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 the presidio to the plant. something we should all think about. as this has to travel through the pipes. we are not used to dealing with this. we have to change handout you we run our operations. it's not just enough water to transport the materials. we run four plans in san francisco. we refer to it as the newest one but it was commissioned in 1993. it's

pretty old already. in treasure island we operate it on behalf of the native on behalf of the operator. we have the wet facility only online during wet weather across from pier 39 and working on to renew the treatment plant. almost 80 percent of the sewage is treated at this particular plant south east. the combined system here is a picture of the combined system. then we have these transport boxes that we can treat almost 600 million gallons on any given day think about that. because we treat storm water, our system operates different than any other place in the bay area. we can go from normal dry weather flow from 80 million gallons in all our treatment plans to almost 600 million gallons within an

hour. that's a significant change in flow. it's still a biological process. so these transports that you see in the middle, they hold all the water. we can also hold about 200 million gallons worth of storage. inside these transport boxer are huge, they are underneath the highway. all of these materials settle to the bottom and it goes to the treatment plant. all the lighter material flows to the top and we capture that stuff. some of the challenges we are experiencing now on the wastewater side is a picture of a lake in second avenue last year in may. sinkholes are appearing. aging infrastructure both in our collection system and treatment plant. obviously the size of vulnerability. the size of the pipes is the only way that the sewage can get

from our largest pump station to the ballpark out to southeast plant. it broke in the '89 earthquake and two times after that. some things that other planners have never had to deal with in the past. the effects of climate change. what other people are talking about is it real or not? >> i started to see it in 1990 and there was never a high tide that came into our system. this last year we have experienced 7. that is significant. we have to address it through the capital work that we are doing. how are we going to fix that? certainly the puc is taking the big step in this direction with our sewage system improvement program that michael our deputy is referring to. we address this as our green clean solution. this is the cost. and then when we talk about gray, we are talking about any hard is

surfaces, paint is surfaces, renewing our digesters, improving our treatment plan. all of these gray solutions. there is a picture in the middle, the green. there is a picture of mission bay. we are using the green structure, to address things that we have never done in the past. we are not expanding the capacity of our treatment plants. we are trying to slowdown storm water or eliminate storm water from our system. so every time we put in a plant, the rain water fills that area. it actually going into ground water. so what does that do? it slows down the storm water from rushing on all of these paved is surfaces buying us time to treat what falls on the ground in san francisco. clean

obviously, we are responsible for protecting the bay. my job is pretty interesting. i actually don't, i'm responsible for what you use for the products that go down your showers, sinks and toilets and we are responsible to making sure that what goes into the bay ocean receiving water is as clean as possible. phase one is approved. it's $2.7 billion and phase two we are working on. some designs are going into place. as you can see the total program is almost $7 billion worth of work. this is significant because it's the volume that we don't have a regulatory driver and most any work of

significance is to speak for. this is volumes for what we care about and san francisco wants to protect for future generations the bay and the oceans around us. one significant piece in the past that we've been building boxes of the treatment plan of expanding the capacity. we are taking a new look at this. we are having the whole team look at urban water shed assessment and we are also using this bottom line to do this. public outreach obviously is signature, -- significant, it's going to affect the rate. at the end of the day we are about four things. why why we are doing all of this work here. financially we should be responsible for what we do and the fourth one is we have to sustain the practices that we do. this is just a chart to show the things how we are actually going to get this

done. this is a big deal for the puc in this program. this is what we actually go through. i heard earlier the speakers talk about education grants and incentives and greater greener structure and storm and design guidelines. this is a big deal and the department of environment had been involved in this piece here as we try to manage storm water as much as possible on sites for the development anywhere more than 500 feet has to adhere to storm water guidelines. the final piece for that is the level of service needs and how this is suitable. we look at the lowest areas are and where our projects are and how this gets affected and suit ability is a big deal and what are the opportunities in each one of these water sheds for us to do stuff on. we have selected some places that we are going to be -- some projects. they

are basically eight water sheds in san francisco. there is one from each one of the water sheds as you can see on here. we are spending $57 million to do these particular projects. these projects are looking to some of the technologies, do they actually work before we go and expend more money elsewhere. here is a before and after. i'm not sure who would want to live on that street. there is some challenges that come with beautification and also there is a big cost. there is a new line of business for the san francisco puc. but we are very excited about it as is the public. this is just a couple samples. this mission in valencia. andante end of the

day, you care to live without me, your no. 2 is my no. 1, no one deals with more crap than i do. thank you for listening. i'm available for any questions you may have. >> thank you. mr. courtney? >> first of all for those who have not had a chance to speak with tommy, i highly recommend to try to get a hold of him because it's a wealth of information and knowledge. and he and karen and -- it's a great honor for me to work with them from time to time and i always find myself getting more and more educated about the great work they do that oftentimes it goes unnoticed. but with respect to the linkage between the two commissions and two missions, we spoke earlier about the pesticides and to what extent that runs off. for those of you who don't know another shame less plug for the

labors union that we represent the staff for the sewers. being a sewage worker on a hot day, think of doing that job for not just one 1 day but for 30 years. i have the utmost respect for those men and women. vice-president king would talk about flushing the medicine down the toilet and why it's not a good idea to do that and we talked about some of the pesticides because we have one of the facilities out there. the george bush facility now. did we pass that? >> it was close. >> i wanted to make sure that we had some linkage between these two commissions and these two missions, if you would mind, make a few comments, please. >> yes, sure. there is a link between the two departments here. we work very closely, one on education and we try to follow up on that piece very

significant piece that we are investing in the future rate payers of san francisco. the resource recovery piece. for the pharmaceutical stuff, we don't want that to get in there. we feel very strongly that the people who produce these drugs should be able to take them back. we have drop off areas now and working all over with the bay area to make this program happen. it's a significant piece for the puc. but the tie in my business, there is a lot of vector. it's not just odors, but mosquitos, some standing water in a lot of places. so we actually spend a lot of money. think about it, every corner has a catch basin of water sitting there. so we have to treat for mosquitos. i'm going to tell

you you will see a dot in every catch basin and it will be a different color to tell that someone has treated it. there is people running around in bicycles to ensure that it's been treated. and rodent control is also a big piece for us. that's done by a contract or. there is a lot of rodents inside the sewers. >> a lot of the press and the attention doesn't really go to the fact that really the public utilities commission and the sewer division itself places a great deal of emphasis on creating opportunities in the southeast part of our city whether it's the mosquito abatement and training programs. the work that you have done is nothing less than incredible. you know that a lot of the trade unions in particular are targeting the southeast sector and opportunities whether they

are reservoirs or green houses, southeast facility gets a lot of attention. but, i would like to make a note of that for the record, in the event that our colleagues of the department of environment, the commission on the environment begin to take an interest and see a linkage to find a common ground and move forward. thank you very much, tommy. >> commissioner, did you have a question for tommy? >> if we can. thank you so much. to continue the puns, one department's trash is another department's treasure, what you think about biogas of energy and opportunity for the treatment plant? >> we do that. we have out of our southeast plant we produce about a million cubic feet daily. we run a 2.2 mega watt generate or out there. we

have two engines 2.75 mega watts each and that is run by biogas. as we move forward in the future, these are 1942 technologies, so these are old. as we build this new as part of the $2.7 billion program we should be able to add food waste and other things in there. we should be able to capture more gas and to be able to use it. whether it's to create energy. we don't want to be able to diversify our portfolio. we are doing vehicles and tomorrow we are doing electricity. we should have the most advantageous for our rate payers money. >> what do you think about the capacity of the new biogas electrical generation plants will be of all sort of vehicle fuels? >> at this point we don't know. we are doing the