been willing to really explore those things. they want people out of their business and now they've put on the table that we could look at ground water banking there in wet years you could percolate excess water to the ground water basin and utilize that in dry years and provide the water to the tuolumne and you could provide the ability to better manager spill. lastly, inter-basin collaborations on the merced river. for that, i'd like to show the slide that shows basically the geography of the rivers and irrigation districts. the river is in the middle of the slide with new don pedro z reservoir in the middle and sule see them on both sides of the

river and there's the oak dale and south is the sean joaquin irrigation district and they both take water off the stanislaus river and the modesto systems butt up to potentially manager water between the two districts in a way that allows to you effectively manager the stanislaus and tuolumne rivers. m modesto in the past has not wanted to discuss it but they've allowed it to come on the table. that's a big step forward. it's not different from the regional reliability work we're working on with other districts but ties to allow us to better manage resources. then to the south is the merced irrigation district that would be the potential for additional

flows from the merced river at certain times that would would help benefit the overall system. the irrigation districts could end up working together and this could be a big step forward in terms of managing our water and i'm pleased about that. i know people have questions about the amount of flow and what we're concerned about in the framework is if there's going to be money to pay farmers for water, how that would be structured and funded. that would be a water purchase fund. science program. what would be the structure and funding for that including adaptive management details. there's been presentations. that's going to be a place where a lot of action will take place to are non-flow measures being successful and if not, why not, and what can we do to improve the situation potentially

through additional flow or modification of the non-flow measures. overall governance and consequences. that cuts both ways. if we get into a voluntary package there has to be assistance in the permits so delayed implementation isn't the fault of the parties, we need to have relief on that. equally, i think the state is very interested in a regulatory backstop. exactly what that might be is a big question. they're all important questions that need to be resolved fairly rapidly. particularly because the state in their action adopted some important amendments to the plan. one was they were directing their staff to work with the resources agency and completing the delta wathershed wide

agreement including agreements for the tuolumne river by march 1 so we have a fairly short time line. for anybody counting it amounts to 37 days. so we have not got a lot of time and the intent is to look at the set of alternatives as a package for future bay delta plan update for consideration as early as possible certainly by december 1. it's an aggressive time line. the state board action did not have a consequence for missing the march 1 deadline so i'm not sure what that means but it is something we're looking at if there are still things to be resolved we have time to resolve them beyond that. then the other thing we talked about is regardless of how fast or slow the state moves on things, we need to be developing

alternative water supplies soon and that we need those for a variety of reasons. partly the in-stream obligations, our existing shortfall and meeting our customer demand increases. we're trying to accelerate the work and a set of projects an activities to move forward. in a single slide i tried to capture that. on the left side is a set of projects we have been working on and rates of speed and this shows the time line by which they may be developed over time. they're mostly recycled water and transfer and storage options including the calaveres expansion. we think it will take 10 to 20-plus years to implement but we'll bring forward and you'll

see the february 12 commission meeting when you look at the c.i.p. adoption going forward that we have in that in the slide the projects and the packages regardless of where the state ends up on it. moving forward to preserve the options to complete negotiation on the voluntary agreement, we joined the lawsuit with others of the san joaquin tributary process challenging the plan. if the state were not to accept the voluntary agreement what they adopted was the plan we had concerns about all along. nothing changed so this is a protective measure to make sure

if that turns out that we preserved our rights and interests and can deal with the situation then but we're very much hopeful voluntary agreements will work and move forward. we met with folks from the newsom administration and expect to be scheduling a meeting with our bay area people to propose the voluntary agreement and due to the march 1 deadline to submit material to the water board we'll bring information to you at one or both of the meetings and things may happen fairly rapidly as discussions move forward including for a policy level commit action involving the efforts. and as a reminder, the policy considerations we've been using as our guide looks at the water

supply level of service and water demand of 265mgd as the contractual obligation and no more ration than 20% system wide and diversifying our water supply and working with others and for the environment and we're work hard as stewards of the resources we're responsible for. we see two things we need to accomplish and that's what we're committed to. i'd be happy to answer any questions. >> commissioner: yes. >> if you could go back to the slides that begin with the map. one thing i had a hard time following was what elements of this are already in place or

required and what are new -- what constitutes new contact in the voluntary settlement agreement. >> start the functional flows element there even going back further we had the san francisco alternative which was a set of non-flow actions and functional flow measures. that is what we had been working on and had collaboration with the districts on that in the ferc process several years ago and that was march of 2017. >> commissioner: those were proposals for the ferc relicensing proceedings which has not reached conclusion.

it does not obligate us. >> that's correct. >> commissioner: there's the original condition and one amendment to that? >> that's correct. that's the true baseline now. >> commissioner: that's the true baseline and determines our operations at the moment and water in the river when and where it's the old agreements -- >> with the 1995 agreement the latest update to that. >> commissioner: within the ferc negotiation there's some things we proposed and my assumption is whatever was ordered would not be less than that.

they're things to consider. >> we were expecting some papers to come out before 2018. the most recent word we heard second-hand with the district is they were going to release it but with the shutdown they're not releasing it until it's over whenever that is. we don't know what's in that package. the amended final license agreement was amended once there was the interaction with fish and wildlife. they had an amendment to that in november and ferc may have added things based on other people comments. we don't know what's in that yet. there may be additional requirements.

this is the district's preferred project in the finalized amendment. >> commissioner: how far down the page does it continue? >> the functional flow page and the flow schedule included summer outflows and critical and dry years came out of the state discussion and the flood pain pulse flow came out of the discussions with the state as well. they're the additions on top of what's on top of the mended final license application. >> commissioner: and those are both additional flows in the river with wet water. in the face of the increased summer outflows in critical and dry years there was a balancing of sorts. there was a reduction in the minimum outflow in wet and above

normal years which in most normal years there's far more water in the river than the minimum required but it did add the equal amount in the dry years when the water is critical. >> commissioner: okay. was that a balance? >> it probably didn't mean much on the wet side and means a lot of on the dry side. >> commissioner: and the additional management is that water that will spill anyway? >> it's water that would spill anyway but spilled in a fashion cognizant of how to obtain flood plain benefits with that. >> commissioner: is there risk ed with that we might release water where we wish we hadn't? >> there might be but i think

collectively in the world we're getting better when's going to be dry and wet you think the risk we have to worry about there is making sure we're maintaining flood protection for managing the releases and holding off on those releases and