and -- taking our green jobs and helps to meet our goals. those are layers where we should cooperate and staff will give a lot more depth to these topics, . there is a lot of opportunities to work together and commonality to build our

respective strengths. thank you. >> thank you very much, michael and david for being here and giving us those important reports. i'm going to ask that the secretary for the commission on the environment go ahead and call items a through e at president arce request. >> thank you. can we start with item a city clerk: tock ikz reduction and environmental safety. chris gooiger. >> thank you. i'm not going to give you a n if you is you -- is survey of what the toxic program does. i have been asked to talk about the program which is a long standing successful collaboration with puc and

other departments. and with apologizes to the commission on environment who have heard this several times in the past years. let me tell you what i mean by integrated pest management. it's not just pesticide reduction. pest management is all about using the best available scientific information to manage pest in a way that possess a least risk to the environment. there is a huge overlap as to what puc does. we are using prevention first and saving pesticides until the last resort. using pesticides we have a very intricate way of screening and what we allow on properties. the important point sure since moving from the bad old days with carpet bombing with pesticides, we are using science and

information almost as a substitute, really as the substitute for all that chemical use and for a lot of that chemical use. it takes an increased level of knowledge about these issues and increased level of professional qualifications. so, when i'm talking about pest, not just bugs, but weeds and snails. the program has been in place since 1996. it was established by an ordinance. it applies to all city properties, not just city boundaries but also hetch hetchy and so forth. our role as part of the environment is the lead agency. we facilitate this program with our partners andn other departments. i'm going to introduce some of our key players here in a few moments. and also steve

ritchie is going to tell you a little bit about what puc does in the realm of ipm in particular. but we face sta -- facilitates meetings every year. they are great solving events. i invite you to attend if available. we also put together metrics, and day-to-day pesticide use on city properties and we organize annual trainings of various sorts. we do screenings of pesticides. my background is ib mks . birmingham -- m and do technical as well. here is a graph of pesticides used over time since 1996. on the x axis is the year and the y axis

you have pound of active ingredient. the thing to look at is the dotted line, the total amount of pesticides used. one you will notice most of the reduction in the past few years. we got the easy stuff first and now we are working on the hard stuff. one thing you noticed there are some bumps along the road. in 2005-2011 these are golf tournaments. i will talk more about golf later. finally notice the red line which is herbicide use compared to the dotted line, you can see most of what we do in the city is weed control. weeds account for most of the pesticides here. we have 84 percent r uks in pesticides and 99 percent reduction. this does not

include public health allocation for mosquitos. this is something that puc funds.99 percent of that in the storm water attachment here in the city. let me just divide this up by department a little bit. these are the major departments doing pest control. parks and recreation has the biggest share, that's the blue slice. and that's because they have such a large area of managed landscapes under their wing. coming in second is the airport and close behind is puc and dpw and mta. that's kind of the state of things. now, let me talk a little bit about current priorities. i will lead into that by focusing on parks and recreation. we can some parks and recreation people here. to take that

biggest slice of pesticide use and we can see where most of the pesticide use within their realm is going to. this is the pacman graph. the red part is golf. almost all of that it should be said is for tournament golf at golf course which is on lake merced, emergency water supply, puc property managed by parks and recreation. so golf is naturally very high on our priority list for a lot of different reasons. and it's also one of the most challenging areas to work on. there is kind of a natural of, it's very easy to have a collision of goals here. the community has said we want to have national golf tourments on city courses but we said we want to reduce pesticide use. so figuring out a way to make that go smoothly is a challenge. together with the parks and recreation, we have been working very hard in the

past few years to develop a new harding park plan. we brought in dr. cornell and rossey and brought in training two 2 months ago of the golf course managers. i'm very excited about where this is going. i really of to say the team that is out there right now and the team we have in general for ipm in the city is the most vital and talented team i have seen in the 10 years working with the city. as far as the potential for collaboration is there is a lot of them, within golf, which is a high priority issue for us as i said, we will, our criteria for a collaboration will be that it is something that has a good deal of public education potential to it. that it's obviously that the resources time and people are available and it fitsen well with what our other partners

want to do especially with parks and recreation which manages these courses and the puc. so, i want to just say that as part of the new ordinance, the new version of the ordinance that was passed in 2010 is a requirement, that requirement is that any pesticide use in the city has to be through a written recommendation by a licensed professional, pest control advisor. pca, this is a conscious effort to increase professionalism and increase the quality of the program. i think some of the successes are standing here before me. i would like to introduce nikki nixon from dpw who is their coordinator and really proactive on reducing pesticide use, matt pruitt, in charge of ipm for golf

courses on city properties and ken woollen the general ipm coordinator for parks. >> thank you very much for that report. it's very informative. i think for the people in the room, it's always a benefit to have staff come in on your time and explain to us what it is that you actually do and how you perform in the field and how important it is and how it impacts people's lives whether it's the children in the playgrounds, whether it's our water, our run off. first of all i'm grateful that you would come here and make a report like that. i'm very interested in getting an education what it is you do and how important it is as to how we can help in moving forward. thank you very much for your report. kevin, you are up. >> thank you. my name is kevin

woollen. i'm proud to be part of this. i'm a senior pest control specialist for san francisco parks and recreation department. basically i want to give you a little bit of history. i have been in this industry for 25 years and i have seen it shift from this spray applicator and something that says you need a safety license to not to make an application into is surface type water. it's evolved nowadays to a license which requires at least 42-semester units in biological sciences or in ecology. we made a transition to a very knowledge based classification. the folks standing besides me here have worked really hard to ensure we are doing things in a way that protects our

environment and protects the people that use our parks and our roadways or golf courses. we have been working hard in the last three or four 4 years since i have been here to make an even bigger difference. i see the graph that chris shows and the opportunities to further improve it to have the use of a golf course. you have someone like matt pruitt whose an educated expert on pesticide use and pest control as it applies to golf courses. he'll be able to make that difference for us. we work in all sorts of environments, golf course, aquatic environments and we control basically all sorts of pests in every binding -- biological kingdom whether it's fungus or birds. it

required knowledge and the ecology and how these organism interact and how we can use wasp and control and the limited use of pesticides. we've done that very well. since i have been there, i have seen constant improvement in that regard both in technology and application of it. i have personally endeavored to improve on our use of these methods and the conscious -- conserve tree of flowers and greenhouse and it benefits the environment in general. i hope that gives

you a summary of what we do. thank you. >> kevin, would you be kind enough, how long have you been performing this function and what department and tell us what license? >> i have three different licenses with 10 different categories. i hold a pest control licenses with a general category and pest destroying organisms category and qal categories to include right-of-ways, forestry, landscapes, aquatics and control advisor's license for plant pathogens, weeds, and invertebrates passes and -- all of these licenses require a specific state exam. a lot of study time. a lot of midnight oil to go up and

take that test. i have written up with matt on some occasions. you have to have a detailed knowledge of each one of these categories and each category are a special in and of itself. san francisco parks and recreation calls on each one of these licenses whether i be working on a structure or golf course or bowling green or around a children's playground with the type of pest i might have to write a recommends for and make a treatment for. >> kevin, thanks so much for being here, brother. i appreciate you. >> thank you. >> matthew, do you have something for us? >> i'm going to add since chris pointed out that golf is a large portion of the pesticide use. i think that's a big area that we can make a huge improvement. i was recently promoted to the ipm specialist position. but i have been doing the

coordinating for the last couple of years at harding park and seen many changes of the plan. i'm looking forward to implementing that. and having summed up a lot of other things as far as having licenses and the knowledge and background to using the less of toxic pesticides in that nature. >> matthew, thank you for all your hard work at harding park. for those who have not been here, it's one of the most publically well maintained golf parks. my sister, from the department of public works. what do you have? oh, commissioner torres? >> what are the pest that you encounter on the golf course?

>> weeds and fungus. there is various types of fungus and weeds are a big issue. models and gophers are not much of an issue. >> what kind of license does that require? >> it's a license and makes applications and you have to have the category for weeds which i have as well as diseases which include funguses and bacteria and invertebrates pest, nooem todds. >> basically those chemicals utilized are non-toxic for the most part? >> we try to use the

chemicals minimally. we figured out ways, techniques. instead of going out with a large doom spray, we can hit weeds precisely with the spot spray. that tremendously lowers our overall usage. >> thank you. >> thank you commissioner torres. in the interest of full self disclosure. most people are aware of the fact that i'm a representative of the union. i represent employees. people assume that is pretty much majority labor workers. this is a classification that i'm learning about myself and how it directly impacts the environment and may also be a subject of a joining initiative of a program and the like. i think it's my

honor to introduce niki milk son who happens to be the local chief negotiator. >> thank you. my name is niki milks on for the public works. in the last couple years i have been the ipm specialist and what i have tried to encourage our staff to do is incorporate more ground cover on median strips to eliminate pesticide use and what that does is creates a habitat for insects and also birds to pollinate. so what i'm trying to do is lower the usage, add plants and also that creates a safer environment for the pest application that we are doing and also it creates a safer

habitat for the insects and things like that on the median strips. >> thanks, niki. you know we agenda ized also to hear from ritchie from puc and course -- curious to see how the two work on initiatives and with respect to the puc. unless other commissioners have any questions? >> mr. rich i? >> thank you commissioners. steve ritchie. i will be brief in my comments. we work very close on the department of environment. we have pest control specialist that work in our water shed lands in alameda county as well as san francisco as far as the distribution facilities. we do a lot of work to control pest as much as possible. we do it

with non-pesticide usage. for example we employee a lot of goats to cover weeds and when we get into restoration activities, habitat restoration oftentimes you do have to turn to weed control mechanisms that are focused on individual plants because you don't want to disturb the soil around your restoration area for environmental purposes. we do a lot of the things to try to minimize our use over all and frankly i will just put this out there, everybody in my staff is great. thank you chris for all your work on this. and i would be happy to answer any questions. >> colleagues, thoughts, questions, puc commissioners? commissioner steven son? >> yes. we talked about reducing application. have we been able