>> the meeting will come to order.

welcome to the may 9, 2018 of the regular meeting of the public safety and neighborhood services committee. i am supervisor receive sheehy, chairman. to my right is supervisor ronen and supervisor yee subbing for supervisor peskin. >> if you wish to have a motion to excuse, it would be in order now. >> do i have a motion? without objection. the clerk is john carol. and i would like to thank leo and michael from sfgov tv for staffing this meeting. mr. clerk, do you have any announcements? >> yes, thank you, mr. chairman. the completed speaker cards should be submitted to the clerk. items acted upon will appear on the may 15, 2018 board of supervisors agenda unless otherwise stated. we are in receipt of a presidential action memo dated may 3, temporarily assigning

south korea supervisor yee in place of supervisor peskin. >> today's meeting will be calling item four out of order. could you please all item number four? >> a the implementation and progress of the police department property crime unit to present information on the structure and practices of the neighborhood property crime unit as well as the regular updates of their progress. >> thank you. we will hear from ellie miller hall from supervisor stefani's office. >> hello. we just ask --

>> and the clerk with public comment is over. >>ened i make a motion to continue the item to the call of the chair. >> without objection. raw a >> now would ke take item number one. go to thego to the regular agen. >> to go to the regular agenda. >> to enter into a bonefied labor agreement with an organization. >> i am going to ask to continue the item, but i have a couple of amendments that i would like to make. so one for my colleagues. so the amendments that we are

making into the records with the amendments that we are making. page two, line 17, where we remove a statement that the applicant will enter into and abide by the terms of the labor peace agreement to read that the condition and the permit awarded under article 16 to abide by the terms of the either the following prior to award of such a permit. and then under line 23, the labor peace agreement. and 24, collective bargaining agreement with a bonefied labor organization. so i think those are the two amendment amendments. i will be offering another

amendment that the city attorney is drafting to change on page one, line 17. through 22 to remove that and change that to save bonefied labor organization meaning a labor union that represents or is seeking to actively represent cannabis workers in the city. so if you are prepared to take without objection. >> the motion to amend would be in order after we have taken public comment on the item. >> a great. is there any public -- and we are going to continue this, by the way. is there any public comment on this item? >> thank you. >> hello to everyone. haven't seen you in some time. good to see you. and so we have been working with

labor on this and the industry is facing a lot of challenge with regulation and compiling giant checklists with the state and as a box they need to check and not fully understanding the relationships they need to get into and what they are signing. so we're educating our members on both the retail and nonretail side on this issue. and we're in support of the continuation. and also in support of with this environment from something that would be required to apply to something that is required before the final permit is issued to give us three, six, nine months, in many cases a year depending on the project and how controversial it may be to work and find the best cultural fit. if you are a cull -- if you are a cull activator or retailer. we are going unregulated to regulated and to organized labor is a whole different thing.

we are all just learning as we go. and i would like to thank the supervisor's office and the labor organizations that have been talking to from the comprises thus far. and i support the continuation. >> thank you. please, no applause. if this is the agreement, you can do the happy fingers. and thank you. can i get kristin? i think i have a comment from kristin from teamsters medical 7. is there anyone else who would like to make public comment? public comment is closed. so public comment is closed. thank you. the one mement that -- the one amendment we have in writing, can i take that without objection?

and i think we will continue it to the next meeting. >> the next regularly scheduled meeting is the 23rd of may. >> we have a special on the 16th, right? >> do you want to go to the 16th? >> a let's try to continue to the 16th. >> without objection. >> >> motion from supervisor yee i am hering is to continue as amended to the may 16 meeting to the public safety and neighborhood services committee. >> correct. >> okay. >> and then i think we're ready for item number two. so mr. clerk, the item two is the safety of the drinking water and testing standards for san francisco groundwater supply project. >> i will turn it over to supervisor yee. >> thank you very much chair sheehy. colleague, today i am holding a follow-up hearing from the first hearing on may 24, 2017, on this

safety and testing of the san francisco public utilities commission groundwater supply project, which blends water with groundwater. i originally called a hearing last year because i heard from several constituents citywide regarding their questions and concerns with regard to the safety of the blended water. starting in april 2017puc began testing very small amounts of blended water. which impacted districts one, two, four, seven, and 11. and as background, p.u.c. spent a decade testing the use of ground water in the supply. we requested the p.u.c. to slow down the blending amounts and continue testing. originally they planned to pump

one million gallons per day for the first full year of operation which would have been about 3% of the water supply in the sunset and central reservoirs. however, as p.u.c. will tell us today, they have significantly scaled back the blending amounts to less than .3 million gallons per day. to slow the process and to insure we are doing the right thing. since then we have conducted even more significant community outreach and as far as the office has heard, the level of concern from the community members has significantly decreased. i believe this is a good sign. understand that the fourth ground well is tested. and today we are here so that the assistant general manager of

p.u.c. steve richie can report back on the data they have collected. are you coming up first? come on up. >> yes, if we could have the slide please. good morning. i am assistant general manager steve richie of the public utilities commission. good morning, supervisors. thank you for the introduction. and thank you also for this hearing where i was identified as stevie richie. my wife is the only person who calls me stevie. i don't know who you have been talking to. >> that was me and it was very embarrassing. >> anyway, in today's presentation, i will give the

material that we presented last year. and it is good to refresh everybody. and to talk about the regional water system and specifically about groundwater in san francisco, and specifically a status update on the ground water supply project. and then i will add in another project that we have been working on that is getting ready for testing and will begin testing later which is from the last of the presentation. and this is the overview of the system. and the maps showing all the different kinds of supply that we use. and we serve 2.7 million customers in the bay air. and from the reservoir in the 5 bay area and the reservoirs we have and so there is a splend of the supply, and there is barely waters and we get about 15% of

the local supply from the bay area reservoirs. we share that water supply with the wholesale customers outside of san francisco. and this shows a timeline of how the system was developed over time. and basically i want to emphasize that the wholesale customers use about 2/3 of the watter from the system and they pay the cost of getting that water to them, which is about 2/3 of the cost for everything outside of san francisco. we serve up to 184 million gallons per day to the folks by contract. so they cover 2/3 of the cost outside of san francisco and san franciscans cover 1/3 of the cost. one of the reasons that we're into dealing with local water is we have risk to the regional water supply. the first is drought which reduces the amount of water available.

police station and employment growth. and while people are using less wat water, the population increase will drive up the demand for water. and recycles water and groundwater. conservation, i won't dwell on that. we are among the most frugal water users in the state in san francisco, and people have done a great job of conserving here. we broke ground on the west side recycle patter and reirrigating golden gate park with recycled water in another couple of years. we have the nonpolitical program and mandates that the developments of certain size produce their own water for toilet flushing and irrigation and water transfers, purified water, which is taking waste

water and converting it ultimately to drinking water around desalination and we are always looking at the possible option, but one of the key ones is groundwater thatment cos from the ground is sometimes known as well water. ground water is stored in underground reservoirs called auk weer if aquifers and deep sands that are historic sands that have been deposited over the my millenia. and note that 80% of californians rely on groundwater for part of the drinking water supply. groundwatter is a common place use in california. the basin extends from san francisco south and diagonally

cuts across the peninsula. from 1930 to 1935, the west side basin provided drinking water for san francisco before the regional water system was completed. it has provided drinking water to davey city, south san francisco, and for over 100 years. so it is a well utilized basin already, and i will get more into how we're going to change the use of that basin. the question i am asked all the time is why are we going groundwater and why now? number one is to reduce our vulnerability with the current supply such as earthquakes and climate change. this is to help reliably meet the long-term supply needs of the city. one of the things we all understand is you should be utilizing the local resources as well as distant resources and that diversity strengthens the ability of the system. and we need to be ready in advance of the need, not afterward. it takes a decade or more to develop the new water supply projects. in this case i think the supervisor commented we had

spent 10 years on this project. the 10 years before that we were doing investigations throughout the westside basin. in my estimation, we have been at this 20 years. and in groundwater, it is local, accessible, and high kauqualityo it works on all those counts for us. and the san francisco project will be pumping ground water from wells that are screened at 270 to 460 feet below the ground surface. and the groundwater is blended with the regional water supply at the sunset reservoir rs and i will talk about what the specific blend has been over the last several months. that blended supply is distributed to about half the city via the existing water distribution system. this trigger here -- this figure shows with the back line with the outline of the west side groundwater basin, so that is the source area for the groundwater. the orange circles on there are the four phase one groundwater wells that have now been

completed, and the two yellow diamonds are the phase ii groundwater wells we will be constructing soon and the total of six wells pumped up to sunset and sutro reservoirs and the blue shaded area of the distribution zones that will receive the groundwater, and they are literally a function of how they function in our system to go to the reservoirs and distribute it by gravity. and the areas that are not shaded and that are intermixed are sold by smaller reservoirs and that are expected to sutro or sunset reservoir. and i think that's pretty much it. pipelines are shown as well going up the sutro and sunset. this is a good, quick snap shot. the treatment blending strategy which has been approved by the

state includes the disinfection added at the well station and that is for disinfection going into the distribution system so that nothing will regrow there. and one of the characteristics of ground watter is because it passes through by percolation at such an extensive amount of sand for filtration purpose, it usually is a high quality from a back bacterialogical sense and it's in a larger distribution system. and adjusting the ph with sodium hydroxide to max the regional water supply to optimize for corrosion control to make sure we don't have any problems experienced like in flint. that is just horrible examples of corrosion control is an important part of anything we put into to change the supply. and blending groundwater with watter from the regional water system supply into the reservoirs before distribution to the customers.

sunset playground, and south sunset and central golden park have been constructed and test and approved as supervisor yee noted, we just completed the eight-week test of the central golden gate park well near the end of april. so those have been successfully through the testing programs individually. we will now enter a period coming up in the future of starting to test them in combinations with each other. and these wells have been coming on heavily along the line and that is in a small amount of groundwater since april of last year. that is when we first started to add groundwater and we have taken it very slowly for the reasons that the supervisor mentioned and also, frankly, for getting our staff really comfortable with operating new elements of the system. and they have really done a very good job about working through issues and so slowly adding over time. we are not in a hurry to get to the one million a day level.

that is the goal of the first full year of operation. what we get to say when that first full year start, and it hasn't started yet. we're basically making sure that the system really runs well before we start to try to rely on it more routinely. so i am going to give some progress report on what we have actually done, answering the questions of how much groundwater have we delivered as a result of the water quality be okay, and have we continued our community engagement. and we're pumping groundwater and delivering as planned from april through december of last year. we pumped a total of 5.4 million gallons of water. that is the total of 5.4 million gallons of water which is a very small amount when averaged out per day. there was a lot of starting and stopping as we dealt with different problems in the system, and from january through april of this year, we pumped about 30 million gallons of groundwater in total in that period as we got to the completion of the testing for all the wells.

again, much less per day than the one million gallon number, and again, this is a testing phase to make sure we get the system operating just right. the short-term goal is to deliver an average of one million gallons a day for the first full year of operation, but we have not started that first full year of operation. we are continuing to monitor and test and the results meet standards approved by the state. the water quality front and we completed the water and testing as required by the state water board. we continue this monitor rg and testing as the wells continue to blend groundwater with the regional water supply system. we have the data system and that is supervisory control and data acquisition to control what sen source and what is going on in the system and alarms with the automatic shutoffs built into the project to insure that blended water meets all state and federal water quality standards. if we start to approach in the concentration of any parameter something that is going well

outside the norm, we have automatic shutoffs. we want to make sure the system is really protective. one of the things that we have been doing and people say you may not be able to read the details of this, but you may not be able to read the details of this. this is a screen shot of what we have been putting on the website twice per month which is the water quality data from the blended water and for the groundwater that requires blending. basically we roll up the data twice per month and includes what the average blended water is over time. you will see that pie chart there in the corner showing the period and .1% groundwater. 14.8% and the water treatment plant from the peninsula. and the blue segment there is the valley water treatment water combined. those are the blends there over

time. and this represents the last two weeks. i want to talk about that blend that is an important factor of all this so that folks need to understand to show how the water supply blend change over time. the thin deliver and the blue color which is groundwater. there is a pale color that is what is from the tail county and from hetch hetchy and the almeda county reservoirs. for the two weeks prior to september 20, 2017, getting about 62% of the supply from hetch hetchy and alameda and about 38% from san mateo county reservoirs. this is because of different operational things that we're doing in the system. and as you moved into the end of the year, we were getting about 78% from hetch hetchy and

alameda county and 22% from san mateo county and the slim .3% from groundwater. in march of this year, we were doing about 70% from hetch hetchy and alameda county and 29% from san mateo reservoirs, and about 1.1% groundwater. then this is the most interesting one here for the period that ended on april 1 of this year, the amount from hetch hetchy and alameda county was only 20%. it was a very small piece of the pie by comparison because we had actually taken the hetch hetchy system offline for maintenance during that period. so the vast majority of the water in san francisco was actually coming from the san mateo county reservoirs at that period about 78% and about 2% groundwater during the heavy testing period for the central golden gate parkwell. again, the blend changes not

constantly, but it is changing every few weeks as we do something different in the system. and we worked really hard to make sure there are no things that people notice. generally people don't notice the changes in supply and that is something strange happens like happened back in 2016. we had algae in the reservoir and that ended up with a two-week period where there was nothing we could do because it was all in the system. we had taste and odor issues. once we got it out of the system, things were back to normal and just as a quick aside, we are starting work on a project to actually o zinate the water which is the silver bullet for dealing with the taste and odor issues, so we should never face than again once we complete that project. a look at the water quality data -- >> i can just -- excuse me.

the groundwater into the reservoir at a certain rate. as i look at the pie charts and increasing to 1.1 groundwater with the increased gallons coming from the reservoirs. >> is that correct? >> and the san mateo county reservoirs with the crystal springs and that is where the majority of that watter is coming from. and so this increases over time for us. and blended in with that water. and with the concentrations coming in. >> that is why i am a little confused. if i am looking at the two chart, it is almost doubling the

percentage of ground water. >> from 1 to 2.1. and the percentage of the san mateo reservoir border has gone from a little bit more than double. >> from about 29% to about 78%. that is because we went from 29 to 78 to indicate that the groundwater should have gone up even more. and this is basically the total supply and each of the charts presents 100% and with san mateo county and 70% and hetch hetchy and 1.1% was groundwater. >> and the groundwater is blended into with the supplies

in the reservoir. >> the percentage of groundwater in your san mateo reservoir should be consistent. >> not necessarily because we had cut way back on the hetch hetchy supply there in the april 1 period. and we peaked up the delivery from the san mateo side and with the demand -- >> a let me try another way. >> the demand in the two periods is about the same -- >> i get it. i am focussing on the ratio between groundwater and san mateo. if you do the math, this is just guessing on the math right here. the 1.1% with 29.4% with that

groundwater coming from san mateo, right? >> it is in comparison to just the san mateo county water, but from the same set of pipelines, a certain amount of hetch hetchy and alamedo county water as well. that is part of the blend. not just san mateo, but all the water that is blended coming into the city. >> okay. >> so it's that you could say basically the golden part and the pale part together is what's coming into the city across the city line into san francisco. regardless of the source of which was the water coming from outside of san francisco. >> can i just because i started asking -- >> sure. >> -- and this has nothing to do so much with the drinking water itself, but there -- can you take groundwater?

i don't know what percentage we are trying to pump out compared to what is already down there as groundwater. and as you pump out too much with the adverse effect in the environment around there? >> there are two types and one is from a salty body of water like the pacific ocean, if you pump out too much, you drag the salt. and one of the things about the design of the project is the flow of water is typically out into the ocean and the pressure pushes water that way. we are taking a little water off the top to skim that down, but not enough to create that inside. and one of the things we have the program is a line of monitoring wells and along the coast and monitor routinely for salt to make sure that we are not seeing any adverse

concentration and so far we haven't. >> there are plans for the future and to increase how much out of the groundwater. so i am worrying about that. >> that is an excellent thing to worry about and that is the single biggest problem with groundwater is overdrafting the sucks in the salt water. it is not an unlimited supply for us. we might have a slight increase in drought years, but not a big increase in drought years because the basin cannot sustain that without doing damage to the basin. and killing the basin would be the worst thing we could do. >> i guess you've probably have done some engineering studies to sort of know that balancing point. >> that is probably the single biggest issue which is taking the 20 years to really understand so we think we know it as best we can.

what we are doing now by turning the system on after we constructed it is getting the real data and we will be cracking that carefully. >> can i ask a question please? >> so i am trying to understand this blend. so where does the water come from in the alamedo and san mateo and hetch hetchy and rainwater, right? >> so hetch hetchy water comes from yosemite and comes across the valley and comes in through irvington tunnel into the system. and it's joined by waters from calavaris and san antonio reservoir which are in alameda county and the water in those two reservoirs is filtered in the snow valley water treatment plant. that water comes from the local drainage, but also some of san

antonio water is previously stored hetch hetchy water when we have excess and we store hetch hetchy water in that reservoir as well. those two reservoirs we refer to as the alameda reservoirs. on peninsula, we have san andreas and crystal springs reservoirs and pillar seal which are the local reservoirs there. particularly crystal springs is local drainage and san mateo creek, but it always sometimes gets excess hetch hetchy water that we can afford to store there as well. so each of the local systems gets some hetch hetchy water into it as well. the total on balance is about 15% local supply and about 85% from hetch hetchy. >> and the local supply, again, how does that get there? like rainfall? >> a rainfall that is with the drainage basin. and built in 1888 to capture local water for delivery to san

francisco. that is what it does primarily. >> what are the quality differences between the three sources? >> yes. there is an overflow room in the chamber. and so i think we are trying to ask people who don't have a place to sit to move to the overflow chamber. thank you. continue please. >> a speaking to the quality of the different sources and one of the things that san francisco is blessed with is on peninsula the

watersheds are owned by san francisco and no extra sources of pollution there. the water and quality of water and the reservoirs is almost as good as hetch hetchy water. very hard to distinguish the difference. the same is true of the alameda reservoirs because we control a lot of the land there either directly by ownership or by agreement with local farmer there is. who are raising cattle and are probably better than any other in the state except for hetch hetchy. but collectively they are all very high quality water sources. >> thank you. >> and speaking of quality, one i wanted to talk about the quality of water particularly in sunset reservoir as of april 15.

we have three parameters listed here which are ones that are of concern. hex valent chromium, and often chromium 6, manganese, and nitrate. we have test ed for each one of the parameters and 103 for manganese and 153 for nitrate. the next column show what is the maximum contaminant level is which is basically the drinking water standard. you cannot serve water that is above the concentrations. but the average concentration of what we've seen of these parameters is in the right-hand column. and they are all far below the drinking water standard for each of the parameters. again, that is due to our, a., the high quality of the water to begin with, and the treatment and blending strategy that we exercise in putting water into the system. >> so this is from blended water or water -- >> yes, this is from blended water. >> do we have the information on

the actual water being taken out. >> this is the water from the reservoir? >> we don't have the values being pulled out of the ground? >> a we have those as well because we also sample the wells periodically to make sure what concentrations are there to make sure the source isn't changing in concentration. >> so what are those concentrations and have the concentrations ever neared with the average plus blend and what really are the values for the water when it comes out of the well? and does that ever approach the maximum contaminant level? >> an i think there may be one well for nitrate that approaches that level and again, blending it down makes it virtually indistinguishable from the rest of the water. otherwise i believe everything is below the maximum contaminant levels. but we can provide the data that

we have collected for the constituents in the ground water. >> ultimately what percentage and you are talking with the value within the well can occasionally be close to the permissible level and average the fine, but with the drij of water, they should have some certainty of what they are getting. as it increases, we could overshoot and we could have the water with higher concentrations. >> the quality of groundwater does not change rapidly. basically it is large underground reservoirs and tends to change slowly over time.

we have no expectation we will overshoot. because we have the m.c.l. we have to meet and target levels below those which are the operating target levels to make sure we don't exceed those. that is what we use with the standard with half or less of the drinking water standard. and that is also to go verify what is happening out there and watching the system and monitoring to make sure that we are meeting the standards that we have to meet and better. >> and looking at this column over here, what is the recommended level it should be below. >> should be below the maximum

contaminant level. >> and that is the maximum when you were testing. with the lower end and high end? >> that is the average there and there is the data which is the stshd set by the state not to be exceeded in drinking water. >> and is shown a little bit higher than the others in the nitrates and ranging from 54% to

60% of the maximum. i guess part of the what i am concerned about and this source coming into this big pool. at some point that water goes out and we are drinking it. and what percentage goes into the drinking water so it is not like you have a big blender. >> we have an awful lot of turbulence and designed the system with the blending to take place and that short-circuiting for different reasons is bad because if you get short-circuiting of water coming in the system and going out, that means you have aging water

on the side. and aging water starts to have its own problems. and the longer you let water sit, the worse off it gets. we work real hard to make sure that it is maximumly blended as much as possible by where we have located it. >> thank you. nice to know that there is a blender there. >> we don't have a switch. >> by the way, i want to acknowledge dr. gene wynne -- wintrop. she is the chief who is here to answer questions as well. >> thank you for being here. >> thank you. >> so really in summary with the addition of san francisco groundwater, we have continued to meet all state and federal water quality standards with no change in the introduction into

the ground water supply. we are taking it slow so that the statements are true over time because that is our goal. >> and i have one more question about the contaminants. are there cumulative effects if you keep on drinking it? and is that impacted? the same thing if you have -- and have a little bit, but it stays in your body. and is that what this stuff is? >> actually, that question is better posed and i don't know if you want to do that now or wait until i finish going through the rest. >> why don't you finish up. >> and i want to talk about the outreach and which we have done more of and also about the groundwater storage and recovery

project. in terms of outreach, again, we have been at it for 10 years and the focus groups, media coverage, newsletter, utility bill insert, planning department, of course, and their processes. and producing fact sheets and we have material available at our website. and providing data updates since july as working with members of the community who have expressed concern and we committed to and remain committed to sharing the data so everybody can see what we are doing. we have had a lot of social media impressions and constantly updating fact sheets and i personally have done a number of presentations to groups throughout san francisco and over the last year or so. and as well as other staff. and in doing a lot of responding

to questions from lots of folk. we really think we have reached a lot of people in san francisco since last july. now i am going to shift gears to the other project which is important for drought purposes by itself. this project was designed for providing drought protection for san francisco and the wholesale customers. as a partnership with davis city, san bruno and calwater that provides additional local water storage equal to the crystal springs reservoir. the way we are doing that is by delivering excess surface water in wet years to the folks who use groundwater down the peninsula and then basically have stopped using the groundwater as much. and that is allowing the groundwater basin to rise and accumulate more. there is a lot of vacant space there that can be used for storage. the whole project is designed and still has space in wet years so that we can draw it down and dry years to the normal level.

and so really that reliability will be getting out of that. >> how do you fill that space? >> basically you fill the space by stopping taking water out of it. water naturally will flow into underground aquifers and we have measured that in this lower part of the aquifer. the san francisco part of the aquifer stays high and is pushing up to the ocean. this part of the aquifer has been pumped by the cities as well as the cemeteries and golf courses down there, so it's been lower over time so you get rebound. you start pumping water out of it and it starts to rise slowly from the natural infiltration. >> we are replacing the groundwater with hetch hetchy water so they can restore the aquifers. >> it is a shared aquifer by all of us. now we're part of the group installing wells there. the orange dots are new wells that have been installed in the lower part of the aquifer and

the southern part to contribute to the overall supply for the northern peninsula and san francisco in times of drought. >> so we basically are expected to see construction of the 13 wells we have slated there. and this calendar year. and we will be doing the startup testing of those wells. i think we will do the startup testing to definitely be backing off the san francisco groundwater wells while we test those wells in the area and this is a diagram that shows, again, where the water comes north of from the three reservoirs in san francisco and with the

groundwater coming from this project in times of drought will go to everybody in the city with that part of the project and that will be experienced during the testing program. but the project is going to be reserved for drought conditions. that is when we're really going to need that extra supply to survive a drought. that is part of the basin that has operated differently than the san francisco part of the basin. that is where we have and a lot of information about the groundwater projects and the local water program for water quality, the west side and f.a.q.s and environmental documents on the website. with that, we can go to questions and i can answer more questions and have dr. winetrop to come um to answer questions, that would be great. >> an i am sure we have quite a

few public comments, but i do one question in terms of the cumulative effects of the contaminants. >> hi. good morning. i'm jean winetrop and the senior epidemiologist and the manager of the water regulatory programs at the san francisco department of public health, and specifically the environmental health branch. so i have more than 30 years in background and water supply and wifb i have been with the city for 17 years. that is my background for you. specifically to the question about what is called bio accumulations and whether what happened, for example, with mercury and fish, if you have a fish swimming around and it eats up plankton that has some mercury in it and a bigger fish eats that fish and it has eats three of those fish and now it

has three times as much mercury. and then so it accumulates and never goes away and when i eat the fish, i get a lot of mercury. that doesn't happen with the come tam nants that we are talking -- that doesn't happen with the contaminants. they all get metabolized in different ways and that goes a little bit beyond my area of expertise trying to actually explain how each particular one get gets metabolized within the human body, but that is where we have to have faith in the regulatory rudiments. they are developed by smart people. that have been the place for a long time and they are constantly being re-evaluated. i heard a little scoffing behind me about the faith and i do

understand. there are many people who do not trust the regulatory process, but i have had the privilege of working closely with a lot of the individuals who do that work and i do have faith in them and the maximum contaminant levels that the p.u.c. tries to not just abide by and set targets that give a real level of comfo comfort. we are living in a time where lay people can look up things and smart lay people who have lot s professional things. >> thank you very much. >> you don't have to defend yourself. >> that is my soap box.

>> there are only three contaminants that are listed here. i am sure you are testing for other ones. are there others that we should be concerned about? >> steve can speak to the many contaminants that are regulated by the safe drinking water act, and they are required to test for them routinely in the annual reporting and other various mechanisms, they have to report when they have excursions and the reporting that's happening on the web and i think it is just the three that people had been specifically interested in. >> there are a whole array and some are on an annual basis and quarterly basis and some are on the longer timeline. and the biggest worry is salt

and that is when we monitor for very frequently and in addition to the routine monitoring, we also have a program that we participate in with the programs of concern and everybody believes three years and go on an extensive testing program for all kinds of things that there are concern about and maybe regulated in the future. we try along with the e.p.a. and other water agencies to be ahead of what is out there in the environment. and if there is something we didn't know about, we are looking for more things to make sure we are continuing to serve that product. and there is a lot of different things. we have extensive data reports that we do a data report annually and we have a large report done by consulting firm and putting together as we started to look at the contaminants that we might see in the groundwater. and reviewed everything and just where we came up with the

targets and chemicals of interest manganese, hexavalent chromium and nitrate. >> thank you. go to public. [calling of speakers]