i would like to call the meeting of the san francisco public utilities commission to order. may i please have the roll call madam secretary? [roll call] thank you very much. can we have the next item? >> approval of the minutes of october 8, 2019. >> you have before you the minutes from october 8.

are there any questions or comments on the minutes? any public comment on the minutes. motion to approve? all those in favor? opposed? the motion carries. the next item is general public comment. i have a card from mr. decosta. it afternoon. .-ellipsis good afternoon. >> i don't say this too many times. when i fill out my card you will see environmental justice advocacy. i have gone your website. in all of this time from 2,002

up to 2019, how has sfpuc addressed environmental justice when it comes to our infants, our children, our youth, our young adults, our elders, those with compromised health, the physically and mentally challenged? i want to know. do we have a department, or whatever term of external affairs/chief strategist? i would like to have some sort of an explanation with all of the money that has been set aside for community benefits,

how much is really being satisfied when it comes to children? how much of it has been satisfied? and, if san francisco public utilities commission is appropriate, and if this is tied to all of the talk that you talk about, equity, resilience, and whatever. cultural competency and implicit bias does and whatever, i want to know. i do come to these meetings. it is not easy for me to come to these meetings. i've got other things to do. if i come to these meetings, i can look people in the eye. i know what is happening. i take notes.

i don't want to judge anybody. what i want to request of you commissioners is we all need to come into the community, or y'all need to go to the health department, or y'all need to go to any of the entities that have the statistics so that y'all can review what is really happening in this community. the carbon footprint, congesti congestion. how does san francisco public utilities commission play a roll? thank you very much. >> thank you. any other general public comme comment? hearing none. next item, please. >> item five is communications. >> i did have a question on the communications as i was going through my docket here. the advanced calendar that we get.

i was just noticing, may i did notice it before, i appreciate the yellow highlights. some of these have gone on for some time. i am wondering how they get addressed. when it gets to a certain., does it then rise to a certain level. some of these things i would still like some information on. i don't know if it means it needs to come back to us has a list to find out if we still want the information. the request i had on the possible uses of drones i'm not quite as interested in anymore as i am for planning for battery storage or disaster recovery, for example. >> probably what we will do is we will double backed with each one of your requests. some we probably thought we answered like we have a drone policy. anyway we can come back with y you. i know that donna has been doing

a good job trying to make sure that folks respond. that is something we are working on. if we don't respond to should do a date in which we can respond. >> that would be helpful. or just some feedback. sometimes we see that it has already been dealt with. it feels like some of these things are getting pretty old. anything else on communications? any public comments on communications? next item, please. >> item six is a report of the general manager. >> the first item is our sewer system improvement program, major project.

>> good afternoon, commissioners. i am project manager for headworks. first, i want to thank you maxwell, and commissioner vietor for taking time to come out to the site recently and look at the headworks construction site and see the complexity of the project on the site constraints associated with also commissioner caen was there. thank you for visiting the site. in the last update to the commission, we provided you an overview of the process which is also known as construction manager general contractor they can inform the design and address the risk early on. we also had cost estimating

process and evaluation during the various design milestones. having cmgc on board early on can inform the project of an industry trends. we explained that in this bill, which we typically used to do. the risk may not be identified or addressed until the construction is underway leading to contracted downtime in the middle of the construction, or expensive change orders. we also highlighted the benefits of cmgc, during the last meeting when we were here. how construction and design can overlap in cmgc. some example of headworks, we would not have been able to start construction even today because we are still finishing up the design on one of the major components. we have been in construction for almost two years and we have made significant process.

.-ellipsis progress. two major items i would like to go over. to provide you an update on the construction progress and also how it will be packaged with the remaining project. also one more item in the last commission update you had asked us about why headworks foundation is not going to the bedrock and if we should be concerned about any settlement? today i will provide approach to geotechnical design and provide you a between the skyscraper versus our headworks which is spread out and more flat type of building. you might remember this slide from the last time. headworks project is often compared to brain surgery being done while keeping the patient alive. we stopped to maintain 250 million-gallon treatment capacity while doing this major construction upgrades. it is one of the most complex

projects by any standards. quickly recap and spend a couple of moments what is the purpose of headworks out what are the project addressing the shortcomings. headworks is also known as treatment, where the flow from collection systems first enters into the plant. the majority of equipment has reached its useful life, 30 plus years old. the current headworks does not do a good job in removing the grit and screening. our performance today based on headworks is 50% below. the new design will take us up to 90% upfront. for any well-functioning plan, the better job we do upfront it helps everything downstream processes. one of the other major level of service was the seismic deficiency.

with the old structure we are trying to address within a project. as you can see on the graphics we have five distinct scope of works. scope one is known as site preparation. okay. scope one is the site preparation and scope to a is known as the pump station is the wet weather pump station. the other scopes i will describe later. those are additional scopes that we added of the project. the main headworks is known as a scope three. you have scope one and then three scope to and made headworks project. since last update to the commission, the headworks

project has moved to scopes into the next phases. move from design phase to the big package, advertisement phase. scope three has moved from advertisement to construction phase. those are the two major changes. the color of the highlighted of the scope has changed, so has the phase. on the construction updates, we have two scopes and construction phase as i mentioned earlier. scope one includes the site prep which consists of relocating major utilities or replacing utilities. we have completed 100 today. we have completed building the readout. the existing old headworks, and also, you know, we have completed 75% of construction of

scope one. on scope 2 we have completed upgrade of six pumps to higher capacity to retrieve -- achiev achieve -- two large screens have been replaced at electrical upgrades. to date we have completed 75% construction on scope 2 a as well. you might be familiar with this chart. we show this to you last time when we were here. this pretty much depicts how we conduct cost estimates at standard intervals. the project designs. often for the complex projects, long-duration. the duration between the start of the project to the completion of design could be 4-5 years. to give you an example of headworks project.

we started planning in 2013. the construction started in 2017. it is a good four years when we go through the planning and design. during this milestone. we prepared estimates to reflect market condition, site constraints, sequencing, workforce availability and update those estimates as we move to the milestones. as i said, conceptual engineer report during the planning phase which is the end of the planning phase completed in 2016. the next milestone will be 35%. it's about that time we start doing geotechnical and hazmat investigation. the design elements were still not completely baked at 35%. in edition, we did bring cmgc on board at the 35% designed to

help us with our design elements. help us with the sequencing. their input has benefited us quite a bit. they collaborate to identify and mitigate risk prior to the construction and we prize that risk into the parade around 2017, we added as an owner about 100 million-dollar scope to mitigate some of the associate traffic on evans avenue, excavation on the streets and increase the liability. we did come back to the commission to inform that early 2018. for headworks, 95% estimate for main headworks was done in may of 2018, reflecting the market condition come at that time. that will be the last estimate on this graph. in the next slide i will walk through what happens after the

95% example of one of the largest package which is the contractual concrete package. that will depict what happens on the structural with 95% estimate done. this table shows you three columns. the first column is the description of the items that i plan to discuss. the second column is the estimate and trend. and that what actually happened when receive the bids and awarded. to date we have awarded 25 package is associated with scope one, 2 a and three. the bids came at 121, the lowest bids, and that is what we awarded. almost 20% increase on what we are seeing on the bids. we have 20 packages out on the street that we haven't received

the bid yet. are in the process of evaluating the bids. that is about $120 million. we did not know the actual award amount until we finish our evaluation in the bids that we receive. the last is our main headworks. we still have about 54 packages to go at the value of three and a $41. you can see there is still 60% of the work is planned to be paid out in coming years. i'm going to show you my concrete which is the real number example in this slide. usc what big packages consist of. in my concrete example which is our real package.

when we estimated -- so i have it here, 95 estimate column and propose one which is the bigger one, take an example of first line item which is classic concrete 4,000-psi strength. at the time of estimate about 1.5 years ago, in a contractor because of a potential vendor and says what is your current price? every milestone they call to get the latest quote. in 2018 it was a hundred $60 per cubic yard. after 1.5 years, same bidders bid the job, on the day of the bid, these are the numbers we are seeing. those bids are very close. it tells me that the market is really -- otherwise those numbers would be a part as well. >> could there be a way that you

could say, you know, if there is an increase that there would be some way we would know? i have the same question. if you would say markets, or something, to indicate why? the first thing i think of, who is bidding? didn't we know? i would ask that question. if you explain what happened, it makes sense. >> timing is a factor. a lot of things have happened in the last year. >> i think he is going to go over that. this is just to illustrate when the contractor called the suppliers, this is the number they received 1.5 years ago. now they call it a supplier again, and the price has increased. we are doing our due diligence to see, you know, we noticed that this is not only in san francisco, it's happening in san

jose and other places as well. we will go over what we are seeing, and what are some of the things we can help mitigate this? >> i understand that. i appreciate that. i would also like to maybe see and hear when you did it. at least if we knew this was done 1.5 years ago, or whenever it was done, then a lot of questions you would have until you get to the next slide, you know? >> on the chart you have may 2018. that is when the contractor called the suppliers. and then june 2019 is when they called again to get a quote. we are seeing that differential a price. i don't want to steal your thunder but there are certain things that have been happening for the last three years. more pressure -- i would say

that if we do not have a change it could go even higher. >> thank you, general manager. i will take one more example on the pricing. let's take an example of the reinforcing steel. at 95% estimate the contractor, which was given to the contractor was our cmgc contractor not the bidding contractors was $1.10 per pound. when the bids arrived in 2019, they are $1.41 per pound. you can see increase on there, too. if you will some not all up. our total cost for the concrete package was $41 million in may of 2018. of course, we awarded at the lowest bidder at six to

1 million. -- $61 million. this bidding is trending about estimates. the bidding market seems to be reflecting in the market types and general labor shortage in the region. as you have seen, you know, we still have quite a few packages to bid out. fifty-four packages worth three and a $40 million. there are things -- -- $340 million. there are things we can do such as evaluate the timing or the sizing of the package. that opportunity still exists. the team is also going to look into resequencing some of the work. also look into the possibility of removing some constraint that can reduce our costs.

>> i would like to highlight 155,000 work hours to date that is something to be -- that is very good. that is great. >> thank you. also the good news, we have $28 million allocated today for the scope i and ii.a. that is quite a significant amount. >> i was going to say, look at the next one. >> the current bid trending, higher than our estimates due to these reasons. we will work as a team to see what we can mitigate in the next 54 packages to bid out. sixty-four job still need to be paid out. we can time what package when we want to bid out. what size of package. if we start seeing too much

price we can break it up or combine a little bit here and there, and still make final completion date. >> i would say that is a great advantage, because, you know, for the work that the contractor is not self performing, and even the work they self perform we can determine if it's going to be self perform or not that we can talk to them and say, hey, this price is high. how can we work to reduce it? then they go out to get pricing on it. so that we can figure out what are the best ways. and then, you know, as part of the whole process we need 2-3 bids on each of the packages so that we make sure, you know. also, what we are doing is looking at other cities in the bay area, because i don't know if you know, san francisco is the most expensive place to build in the united states.

>> second from new york. >> i thought we overtook new york? >> not on construction. >> i know new york, hong kong. yeah, so, but anyway, it is really challenging. >> we are moving from the numbers? i did have a question, it would serve your first slide where it had the second and third phases and it really is what prompted the question in the first phase is about 20% over, i'm curious, you know, once those numbers do come in, even with medication from a time perspective, it seems like cost is still going to be quite a bit more than what we have seen what we have approved as a commission. while that then come back to us as a whole package or by phase

to be able to say, you know it's actually going to be this much and those are the applications? -- implications? >> we can posit any time because we are doing things and phases and this is something we do not have the luxury of not doing. we are, you know, working in increments to figure out how we can reduce each one of the component costs and working with the contractor and bidding it out. we are pretty much, you know, going through the path of bidding out each package and we can let you know what the trends are what we are doing and mitigate it. i mean,, at a certain point you have to decide if you want to continue building this or not? >> i'm just speaking for myself. on the commission we are going to likely commit to continue to build it. i want an understanding of what

that actually means where's the money, did it come from some other important project or is that coming from reserves. how does that really look. >> we are planning to present to you, as soon as the new director comes on board to look at rhe baselining everything based on what we are experiencing now in the marketplace. this is something that we will use to kind figure out out, you know, how expensive things are now. we will look at all of that. >> a comment to the general manager. also, that would be part of our planning process. >> great. thank you. >> quickly switching gears to our geotechnical aspects. in the last meeting, that the commissioner brought up why we are not going to the bedrock. we have a systematic approach to

address geotechnical design. there are five steps which are listed on your slides. the first step is basically to look at existing geotechnical investigation in the region. the second step would be to look at what are the data caps compared to our site specific requirement. on the third step we have the site specific exploration plan and do the geotech. on the fourth step would be based on the data that we get from actual exploration on the site that the report comes out and guides the structural design in step five. i will go over quickly how that all works. what you are seeing is the general region of the southeast plan. you have the 280 freeway, and we are right on the clarifiers and headworks. yeah, this is our headworks

facility. we look at the region what has been done in the past. all of these .-dot you are sitting on the map is the previous investigation in the region. we look at what is available, other data gaps. the next step we prepare a site specific exploration plan. we have a seven that we did at the perimeter of the existing facility to identify what layers are where? where's the bedrock? what kind of soil we have. those are the important things to identify early on on the design so it guides the design. in the next step would be the final design based on the actual data of the site. this is an example of an older control area which is the height limit is 64 feet for the facilities. this is probably about 60-foot high. you see the design is based on

the actual data of the site. that is the reason why we do the site specific. quickly going over the major differences between the skyscraper, vertical load which verses headworks which is on your right site. typical height of some of the tall buildings could be. our headworks is about 64 feet tall. that is the major difference between the two. on the left there could be 90/100 story building. ours is like five-story, 64 feet height. on the design approaches, the skyscraper we have two examples of what could be the design on the left. the skyscraper doesn't go to the bedrock, the foundation. what happens those could be 90-100 feet deep piles. and there still a stress at the bottom of the foundation.

keep pushing so you can have a possible settlement. there is still residual stress at the bottom of the foundation. on the right side, the skyscraper which is approximately 200-300 feet all the way to the backdrop drop. there is no settlement expected because all of the stresses are being taken to the bedrock. these are the two examples of the design of the skyscraper coming back to the headworks. what we have done is on the left, what you see is our site specific exploration. our maximum depth is about 120 feet. what happens is the soil based on the data, if frictions the soil allows the stress to be diminished at around 120 feet. when it goes a little bit beyond where the stresses on the left side, because there is a safety factor that we incur.

we're going deeper than what is needed. we don't want to go on the rights over the length of the pier goes all the way to bedrock. just adding extra land for no good reason. it just increases the cost. those are the reasons why we do not have to go to bedrock. all of the stresses being taken by the friction of the soil. i hope that answers, you have a concrete mass of a 90 story building versus our spread mass. ultimately we landed on this design. we have 24-48-inch depth. on the ridge it is about 120 feet long pier system. toting -- total number of drill system is 700. because of the friction, the only kind of system we don't need to go to the bedrock. just quickly on summary, scope

wanted to is about 75% complete. they are trending a bit higher than our estimates as i demonstrated earlier on the slides. fifty plus packages are still to be advertised with most of the dollar value of the project. the team will be looking into some of the mitigation strategies that i described earlier to slow down, advertising, or break a packages according to the need. we will be looking into last but not least we will continue to enhance environment of team collaboration to have a collaboration with the designer, the planning folks and the contractor. we will continue that. with that i would like to see if you have any questions that i can answer. >> question about, i might've asked you this in the field, but i can't remember. we know the climate is changing,

and sea level is rising. that means that the creek is going to rise. i guess my question is around the resilience preparedness that you are doing with regards to that. i didn't really hear the pilings, and that design of pilings is also going to be in the event of water seepage, flooding and whatnot? >> headworks is designed based on the sea level rise criteria, establish out the city. all of our electrical facilities are above the line of the projected sea level rise. all of our program reits -- meets the criteria of sea level rise guidelines. that has been in consideration of our design. to keep the elevation higher. i hope that answers your question. >> it does. i'm still nervous. but it answers my question. >> thank you so much. >> any questions, commissioners? thank you.

public comment on the item? >> this was a good presentation on the topic itself. here is a way of looking at things as human beings having intelligence. you could have used our warehouses and a lot of space that we have in the southeast sector. [inaudible] saving millions of dollars. rather than putting the burden on the contractors. if you look at how things are going on, you really have to be

a real big contractor having a lot of money insurance to bid on a project like this. even if it is a low bid. if you look at the last two bi bids. the difference is about 1.5 million. could we have done that? for sure. did anybody bring it to the attention of the sfpuc? for sure. did sfpuc do anything about it? no. we are used to like, okay, that is a low bid at some time. let's delay something for a couple of years. of course the price will go up. why would the price go up? do you know who is in the white house?

do you know how to spell tariffs? do you know how the guy works? screwing things up, our economy, our safety. you do. so what do we do? we ask questions. questions about what? do you know this hood winking has been going on for how long? we intended initially, early on, over -- attended initially, early on, over 30 meetings. the community. yet people serving some chicken. they eat the chicken and forget to ask the right questions. i am the only one left. all of the sellouts, they just want the money on a platter. are they serving our community? is it benefiting our community? let's look at the digest, the stench in the year 2019, it is

thinking. were said and was stinging years ago -- -- stinking. worse than it was stinking years ago. we have to ask ourselves; do we have the guts to do the right thing and save this city and county of san francisco that is going to the dogs? thank you very much. >> any other public comments on this item? next item, please. >> before i move to the next item, i just want to say that the next commission meeting we talked about the southeast community projects because we have three projects. one is the biosolids. this project that we talked about, and then 1550 evidence and how we are approaching all

of those projects together of making sure that we look at the environmental justice portion of it. we also look at how we are engaging the community, and how we are engaging the local businesses. we are trying to coordinate everything. they are all competing for resources in the community. we are going to make a presentation on how we are trying to maximize efficiency of trying to utilize the community in the local businesses there. and then we will come back and talk about the biosolids. the one advantage of the biosolids is we are bidding out some of the early packages. the major ones we are getting prices and we are looking at what the costs are. we are trying to look outweighs, you know, we can minimize the trends we are seeing now. that is something we are moving forward and will present to you what we are seeing as far as

trends and stuff. i just wanted to point that out. >> have a question. i probably should've asked him, but i'm sure you know. when you talk about a new screening design, you are talking about the design of the plant not necessarily what you are putting into do the screening? >> yeah. >> plant design? >> ya, is that what you are referring to? >> am talking about the facility itself. it was on one of the slides and he said there was going to be, the screening design was going to be more efficient. i was wondering if the design of the plant itself or what were we going to use to do the screeni

screening? >> yeah. the screening efficiencies based on the equipment selected and i believe the equipment so liked it was pilot tested to make sure the approval rates were in line with what we were expecting around 90%. we tested based on the influent that comes into our headworks facilities through pilot testing to make sure which perform and we have recommended product that we selected and we are basing our design on. >> while we were at west tech i think we saw what you had chosen. i just wanted to know, that's going to be really amazing. i also wanted to add a little something that would be good to get. you could see what was going on because they had cameras, they had lights. i mean, i don't know how expensive they are. at least if we had one, with the

cameras, so we could see what was going on while things were happening. if we only had one, when things do happen if it's another one we would kind of nowhere. i just wanted to put in a pitch. i'm sorry. i mean, it really made a lot of sense. as we look at money. if you wait later on, then it's going to be more expensive. if we were just to get one, that one could tell us what was happening with all of the other ones. it's an idea. >> thank you. >> all right. the next item is the update of the development of the stormwater components of the sewer system chart. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is aaron franks i'm the administrator, i'm here to update you on the development of the stormwater component of the sewer service charge. >> we are going to start off with a little bit of background about how we got here today.

give you a quick update on the current work we are doing and then finish with the next steps that will be coming to you in the future. >> as you know we have a combined sewer system here in san francisco that manages sanitary sewage and stormwater runoff. far quite a few years now, the rates team has been looking at how we can redesign our rates to better reflect our combined sewer system. a rate study in 2018 calculated 27% of our total waste water costs is related to managing stormwater runoff during wet weather events. right now our existing customers are paying for all of those costs through their sanitary sewer service charge. that is currently based on the meter on water usage that comes into your building. what our prior rate consultants have recommended, and the rate study was we should actually separate out our sewer service charge so we have a stormwater component and a sanitary sewerage component.

utilities are doing across the country. we have been doing some work since sent to figure out how we can implement this change. >> this is a pretty big rollout. it will require a lot of internal and external work. what we decided on in the package which gives four years of retail rates we will do a phased approach. what we implemented then, and is currently in place, is the sewer service charge for unmetered property. the idea is that there are certain properties within the city of san francisco, vacant lots, parking lots, they have stormwater runoff when there is a rainstorm. they are not currently paying for anything because they do not have water service. what we did is we took our existing sewer rates and calculated what the average existing customer is paying right now for stormwater runoff. we decided to charge these unmetered properties for their share of the cost they are imposing on our system.

the other big thing we put into place is a grant program that is going to provide private customers with money to install green infrastructure that they will put on their properties to manage stormwater runoff. this is one of the big lessons learned. this grant program really comes into play when the full charges rolled out, because people who have installed infrastructure and stormwater management on our reducing their burden on the system will get a credit on their bill and the same way if you conserve water you don't pay as much for your water bill. what we are gearing up now to do that we are planning to roll out in 2022 which is at the beginning of our next big package is the phase-in of the stormwater cost allocation. this is something we want to phase in over time although this change does not make the puc. there customers especially ones that own a lot of property in the city whose bills go up. we are planning to phase this

and slowly over time. also planning to roll out the credit program that i mentioned. any customers and the city who have installed stormwater management. whether they received a grant, whether they just really care about infrastructure and did it on they will receive a credit on their bill that recognizes the lower costs that we have incurred to manage the stormwater from their properties. >> a little bit about what our current work is doing. we are getting ready to issue a request for proposals for a consultant to have a database that will connect to our customer service and billing system. what i put here is a screenshot from the city of philadelphia. they have hundreds of these if you just start googling. you can find quite a few. what it does is it lets customers scroll into their particular property and look at what we have measured for impervious services. it is things that cause stormwater runoff.

that is what the charge will be based on. this database is going to connect to our customer service billing system. it's a pretty big infrastructure and we need to make sure that we get the billing right. that is a very important thing we have to focus on. it's also a great tool to connect with customers. it communicates what their charges based on. some of the things we are looking at is letting customers make make appeals if they think their information is inaccurate and the system. or potentially apply for credit right through that. that is something we are excited about rolling out over the next few years. gis is geographic information system. google maps is gis. it is just the idea of databases that are on a map. you can click on a restaurant, you know pops up with a phone number, the address, the star rating. that is a gis database. this will be the same thing except it will tell you about your stormwater runoff instead

of what your star rating is. >> the other big where we are trying to work on is our outreach. this is a change and we recognize it is not something that most san franciscans think about every day, there sewer systems. we are really doing this in a lot of ways as an opportunity to communicate with our customers about what they are currently paying for with their sewer service charge. right now our communications team is working to get some clear messaging on key talking points about here is what you currently pay for. here's how it is going to impact you. we are also identifying the customers the bill will go up as a result of this change. we are trying to reach out to them right now. we give them warning ahead of time before we roll the charge out in 2022. we also connect them to our grant program and encourage them to apply for those grants which if they installed stormwater management will reduce the bill on the long run. i know we have had a couple of

in the commission from the school district. we are meeting with them and we are excited to work with a lot of our partners both governmental and private to think about how we can help them. >> can you give us a couple of examples of highly impacted customers that it is going to affect? >> absolutely. it is mostly people with large amounts of what we call impervious surface which is asphalt and roofs. the school district, because i mentioned a lot of schools within san francisco are essentially parking lots on they own a lot of land. that is one of the ones we are concerned about. some of the others we have seen and other cities that have had an impact, churches we focus on, because they do often have large parking lots. we want to reach out to the faith based community. it is large and physical land owners are the biggest. we are developing a full list of who all of those people are. so we can make sure we reach them all. the other thing we want to make

sure, like i mentioned we use this as an opportunity to connect with all of our ratepayers to let them know about our combined sewer system. it is a huge benefit we have here in san francisco, for public health and the environment, that we do capture and treat stormwater runoff. having a line item on the bill that informs our customers about that and also connects them to what the cost of that performance that they are getting we think is a great opportunity. we want to think a lot about how we can connect with community groups and use this as a way to inform them about our great wo work. >> what is spur and what is. the public is looking at this and it says leverage existing storm wattage management. who are these people? >> thank you. we should be better about acronyms. spur is in urban planning group who is a big supporter of green

infrastructure and other environmentally friendly advocacy around the city. they have been advocating for us having a stormwater management charge and for almost decade now. they have a paper they publish quite a while back and they have been a big proponent of this. so i know they would be interested. the citizens advisory committee is a body that sfpuc runs. there is various members some of whom are environmental activists. quite a few years back, we presented to them on a tentative idea about doing the stormwater charge. they said they would like you to go forward. we want to go back to the people who have said they want us to do this and get their feedback, because we know they are very interested. >> that certainly does not mean that you are not going to reach out to neighborhood groups? that is why this concerns me. that we kind of point to these people, the rest of the people

may not have even known about it or even had a chance. may be they would have been supported if they had known. it may be a little bit much to put out people, you know, like that without people knowing who and what these people are. because, you know, maybe they are saying okay, they wanted it, let them pay for it. it could be that. it's a consideration. >> i think, you know, based on earlier conversations we were talking about focus groups and trying to get, you know -- >> maybe we should say that instead of -- >> ore, include. >> that is great feedback. something i am very proud of with all of our rate studies is when we do roll out our rates packages we do a really large amount of outreach to community organizations and nonprofits business associations and offer

any one of the city who will listen to us talk about rates, we will come talk to them. we are working with our communications team right now to think about how early can we start talking to people about the specific issue and what is appropriate. very open to your input on that. you will next hear about the contract award for the stormwater database we are hoping to release that request for proposal this fall. we are going to be, as part of the budget proposal adding some positions to administer these credit and grant programs going forward. and then our rate study which is per the charter requirements conducted by an independent consultant rolling out rates in 2022. the adoption of those rates will happen in spring of 2022. it will be before the commission during that entire rate study. having a periodic updates on this and other rate topics.

>> so we already pay stormwater but it is integrated in another charge? >> right. in your wastewater charge that you pay right now, your sewer service charge retake the meter water usage multiply that for -- by a flow factor and that is the volume of waste water that you billed for. what that covers is all of our operating expenses including for the stormwater runoff. >> it is already there? >> yes. >> however, we are going to be paying more for this stormwater once you take it out of where it has been hidden all this time? >> so, individual ratepayers may pay more. you might, my favorite example is a big box store it has one toilet, but a huge parking lot. right now, it's a waste water bill is very low because it has no water usage. however, it does generate a whole lot of stormwater runoff

so it is costing the p.u.c. a fairly significant amount paid for customers like that their bill may two other customers, we think for the average customer in san francisco, the change is not going to make a big difference. for the p.u.c. overall, we are not collecting more money. we are just trying to reallocate the way we collect our money to make sure it is more fair. 1020 thank you. >> thank you. >> thank you very much. i do know spur, who we were talking about did a report, it has been some years now, i don't know if it's been updated. maybe that is something for our commission secretary that could be distributed to the commissioners for some background reading. it is a complex issue and i feel like they did a pretty good job. at least in summarizing a complaint -- explain them. this is going and we need as

much background information as we can get. it would be helpful. >> just to let you know, when we did the last rates we made a decision to customers who do not receive water bills to give them a stormwater bill. we've been somewhat successful. that was the first phase we figure it will take time to get there. we will make sure we redistribute this spur paper. then we will work with all of the groups i may become back and do another presentation on how we plan to roll it out from just a communication standpoint. >> thank you. i also want to say. if we can send that out, that is

good. i want to come as a former member of spur, even though it is a premier think tank in san francisco when it comes to urban policy around transportation, energy and what have you. it is also, i want to make sure everybody knows, it is also that takes the positions on policy. it isn't like a standalone ivory tower intelligent group. it also date -- it does policy position. when we digest the good stuff that they are giving us, that we keep that in perspective, too. >> thank you very much. also, the current magazine, that is really a great source of magazine. people do read it.

they don't always read it when they get it, but at coffee or something they read it. that is something for us to start looking at as well as anybody else's paper that you guys do a very good job of doing that. maybe that is something we can start talking about in some way. >> great. any public comment on this item. >> the next item is water planning system update. steve ritchie. >> good afternoon, commissioners. steve ritchie assistant general manager for water. i would like to provide an update on the water supply planning efforts we are engaged in with the commission added to the capital budget this year, $20 million to get moving on water supply planning for various purposes. i'm going to cover today, our level of service as they were adopted in 2,008 that were operated under.

we talked about water supply playing priorities and specific goals for the water supply planning effort. about specific projects that we are going to be working on. on the planning structure. there is also a memo with information sheets on the individual projects included in that as well. first, the level of service goals and objectives. the first is for water supply which is to meet customer water needs in non- drought and drought periods. water demand was 265 million gallons per day for retail and wholesale customers during non- drought years. dry year delivery needs while limiting rationing to a maximum 20% systemwide reduction during extended droughts. diversifying our supply, during

both periods and improving the use of water sources and drought management. protecting watershed ecosystems a meeting the anticipated meeting requirements for fish and wildlife habitat. these are the guiding principles that the commission adopted back in 2,008. those include meeting existing obligations to existing permanent customers and meeting instream flow requirements. one and two. those are our true obligations.