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 bit more effort and the campaign we are counting on a lot there and hope to get over the top for in city use. outside of san francisco, we are lagging behind and that's where we are working with our wholesale can ustomers to try to make sure

we get their use down as well. we are reevaluating how to get that out there to make sure the message is strong and clear and that we all need to conserve. >> is it for the can ustomers and citizens and residents that have the biggest impact? >> the wholesale can ustomers we sell to the water districts. that's where we hit them and and their obligation to go to their can ustomers. we are working with an add campaign to get to the can ustomers regard lers -- regardless of the area they are in. >> rain baerls? -- barrels? >> yes. we need to have that element come into place. that's something we have funded over time. >> as an incentive program for

people to put in place before? >> yes. in time for next winter so when there is some precipitation capture it and use it. >> thanks commissioner. commissioner walt? >> thank you. the first is the 10 percent goal applicable to san francisco also applicable to is it the same goal for all the users? >> yes. the 10 percent goal is system wide. it's the reduction in our overall demand. >> and the second question is what is the rational for the 10 percent. is the notion that if everybody, if we reduce it by 10 percent we'll have saved enough water if we have another year of drought or

what? >> we actually are motion tion modeling -- 3 years into future. we assume right now the worst case we'll have three dry years. if we save now that will keep us in better shape for the next 4 years. if we don't, we'll have to go 20 percent or more rationing in the future. 10 percent is a little bit of a challenge, but not much. even with 20 percent is really an impact there. that's why it's important to get 10 percent in the early days in the drought to address the water supply and make it last long enough to get to good wet weather. >> my fingers are crossed too. >> commissioner? >> thank you. can you say just a little bit more about the laundry to landscape water

program. what sort of participation are we getting and what are the obstacles to more participation? >> the landri landscape program is a popular idea using water from your laundry and using it for irrigation in your yard. we have workshops and material for it. people interested in it and then came the reality of how does it work in my house, how does it work with my plumbing and my washing machine and the landscape. the actual implementation has dropped dramatically down to a small number. we are reviewing the program now to try to find what it would take to make it more effective because just the implementation issues that vary by household make it less attractive for people. we have 75 percent that show up for a workshop and two, to

the point of implementation. the devil is in the detail and we are trying to figure out ways to make it easy for people to do. >> colleagues, commissioners? >> let's hear from ms. hurwitz. >> good afternoon. i have that had pleasure of working with the sf puc on water education in our school system here in san francisco both public and private schools. i'm going to talk today about some of the programs we do to promote water education. starting in 2001 before i arrived to the

department we had already been working with the puc to teach about water pollution prevention to 5th grade students. this is a 90 -minute presentation to grade 5 to talk about how no the to pour toxics down the drain. these presentations we do from anywhere from 45 a year. since 2001 we've given these presentations to around 5,000 students from sf puc. we also teach about the storm water system and the mixed storm system as well. a program we created on a variety of

environmental topics in ways to environmental justice, to climate change and also included water and also things like energy efficiency and renewable energy. this curriculum is available for everybody to download from our web sietsite the puc realized they wanted a curriculum for schools and we did that in partnership. there is a lot of water curriculum out there. we wanted to create something that made more sense for local schools in classes and really are issues here. the water curriculum teaches about local water resources and water conservation. we teach about hetch hetchy and water

conservation in the gold rush and water conservation in a variety of ways. this is available for download on the sf water .org website and we distribute hard copies in partnership with sf puc to teachers. following the development of the curriculum we also developed a classroom presentation for students to teach about local water resources and water conservation. to date we have given 80 presentations and reached 7500 students. in 2012, we started going into schools with the drink tap assemblies. some of you may know that there is a law that says that students need to have access to fresh drinking water in a cafeteria and some schools didn't have that ready access. the drink tap felg

-- filling stations were put in schools so they can have access to drinking water. this is with puc and department of public health and school district. sf environment was brought in to do the outreach to the students about why drinking swear the so important and why it's good to drink hetch hetchy water from the tapas posed to water bottles. they have been given hetch hetchy water bottles so they can have drinking water at school. last year we were doing workshops to train on the water curriculum and worked with more than 60 teachers so far. here is a picture of teachers going through one of the lesson plans in the curriculum where students pretend to go back in the days of the gold rush where water

was limited and they had to do daily activities using a limited amount of water. if you have only a gallon of day how you would use it so students understand how modern plumbing encourages us to use because it's so readily available. we also partner with the sf puc and all three enterprises at the puc and there is toxic program and zero waste program to sponsor the connection. a program with the san francisco unified school district where stults -- students from title one school learn about water shed prevention and waste, energy efficiency as part of this program. and we also

cosponsor field trips in regards to the environment. a great opportunity for students to get their hands in the dirt and learn about science and gardening. in these field trips it's not just about the worms they find but also about water conservation when gardening. they learn about irrigation systems, they learn about rain water harvesting and they also learn about drought tolerant plants. every once in a while we get asked to go to communities. i was asked to go to a local school and a conference. both of those are independent from any conference with the puc we chose to talk about water conservation and people are interested in learning what they can about water conservation of course because of the drought. we use whatever opportunities we have to promote the water

conservation message. you know moving forward we understand how important it is to protect our water. none of us can live without it or do much without it. so we really look forward to continue partnership to help teach and inspire san francisco's youngest residents to protect our valuable water. thank you. >> thank you. questions for tamar? environment commissioners? president courtney? okay. thank you, tamar. >> thank you. >> all right. monica, can you call item c, please. >> wastewater management. speakers are tommy moala sf puc, commissioners ruth grav

anis, environment commission and sushma bhatai. >> if i may introduce water since it's my favorite subject for a long long time and make sure that everybody knows that wastewater we are talking about sewage and rain water run off. we need to get people to be less afraid to say the word sewage because it's so important that we have a vocabulary to talk about it. michael carl in talked about the interesting challenge that we have related to the fact that we have a combined system and i'm happy that tommy moala is going to give us an overview of our water system. >> good afternoon, tommy moala in charge of wastewater. finally to the coolest part of

the puc. talk about some wastewater. michael did indeed talk about that. we have a combined effect in san francisco. so here is a picture of our system here. he's described to you our combined system, what it does. we operate a thousand miles. as we talk about water conservation, we don't think about the sewage system. all of a sudden we went from 80 million gallons a day coming to our treatment plant, the significance of our water treatment as we have one 1 gallon flush tanks, how do we get the material for the miles from