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 to measure in the water system whether or not we have seen a drop off accordingly? >> well in the water system our goal was to make sure it is zero and the water systems. oftentimes we are controlling weeds around our facilities, mosquito, larva and what they have to do with wastewater. i don't know in the affluent tom can speak to that. >> colleagues? just one quick question, steve, obviously as the ag m with water, that is the linkage for water. they talked about golf and pesticides and we've heard this at the environment commission, golf makes a spray like this. when it comes to water, if you find with respect to golf, does golf

similarly lead to a spike in water usage whether it's just plain golf in these tourments? >> actually, interesting to see that graph. i would like to go back and koerment to -- correlate to see if there is a spike. there might be because there is nothing that looks better than the green grass. >> for me the interest in bringing down the usage of water especially in light of the drought and use of pesticides if related to this recreational sport are in line to twin goals is something we can work togetheron? >> absolutely. >> colleagues? all right. thank you very much. thanks everybody. monica, can we go to item b? cl --

city clerk: water conservation. steve ritchie and tamar hurwitz on the environment. >> again, steve ritchie assistant general manager for water. i'm going to give a brief overview of the water conservation program in puc. something 245 we are very proud of. we are still in the drought and will be for the foreseeable future and reduction and demand and the mayor directed city departments. he didn't use the word "voluntary" he said reduced. we are pushing for more water conservation. in san francisco it's 49 gallons per day per resident. it's very low for the city. it's something we should be very proud of. that's down since

the last draft. here is a history on the on going conservation assistance. this shows the number of rebates that we have given over time in various different programs for commercial washers, high efficiency units and toilets and single family washer rebates. so you can see from 2007 on we've been steadily increasing slowdown a little bit in 2010-2011. the number of rebates in the thousands. this is something that works for us. what we find is that fix you are changes -- fix you if if if i can you changes. direct install of toilets. our water wise evaluation. our folks will go out and help you in your home to figure out how to useless water and we have devices constantly giving out to people, shower heads,

faucets and other things. you will hear about the classroom presentations that we have from the department of environment and we have outdoor stances and we have lots of grants we provide and on how to reduce water use and we have irrigation meters for folks, lots of workshops, landscape program. we'll be looking at rain water barrels and new electric and toilet programs. a lot to get out to the community. in particular, a couple things we are doing new, may 20th we launch the my account web portal. right on the right hand side is a screen shot of the web portal

where individual can ustomers can look at their water use on a daily basis. there is a green bar across the middle, that green bar what is relatively efficient use. if you are above, you have a lot of work to do, if you are below, you can see your points too. people are paying attention to it. we've been giving out lots of checklist for water efficiency you can walk around your house and say, am i doing the right thing. if you are not, get to it. lots of posters and stickers and lots of public information. we have a public information campaign coming in june. in response to the drought, we've had walk in request for devices for 90 percent, evaluations up for 25 percent, we'll be increasing our rebate amounts for toilets

and portable washers and the campaign in june for indoor and outdoor announcements and we want to get on the press and muni buses. when you talk about it, people respond. i'm happy to answer more questions on this program before i turn it over to mark. >> environment, commission, colleagues? >> commissioners? >> how do you measure the program? >> the way we really measure them individually. we measure them collectively in terms of what people do. when we project uses and demands into future, there are various end use models that you can actually take a home and break it down into numbers of toilets, numbers of sinks,

numbers of washing machines, number of flushes per day so you can get at different ways there. where we find the effectiveness is the installation of toilets, installation of new washing machines, use of air rate or is and shower devices. >> what do you think is the usage that has the greatest room for conservation going forward? >> if we had for every dollar i would spend it on replacing toilets. that's where we can save water. there is lots of old toilets in san francisco. >> one more, i live near plaza park. that's sort of alta plaza lake where the irrigation is turned only.

-- on. do you work closely to implement more efficient and maybe intelligent irrigation systems? >> yes. what we particularly done with parks and recreation is move to large landscape grants available for parks and recreation as well as other folks. we worked with the federal government and dph and others. we work with them on park basis and identified those where there is the greatest water wastage in effect. we have worked with those and jefferson park is a big success and alamo square is getting work on. in test -- terms of cost share replacement program where you can move to drop tolerant plants which doesn't need much irrigation. we have hit about

six parks so far, i believe. that's great. one last question, have you ever encourage the installation of smart irrigation systems which will spray a different amount of water depending on the humidity on the ground? >> yes. >> commissioner stevenson? >> you said we are not at the 10 percent goal. where are we? >> the 10 percent goal is a curve. demand goes up. so far we've been tracking fairly close. it's a little bit below when we've had some pretty hot spells. it has gone up during those periods. so we are actually fairly close. we think with a little