you're a nice lady. >> good afternoon this meeting will come to order this is land use committey i'm malia cohen the president of the committey to my right is scott weiner and to my left is jane kim. i would like to recognize jesse larson helping us with sfgov. tv and gym smith madame clerk do you have announcements for us? >> yes -- items may appear on

the june unless otherwise stated >> thank you could you please call item number one? >> health, public works codes. mandatory use of alternate water supplies. >> supervisor weiner is the author of this item supervisor weiner? >> than you for scheduling this item to be heard today today is legislation i have authored to significantly increase water recycling reuse in san francisco. particularly by requiring water recycling in large new developments to require all new developments to engage in a water budget analysis, and to make it city policy within five years to use only recycled water for irrigation and cleaning of parks and public spaces i would like to thanks supervisors, breed avalos and christensen for cosponsoring this legislation as

far as we know it's the first of it's kind another example of san francisco leading the way when it comes to environmental sustainability. colleagues auz you know water is a limited and precious resource if many years this state adds and country has not treated it as the resource it is. water should not be used with flushing toilets irrigation and the likes we know we can make broad use of recycles water it's a severe public policy crisis if it continues it will be an exterrible threat to our state this say long-term structural problem that the state should have addressed many years ago it's never too late to start addressing this huge problem according to estimates we may

have a year or two stored water capacity left in california if the drought continued unabated even when this drought ends we will still be vulnerable to the same water shortages for decades to come as our population grows we must take aggressive policy actions now to conserve water and make the best and most efficient use of the water we have. last year in this committee i held a hearing on a drought and what the city is doing around efforts to use nonportable water for nonpublic uses and what we can do to improve water conservation and reuse in san francisco. at the time i was and still am interested in legislation to require water sub metering in sub unit buildings because they will be paying their own water

use there is legislation to require individual sub committee we will holding off to see what happens there also at that hearing a year ago we heard the puc's on-site water reoous program. there this program volunteers use puc to capture sinks and laundries rain and foundation water for nonportable uses for toilet flushing and irrigation the legislation will take this program a step further by man dating these systems and developments of 250,000 square feet or more developers can choose to install these with buildings or nearby i wouldings for a district where one recycling system serves multiple buildings it only applied to building in the purple pipe zone

as these developments were required to install purple pipes for water recycling and have done so for decades we have expanded that to be citywide providing projects outside of the purple pipe zone in latitude we need to conserve water and make efficient use of this scarce resource it did not make sense to require this recycling in one part of the city. however as i noted we have provided extra time for the projects outside of the purple pipe zone. projects within the purple pipe zone not receiving of this year -- buildings outside that have not received their building permits by 2016 will be required to comply.

and citywide 40000 square feet or more for water reuse analysis to determine the feasibility of using one of these systems the savings of these systems are real mixed use can have 1% of demands for water reuse system a housing of 40000 square foot can reduce this by two years -- the city needs to do more to increase our nonportable water resues z the legislature slaegs will make it policy within five years city departments will only use not portable water for irrigation and parks and cleaning of public spaces city departments must report back in two years on the feasibility and needs in terms of resources required for implementing these policies while i absolute

support residential and commercial development and housing creation across the city we must recognize the future of our city requires us to do so in a smart sustainable way we shouldn't be building a $400 unit willing to help people get around and acknowledge that growth we not be building developments without thinking how to reduce and best manage this finite resource called water. we conducted significant outreach in general and also within the development community to gather feedback and solicit ideas on how to best move this legislation forward how to mitigation various issues that were raised and costs that come up with water reuse systems building within the purple pipe zone that are required to have this piping they are already

installing the overwhelming majority of the cost erelated to water resues systems the pipes themselves over the last number of moss we have had several large meetings with residential and commercial developers and many individual meetings and phone calls to talk through the legislation and to take feedback and hear suggestions i want to give a lot of credit to the development community for participating for taking a reasonable approach to this problem we face and i really appreciate this community's participation. one idea that has been raised for the puc to reduce certain fees in recognition of the impact of buildings that have water reuse system impacts on our water and sewer system the puc working with the agencies they're taking a hard look at this. i have encouraged the agency to

seriously consider these reductions to reflect the lessoned impact on our sewer and water systems i'm cautiously optimistic you will make the right decision here and use puc for buildings systems i will make an amendment in legislation today to urge them to do so. under the man date we cannot urge the puc to do so. another one i put forward is the testing requirements for the system can change. since technology has evolved this can reduce costs you aren'tly if it's i gray or block water system there is significant testing and monitoring required under public health standards the the department of public health is

assessing whether they're too con certifitive anyones technology is not what it is today and standards should be loosened that current technology allows us to have safe water whether it's gray or black water we know these systems often pay for themselves over time for the buildings that purchase less water. we also made aaddition nah amendment to make it easier for buildings to form so called districts where one building has a water reuse system and several buildings share that system which spreads the cost to do so you need the encroachment permit to connect a piping to another under the street we're applying from a major to minor encroachment which will make it a much easier permit to obtain.

we're also contemplations and working on trailing legislation which will exempt the square footage taken up by water reuse systems from far and water impact fee assessments needed to recycle water that square footage should not be suggest to impact fees finally we're considering follow up legislation we will be doing broad outreach into the development of the community to the numerous existing purple pipe existing zones sitting there unused and whether we should have legislation that requires over a certain number of years those existing buildings to find recycled water source whether it's installing their own equipment linking to another building in the district i am open to ideas that will

help mitigate costs and impacts the goal we share is the best use of water supply our precious water supply we can't sit idly by this legislation is a step in the right direction. i want to know we will hear during the presentation discussion around block and gray water. black water is water that comes from a toilet dish water utility or dishwasher machines gray water comes from bathtubs showers and sinks this legislation is broad in terms of requiring water reuse not specifying what kind of water reuse or what system there are various approaches and whether it is gray water black water or otherwise we're not requiring a specific type and in fact black water even though there used to

be the ick factor around it. more and more black water is part of our water future in terms of being a huge source of potential healthy and clean water i want to thanks the sierra club the bay orders and the institute for endorsing this legislation i also want to note we have several amendments i will be making after public comment none of which is substantive one is urging the puc to make fee aadjustments for buildings using the water systems and the expression of alternate water source in terms of minor clean up and today before public comment we will be hearing from public utilities commission how these systems work and have a short presentation about gray and rainwater system installed at

181 fremont we have representatives from the department of public health and inspections madame chair if the there are no initiate comments or questions i will call op paula keho. from the public utilitieses commission. >> okay. >> good afternoon. i have a power point i just want to pull up. paula keho the director of water resources with the san francisco public utilities commission as weiner mentioned weiner mentioned i will talk about the not portable water program how it works and examples of on-site water treatment systems happening in

san francisco the nonportable water program is part of the san francisco local water program which consists of a conservation program i think you know we have been doing conservation for many decades you aren'tly the residential per capita is 44 gallons per day in the system that is one of the lowest in california that is because san francisco is responding for our call reducing demand especially during the drought today we are building grand water wellings in san francisco where we will pump ground water with our surface supplies we will also have one south of san francisco working with our communities to the south to develop ground water program for dry years such as the time right now we have a recycle water program we water golf courses with recycled water

we have a recycle water on the west side of san francisco to irrigate golden gate and link con park -- installing on-site water treatment systems to collect and treat nonwater portable systems such as flushing and irrigation -- including rainwater that is defined as water that hits the roof storm water water that hits our street stores and parking lots also alternative sources are knew sense ground water that pump ground water that is to the pump system today -- gray water is water from our bathroom sinks

showers and washing machines and black water from toilets kitchen and utility sinks the san francisco puc has programs on the residential scale for gray water harvesting we're seeking a contractor to help expand programs on the residential scale we have been expanding our scale to the commercial large mixed use for unit and multifamily buildings in san francisco. two on-site water treatment systems in the buildings arraign water harvesting system that watcheses rainwater for irrigation we also have a living machine that collects and treats all of the black water in the building to the right is a living machine it's a series of wetland cell tell us that look like large planter boxes on the side of the treat it's treating all of the black water in the

building so we can reuse that water to flush toilets and urinals in building we have been able to save 60% of our water -- which is equivalent to 1.5 million gallon thes of portable water we served each year with on-site water treatment systems we heard from a lot of other developers in san francisco they wanted to collect and treat water sources in 20 level the san francisco public utilities commission talked with the building inspection as as the san francisco. department of health we had a number of stakeholder outreach meetings for an ordinance that would allow for the collection and treatment of water treatment in buildings it was passed in 2012 for single individual build

buildings in 2013 we wanted to expand for district scale systems how we define district scale systems is more than two buildings today you can install on-site water treatment system in an individual buildings or sharing and selling the water between buildings in the city. or ordinance this is just a quick overview of the ordinance in the ordinance i want to stress was a great partnership with the san francisco building inspection steve paneli and public health june win craft who is here today -- the city can come together and remove barriers and policies that previkt innovation from happening in san francisco. the role of the public utilities commission is program administration our job is to help developers architects and

engineers to understand what nonportable water they can reduce in the building what they can use that for we track we want to know what kinds of water savings are achieved through the buildings and incentives i will speak to in a minute. the role of the department of public health is critical they issue permits to operate these treatment systems why this is critical we want to make sure we're protecting public health we want to ensure these public water treatment systems are protecting health when they're used to flush toilets or irrigation purposes the role of irrigation department inspection is critical they help in term terms of installuation and approval of on-site water treatment systems quickly it streamlines the process and consists of three major steps design construction and

operation phase. the design phase is applying to the san francisco puc about what kind of water source you would like to collect how you propose to treat it and use it for getting into more details with an engineering report that is provided to the san francisco department of public health which requires approval to obtain your permit from the building in inspection -- cross connection being between portable and nonportable a test is performed again to ensure the pipelines are separate and operation are three phases the system is started up but the water is discharged to the sewer to allow the operator to get a sense of how the system is working and ultimately use the water for nonportable

application for nontoilet flushing or irrigation the san francisco public utilities commission provides technical and financial assistance we have developed the guide book to help the steps i walked through. we have a calculate cue later helps them understand should i collect drainage and gray water what kind of demand do i have in the building? currently with i have a grant program the san francisco puc will provide up to $250,000 for an individual buildings as long as they save a million gallons or more of portable water each year for ten years. we also have a $500,000 for district system that saves 3 million gallons up to ten years if in deed this legislation goes forward the puc disease not provide grants for ordinance or

requirements we're looking at amending our grand programming we're considering things if it's an existing dual puming building -- similar to what weiner mentioned a few minutes ago -- wants to connect to one of these new buildings that are forming a district scale water system project. we're aiming to keep the program available to projects that may not necessarily fall under the ordinance there are examples out there of projects that may not fall within the proposed legislation. we're also looking at our capacity fees as well as flow factor assessments and we have been looking at modifying their fees our plan is to take it back to our commission the san francisco public utilities commission with proposed change in early september.

i mentioned earlier we collect a lot of information and track these projects happening in san francisco we have a report -- all of the information is available online this report and i want to highlight a couple examples that are happening today in san francisco. st. anthonies has arraign far vesting system for toilet and urinal plushing bg and e is an existing building that retro fitted the building to collect water for toilet and urinal flushing pier 27 harvests water for irrigation -- in the city is collecting rainwater store and gray water for toilet and urinal flushing as well as irrigation.

transbay transit center one of the original proponents in collecting and treating alternative water sources for gray water systems for urinal and toilet flushing as well as irrigation 31 fre mont -- i think you will hear a presentation on this is you aren't construction to intall a system for collecting rainwater for toilet and irrigation. the last examples are examples of scale operations maconi is looking at expanding the center there say lot of drainage at masconi center we're looking to capture at the convention center as well as the possibility of installing a truck fill station

to provide water for street sweeping purposes in downtown san francisco. we have another project. project. puc has been working with the department of public works to install a treatment system at un plaza the truck fill station the purpose of the water would be again for street cleaning downtown san francisco irrigation and for fountain make up water as i mentioned all of the materials are available online the ordinance our guide book and grant pam at smp.org and i'm happy to answer any questions you may have >> thank you. your staff has been helpful with this process we appreciate that. a couple of questions pirs thank you for those examples i think it's important for the private

sector to see we're not just telling private owners what to do with the cities and transbay the governmental building are being build that is important i think the masconi center falls within the area as well i think everyone's going to have to comply with this legislation. so a couple of things. in terms of monitoring thank you for mentioning that i know the department of public helt is actually taking another look along with other cities about whether the health standards for monitoring gray water but also black water are too conservative can you comment on that >> certaintily in the state of california there are water quality standards for gray and rainwater today however there are not more black water storm or drainage water.

the department of public health established water quality standards although there will not monitoring requirements today however we believe as a city these kinds of systems should have ongoing monitoring so we developed or program also the san francisco puc is spearheading a national program to look at what is the appropriate water quality standard we have a project we're working with we're funded by the water water research foundation with a panel of experts to develop -- public officials come to consensus at the end of the calendar year looking at water quality standards and monitoring requirements >> great. i also i know the puc is

evaluating potential fee adjustments for buildings that have water reuse systems i want to thank the agency to do that and i want to encourage the agency to make the fee adjustments requiring this for these buildings we want to make sure also they're getting a benefit in terms of less strain on the sewer system. in addition to buildings that do it volume -- volcano tier -- voluntary -- particularly the incentive funds to help buildings link together to form

districts since we're not man dating districts here that is a still a powerful and importative innocent incentive of 3-4 buildings are sharing it spreads the costs and makes it easier for everyone. i hope the agency will considerly consider that. p you could comment we want the city ultimately to be providing recycled water to san franciscoians i know the west side plan is water recycling plant is moving forward. the east side plant for the cohen's district is a little bit further off. i want to get your take on what we can expect to see in the future. >> so we are supervisor weiner mentioned san francisco looked at the east side