committee report, highlights of the august 62018 and in this december 17th, 2018 meeting. this item is for discussion. director raphael? >> when do we introduce new staff? >> i'm sorry. >> is that part of my director's report? >> yes. >> my i have permission to continue my report? i'm sorry. that was my bad. we have a number of new staff and they are here. they would like to come forward and introduce themselves to you, if that is ok. would all of you knew people who are new to a commission meeting or new, come line up and tell us who you are and where you come from and what you are doing now. welcome. >> all women. just three. >> ok. i wrote mine down because i

forget, even though it is who i am. my name is parris smith at i grew up in northern virginia and i am a recent college graduate from james madison university in virginia. i spent all of my time over there. i graduated with a bachelor of science degree in innovative science and technology and i had a concentration in sustainable environmental studies. i am a civic spark fellow or a climate fellow that has been placed with the climate team for the next 11 months. and civic spark fellow his focus on building local government capacity to address community resilience issues. i will mainly be working with a climate team to conduct san francisco's 2017 community and municipal greenhouse gas emissions inventory and along the way i will be helping improve that process as well. >> thank you. >> hello, everyone. i am betty chung. i'm originally from san

francisco. i went out of state for college for four years in pennsylvania and they decided to come back. i did environmental education at s.f. public schools for a year and i am working now on the green business team. i am going to help recruit businesses and do phone call cetaceans, health plan panel events -- phone consultations, and help plan panel events. thank you. >> thank you. >> good evening. my name is nancy. a year ago i introduced myself to the current commission. as a member of the environment now outreach team at the department of environment. i'm introducing myself today in a new position as a transportation associate. i am still in the outreach team and i'm very excited to see what duties i have ahead of me. thank you. >> congratulations.

>> hello, my name is marion. i moved up here from southern california at a recently graduated from san francisco state university with a degree in environmental studies, a concentration in sustainability and social justice and my second degree in labour studies. i work for the school education team and we work with k-12 public and private school in the city. >> thank you. >> hello. my name is samantha quan. i'm from sacramento. i am coming from san francisco state. i studied environmental sustainability and social justice as well. and i will be on the environmental school education team. >> thank you. >> good evening, everyone. my name is annie wong.

i was born and raised in san francisco. i studied at the university of california, santa cruz in sociology. i was recently working with the community centre as a liaison. i am now part of the school education team as well. the environmental education aid. thank you. >> welcome all of you and let's have a warm hand. [applause] >> thank you. >> without objection, may we returned to item nine? >> yes. >> thank you. item nine is committee reports. highlights of the august 6, 2018 and september 17th, 2018 policy committee meeting. >> thank you. at the august sixth policy committee meeting, we had a really -- that was a deep dive

into everything that is going on with regard to pesticide use, but also, the entire ipm program we have talked about the pesticide stop when i want to say, it was at that meeting that i really realized what a very small part of everybody's worked at the pesticide work is. which had a deep impression on me. we only think about the pesticide part, but in fact, it is, as i said, a small part of the ongoing programs and learning about those programs. it is really fascinating. on september 17th, we address the pesticide program and we approved the resolution that you all approved earlier tonight. we also heard a presentation from jesse and troy on the 2017

greenup report, what you all approved earlier tonight, as well. that is it. >> commissioners, any questions? is there any public comment? next item, anthony. >> the next item is item 11, future agenda items. we have a speaker from the policy affairs. >> good evening, commissioners. and the chief policy and public affairs officer. i will be briefed although we do have a couple of action-packed meeting is coming up. our next special commission meeting is october 24th. is a special meeting. it starts at 4:00 pm. we are still working on the location. this is the joint meeting with the commission on the status of women. director raphael, the director of the commission on the status of women, at the president, and their president, that they met last week, or last month to plan and there are a couple of

presentations and development right now in a joint resolution that is being drafted. but we are still looking for a meeting location. if you have any leads, it needs to accommodate 15 commissioners. if you do know of any place, let anthony or i know and we will investigate further. november 27th, that is our regular meeting time in november will be doing a deep dive on blocking and the implications on the long-term sustainability goals. we will also be conducting the director's performance review in that meeting as well. the next policy committee meeting is october 22nd. and the next operations meeting is october 17th. >> any questions? any public comment? seeing none, next item. >> thank you.

we skipped an item. we will move back to item ten. announcements and items for discussion. >> any announcements from commissioners? [laughter] >> i'm giving everyone the opportunity. any public comment? on item ten? ok. we will go back to the next -- the last item. >> the next item is item 12, adjournment. the time is 7:04 pm. >> thank you, everybody. thank you for being here and congratulations to all the new folks. [applause]

>> okay. good afternoon, everybody. welcome to the september 25 meeting of the san francisco public utilities commission. thank you for showing up here at our revised time of 2:00. roll call, madam secretary. [roll call]

>> clerk: and we have a forum. >> all right. so item number three, we have approval of the minutes of september 11, 2018. is there any general public comment on the minutes from september 11? seeing none, this is discussion only, so we don't need to vote. item number five -- >> clerk: so moved. >> second. >> pardon me. all in favor? [voting] >> all right. opposed? motion approved. item five, communications. >> clerk: item four. item four. >> oh, so we do. mr. decosta, please come forward. >> so i'm here. there are many astute people in the audience. i watch them on the tv, and i'm here to talk about our

watershed here in san francisco, and i'm here to talk about another topic, which is known to you all, tech no logical term of dewatering. so as much as we talk about our technical term ms. gener-- ter general, and california law, we should be paying more attention to our watershed. our watershed plays an important role. as human beings, we have many different types of human being, but you know, i represent the first type of people of this area, the ohlone, who respect

mother earth. and when it comes to water, the way indigenous people look at water, water is life. that is why we went all the way to north dakota to represent the people of san francisco, all san franciscans and the bay area, to state categorically that we respect water. water is important. we know about it, but we don't pay attention to it. i haven't said that -- you all do your research on how we take care of our watershed in san francisco. i worked at the presidio where we had some streams, we had many streams and rivers all over san francisco, all of them

covered. but we have to pay attention to the quality of our watershed. i know you have your members that talk about this, that, and the other, but i have yet to hear a report on the issue of the watershed. now, my second issue, the watering. this is a process that one of you -- and i'll mention his name, mr. anson moran, knows a lot about. you need special permits for dewatering, so when we remove millions of gallons of water in the area where the salesforce building, and we compromise a building that is sinking 22 inches, 17 inches, not less, we need to pay attention to dewatering. thank you very much. >> thank you very much. is there any other public comment?

seeing none, we're going to move onto item five, communications. any discussion, commissioners? any public comment on item five? seeing none, item number six, other commission business. is there any other public comment here for this item? okay. seeing none, item number seven, citizens advisory committee report. is there public comment on this? >> clerk: we have a presentation. >> yes. >> hi. good afternoon, commissioners. i am a new face to you all, although not new to the c.a.c. i'm working really hard -- i'm the chair of the sfpuc c.a.c., representing district three. i'm working very hard to fill the shoes of wendy aragon, the former chair of the c.a.c.

i want to mention that today i'm speaking on behalf of my fellow c.a.c. members, all 15 of them, so the accomplishments that i'm going to talk about briefly, it's -- it's all theirs, so just imagine 15 other people standing up here with me today. on your own time, please take a look at the priorities laid out by the full c.a.c. and its subcommittees, water, power, and waste water in the c.a.c. annual report included in your docket, so you can see where we are steering our ship over the next year. these priorities were developed during our annual c.a.c. leadership retreat in july in coordination with staff, who gathered input from the agency's executive management team. i won't go through all of them here. rather, i would like to take the time to speak about the c.a.c., the folks that makeup the body, and how we measure success you so have a little bit of an idea of how we operate. we have an incredible body of humans on the c.a.c.

i'm extremely biased, and i probably say that every year, but it doesn't make it less true. it's diverse in background and viewpoints. the ability for us to have civil discussions about issues that we're passionate about has made the c.a.c. effective and powerful. two meetings ago, we had a great presentation from a.g.m. steven ritchie about the bay delta. it was clear that the c.a.c. needed more information to take a position. there was no lack of position on either end. the topic of the bay delta will actually be taken up by a smaller set of members at the c.a.c. next tuesday. i know i learned a lot from that meeting, not only in terms of issue but also in terms of process. most notably, though, it confirmed my gut feeling that the work that i want to do over the next year is to truly listen and understand the motivations and passions of my fellow c.a.c. members, to

develop thoughtful recommendations and positions after sufficient deliberation. in the past, we've measured success by how many resolutions we've passed. in 2017-2018, that shifted. it's clear that we did much more than pass resolutions this year. the c.a.c. and its individual members have been very active in engaging and educating the board of supervisors, their constituents and their networks on topics such as groundwater, water-sewer rates, and cleanpowersf. we wrote letters to the board of supervisors, made public comment at board of supervisors committees and p.u.c. commission meetings, and organized presentations for the community groups that we were connected to, and we are connected to a lot of community groups. this is the fun fact of the speech today. thanks to our annual survey that we do every year with the c.a.c., we noted that we, as a body, represent 47 community

and civic organizations, and it's because of these deep connections that this coming year, we want to meet people where they're at in their community. several members of the c.a.c. are passionate about what they believe is the next level of engagement for our group. to host more c.a.c. meetings, full, and subcommittee meetings in the neighborhoods that these topics directly affect. that is exciting and will allow for deeper public participation in really important topics. i was really nervous to speak today, and one piece of advice i got from my fellow c.a.c. member matthew steen is i shouldn't go long, and i shouldn't ramble. so i'm going to stop here, and i look forward to providing these updates regularly. thank you. >> thank you. remind us of your aim. >> amy zock. >> amy, thank you so much for assuming the chair of the c.a.c. we really do value the work that you're doing, and your leadership, so congratulations. >> thank you. thank you so much. we appreciate it.

>> thank you. all right. next item is the general manager's report. >> public comment. public comment. >> sorry. i'm a half an hour ahead of time. any public comment on this item? with that, so with the general manager's report, as always, we'll ask for public comment after each item. >> good afternoon. the first is cleanpowersf, barbara hale. >> today's report will cover service to customers and clean power activities. so service to customers continues to move successfully. the program is actively serving about 108,000 accounts with a cumulative opt out percentage of 3.1% or 97% retention. our supergreen upgrade rate continues to exceed the opt out rate at 3.4%, so that means we

have about 360 -- no, 3,600 custome customers choosing 100% renewable power supply for their home or business. in october we'll be enrolling another 1600 customers. these are folks that have solar on their property and receive service on our net metering tariff. it also includes folks that signed up on our wait list. so to sign up, get your pg&e account number out, go to our website, cleanpowersf/enroll. commissioners, you've been following along. our generation rates are set to absorb the rates of certain customers, including the exit fee or pcia. the california p.u.c. has a rulemaking underway where they are reconsiderating -- reconsidering the methodology

for how these rates are set. they've issued two proposed decisions in that rulemaking, one by the assigned administrative law judge, one was issued by the assigned commissioner. that's referred to as an alternate. broadly speaking, the judge's proposal is much better for c.c.a.'s. it includes incentives for the utilities to prudently manage their supply portfolios in order to minimize costs that are passed onto all rate pairs, and it creates a more stable and predictable charge. that predictability helps our customers, and it allows programs like ours to continue to invest long-term in renewable resources and in developing innovate tiff local customer programs. the other does the opposite, creates risks for c.c.a. programs, and we feel it compromises cleanpowersf's

sustainability and greenhouse gas reduction goals. it looks like it's going to undermine all the progress that c.c.a.'s programs have been making. our initial assessment that the alternate proposal could significantly impact our -- our ability to deliver a clean energy product at a lower or equal cost to taking generation service from pg&e, so we're watching this case very closely. together with cal c.c.a., local -- that's the local government trade association and our neighbors, we're making our preferences known. we've filed comments and reply comments at the california p.u.c., we've participated in an argument before the commissioners there on the proposals. mayor's breed, licardo and schaaf issued press releases, local elected officials throughout the state representing community choice programs, including mayor breed and all members of the san

francisco board of supervisors signed an open letter to the california p.u.c. that was published in the chronicle, so we're very engaged, we're very active, we're very thankful to have the support and help of our policy and government affairs group at the p.u.c. -- at the san francisco p.u.c., that is. the california p.u.c. held a closed-door deliberative meeting on monday. then, they came out and announced that a decision will not be made in this case before october 11, so i think the last time we reported to you, we told you they told us september 27. they've put it off until october 11, so we're keeping our ear to the ground and are prepared to model the impacts using our pro forma of whatever the decision is, and we'll be able to report back to you the

impacts to our customers and what have you. happy to answer questions. >> i have a question. >> yeah. >> when you say there's 3800 supergreens or whatever that number is, does that include like a salesforce? does a business account include as one account? >> yeah. so that includes that account. most businesses, a building as large as that has more than one meter, but what we tend to do -- what we tend to do when we bill is those get bundled and are billed as a single account. so i think the 108,000 accounts and the 3,672 that are cleanpowersf supergreen customers, i think would include a building like salesforce as one. >> it would be interesting to hear what that translates into as far as renewable energy, power, because it is a big building, as well as possible

g.h.g.s reduced, just to have that as your -- right, when you're telling us what those numbers mean so we can see where we're heading. >> happy to do that for you. i just made a presentation that said how many cars we've taken off the road, but i can't remember the number for you, so i know i have all that information. happy to bring that next time. >> okay. thank you. >> thanks. >> thank you, barbara. is there any public comment on barbara's report? mr. decosta? >> for the last 40 years, a group of us have been at the forefront of solar, clean energy. and often times when the

presentations are given here, we have to look at holistically how it really affects all of us when it comes to our energy. and also chronologically why is it that pg&e in the first place got this opportunity to bully us? so i say again and again, we need to read the act and see whether we san franciscans who dammed the beautiful hetch hetchy valley, if we fully utilize the hydroelectricity that we produce. and also, when we talk about solar, how much of their solar energy is tied to dirty racks?

so we need to have a hearing on dirty racks, so that we understand this concept. now while we want to say or we choose to say when we use clean energy, it's like removing so many cars from our city, you don't need to be a rocket scientist when it takes you 45 minutes to cross one block with a salesforce event that's going on right now. we have to reflect on this. so on one side, we have salesforce, using state of the art, and sewer system, and depriving us of taxing them because they get a write off

because they are billionaires. on the other side, we like to say how many customers, and i am a customer. i pay my bill regularly. but young people cannot be bluffed. young people look in this digital world at clean energy all over the world. they like to make comparisons, so we have a long way to go to maintain our high standard. thank you very much. >> thank you. is there any other public comment on the general manager's report, item 8? next item. >> clerk: second item is capital financing plan, rich morales. >> get the slides, please. thank you.

members of the commission, good afternoon, i'm rich morales, manager of the sfpuc. i'm here to present the capital financing plan for fiscal year 2018-19. this is the third annual capital financing plan being presented to you. the plan's more fully described in the memorandums in the general manager that's in your packet. capital financing plan presents you with those debt transactions that we plan on entering into during the fiscal year. as we've done the past couple of years, each time we come back to you during the year for the approval of a debt transaction, we'll reference that as one that was referenced in this capital financing plan. the sfpuc has a large outstanding debt portfolio among all of its enterprise, and given each enterprise, capital plan, new funding is needed. it's important to know that all

of our policies are guided by the department management policies and procedures last adopted in 2017, and the department capital services and policies. we also report to the sfpuc debt over sight committee on all transactions. as always, we like to provide you with an overview of each enterprise's debt and credit ratings, so you'll see each enterprise's outstanding debt. you'll notice new items to this table, the low cost s.r.f. loans and whitfield loan that we entered into this last year. first, we issue new money debt and provide new credit needs to meet the ongoing capital

requirements of each enterprise. this is guided by the regular monitoring and analysis of when found funds are needed and how much are needed. second we manage our outstanding debt portfolio, particularly renewing or replacing bad debt facilities and authorizing program consolidation when needed. [inaudible] >> however, though, taking advantage of these new refunding opportunities is now limited due to the recent tax bill's repeal of advanced refundings. and so finally, on this slide, you'll see a listing of the various debt transactions we plan to enter into into this fiscal year.

these transactions are more fully provided in the information presented to you in your packet. when we bring those items to you for your consideration, we will reference them as part of the capital financing plan. so thank you, this concludes my presentation. i'm happy to take any questions. >> thank you, mr. morales. commissioners? is there any public comment on this portion of the general manager's report? seeing none, public comment is now closed. mr. general manager? >> so the next item is a quarterly budget status report, charles pearl. >> commissioners, good afternoon. charles pearl, acting c.f.o. and a.g.m. business services. eric sandler is expected to be

back in the office in early october, so i am here to report out on our fiscal '18 year end activity doe activi activi activities. this report, which is a preaudit look before we present to you our financial statements, is about a month later than we typically present to you, and the main reason for this is that it is the first year that we are closing the financial statements within our new system, people soft, and that's taking a little bit longer than we expected. so we're reporting to you today on the preaudit actuals, and then, subsequent to my report here to you today, you will get the financial statements presented to you. those will also be later than what we typically present, which will be in early january . so i just wanted to provide a little context. in terms of the overview for fiscal '18 -- so again, fiscal year '18 ended on june 30.

we have positive net results for all of our operations, which is a good thing. it means that we took in enough money in order to pay all the bills, so no drawdown of reserves were needed during our operations. i'll go through the details so the additional revenues that you see here for water and sewer, i'll provide a little more color on, and we came in a little short on the power revenues, but i'll provide more color on that in a moment. clean power came in a little bit over expectations, and we met all of our targets for policies and cover reserves for the year. in terms of details. first up is our water enterprise. we had sources or revenues greater than budget of about $48 million. before i go into this any further, i just want to remind the commission that we -- this budget for fiscal '18 was actually set two years ago. we're on a two-year budget cycle. so that was 2016. we had just come out of the

drought at that time, so that's why you're seeing a large variance here in terms of revenues above budget. when we start to report to you for fiscal '19, you'll see much smaller variances or changes against budget. we'll be much, much closer because we just set the budget for fiscal '19. so we are here, we're talking about revenues, about 48 million or just about 10% higher than our budget. as you can see, much of that is from additional water sails for wholesale and re -- water sales for wholesale and retail customers, and we did have an out pay of $9 million, and that was due to a legal settlement. it is fairly typical for each enterprise to have some unspent money at the end of the year, so a little over 5 million for water. for waste water, similar story.

we have revenues above about 10%, and then, on the uses side, we have about $46 million in savings. the vast majority of that has to do with debt service savings and our unspent general reserve. and just a note on the debt service savings, that was mainly due to a change of timing. we changed the timing of the debt issuance, so not so much a debt refunding or the typical thing you may here from us about savings, this was just we issued let debt at a later time, so that's why we have some savings for waste water debt service. for power, we have revenues under budget of about $30 million, and as i mentioned at the outset, we -- that is -- we still -- even though we have lower revenues, we have enough expense savings to cover that lower revenue. the majority of the reason for this change is because of how

we have been booking our kel-iso transactions, so these are the transactions that we have cwith cal system operator. so what you'll see down below is a savings of $26.6 million, and the rathvast majority of t is tied to the lower revenues, and there's some salary savings as the other enterprises have, as well. and for clean power, we have, again, some savings for mainly personnel and professional services, and we have some slightly higher revenues. we had enrollments that were slightly higher than planned, so that's why we have a little bit of additional revenue. and then, the note there is just to point out we did have a use of some of the general reserves as we've been ramping up the program. key financial ratios have all

been met for the year. fund balance reserve as noted as well as our debt service coverage reserves. these all tie back to our commission policies and the clean power reserve target is projected to be met, as well, and i'm happy to take any questions. >> commissioners, any questions, comments? any public comment on this item? all right. thank you, mr. pearl. so the last item, i would just like to congratulate the two commissioners, four more years. [applause] >> so ike and anson, congratulations. i heard it was tied -- no. >> you never know, right? >> so congratulations. >> thank you. thank you. >> thank you. it's our pleasure to serve. we're honored. >> oh, public comment. >> yeah. >> i've got this one now. any public comment on this last item? okay.

seeing none, next item, please. >> clerk: item nine is a bay delta water quality control plan update. >> mr. ritchie? >> congratulations on your a's. >> thank you, commissioners. steve ritchie, assistant general manager for water, and may i also extend my congratulations to the two commissioners. glad to see you back in time for the item. if i could have the slides, please. yeah. this afternoon, i'm going to give an update on where we are on the water quality control plan, particularly regarding our issues. this is something we talked about a couple of meetings ago to try to put some information together that kind of focuses on what the differences are in an understandable way for a commission level and hopefully,

we're able to do that. so for the agenda for this, i'm going to start by actually talking about at the state water board adopted the water control quality, how can we makeup the water supply shortfall because that is a question that often comes up. we've made it clear we will meet our obligations to customers, whatever conditions we have to, 'cause that's our job. why does the state water board use unrestricted throw approximate, what is this approach have to do with the control of the tuolomne river. well, gosh, some of these things were tried in 1995, and they didn't work, and what happened as a result of that settlement agreement and then wrap up with some conclusions. first, it's very clear that we must prepare for additional ply supplies no matter what --

additional supplies no matter what. the message was, with, you know, in light of longer droughts and increased warming, you know, the old way of doing things just isn't good enough. we' we've got to do better. i've cited a couple of chronicle articles in the past, that say that we should be planning for future water supply. so i think we stand by our statements that our 8.5 year drought planning scenario is a prudent one. >> excuse me. >> yeah. >> is that ppuc planning report, did they say how long? >> how long? no. they didn't set a specific number, they said people should start being more conservative. the state sets a minimum standard, but people should look beyond that. and i'd be surprised if they

ever published anything that said, this is what you need to do exactly. >> the assumption is beyond current state requirements is more than five years, right? >> yeah, yeah. >> and if i might, also, that's going to be very different, agency to agency. you know, if everybody had a five-year planning drought, the agencies would have very different levels of reliability just because of the way water rights and hydrology and various agencies interact. that's why the state doesn't have a standard. they have a standard for their state water project, but they don't have a standard for the rest of the state. >> you need to show what the results would be for five years, whether you actually use it for your actions may be a little different. kind of like the stress test that they asked us to do. so how can we makeup the shortfall? well, what is the shortfall?

using our level of service objective at our contracted levels of demand indicates that we would need potentially 900,000 acre feet of new storage or a water supply project that could deliver roughly 100 million gallons a year. i've presented all of that before. what's new today is the slide here showing what i would call our "real particular alternative supplies." these plans could produce 50 million gallons perday in time frames ranging up to 30 years. there's a list of projects here, daly city recyclable expansion, partnership with the alameda county water district, los vaqueros water loss

prevention, and east side power plant. we've moved away from the plant on the east side for nonpotable purposes, but we think out there, 10, 20 years, we will be thinking about it for potable purposes. each of these is estimated to produce a certain amount of water. if you add up the high estimates here, it adds up collectively to 50 million gallons perday. every one of these projects has its issues. the los 1r9d aqueros residence voyeresidence -- reservoir has a blampg because we don't know what it's going to be yet. the point is that these have all been in active discussion, and we are moving forward with them at different paces, but i'm just reminded now, the groundwater storage and

recovery project, we're almost ready to put into operation now. it was initiated by a letter in 1993, so we're at 25 years and counting on that for a project that seemed like a no brainer at the time, but every project has challenges. we are going to be able to conserve more, but at least in the retail area, we've been buying ahead. we've been paying to get more water efficient facilities that would ultimately be required by the plumbing code and would be changed out eventually, so we're really getting advanced on that, but those are built into our demand projections. on groundwater, we've got the san francisco groundwater project. there's not an obvious

groundwater project for us to expand with. transfers are always brought up, and our experience is that transfers in times of drought have not been particularly successful. we did a couple little transfers from '87 through '92, but this time, we went shopping and no one was there to sell us any water. we have broached the topic at different time with the turlock and modesto irrigation districts with no luck. they would have to be interested to make that work. another one is delta diversions. it's lower quality water from an already stressed environment just don't seem like the right idea or solutions for us. those are all things that could have some discussion, but there are challenges with all of them that we'd have to deal with, and so there's nothing actively being planned on these fronts, other than conservation. >> steve, one question. on the groundwater banking with the districts, does that

include -- there's been a suggestion that on the west side of the valley, that there might be some conjunctive use opportunities? >> that, i have not been aware of any discussions on the west side. there possibly could be, but not to my knowledge. >> okay. but that's -- that's one that has been brought up in some informal discussions, so it's -- that may be something -- >> be happy to look at it more. i think we're really thinking in the context of modesto and turlock having some kind of banking operation that would operate similar to water bank and new don pedro just a different type of animal. okay. that's where we are on the supply front, and in fact, you know, last night, we received a letter from the various fund governmental organizations suggesting that we look at and

explore various water supplies. that makes sense because we're going to need those supplies one way or another, whether it's a state board water action or some kind of long-term drought that we have to deal with. >> maybe you're going to get to this, but have you done some workup on what the cost would be and the alternate tiive to pairs? >> i did not purposely on this. i think realistically, we're talking for those projects certainly north of $1 billion, maybe more than that, just because of the nature of projects at this point, but it would be very expensive, it would cost our rate pairs a substantial amount of money. -- rate payers a substantial amount of money. >> it feels like it would be somewhat worthwhile to not look at the overall number but which of these projects seems most feasible from a variety of

perspectives, whether it's environmental impact or, you know, cost, or each of these variables and be able to look at it so in the event that we do need to respond to either the state or do some planning as you're now saying for drought or climate, that we can have some more information to be able to make those decisions from a policy perspective. >> absolutely. no these are all in the regional stages. vaqueros, is really moving ahead quite rapidly -- rapidly as projects go, which means, you know, still several years before we could be to be a decision point, with you we will fully flush these out so we can all see and make constructive choices when the

time comes. >> and that would be -- >> it won't be tomorrow. i would say probably in, you know, we will probably get to some hard decisions probably in, you know, two years out before it was real money invested. you know, we've invested real money in all of these. until we get past the 2 or $3 million, is when you get to past the study point. some of these are already in our ten year capital plan. we may bring at the adjustment of our ten year capital plain, we may bring some modifications to that. okay. the next thing i'm showing here is a map i've shown before of the sacramento and san joaquin river system and particularly the san joaquin tributaries. as you see in the san joaquin river in the south, there are

three marked in red, the stanislaus, tuolomne, and merced. and actually, hetch hetchy isn't on the map, so we had to add it there, and also because it's the important point, i've added the position of bernales. it is just downstream of the confluence between the stanis law and san joaquin river, so water standard quality is often talked about vernales, all of those things are really about the delta. the discussions there don't specifically impact the tributaries except as what their relative contributions might be, but vernales is about what real he happens in the dealt, so that's an important point we want to make as a part of this discussion. so why does the state water board use unimpaired flow? one because it's really simple

to understand the concept. it is not a complicated flow schedule, it's just 40% of unimpaired flow, which is what would be there if there were no dams and residenervoirs on the system. the general scientific literature supports the use of the nature flow regime as a reference for understanding functional flows needed to support and maintain native species and their habitat, so it's basically a generic approach to a river, and if -- if -- particularly if it's an unmodified river, it's a decent starting place to look at. but basically, what we see in the scientific literature, it's not generally supportive using an unimpaired flow approach in modified river systems, such as the lower tuolomne where

specific river relationships have been developed. it's important we're talking about a lot of water one way or another in terms of trying to improve the tuolomne river, and we want to make sure we're making the most efficient use of that fishery while protecting our water supply. [inaudible] >> the whole point is, that is all focused at vernales relative to the san joaquin river meeting the delta without looking at other relationships, and we keep pounding away at that point. we've got lots of information on the tuolomne, and we're not using it to make better decisions here. we're focusing on vernales and the delta. and this is a part i haven't

pushed too hard, but i want to make very clear. the state is requiring 40% of unimpaired flow for february through june says in their plan, the flow can be managed as a block of water to provide more functionally useful flows if scientific information indicates this would better protect fish and wildlife beneficial uses. what they're not saying is unimpaired flow is a better way to mistake i am the flows of the -- mimic the natural flow regime. so what they're saying is we can take that 40% block of water and move it around to the time of year that makes more sense. well, then, february through june ceases to have any meaning in that context, and so i think they're trying to say yes, we need this, but you can use it

any way you want, and that fundamentally is problematic in saying this is the amount of water that's needed. and again, it means that unimpaired flow of vernalis does not take into account water flows with the tuolomne river needs. it's unclear how the board -- [inaudible] >> -- that has been defined. they've defined flow goals, but they've made an assumption that that will improve the biology of the eco system, which that is a leap. it's not set and going to a specific goal. the lower tuolomne is a highly regulated, and i'll show a slide in a minute that shows what it actually looks like. [inaudible]

>> -- in other words, it's a different water body than the one that the unimpaired flow calculation comes from. so when we look at it, and i just borrowed this from google maps, this is what the tuolomne river looks like flowing from east to west there across the map, ending up in the san joaquin river confluence down there on the left-hand side of the aerial photo. you see it is flowing through modesto, heavily urbanized area, and then it flows and winds and meanders down through the san joaquin largely through areas that are diked off farm land, but also, there are some gravel mining pits there, so there's a lot of disturbance of the -- excuse me, of the river bed there from those activities, and people have tried to deal with those. they tried a little bit in 1995, but it's not the same river system that you would think of the unimpaired flow

having value in. one thing to note is down at the confluence of the tuolomne river and the san joaquin river, we actually contributed to the acquisition of dos rios ranch, and how it can be used for a vlflood plain. we've got a good situation down there to be able to make some improvements. but again, it's a very heavily modified system and we really need to take that into account, and that's what the state board has not done. so that brings us back to the tuolomne river management plan which includes functional flows and other flow and nonflow measures. it directly addressed tuolomne specific flow needs and not vernalis and san joaquin and delta river needs. i won't go into it detail, but it includes strategically timed flows including functional flowing that drive important eco logical processes, and

that's what we're saying, is what's going to drive the eco logical processes in a good way linked to the nonflow measures? [inaudible] [inaudible] >> and the last one, as compared to 1995, would be fully funded, including monitoring, so there's -- there's a package there that actually makes sense and can be carried through. and this will also include an adapt tiff management program which is carefully monitoring, studying and treating them as experiments and then making adjustments as you find things over time, unimpaired flow percentage really doesn't work for the tuolomne river, and using our managed approach to

the tuolomne does. now i'm going to turn to the 1995 turk settlement agreement because it's gotten a lot of attention. first there was an increase in flows at that time. the original license was issued in 1964, and it had an amount about 64 to 123,000 acre feet of flow in it. in the settlement flow, it was increased to 94 to 301,000 acre feet. but then, they started to single things out. [inaudible] >> so 1964 was -- i wouldn't call it the dark ages, but we were just starting out, understanding rivers. in 1994, we started to get somewhat better at it, but i think what we'll see is we have a long way to go. the settlement agreement established the to you loply river technical advisory committee as a way to decide what to do on the river, which produced the habitat

restoration plan for the lower tuolomne river at that time. so what the agreement included, san francisco has agreed to priev $500,000 to provide riparian improvements, recreational improvements or other projects, and san francisco also agreed to fund the california department fish and wildlife department of fishery position for five to ten years. a side note, in the folks that p.u.c. was working with at that time, they were convinced that at least the staff we were working with, was convinced that a hatchery was what was needed. so they had a bias that direction, and i think that that clouded the conversations and the work that preceded. it would identify ten priority nonflow projects, with a minimum of two special run pool projects. special run pool projects where you take one of those big gravel pits that have been