move these programs forward rapidly. >> thank you mr. brooks for being here. is there anymore public comment on item no. 3? >> good afternoon. >> good afternoon, my name is robin share. i'm speaking for the trees in san francisco and speaking for the san francisco forest alliance. as part of the department of the environment and the natural areas program, i would strongly urge for the care and preservation of all san francisco trees to stop the destruction of san francisco open space trees. you are caring for the water h20 and the carbon needs to be second questered and the 400 parts per million to 350 parts per

million which were always considered the absolute maximum co 2 load in the environment. i have to say that no one ever voted to remove the iconic you eucalyptus trees in san francisco. it is shocking to go by an area that is under construction by recreation and parks to see trees removed from the area. people i have talked to about it have misconceptions. there are all kinds of things written and said about you can leadership -- eucalyptus trees that are not true. we are waiting to talk to the professors in order to get it together. i really think the eucalyptus as san francisco's official tree. when i get back to san francisco i smell the

eucalyptus and the money from the bond said restore the park. i don't think anyone thought that we were trying to restore them to the 1700s. i haven't used my time. someone else can have it. >> thank you very much for being here today. anymore public comment? i'm going to call or commissioner walt? >> thank you very much. i had a clarifying question about something that our first public speaker eric brooks said. is it in fact correct that we could not say anything about cleanpowersf under this agenda? i have to admit that i read 4e as a topic under which -- >> you are right. under 4 e,

we plan to go under cleanpowersf and other renewable efficiency programs. that's under 4e under the next item. >> thank you. >> thank you. can i call francisco decosta. thank you. >> commissioners, my name is francisco decosta. i want to speak about the people of this area. i read the agenda and subjectively speaking, this agenda is about bringing two bodies together to decide about something. and i want to watch how you are deliberating this something. what i want to speak about is that 350 years ago, all that you see here was pristine. it belonged to the

first people what we have done without contamination is on us. and what we want to do using fancy words like carbon foot print and addressing that is on us. do we really have the empirical data on the carbon foot print that we are going to be addressing? i doubt so. having said that, i would encourage the san francisco puc to bring full on hetch hetchy and bring to san francisco here our home. don't sell it to somebody else and you have those permits and when those permits come before you, don't renew them. bring that hydro electric city right here to our city. let's see if you can do that. regarding

the department of environment which was created not long ago by willie brown, i would encourage the department of environment to enforce the precautionary principle. you heard dr. spinola speak about contamination in the bayview. the department of environment hasn't said a word about hunters point, hasn't said anything about this rogue development harming or children and elders. hasn't said anything. if the department on environment dare to do the right thing or just to rubber stamp, we want to know. the precautionary principle and those who want to learn something is to find 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