>> this is the public utilities commission. madam secretary, take the roll, please. [ roll call ]. >> clerk: we have a quorum. before we get started, madam president, i would like to make an announcement. due to the covid-19 emergency and the public health recommendations issued by the san francisco department of health and the governor and the mayor have looked into restrictions on teleconference. this meeting is being held by teleconference and televised. for those of you watching the live stream, be aware there is a lag. on behalf of the commission, i would like to extend our thanks to staff for their assistance

during this meeting. if you wish to make public comment on an item dial 415-655-0001, meeting id 146 7158 0343 pound, pound. you must limit your comments to the topic of the agenda item being discussed unless you are speaking under general public comment. the chair can interrupt and ask you to limit your comment on the agenda item comments. we ask that public comment be made in a civil and respectful manner and refrain from using profanity. driveways your comments to the whole. 8(d) and say award of contract no. hh-1003 r has been removed from this calendar and will be rescheduled to the april 27 meeting. the first order of business is

item 3, approval of the minutes. >> chair: colleagues, any discussion on the minutes? seeing none, madam secretary, public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make comments on item 3 of the minutes, dial 415-655-0001, meeting id 146 7158 0343 pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak, press star 3. you must limit your comments to the agenda item topic discussed. we ask that comments are made in a civil and respectful manner and you refrain from profanity. driveways your remarks to the commission as a whole, not to individual commissioners or

staff. moderator, do we have any callers? >> operator: madam secretary, there are no callers in the queue wishing to comment at this time. >> clerk: thank you very much. item 3 is closed. >> chair: may i have a motion and a second to approve the minutes of march 23 of our regular meeting? >> so moved. >> seconded. >> chair: so moved and seconded. roll call, please. >> clerk: on the minutes of march 23. [ roll call ] >> clerk: we have five ayes. >> chair: thank you. now may i have a motion and a second to approve the minutes of march 23, the special joint

session with the board of supervisors. >> i'll move. >> seconded. >> chair: it's been moved and seconded. roll call, please. [ roll call ] >> clerk: [indiscernible] -- >> chair: that was the meeting minutes for the march 26 special meeting. >> [indiscernible]. >> chair: roll call, please. [ roll call ] >> clerk: you have five ayes.

>> chair: thank you. next item, please. >> clerk: the next order of business is item 4, general public comment. members of the public who may wish to make comments on matters that are pertaining to the commission and not on the agenda dial 415-655-0001, meeting id 146 7158 0343 pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak, press star 3. we ask that public comment be made in a civil and respectful manner and you refrain from using profanity. address your comments to the commission as a whole and not individual commissioners or staff. >> moderator, do we have any callers? >> operator: madam secretary, there are two callers in the queue. first caller, your line is open. >> i am from the san francisco

coalition of neighborhoods [indiscernible] -- written study [indiscernible] -- their thesis is while covering [indiscernible] -- the water saved from evaporation could irrigate 50,000 acres of farm lands. the solar panels could generate 13 gigawatts of electricity each year. [indiscernible] -- thank you.

>> operator: thank you for your comment. next caller, you have two minutes. >> can you hear me now? >> operator: loud and clear. >> great. good afternoon. i just wanted to refer you to my comment letter dated today. sorry, it was a bit late. i hope you got it in the last hour. i just wanted to add briefly that last week at the mta board meeting, one of their members inquired about ways to track requests from members of that body and i suggested using that

p.u.c. advance calendar as a model because i think that would be a fun way to track upcoming requests. i thank the commission secretary for her good work over the years and thought it would be useful. that's all from me on item 4. again, i hope you've looked at my comment letter. >> operator: thank you for your comments. madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. >> clerk: thank you. general public comment on item 4 is closed. >> chair: thank you. next item please. >> clerk: next item is item 5, communications. >> chair: [indiscernible] -- >> commissioners, if i could ask a question on 5(i), the water

supply conditions update. at what point are we going to get [indiscernible], thoughts on the draft and any thoughts you have would be appreciated. >> steve ritchie, general manager for water. at what point do we get nervous? i'm always nervous because we live in california. we are preparing an annual statement of water supply available to the wholesale customers which is something we're required to do by april 15 of each year. and in that, at least in the draft we are looking at [indiscernible] -- we will not fill waterbanks, which is not a good thing. so we are urging people to look

at controlling outdoor irrigation. we are facing the problem of stifling the economic recovery by being too demanding overall particularly for businesses who have been shuttered for a year. we expect to see some rebound of water usage. we've been doing good as a collective community between us and the wholesale customers. we feel good about that. looking around the state, all kind of people are waffling on how bad it is. one thing to note for our system is the state water contractors are only getting 5% of their deliveries. they will be looking to us because they are getting

virtually zero water for the state. we're paying close attention to it and we will be copying the commission on the letter as we send it out to the whole sale customers this week. >> the water pipeline assessment, if there could be a couple of comments about what that really needs. i know we've seen that and the materials we need to make the

possible changes. >> again, steve ritchie. this is an important report for us because there is a lot to goes into the pipelines in the wholesale area and the distribution lines in san francisco and the connections, which is where we start off with how we're dealing with lead service connections, some that exist that we're looking at. we have a few thousand that are galvanized material or unknown material that we have to search out and verify that there is not any lead as part of those. that will take some time, but we're doing well controlling lead in the city. also there we talk about the replacement rate of mains. we usually do about 12 miles per

year. we're looking at ways we can potentially accelerate that and maybe if we can't get beyond that, we can settle for that amount. that's on our radar screen. with the transmission system, we're doing a lot of work inspecting and repairing pipes which were the left behinds from the wissip program, which focused on a number of particular segments. many were untouched. we're doing inspections on those and making improvements. one big thing was to complete the pipelines to the san andreas. in 2015 or 2016 we had a major transmission line break in san bruno. we replaced a lot of that

pipeline that was in desperate need of repair. a lot of different things that are going on throughout the system. we got behind on these reports and did 18 months of reporting on this to make sure we caught up with up-to-date information to the commission. >> thank you. and i don't want to pigeonhole you in any words, but this fits under the general umbrella of maintenance as opposed to direct relationships or what have you, right? this is just an ongoing look at maintaining the entire system. is that a relatively fair way of -- >> that's a fair way to describe it. >> if you could go into a comment or two. >> that is a fair way of

describing it, yes. >> thank you. >> chair: any further discussion? >> madam chair, i also wanted to acknowledge the [indiscernible] that was produced by the staff showing the distribution of the high-efficiency toilets and i found that informative. >> thank you. >> that was my observation, you can see a lot of positives have been made. i think other valuable observations there was that there was a focus on the area.

you're correct, every street will have 10 or 15 or maybe more thoughts on them. >> chair: thank you. any further comments? seeing none, then madam secretary, public comment, please. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of comment specifically on item 5, communications, dial 415-655-0001, meeting i.d. 146 7158 0343, pound, pound. we ask that public comment be made in a respectful manner and you refrain from using profanity. please address your comments to the commission as a whole and

not an individual member. do we have any callers? >> operator: madam secretary, there are three callers in the queue. first caller, you have two minutes. >> thank you so much. [indiscernible] -- i spoke at your last meeting. i just want to thank the commission for responding to our local community concerns about the berm /* berm that's going to occur on the watershed neighborhoods. we are the primary neighborhood affected by that. i just wanted to say thank you

because when we asked cal fire for public comments they refused, it's only because you interceded that they allowed us to raise this. our only hope is that you, the commission, will listen to our comments and raise -- or if you agree, raise the environmental concerns in this plan. i know there is a claim that this has been in the works for 20 years, but if so why hasn't the most affected neighborhood been consulted even one. our own city council didn't know this was happening until we found out and informed them. there are many things that could be done.

they've done a lot to create a wonderful fire break. the idea that all open space next to homes should be burned is not reasonable, it's not reasonable. i'm asking you all, please, listen to the environmental concerns we're talking about. cal fire is setting the stage to ignore our concerns, but you are the landlords. thank you so much. >> operator: next caller, you have two minutes. >> thank you, commission. i'm also calling about the prescribed burn on the peninsula watershed. i first want to thank you for intervening to get cal fire to extend the public comment period because they had denied us and

we know that it was your intervention that got us two weeks. despite the staff report, residents have fundamental concerns that have not been concerned. we question whether the burn is even necessary. cal fire has not addressed our comments so we rely on you. the own staff report looks at the huge fuel load of the abutting homes. all along the shared property line are dense eucalyptus. there are hedges so high you can't see the homes. why does the report ignore this? in a fire situation your best

defense is home hardening. the real hazard is the elephant in the room, the fuel in the homes. i argue that we, sfpuc and the residents, will be set up as a burn site. please don't fall for this red herring. i urge you to question the many flawed assumptions in this plan and the failure to consider any alternatives. thank you again for being such great neighbors. >> operator: thank you for your comments. secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. >> clerk: thank you. public comment on item 5,

communications, is closed. >> chair: any further discussion? seeing none, please read the next item. >> clerk: the next item is item 6 report of the general manager. >> thank you. good afternoon, commissioners. the first time we have is on the retail water conservation plan. julie ortiz will present. >> good afternoon, commissioners, staff, and viewers. i am julie ortiz and i manage the water conservation program. i'm going to provide a brief overview of the planning process. you may find it useful to review the draft 2020 conservation plan. this is for the retail systems.

next slide, please. we have had a comprehensive retail conservation program since the 1990s. we run it rain or shine, not just in dry periods. our program now includes a mix of incentives, tools to help our customers save water as well as mandates. we draw on many resources and our own expertise to determine the next program and it is data and feasibility that drive our decisions and not budget alone. the code has contributed to the population decline. since 2005, per person water use has increased.

we have the lowest per capita water use of 42 gallons for indoor and outdoor and this is projected to increase by 2035. we have an organized process for updating our program. we look at a wide range of measures, conducting market research, analyzing data such as customer water use and customer participation in our past measures and we use forecast tools, that includes a model that estimates water savings. we monitor and adjust our conservation program yearly, but every five years we take a deep dive and monitor and evaluate. since 2005 when we developed our

first conservation potential study and model, we have evaluated over 80 different measures and implemented many of these. we don't monitor water savings for all of the programs. our program includes a number of free speech -- outreach programs. we determine what measures are best for savings opportunities. these aren't limited to water savings, costs, is there a market for the measure, how feasible is it, would there be research benefit to it and customer interest. every five years we voluntarily prepare a conservation plan. we do this in sync with when we need to prepare the urban water

management plan. you're going to hear more about that during item 11 today. this includes past current and planned measures and the estimated water savings cost and effect on demand from those. we're able to estimate what our program will be over the next five years, although we do have it running 2045 and the plan talks about it. the draft plan is available on our website at www.sfpuc.org/savewater. though the program has provided extensive water saving, as this graphic shows, you can see some of the highlights for the past

10 years. moving forward we'll continue to build on these accomplishments. this slide lists our current conservation measures and those we're going to implement over the next plan. the plan includes estimated water savings for those that we model. this is my last slide. this slide shows the estimated cumulated water savings from the conservation program between 2005 and 2045. active savings are from the measures that we offer in our program and passive savings are from plumbing code and mandate. cumulative we estimate over 86,000 acre feet and future of over 117,000 acre feet. for viewers one acre feet equals

about 326,000 gallons or enough water to cover the size of a football field. and a san francisco house uses 1/8 of an acre of water a year or less. the measures are increasingly credited to the plumbing code. the overall cumulative savings grow. the conservation plan includes more detail on estimated savings and breaks this down by customer sector and measure. that concludes my presentation. i will take any questions. >> i had a question. thank you so much for your presentation. one question i have for you is

on the active savings side, are you accounting for the efforts of the individuals tapping into the incentives you're providing or are those falling under the passive measure? >> those are under passive. if they're doing a natural replacement and we do estimate that over time. the active measures are what the p.u.c. offers as education or assistance services. receive is not only just changing plumbing, but as we become better at building efficient appliances and fixtures and the next generation of things comes available. as official standards increase on common fixtures that

reflected. >> clerk: those who want to make public comment on item 6(a), the 2020 retail water conservation plan dial 415-655-0001, i.d. 146 7158 0343 pound, pound. we ask that public comment be made in a respectful manner and refrain from profanity.

please address your comments to the whole and not an individual commissioner or staff member. mr. moderator, do we have callers? >> operator: madam secretary, there is one caller in the queue. you have two minutes. >> i'd like to commend staff for a very good report and a nice presentation. there is a lot to be proud of and sfpuc is a national leader on water conservation. congratulations on that. this is the first meeting since we had the water supply and demand workshop on the 26th. thank you for the opportunity to participate. we felt it was really constructive. the feedback i was hearing from environmental fishing groups was that it was a great opportunity

to share information and there is a real eagerness to move forward. thanks for that. a lot of great stuff in this report and i think staff did a good job presenting it. the one thing i noticed is something that isn't great news, at least to me, an expectation that the population of san francisco is going to grow to 1,250,000 people. we just assumed that population growth was the norm. i remember when my parents were reading in the paper that the human population reached 4 billion and they were nervous about that. in my lifetime, the population of san francisco and the bay area has doubled.

we are looking at more jobs in the bay area. for those with an opinion, 85% make their quality of life worse. there is a lot of pressure to not limit jobs. that's something we have to address. there was an interesting article -- >> operator: your time has expired. madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. >> clerk: public comment on item 6(a) is closed. >> the next item is the wastewater enterprise racial equity plan. this is one of a number of

presentations we will be doing. >> do we have the presentation, please? i'm greg norby and it is my privilege to be leading off our presentation today and to share with you the important work done by the racial equity team. i'm pleased to share with you on an area of our entry that is overdue for change similar to so much of american society. on a professional note, those of you who work with me know i'm all about the equity racial framework. our plan aligns with this

utility leadership and management framework. recognizing and respecting who we serve, making unbiased decisions on who we hire, and embracing the collective talent and energy of our diverse staff will inform everything that we do. progress on the racial equity front equals progress on utility leadership, management, and value to our service community. i find this alliance encouraging because racial equity is not something separate that we lay on top of our core work, rather it needs to be embedded with everything we do. i want to hand it off to chris mcdaniels, an early internal leader for the public utilities in our racial equity work.

>> even when i was invited in to this project, i had to take a few steps back. the work is important and i needed to center myself, contain my frustration and focus on what i could give as a value to the process. i also needed to decide whether i believed in the process and progress that the agency made. the conversations can be difficult. as noted in our previous slide, we started this work ahead of the directive and it was at a time when intentions in the

community and nation were high and there were many open wounds that ran deep. moreover, people manage their differences on different levels. opening ourself up to a food gate of oppression and repression and we had to ask ourselves if we were challenged by what we learned. we have all hands-on meetings which are training environments and not a place to share but to learn. we diversified our approach to meet folks where they were in the areas they actually worked.

we led with a listening ear building trust with our team. i would like to pass off to our senior analyst to highlight our racial equity plan highlights and priorities. thank you. [indiscernible] -- that you're hearing from today to draft the wastewater racial equity plan. i do want to note that all of the wastewater racial equity plans are early drafts and living documents. today we're going to focus on three of the top priorities that we're working to make significant progress on this year, many of which have already been initiated.

we wanted to identify our top priorities in order to incorporate them into the two-year wastewater plan to highlight the importance of this work. these top priorities are diversity in recruitment and barrier removal in hiring and promotion, develop internal support systems, and developing an intentional culture committed to inclusion and belonging. this is one of the ways we brought together the issues raised by staff. you're going to hear a little more of these three areas of work. >> this shows the hiring efforts

for the wastewater equity action plan. we are doing many things already and we will continue. for example, fostering relationships with non-tradition outlets, such as black, indigenous, and people of color networks and bay work. bay work is a collaborative of 43 utilities focused on workforce issues. we can post on social media platforms. we can brainstorm with the racial equity and diversion committee for recruitment strategy. wastewater enterprise has a goal to broaden the minimum qualifications for a number of entry-level job classes. some examples of this would include looking closely at the educational requirements, specific qualifying experience, and the amount of time in those

qualifying experiences. next you will hear from our urban watershed planning division manager. >> this is something we're calling the internal mentorship committee. the idea arose from an observation that staff across the enterprise were [indiscernible] but wouldn't have access to mentorship opportunities or ways to gain a bigger picture of you where they could go next. this challenge called more acute for our black, indigenous, people of color workers.

with that in mind, the goal of the committee is to connect that from across the enterprise with different members of management so it can be cross-functional. folks can explore areas that are different from their area. we would also connect them with members from the black phoenix alliance. to show our commitment that we create charter documents, mission and key metrics, this is all very nascent and we're working on the structures to be successful. now i'll pass the baton to talk about the wastewater enterprises alliance. >> i'm going to talk about the

step that wastewater is undertaking to create an intentional culture of inclusion in our enterprise. we began to provide feedback on the equity inclusion plan. each month that we meet we try to hear from each other to improve. the alliance has provided input and asked poignant questions around what you've heard today. one of those concerns is career counseling and progression plan. the black phoenix alliance is open to anyone and i am the

connect. i'm happy to answer any questions. like most of our initiatives, dedicated resources outside our time is to train and build a measure of success. outside the support that the black phoenix alliance provides, we need to provide better interviews and analysis. some of the micro cultures vary by division and facility. it's going to take an intentional training of all our staff to provide these training benefits to everyone. we are in the process of developing a two-year business

plan to outline the priorities for the next couple of years. to ensure this remains a priority, we are developing an equity goal. we don't have all the answers. we've reached out to all the consultants to provide support and training for staff. this work will help support and inform the work. across all these efforts, our priority is to ensure our efforts with the overall sfpuc strategy. this is happening with active participation in the work group and [indiscernible] -- for now this concludes our presentation

and we welcome any questions you may have. >> i have a comment. >> chair: she's finished so she's open for questions. >> sheena, thank you so much. i guess i just have a question on the slide that was up maybe prior to your presentation that mentioned a couple of unions that have apprenticeship programs. as you know, the neighbor movement represents every type of work that there is in san francisco, in particular infrastructure and construction work. i hope that there is a deep dive talking with the apprenticeship coordinates and the unions that

represent so much of this work. it's quite a dialog and a dive in to move that forward to have success to make sure that folks that do get into the system and do get a good job and are being outreached to have a successful experience. when you go into an apprenticeship program where you work with neighbor and management and you have accountability and support systems and hopefully feel as safe as you can as you make new careers, i really do want to emphasize that's where development really does take place in a concrete, measurable state of california metric type of a program.

if there's anything i can do as a commissioner or not to make sure those connections continue and be advanced, i want to offer that. i know it is on the radar for the department and for this outreach, which we're hearing so wonderfully about. thank you. >> thanks for the work on this. thanks for the presentation. we appreciate all that is going on. the people that i know, anyway, that were talking to us tend to be people that work in the office. a lot of the wastewater activities happen in the field in the treatment centers. are we engaging folks in the same ways or do we have to have different strategies. how does that work? i think sheena mentioned micro climates. how does that work?

>> this is greg. we had a little glitch at the beginning of our presentation. we intended to have chris mcdaniel speak to that point. that was an early focus of chris' and that is notable for the rest of the team at wastewater enterprise. that is where we started early on. when this whole effort began, particularly chris took a leadership role in outreach to our leadership staff. i see chris is on, so i will hand off and let him answer your questions. >> good afternoon, commissioners. sorry for that glitch at the beginning. when george floyd was murdered, my staff, my father, and i were devastated. we had many questions, but no answers. at work i called for an all staff meeting just to let the front-line staff express their feelings. we got limited feedback because

some of the employees in a group didn't feel very comfortable speaking. so then i tried a different approach. i got everyone's cellphones and checked in with their families and if they had any racial equity concerns. wow, did i get the feedback then and so much so that i needed help from staff. two of my colleagues offered me assistance to sort out the problems and to develop plans to fix them. now we have a foundation that can -- we can build on. the most important thing we did in this time is we developed a communication structure from the

front-line folks all the way to the sfpuc executive team. that was the most important thing we did in this process. yes, we have a conduit so to speak between the front-line folks and the executive management team. the black phoenix alliance reports up to greg. from there, we report up to masud and justine. sorry for the glitch at the beginning of the presentation.

[all talking at once] -- >> after the commissioner, i have one more comment. >> i want to thank the staff for a great presentation. this is a big undertaking and i appreciate to see what you're doing. one question i have is came up with the mentorship -- actually, reaching a point in their career without a path forward.

i wonder if there are ways to collaborate as people move around from enterprise to enterprise. obviously it's water and wastewater and even with energy, the future is going to be much less siloed. i think this might be the path to train this new generation of people who can speak the three languages and see the synergies and go beyond the silos and potentially be the future leaders of this movement. i'm wondering if there are any efforts going on at the management level or other levels to create this action? is it -- >> to my knowledge, there is not

a specific process for that. there is a base amount of rotation in terms of staff that seek positions across the enterprises on a fairly regular basis. you get that cross-organizational opportunity there. to your more specific point in a more structured and intentional manner, i don't think we have something like that in place. i will defer to others to add anything further. we started bhooiped behind the scenes with staff to determine where they will go. we are updating our field staff

and how do they get to the next stop or position. so this was part of our early work. we have declared victory on one staff member already. he was a laborer and now he's a service worker. he's extremely happy about that promotion. we want to continue that effort. we have momentum and our plans are to continue creating an employment path in our group so folks can say, hey, if i do this, that, and the other, i can get the next positions up. we have a succession plan and we're happy about it. >> i think justine and masud are working on it because they got a

lot of input from front-line staff about how to move up. i do think we have a lot of movement on this. >> president, thank you. there are some of these things happening. in my previous comments, that we as organizers move to train into the jobs to be successful, in particular in our department. i felt like i was just talking to myself. i would like to have, whether greg or chris or somebody to address my question in terms of

maybe just a little bit more depth about the folks in the labor unions that are actually engaged in making sure that this wonderful program will continue to be successful about i the folks that have put together the programs for good wages and success. if someone could comment on the record on that, i would appreciate that. >> chair: we have to remember it does definitely take a village and our unions are one of the most important parts of that village. we have engaged with the labor unions. i have relationships going back.

we need young people prepared to come in as apprentices. commissioner, you bring up a good point on something i'm thinking about. there is a limited amount of time to expose people to the different sectors of our business and finding where they want to land and growing more. chris is right, we need to have a more active program to create career pathways for our employees, ladders that they can see that there is a way for me to go from here to there in the future. we're exploring all of those. you're seeing this plan on racial equity and i hope we'll see more. i hope this is stimulating the

conversation going forward because we're trying to change things in a meaningful way. it thank you for your support on that, commissioners. >> chair: any further comments? let's open up to public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who want to make public comment on 6(b), the wastewater enterprise racial equity plan dial 415-655-0001, 146 7158 0343 pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak, press star 3. we ask that you make comments in a respectful manner and refrain from profanity. make your comments to the commission as a whole and not individual commissioners or staff. >> chair: mr. moderator, do we have any callers?

>> operator: madam secretary, there are no callers wishing to make comments. >> clerk: thank you. item 6(b) is closed. >> that concludes my report for this meeting. thank you for your work and the ideas that we are coming up with has been great. thank you so much. madam secretary, next item, please. >> clerk: the next order of business is item 7, new commission business. >> chair: yes. >> i found the unmute button. i would like to request a meeting to follow up on the

workshops that we've had. we've had three of them. a lot of issues came up and need further attention. i want to make sure we proceed in an orderly and intentional way with fixed timelines on it so we don't just linger talking about stuff, but proceed through. i would propose two agenda items. one would be an opportunity for commissioners to give thoughts and comments from the three work shoeps that they've had. for staff to propose to us a series of actions with the issues raised. i saw items of predator control, the drought demand dynamics, climate change impacts on water

supply, design drought, reliability goals and rationing plan and there's probably more. some of those may require or merit an additional workshop. others may be best addressed in a different forum, putting together a committee or some panel of experts or something to deal with individual issues. i would like staff to put some thought into that with input from the commission and come back with a plan on how we start dealing with those various issue s. >> chair: commissioner, are you thinking the next meeting or do we have until may? what's your timeline? >> i would like to see it at the next meeting.

you have to be prepared for the press on time. we've put some thought into it. if it has to go one meeting beyond would be okay. all of this is of the essence. >> chair: absolutely. if we start at the next meeting, we can conclude at the following meeting. it doesn't have to be all one day. i think that's excellent. commissioner harrington, did you have something? >> i think the commissioner was trying to respond to the comments. >> if we can schedule the opportunity for axising with the commissioners at the next

meeting to provide that input so we can prepare a proper response to you, i think that would be actually a path to complete what you're requesting. >> chair: thank you. >> thank you, commissioner, for saying what you did and particularly the first piece because i felt like i wanted to respond after the last workshop that we had. it felt awkward because i felt like i was running in place with the comments. it would have been better on a commission basis to find out what we thought was happening and the back and forth and the whole context of what these workshops are when commissioner

harrington along with you presented this forum that we've been engaging on. i think that's a great idea and i can be more prepared to give my assessment. i really appreciate that first comment to give us the space to respond to what we are engaging in. thank you. >> what i was trying to say is i agree with everything going on and thank you very much for following up because you're right, we have to keep moving on this. on friday we will have another workshop. i know these workshops take a huge amount of time from the staff so i appreciate the huge effort. as we have them and get educated, then something has to happen. this is slow and makes sense to

me. maybe as a discussion in the future we can say does the workshop mechanism work for us? are there better ways to do it. i appreciate the work and tune in on friday. >> chair: it seems to be that our partners are feeling pretty good about the workshop as well. madam secretary, will you open up to public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who want to make public comment on item 7 new commission business dial 415-655-0001, 146 7158 0343 pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak press star 3. we ask that public comment be made in a civil and respectful manner and you refrain from the

use of profanity. address your comments to the commission as a whole and not individual commissioners or staff. do we have any callers? >> operator: there are no callers in the queue at this time. >> clerk: public comment on item 7 is closed. >> chair: next item. >> clerk: the next order of business is consent calendar. all matters listed hereunder constitute a consent calendar are considered to be routine by the san francisco public utilities commission and will be acted upon by a single vote of the commission. there will be no separate discussion of these items unless a member of the commission or the public so requests, in which event the matter will be removed from the calendar and considered as a separate item. as i noted at the beginning of the meeting, item 8(d) which is

award of contract no. hh-1003 r will be removed and rescheduled for april 27. >> chair: any discussion on the removal or the items? seeing none, madam secretary, please, public comment. >> clerk: members of the comment who wish to make 10 minutes of public comment on item 8, the consent calendar dial 415-655-0001, 146 7158 0343 pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak, press star 3. please note you must limit your comments to the topic of the agenda being discussed and remind you if you do not stay on the item, the chair can interrupt and ask you to limit your comments to the topic. please make comments in a civil and respectful manner and

refrain from profanity. please address your comments to the committee as a whole and not an individual commissioner or staff member. are there any callers? >> operator: no callers. >> clerk: item 8 public comment is closed. >> chair: may i have a motion and a second to approve the consent calendar? >> so moved. >> seconded. >> modification to the motion that everything on the consent calendar except 8(d). >> chair: may i have a motion to approve everything on the consent calendar except 8(d). >> so moved. >> chair: roll call, please. >> clerk: on 8 excluding 8(d).

[ roll call ]. >> chair: next item. >> clerk: is item 9 approve program rules for the customer affordability and arrearage management plan pilot program and authorize the general manager to implement the pilot program which will provide up to 150 low-income sfpuc residential water and wastewater customers residing in the 94112, 94124, and 94134 zip codes, who have accrued high levels of arrearages on their sfpuc accounts, with a combination of rate discounts and/or debt relief, with a not-to-exceed program budget of $110,000 from sfpuc funds >> i am here with my colleague to talk about the customer affordability and arrearage management plan pilot program, known as the camppp program. in the beginning stages of the

economic crisis caused by the pandemic, we noticed increasing arrears and listed the best ways to address them, which is how this pilot program came to be. we're going to give you a lot of data in this presentation, but we wanted to begin in how this impacts real people in their real lives. in the pilot process, we addressed the arrears. one of those customers was evelyn, whose name we changed. evelyn is a san francisco native who is also the primary wage earner in her multi-generational household. she has been struggling to afford her bills, including water and wastewater which resulted in $2,000 of arrears.

over the course of developing this pilot, we discovered that this is not unique to evelyn. the arrears have increased to $1,043 by the end of february 2021. over the same time frame in which the delinquency has grown by 216% from 163 accounts at the beginning of the pandemic to 4,320 accounts in february of 2021. additionally, the number of payment plans have decreased during this time frame. to recap, not only are there more customers with higher arrears, but the payment plans

are being underutilized. one other factor is there are disproportionately high rates of debt [indiscernible] -- specifically in the area codes listed here. these parts of the city have the highest unemployment in the pandemic. we've developed a pilot program to test the efficacy and interventions intended to alleviate some of the systemic inequalities and to address the risks that are posed to sfpuc's

financial sustainability. >> the purpose of this pilot is to provide support to customers who have accrued burdensome arrears in these high-needs zip codes as described. we also intend to measure the impact of bill discounts on payment behavior for customers who accrued debt. we also want to measure the effect of debt relief as an incentive. all of this is so we can better understand the efficacy of different interventions. finally, as mentioned, through the pilot, we hope to ensure that there are additional tools to help customers manage arrears.

in this pilot we will have three groups of customers that will receive support. the first group is the status quo group or the placebo group. they will receive 15% off the water bill and 35% off the suer bill. the second group, group b, will receive deeper discounts and these are people who we anticipate may be likely to re-engage making payments if their bills are right-sized for their financial circumstances. for customers between 40 and 80% of area median income, they will receive a 50% discount on their water bill, 50% off their sewer bill. for our lowest-income customers,

they will receive a 90% discount off their water bill and a 90% discount off their sewer bill. and this third group will receive the discounts i just described. furthermore, at the beginning of the pilot, we will notify them if they make six payments on those discounted bills, we will be able to forgive up to $1,000 of their accrued debt. our hypothesis is deeper discounts plus debt relief will be the most effective intervention, but this pilot and the data we gather will allow us to maximize our resources by being able to assess them. as i mentioned, groups b and c

will get the deeper discounts in accordance with their income. we're excited to test the efficacy of a tiered income structure to right size bills in accordance with incomes. as i mentioned, the debt relief plan for group c, that funding is coming from funds granted to the treasurer's office of financial empowerment. applicants will be randomly selected via lottery and put into the three groups in an effort to ensure fairness for this pilot. finally we'll note, those customers that are eligible for support but not selected randomly again in that group of 150 pilot customers will still receive the emergency customer

discount program discount levels if they are deemed eligible. we are hoping to help customers engage with this group in an equitable way. we know that for many of our customers it's a lifelong relationship with the sfpuc. success also means that customers will report a more positive relationship with the sfpuc and increased well-being because of the financial relief.

our customer services bureau will report this as sustainable, scaleable, and a valuable tool to help future customers to avoid shut off. we know that customers are facing really tough choices, so we're eager to offer our resources to offer support and scale the most effective strategy. thank you so much. >> thank you. colleagues, any questions or comments in. >> thank you so much for your great presentation. a very interesting program. i appreciate the time you took to put together such a complex and thoughtful pilot program together. two questions. one, do we know how many of these people had problems before we hit the pandemic? maybe you mentioned this and i

missed it. i apologize. do we know that that was due to a leak or something that happened where all of a sudden they went from $2,000 to $500 a month and all of a sudden they just couldn't afford it anymore. the second thing is i wonder and this is a suggestion and it might not be practical. as you're engaging with these people, and i don't know if they are renters or homeowners. i wonder if there is an opportunity to improve their water use. do they have efficient appliances. i wonder if it does better to invest in those in the long run.

those are my two questions. thank you. >> thank you for those questions and comments. i'll start and hand off to the team to chime in. with regards to your first question, i think we do do have a sense of the issue. i think part of how we think about this issue is there is a sector of customers, where they are perhaps not paying now and for some of the pandemic. we may not see the crisis. i believe for many of our customers, they are making very difficult decisions and trade offs to pay their water bill. for us, we see them paying, but cannot see the hidden cost for them. all that to say, we can follow

up on the pre-pandemic scale of the challenge. certainly there is alignment in the neighborhoods where we saw high rates of shutoff. the highest rates were in some of the listed codes. i think we've seen something striking since the shut off moratorium, this striking arrears. that is a result of the financial crisis our customers are facing. to your question as well on do we have a sense of why that may be the case. i certainly think that we hear from customers that leaks are a

challenge and i know that customer services worked closely with customers when leaks are a challenge to have a bill adjustment. we're trying to address the gaps. this is a step forward for our agency to have an additional tool in our toolbox when customers are in distress. i will pause and see if my colleagues want to pause and add to that question. before the pandemic we did have shut off and the customers are finding ways of making a payment

arrangement. during the pandemic we have a lot of customers who are unemployed and the whole family is at home so their water usage has gone up. not only are they unable to pay because of their financial situation, but also they're home all day, the whole family, so the water bills really have gone up. that's why you see that the dollar amount has increased. that's one of the reasons. there are other reasons also. >> if i may add on the

importance of conservation. that's front of mind. we could do a better job thinking how to better integrate our amazing colleagues. the water enterprise are experts. we have some coordination with them on the affordability work. we're certainly happy to follow up and engage further with our water conservation colleagues on that. >> chair: i think that's a terrific idea and something that we as a service, if your bill is high, that we go and help you. i think they used to do it. i think kind of an assessment that people can get in their homes and that can certainly be helpful. that's one way of getting into the program if you are willing to do that kind of an assessment.

>> thank you two for your presentation and the work. one of the things that struck me for a long time when we talk about affordability, if we're looking at rate increases and that sort of thing, we talk about a percentage of the a.m.i. and there are so many in this city who earn significantly less than the a.m.i. if you're making $100,000, an increase might not be a circumstance, but if you're making less, it's a real burden. i'm glad to see that you're taking this issue on and i'm glass you're taking it on in an organized way. pilot projects that don't take measurements and report out

aren't pilot projects. this one is and i appreciate you putting out what you're hoping to get out of it in terms of success measures and also what you observe during the project so you can report out and draw conclusions from those. again, thank you for both of those. >> there is supposed to be something related to water as part of the federal recently passed program. any news on that or how we apply or what happens. the second question is this is a great pilot. you mentioned there was 4,300 people in arrears. what about the other 4,000 while this pilot is going on, what's going to happen with them? >> i can perhaps start the answer and hand to others.

certainly we are thinking about those two pieces hand in hand knowing those resources will come from potentially federal or state resources that will help us to scale the interventions, knowing that whatever we do, we want to maximize those resources. that being said, we want to cast a wide net for those in arrears. our communications team is doing a fantastic job to roll out outreach programs that get customers enrolled in the emergency customer assistance program. there are simultaneous efforts. ideally we could extend support if additional funds become

available. i don't know if my colleagues wanted to chime in on this or others from the policy team. >> i'll try and answer your questions on the state and federal fund. yes, we are actively pursuing those funds. there is some question of how they would come to a city like hours because there has been a discussion at the state level in all towns and communities. here we have a pocket of people that are deserving of this benefit and we're lobbying at the state and local level. we will have another item to extend our program into next year and that's going to be coming to you for approval as well in the near future. >> also, is there any look at who these people are? especially in the bay view, you

have a lot of older homeowners and they're basically making it anyway and someone dies, a husband or a wife, and then the children move back in because we're doing multi-generational. is there any look at who these people are? i know many, a lot of older women, who are really struggling with this question. >> certainly in this effort we want to absolutely balance our desire to gather as much data as possible and do so in a trauma and community-informed way so we aren't coming in as government staff wanting to try into people's lives, hopefully in a respectful manner hear from people about their circumstances and what's happening in their lives, their circumstances and

financial circumstances to best support them. i think we are expecting in a respectful way to hear from residents through this process and surveys through that sort of an engagement. unfortunately our data is limited beyond what we may be able to gather and in the pilot we have some limited data. always eager to think through ways we might engage with our customers. >> it seems like we might be specific and have people do a contact, either a call or a knock on the door. maybe a program with young people doing something. thank you very much. thank you all for this work. it is so important. i'm very proud to be part of an organization and an agency that is doing this work. any other comments or questions, colleagues?

madam secretary, public comment on this item, please. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of public comment specifically on item 9 dial 415-655-0001, 146 7158 0343, pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak, press star 3. please note you must limit your comments to the topic of the agenda item. the chair can interrupt you to limit your comments to the agenda topic. please engage in a civil and respectful manner and limit your comments to the committee as a whole and not individuals. mr. moderator, do we have any callers? >> operator: secretary, there are five callers in the queue.

caller, you have two minutes. >> my name is ted lowenburg. you're talking about really at its core the issue of affordability of our basic utilities, water, power, sewer. the problem that really needs to be conquered is how you get more people that live in the cities and use those services to pay for them. roughly 80% of the people who live in this city don't pay a p.u.c. bill. it's paid by a landlord or a business or a condominium association or things like that what you need to do is look at ways you can increase the denominator from the roughly 70,000 or so that exist today up

to the population level in terms of households that could bring you to 350,000 or 400,000. that's what you need to be looking at long term to make our utilities affordable, otherwise we will dry up the money needed to pay for the water. thank you. >> operator: thank you for your comments. next caller, you have two minute s. >> hello, thank you. [indiscernible] -- sustainability and resilience policy director. i want to thank the commission and the staff for bringing up this really important issue around affordability and bill discounts and an arrear management program. as all of you know, the cost of delivering water is going up and rates are rising in proportion to the income of people who earn

the least. they're the people in the lowest 20th percentile are paying a larger and larger portion of their income for water. this problem is only going to get worst. so it behooves us to think about a strategy allowing those water rates to rise in a way covering their costs while protecting those people who are vulnerable and don't make enough to cover their daily needs. i think in particular an arrears management program is interesting and doing it in this way where the sfpuc will see bill discounts with or without an arrear program is well designed and will be the

impactful. there is a lot of questions about whether or not the programs will work and this pilot program will help move policy forward on this issue. thank you very much. >> operator: thank you for your comments. next caller, i've opened your line. you have two minutes. >> good afternoon an commissioners [indiscernible] -- and chair the power s.f. committee. i'm speaking on my own behalf. [indiscernible] affordability in arrearages [indiscernible] and i've been informed by the work of the commission. thank you for the work in the pandemic and for your support of the camppp pilot.

[indiscernible] focus on clean power, customer affordability, and arrears program [indiscernible] -- i look forward to more affordability programs to make sure that arrearages don't hamper customers' ability to get back. >> operator: thank you for your comments. next caller, you have two minutes. >> hello, commissioners. good afternoon. i'm from the water foundation. i'm calling in to thank you for your exemplary leadership. again, you're setting an industry standard here in your response to this crisis, showing how utilities come up with main

and responsible approaches to dealing with the financial health, equity crises that are hitting so many people right now. the water foundation has been actively working on trying to pull down federal funding for programs like this. as you all know, $500 million funding was put into the last covid package. we are working to get more. that money will be given out in california through a low-income assistance program that we are trying to design with your help. i want to thank you for your support of that. it did pass committee yesterday and is moving on. i think that's an important long-term mechanism to ensure that these types of programs get funding.

i also wanted to echo the success indicators for the program. it's laudable that you're doing it in such a structured way. one measure of success is measuring the accessibility programs. lots of funds end up going into enforcements and collections. in this case we are not if people don't have the money to pay. thank you for your exemplary progressive leadership and we look forward to continue to work with you. >> operator: next caller, your

line is open. you have two minutes. >> can you hear me now? >> operator: loud and clear. >> great. good afternoon. on item 9, first thank you for providing the 10-day prior notice on the sfpuc website of this item. i think it's important to provide that much notice for all rules and regulations. when in doubt, i think we should provide the prior notice to the public and thank you for doing so. along those lines, another item is noticed for the customer payment rules. on this program, i assume that the rate payer impacts do not impact this. as i think i've indicated at prior meetings, we still need a

way to pay sfpuc bills by credit card and over the phone. i'm hoping that that option will be available in the future since it looks like in-person payments just aren't going to be happening going forward. finally, great to hear, not just from staff, but ted lowenberg who i served with, it's very thoughtful and it's great that he's still engaged on these issues. good work. >> operator: thanks for your comments. next caller, you have about to minutes. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm here today not as a member of the citizens advisory committee [indiscernible] and i

just want to say that we worked on affordability for a couple of years now and one thing we learned is this is a problem throughout the day. right now about 12% of households have water debt [indiscernible] because once the state of emergency is lifted, we're going to start seeing shut offs. i thank my water agency sfpuc for acting proactively to investigate solutions and to find ways to address that. while we're getting some relief, the level of debt is approaching $1,250,000,000. i'm really glad that you're working to see what we to if we get the funding and if we don't.

thank you very much and keep up the good work. >> operator: thank you for your comment. madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. >> clerk: public comment on item 9 is closed. >> chair: thank you. may i have a motion and a second to approve this item? >> so moved. >> seconded. >> chair: roll call vote, please. [ roll call ] >> clerk: that's five ayes. >> chair: thank you. the next item, please. >> clerk: the next item is adopt the 2021 revised baseline scope, schedule, and budget for the water enterprise capital improvement program, consisting of 36 projects (25 regional

projects and 11 local projects) within the adopted san francisco public utilities commission 10-year capital plan for fy 2020-21 through fy 2029-30 that have budgets greater than $5 million and are currently active or intended to be initiated within fy 2020-21 or fy 2021-22. >> good evening, commissioners. i'm katie miller, director of water capital programs. that's a hard act to follow. i hope the news i share can equal the fiscal responsibility we've shown in our affordability work. that's very impressive. i'm here today to present an overview of the water enterprise capital improvement program that is proposed for your adoption. this is a subset of capital improvement projects with budgets greater than $5 million within the adopted sfpuc 10-year water enterprise capital plan. these projects replace, rehabilitate, or build facilities for both the regional and the local water system. these projects are needed to meet levels of service goals--

for some background, this capital program was originally approved by this commission in december of 2018. last year you approved the sfpuc 2021-2030 water budget february 11, 2020, and this was adopted by the board of supervisors on october 2nd, 2020. since 2018, the program has consistently forecasted potential changes to scopes, schedules, and budgets to align with requirements. these forecasts were used to update the requested budgets in 2020. and this revised program is consistent with the two-year capital budget and the 10-year capital plan. why this? many large infrastructure programs, including our own

water system improvement program, periodically revise the scope and/or budget to further align with further level of details. our 10-year c.i.p. is a rolling c.i.p. that is updated every two years. rebase lining provides an opportunity to add new projects and to amend reporting on completed projects. we try to follow this. this was delayed by the later adoption of the budget in october 2020 due to covid-19. the project budgets and scheduled forecasts have been consistently reviewed and updated in the quarterly reports and these revised budgets and schedules were included in the water enterprise c.i.p. quarterly report for the second

quarter of this fiscal year. these variances were incorporated into the capital budget and became the basis for this revised baseline. as we developed the updated scopes, schedules, and budgets, we considered resources needed in terms of labor and contracts to successfully complete these projects and deliver this program. there are generally four types of changes to the program. the first is new projects that need approval of a baseline so we can report on their performance. the second is refinement and scope changes. refinements are considered small additional details that is found and spelled out in planning and design. there are only a few projects that had major scope changes in 2018.

updated cost estimates that reflect the higher levels of details. the final category is schedule extensions. probably every project was touched in some way by covid-19 over the past year, but in addition to that we experienced quite a few schedule delays due to resource limitations, due to procurement or labor and resource needs. we've updated our schedules in this baseline and extended them for what we think true resources are available for the next two to five years. this slide shows a comparison of the 2018 water c.i.p. compared with this revised 2021 program. as you can see, the total number

of projects is the same, but there was an increase of 17 projects to 25 and the projects were reduced because they were completed, consolidated, or came out of the reporting cycle because they were considered r & r projects. the total for the regional and the local has increased by a total of $441 million. we have a lot more to manage in the years ahead. our completion date has been extended out considerably. some of this is the dam projects that have longer periods of time. the the caseline for this is 2035. a summary of the changes you'll find in the report is we had eight projects that were completed. we added 17 new projects.

19 new projects from 2019 will be continued and that our budgets are aligned with the 10-year c.i.p. and aligned with our details. i'll go into details on that. for completed projects, these are the eight projects that were completed. there were two in the regional area and four local for a total of $102 million in expenditures. you can see quite a few of those were on the emergency fire-fighting water system. for new projects, these are the 12 new regional projects added for a total of $253 million. that's a considerable number of new projects to juggle and balance. within the local system we're adding five new projects, but

you can see that many are very large. the new c.i.p. headquarters is a budget of $350 million and the emergency fire-fighting system project, these are a consolidation of the seven or eight projects that were in 2018, plus new projects. we consolidated them into new projects of pipelines and pump stations to make it easier to report on and track. those two alone are a combination of the bond funding and over the several years. this is a total of $612 million for the projects. this slide illustrates budget changes. eight projects had an increase of budget, but four projects had a decrease, and one stayed the

same. they had an equal amount of budget increases or decreases, just to give you a magnitude that not everything is increasing. there were increases and decreases. next slide, this is a little bit more of a trend. this is schedule changes. as you can see, 10 of the projects continuing forward have increases of greater than 12 months. i believe you saw that in the last quarterly report that there were schedules extending further into the future. within local it's kind of a mix, some increase and some stay the same. the bay area water conservation

agency gave comments. we received comments from them on april 6 and those comments have been included in your package. we are appreciative of their comments. they are appropriate and we appreciate the review of our document and the program. we're in general agreement with their findings and recommendation. in the near future, we will prepare and submit to you a response letter to addresses their comments. for next steps, today we request for you to adopt this revised base line. following adoption, staff will bring the revised scope, schedule, and budgets into our report. we will continue to review the long-term resource requirements for this program, especially in coordination with the sfpuc's other capital program. and infrastructure will use this data to support the water

enterprise as they begin to compare the 10-year project starting this fall so the projects' funding can be updated as needed. that is the finish of my presentation. i will be happy to answer any of your questions. >> i have a quick question. i assume that all of this will be included as part of the labor management agreement? >> the project labor agreement? >> yes. >> yes. the project labor agreement will be applied to these projects or considered on a case-by-case basis, but typically we include those and that will go for these projects. >> i just wanted that on the record. what do you mean by

case-by-case? size or scope? >> yes, there was one that was smaller in scope or had specialized electrical work. there are cases where we evaluated and consulted with the union and decided that it was okay to not include the project labor agreement. icc get back to you with specific examples if you like. >> if you could. when it comes to some of these changes are aberrations, whatever the changes are, you always do reach out to the affected folks in the labor community regarding this. >> always. then it's rare to not include it. >> thank you very much. thanks, katie. >> any other comments or questions, colleagues? yes. >> i had a question.

on page 15 of your report there is an item called [indiscernible] and other surplus see note 2 which i couldn't find. it says it's deferred, but when you read, it's not deferred, but moved to another place and going up by $112 million. can you talk about what's going on there? >> that was pointed out to be a mistake in the report. see note 2, there is no note 2. we added an addendum at the beginning of your package that points to that mistake. there is no note 2. the potable use and other supplies, i'm not the person to speak to the projects itself, but that's one of our alternative water supply projects that's under water enterprise. and we decided that since that is already reported in their own

quarterly report, that we would take this out of this project and allow that to be recorded in the alternative water supply project report. >> it's not being deferred, but moved someplace else for reporting? >> that's correct. deferred was inappropriately used there. >> thank you . >> i have a question. so you have those two graphs that showed how many projects had an increase in budget, decrease, or hasn't changed. i wonder if you have a similar graph that shows the magnitude of increase or decrease. not just how many have an

increase or decrease, but how much we're talking about. >> absolutely. it's a lot of data. we want to see it broken down. i would be happy to show the increase in budgets. it is because of a major scope change. the millbray lab, it was decided to rebuild the entire facility, that was an increase of $70 or 80 million which was a major scope change. the others about the refinements or escalations, we worked with the department [all talking at once] -- >> thank you. now that you mentioned it with be it would be good to have the

ones that have a change of scope different from the ones that are still on the same scope but two different categories. thank you. >> i'd be happy to address that for you. >> thank you. >> chair: any further discussion? comments? then why don't we open this up to public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of public comment specifically on item 10 dial 415-655-0001, meeting i.d. 146 7158 0343, pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak, press star 3. please note that you must limit your comments to the topic of agenda item being discussed and if you do not stay on the topic, the chair can interrupt and ask you to limit your comments to

the agenda. we ask that you address the commission in a polite and respectful way and not use profanity. mr. moderator, do we have any callers? >> operator: madam secretary, there is one caller in the queue. caller, i've opened your line. you have two minutes to comment on item 10. >> can you hear me now? >> sounds good. >> david fillpow again. i've not looked at this item in detail, but i was wondering and perhaps someone can address my question if this item was presented to the advises' advisory committee or the water sub-committee for their review and comment. it seems like rebaselining and

things like that should be sent to this commission or enterprise sub-committee before coming before the commission. perhaps someone can address that. >> operator: thank you for your comments. madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. >> clerk: public comment on item 10 is closed. >> chair: thank you. is there someone who can address that? >> this was not brought to the citizens' advisory committee. we can look into that. it's not my understanding that that's -- we regularly meet with the revenue bond oversight committee, but we will look into meeting with the citizens' advisory committee.

>> thank you. colleagues, may i get a motion and a second to approve this item, please. >> so moved. >> second. >> chair: it's moved and seconded. roll call, please. [ roll call ] >> chair: next item. >> clerk: next item is item 11, presentation and discussion only of the draft 2020 urban water management plan (uwmp), including the draft 2020 water shortage contingency plan, for the city and county of san francisco pursuant to california water code section 10642. the commission will consider approval of a final uwmp at the june 8, 2021 commission meeting. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i'm the project manager for our 2020 urban water management

plan. i'm here today to present to you as part of public hearing on the draft plan which we are required to hold. the document is in draft form. i will provide additional comment at the end of the presentation. you are wan plans are provided every five years. the main goals of the document are to assess water supplies and demands over a 25-year timing time frame, describe measures, report progress toward meeting a targeted reduction and per capita water use by 2020, discuss the use and planned use by recycled water and other water supplies and develop and adopt a water shortage contingency plan. i'll be focusing on the bolded

items in this presentation today. the first topic i'll be covering is the updated retail demand projections. our primary forecasting tools is economic econometric models. each model was developed using 10 years of data. the sector models account for changes in water use as a result of changes to temperature and forecast. there are also additional factors where demands are projected to remain constant. these are municipal irrigation and suburban retail. as you can see on this table, total retail demands are purenlt

69 m.g.d. and projected to go up in 2045. a key piece of information underlying these projections is the anticipated growth of housing and employment in the city and this information is provided to us by the san francisco planning department. housing growth is assumed to be in the multi-family sector with no increases to single-family homes. the residential demand projections are built based on water use per housing units and for commercial projections the forecast is based on employee use per day. so as i showed and as you can see here in this chart on the green line, the retail demands are projected to increase by

2045. this shows the proposition projected growth provided by the planning demands. although the numbers are increasing, the per capita demands is set to decrease. this is residential per capita in all sectors. the residential per capita demand is capped at 38 gallons per day, while the future growth will be 64 g.p.d. now that we've looked at the retail demand projections, what i'm showing here is the total projected demands on the regional water system from the

retail and wholesale customers. the retail demands on this chart don't match the retail demands i showed earlier and that is because we subtracted demands met by local recycled water and groundwater resources to meet demands. the wholesale customer demands are demands on the regional water system after accounting for their other applies. demands on the current quarter system is going to rise to 236. i'm now going to transition from talking about demands to a discussion of our projected supplies. in this graph we are looking at the projected availability of

regional water systems supplies under normal year conditions and a multi-dry-year period. notice that the access shows these periods and a dry period would be at least five consecutive years. because of the uncertainty around the bay delta amendment, this plan has evaluated future conditions both with and without the implementation of the bay delta plan. on this graph you can see a hidden black line and that line represents projected demands. i'm using the 2025 projected demands of mgd. you can see that there are no shortages under the conditions

even during the multi-dry-year period. starting in the first year of a multi-dry-year period, there is a significant shortage of supply which gets worse as the dry years continue. at this level of demand, we would experience a shortfall in years two through five of a multi-dry-year period. this slide is showing the same analysis, but at the 2045 projected level of demand on the system which is about 236 mgd. in this scenario even without the bay delta plan, we would receive -- experience shortages starting on day one of the drought reaching 116 mgd.

this is an additional level of mgd we would experience as a result of the bay delta plan. what we're now looking at is comparisons of supply and demands for the retail customers. this is showing the retail comparison for the 2025 and 2045 projected levels of demand with the supply scenario that includes the implementation of the bay delta amendment. on the retail died with the plan, we would experience shortages of up to 29 mgd at 2029 levels of demand. this shows that local groundwater would not be impacted by drought. now we are looking at the

wholesale comparison of supplies and demands on the regional water system. as you can see, the wholesale customers would experience significant shortages during multi-year droughts approximate p the shortages would be up to 87 mgd or 53% of their demand on the regional water system. the final topic i'm going to topic is our water shortage contingency plan which is a new requirement for this 2020 urban management plan and we are required to address six shortage stages ranging from 10% to greater than 50% system-wide shortages. note that these are not connected to any part of the shortage. the goal is to outline the shortage that could be

identified. you would have to translate this shortage level using the tier one allocation process to find a water supply agreement. we compare the retail allocation with retail demands on the regional water system. the primary tool in our water shortage contingency plan is reducing water demand through a clearly identified communication target. depending on the shortage level, reductions may be voluntary or mandatory. we will continue to provide demand reduction support as we always do through our conservation program you've heard about today. during a drought we will have

shortages. mandatory reductions would be implemented based on customer type. first irrigation, then residential, then commercial. other tools we would also use to achieve demand reduction include water waste prohibitions and operational changes. just to provide a little bit of information about the public comment process. the period began on april 5 and continues to may 5. you can find the document on our website. you can submit public comments at today's meeting or e-mail or through the mail.

once the public comment period ends, we will be making updates and finalizing the plan and return to the commission on june 8 for adoption of the final urban water management plan. that's all i have. thank you. and i will be happy to take any questions. >> chair: any comments or questions? >> could i ask a quick question. >> go ahead. >> chair: no, please. >> thank you so much for your presentation. it was definitely very informative. i wonder if in these analyses if you consider some uncertainty if you're off by this much what

happens, to be able to do a risk assessment. what will happen if you land in a different place than the model assumes we end up in? >> that's a great question. in terms of the urban water management plan, the requirements are very specific and laid out in the water code and we have to address them as they are. in the context of this document, i would say, no, we don't have a risk assessment type of an analysis. >> i should have been more clear. for ourselves, are we doing something like this on the side? >> steve ritchie, assistant general manager for water. we don't do a formal risk assessment per se in all these

assessments, but we're constantly evaluating where we're at and may end up so we're prepared for any eventuality that comes along. we know one thing for sure is that all projections are wrong. so you have to deal with that fact because it exists. one of the first things we anticipate is each year hydrologically is different or we could have a drought or something else. the population projections were also referenced. we take those from the planning commission. they're given to us. we don't do population planning. we do per capita use. we know those numbers will be different and we have to think about how we deal with that. probably the single biggest risk assessment figure is do we have

to build projects to accompany demand. there is a lot of active planning and not a lot of active building because the levels are not at the levels we anticipate. i'm sure the department would be in agreement. a lot of our customers don't want us to build something we don't need. >> i have another question. are you incorporating any of the on-site programs. i'm wondering if it was incorporated in there? >> one quick phrase, yes, we do. >> thank you. >> chair: any further questions or discussions? i have a question and that is, in any of these scenarios -- is

there any scenario in which our contractual obligations to our wholesale customers would change or could or would change without any of their consideration and a renegotiation of a contract? >> no. >> chair: say that a little louder. [laughter]. >> the answer is no. the water supply agreement is the contract and it can't be changed without mutual consent of the parties. >> chair: then any further comments and questions? seeing none, let's open this up to public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make public comment

on item 11, dial 415-655-0001, i.d. 146 7158 0343, pound, pound. to unmute, press star 3. we ask that public comment be made in a civil and respectful manner and that that yow /* /* you refrain from the use of profanity. mr. moderator, do we have any callers? >> operator: madam secretary, there are nine callers waiting to be recognized. first caller, your line is open. you have two minutes. >> we would like to make some

observations about the presentation today. san francisco's population is projected to grow by 39% between now and 2045. water demand is projected to grow by 11%. further san francisco per capita per day will remain flat from 2035 to 2045 indicating there is little movement below that. the agencies are projected to see a 31% population increase through 2045 and an increase in water demands of 23%. for sfpuc there are unrealistic challenges associated with addressing the shortfalls created by the implementation of

the bay delta plans. if those cutbacks were to be applied to the customer base, the numbers would have to dip below 30 gallons per day. moreover, during a drought, the agencies would have to reach the low levels in a drought and continue that low levels moving forward. we are faced with significant difficulties to implement when and if a drought occurs. san francisco faces similar challenges in the retail base. let's hope we are not faced with the shortfalls becoming a

reality. >> operator: thank you for your comments. next caller, your line is open, you have two minutes. >> i am a senior water special at the bay area facility. [indiscernible] this cycle requires far more engagement between the agencies than previous rounds which is due to the requirements of the state legislator as well as the uncertainty of the implementation of the bay delta plan. the team is always responsive and makes this possible as soon as possible. thank you for the opportunity to speak. >> operator: thank you for your

comments. next caller, your line is open. you have two minutes. >> i'm john steeple, i'm a water consultant in san francisco and a member of the coalition on human rights working group. i wanted to commend you on this robust report which i had a chance to review. i wanted to highlight that while the plan is intended to attempt the water delivery compared to uses, it doesn't capture [indiscernible] since the residential connections only account for house connections and ignored unhoused residents. [indiscernible] the plan is largely planning on public water facility assets, such as public

drinking fountains and restrooms which is a significant source of water use. according to the report from the san francisco association on homeless, [indiscernible] water of access. 78% of unhoused san franciscans do not meet the minimums of the safe water sources set by the united nations, and unhcr. california's current water code currently states that california recognizes that every human being has a right to safe, clean, affordable and accessible water for cooking and sanitary

purposes. all californians, including unhoused individuals, regardless of their household status deserve this right -- >> operator: thank you for your comment. i'm sorry, your time has expired. next caller, you have two minutes. >> good afternoon, commissioners. i am with the city of santa clara utilities. we serve a daytime population of approximately 250,000 individuals and that includes many employers. our city utilizing 3.3 million gallons a day. these important purchases from sfpuc represent 20% of our water portfolio and 17% of our total

water portfolio that includes recycled water. we take our responsibility seriously. our demand usage is over 15.3% when compared to 2013 water demands. recycled water is approximately 19% of our water portfolio of 3 mgd per day. in our city we are concerned about the impacts to our residents and businesses that result in the implementation of the [indiscernible] that will result in approximately 50% cutbacks in drought years. this information regarding cutbacks and concerning and we must use this data for major arena and housing requirements. we are looking at 11,000 units

by 2045. we urge the commission to reaffirm its commitment to meet the legal obligations to the wholesale and residential customers and to take the actions necessary for the water supplies. thank you for your time and thank you for the presentation today. >> operator: thank you for your comments. next caller, your line is open, you have two minutes. >> i'm speaking on behalf of the 26 member agencies who rely on the water supply system to meet the needs of the residents and businesses they serve. the wholesale water supplier has applied reliability data that

must be used in developing the urban water management plan. [ please stand by ] -- to have the tvra by the state board as an alternative to the plan. if improvements are needed, they

should be proposed and analyzed by the state board. and it highlights the importance of the alternative water supply program, and strongly urges the p.u.c. to move to develop new supplies as necessary for it to meet its legal and contractual obligations for the customers that they represent. thank you. >> clerk: thank you for your comments. next caller, your line is open. you have two minutes. >> caller: my name is francesco de costa. and i would like y'all to read the act and see how far left you have gone by supplying water to those entities that were not prioritized in the act.

now before i say anything else, let me state very clearly that the reservoir and all of that water belongs to the first people. and y'all can reflect on it, it was stolen from them. and it's a shame that we here in 2021 you commissioners have not dealt with this problem. and to have clean drinking water from there. so you need to worry about having money and how you're going to lose money. but san franciscans conserve water. they conserve water to a degree that it's (indiscernible) but

y'all are finding excuses on how to make money by creating (indiscernible) that are poorly designed. thank you very much. >> clerk: thank you for your comments. next caller, i have opened up your line. you have two minutes. >> caller: hi again. a lot of report went into this report but to me it comes across as a lobbying tool. some of the numbers, 55% rationing, 30% to 40% rationing in a single dry year. after the workshop a couple weeks ago we realized that there's a lot that plays into these numbers.

and it's really disappointing that it appears that the staff is trying to turn people against the delta plan and you have heard from the bosca folks they have bought into these numbers and that's disappointing. we haven't needed alternative water supplies. they were identified in 2008 as a high priority and yet very little has come online. and the staff has yet to answer the commissioner's question that she asked several times and never got a response. what would we do if we had to reduce 40%? i think that at the workshop we started getting close to the answer. we shorten the design route a little bit. we add alternative water supplies and we get more rational about the scenario. i am happy to hear that commissioner moran say that we'll move forward, and i hope

that we do this quickly because this will be a five-year plan. i want to point out that the five year drought is just five years. and the way that it's portrayed is five years of the 8 1/2 year drought. we could get through a six-year drought record without any rationing with the bay delta plan implemented. so we'll be sending a lot more comments on this. but i hope that you can help to shape this so that we go into the next five-year psych wela ca really good plan that we can all believe in. >> clerk: thank you for your comments. next caller, i have opened up your line. you have two minutes. >> caller: hi, this is larry akalome. i'm a homeowner in 99173 zip code and i volunteer with the human rights work group of the coalition on homelessness.

and while they outline the most significant points that we have to make and we need more information and data to support and i'm going to just give more of a personal point of view as i have been going out in last couple years and talking to people on the streets who are living unhoused. and it's almost overwhelming to see how they struggle to obtain water. and they are not getting anything even close to 50 liters per day that the u.n. recommends for urban vicinities.

people get a gallon or less a day that they are able to acquire. and water is already and it will continue to wreak havoc in our world, and in our city. so i know that, 10,000, 20,000 people that are living on the streets, it's a very small portion of our city, and the water they would consume is a very small portion of what the supply is for our city. nevertheless, you know, it's part of the problem that we're facing in our society, in our world and in san francisco. >> clerk: thank you for your comments. your time has expired.

next caller, you have two minutes. >> caller: hi, can you hear me? >> clerk: loud and clear. >> caller: hi, i am here to represent the city also as one of the sfpuc customers. and the city's 26,000 residents have led by example with water conservation and only use about 16 gallons per capita per day, and that includes all of the uses in the city, making it the lowest of the wholesale customers. approximately 70% of the demand is from its residential customers and close to 90% is for indoor water use to meet basic health and safety needs of city residents. the city has contracted with a goal of no more than 20% cut back. and the projection set by sfpuc

has a cutback up to 54%. to achieve that level of demand reduction per capita water use would have to reach a dangerously low level of 36 gallons per capita per day. fortunately, the economically disadvantaged would have to (indiscernible) because there's not a sufficient water supply. the city feels strongly that the sfpuc should do to meet its goals so that its wholesale customers and customers have a reliable water supply. thank you so much for your time >> clerk: thank you for your comments. next caller, your line is open. you have two minutes. >> caller: can you hear me now? >> clerk: loud and clear. >> caller: great. david pell again. so a couple of comments and

questions. the staff report is a good high level summary, thanks to steve, paula, sarah and any other staff and consultants for their work on this. i apologize that i have not read the entire 432-page document yet. i will try to do so and i may submit comments by the comment deadline. so a few brief questions perhaps these can be addressed. does the plan incorporate the bosca analysis that nicole sancola discussed and walked through at the last meeting i'm wondering. how do the population and other projections align with the city's planning department and plan bay area? and, last, is there any additional planned public engagement on the uwmp before the commission action in june? i can certainly follow up with staff and i thought that having

some kind of a notice for a public workshop separate from the commission might be helpful i recall that there was an in-person workshop on a prior uwmp -- i think that it was about 15 or 20 years ago and that's the first time that i met steve ritchie in person. i was on the ground floor of 1145 market street and a memorable evening was had by all. since that is not really possible right now, i thought that maybe a virtual get-together to walk through the plan, the requirements under state law, different projections, and what it all means might be helpful. so i don't know what public engagement is planned. those are my comments and questions. thank you very much,. >> clerk: thank you for your comments. madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue.

>> president maxwell: that closes public comment on item 11. and i want to note that commissioner paulson got bumped off the meeting and is trying to rejoin. any comments or questions -- (indiscernible) any comments, questions or discussions? s with the homeless water use, is that something that has been factored in? is it going to be factored in? is it enough to factor in? >> yeah, steve ritchie, the assistant general manager for water. we can look into that. we have actually been working with the department of emergency management and others through the covid crisis and saw the number of drink tab stations in various locations around the city to help to address some of

these issues. when the homelessness coalition came to the commission, i believe that it was a couple months ago and raised the issue, we contacted the d.e.m. to see if they were in touch with them and they were totally unaware of this being a pressing issue. given the nature of the comments, i think that we'll evaluate it and try to come up with a description of how we thank we should approach it. i think that the real definition is that it needs to be addresses mean? is it a drink tab station? we had water manifolds which were literally hose bibs that we put out at different places. but those took active management on our part and that's something that we have to consider and deal with. >> president maxwell: would there be any way to meter it, to find out exactly what the use is and, you know, how important it is? we know that it's important, but

what the use is? >> yes. it's very possible to meter it. we have contractor meters that we use for those. >> madam president, to add some information. we have 365 tap stations in san francisco and about 109 in schools and 64 in sidewalks, plazas and parks and playgrounds. and so, you know, that's a program that we can look into expanding but there is right now access to water in certain neighborhoods spread throughout the city. >> president maxwell: thank you colleagues, any further discussion? all right, thank you. public comment we just had. so may i have a motion to -- >> clerk: i'm sorry, this is a

discussion item. no action required. >> president maxwell: thank you next item, please. >> clerk: item 12, approving amendment number 2, to agreement nobody pro.00 # 2, and execute this amendment increasing the amount by $2 million and extending the agreement duration to four years. it's with heather manders. >> good afternoon, commissioners. my name is heather manders and i'm the sfpuc project for the adaptation project long-term project phase. i'm here to present item 12, an amendment to pro.0092 to add $2 million in four years to the services contract for the space of the project. the south ocean beach coastal erosion project is led by the sfpuc. and the sfpuc is the lead agency because the main objective of

the project is to provide protection to our critical wastewater infrastructure, along the ocean beach, near the oceanside plant. it has three phases. the first phase is a short-term improvement which utilizes the environmentally friendly measures to protect the area while the long-term improvements are being developed. the second phase is an army corps of engineer beach nourishment project which is an agreement between the sfpuc and the army corps of engineers to place sand dredge from the san francisco main shipping channel on this portion of the beach to further protect the area. and the third is the long-term improvements, which will build a low-profile seawall to protect our critical infrastructure, mainly the lake morsed tunnel while addressing the climate enduced sea level rise and the required improvements and add recreational access in the area

the last step that you received on this project was given by our project manager on february 23, 2021. on the army corps of engineer phase of this project. in the update, anna gave a background on the project in the ongoing threat to our oceanside wastewater infrastructure, ocean beach, due to climate induced erosion in the area. when the pier was originally awarded in july 2018, the project was in the beginning ever the planning phase. since then they completed the planning phase and they're currently in the design phase with the 35% milestone completed in october of 2020. the request to amendment 2 would increase the contract value and duration to address the following changes that have been realized since july of 2018. there's been an increased complexity and scope to the design element. additional analysis and design efforts are needed to address unexpected geotechnical

findings. a specialized design is needed to protect existing wastewater infrastructure in the area of the wall. and additional analysis to address the jurisdictional and regulatory requirements mainly by the n.p.s. or the national park service, excuse me, and the coastal commission as needed. and the second major change is increased need for engineering supports of environmental analysis. additional analysis is needed for traffic related impacts. additional modeling and coastal analysis is needed to address management and the effect on neighboring properties to meet the informational needs of n.p.s. and the permit requirements of the california coastal commission. finally, there's been an increase in the duration of the schedule. two years of construction are added to meet the needs of the construction for the open space amenities as well as the intersection modifications that are needed for the design and construction of the wall. and engineering support is

needed for this additional two years. a delay in awarding this amendment would delay the technical engineering expertise needed to complete the design. it's scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. it could potentially delay the certification of the environmental impact report scheduled for early in 2022. thank you for your time and if you have any additional questions, i am here to answer. >> president maxwell: thank you commissioner harrington. >> commissioner harrington: thank you, miss maxwell. thank you, miss manders, for your report. i guess that my question is -- this is extending this contract for four years. does that mean that we have to work to do something with the oceanside plant is four years later, or how is that going, the substantive work? >> so this contract is meant for the -- specifically for the pile wall to protect valentine and the design of the open space

after the e.i.r. certification in early 2022. we're anticipating n.t.p. and to the contractor. the only extension is to two years of construction which bring us to 2027. but we are anticipating construction starting in 2020. >> commissioner harrington: thank you. >> president maxwell: is the construction phased? because if you go out there, i mean, there's some immediate action that needs to take place yeah, so is that going to be done and then, you know, short-term, long-term, medium-term construction? >> so right now as i had mentioned, there's two phases happening and that's ongoing sand placement and the army corps project where we're placing sand. but additionally the long-term improvements are phased in that

we have to do intersection mod modifications, and then we will have emergency action while we build the wall. following that the open space design will happen where the current highway between skyline will be converted to a trail and park. which will have a bathroom and a new parking lot. >> president maxwell: thank you any further comments? questions? thank you. why don't we open this up to public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of public comment specifically on item 12, dial 1-(415)-655-0001. meeting i.d. 146 758 0343. pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak,

press star, 3. please note that you must limit your comments to the topic of the agenda item being discussed and if you do not stay on the topic the chair can interrupt and ask you to limit your comment to the agenda topic. we ask that comment be in a respectful manner and you do not use profanity. direct the commission as a whole and not to individual commissioners or staff. mr. moderator, do we have any callers? >> madam secretary, there's one caller wishing to be recognized caller, i have opened up your line. you have two minutes. >> caller: can you hear me now? >> loud and clear. >> caller: great, david pell again. so on this item i'm wondering if the staff could perhaps explain -- i believe that this project is entirely south of the

boulevard and there's discussion underway of closing the highway, or otherwise modifying its use north of sloade. and so i wonder how those two items relate and if i could get a brief response on that. i assume they are connected in one and forming the other and all of that, and i know that there are other items that are related in the area. but i just wanted to hear a little discussion of that if you could direct that question. thanks. >> sure. so, yes, correct. this project closes the highway between sloate and skyline. there is an effort underway to close the entire highway that is being undertaken by r.p.d. and we are working in conjunction with r.p.d. on this portion of

the project. >> president maxwell: thank you >> madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. >> clerk: public comment on item 12 is closed. >> president maxwell: thank you then, colleagues, can i get a motion and a second on this item? >> i'll move it. >> second. >> president maxwell: thanks, moved and seconded. roll call vote, please. >> clerk: [roll call vote] you have four ayes. >> president maxwell: thank you next item please. >> clerk: your next order of business is number 14.

and to execute the professional service agreements with kennedy/jenks consultants, water resources engineering, and aecom for pro.0172.c, and the hazen-lee for pro.0172-a-d. and this is presented by kendra cox. >> hi there, good afternoon, commissioners. my name is kendra cox and i'm a manager in the sfpuc contract administration bureau. this afternoon, we are requesting your approval for the award of four professional services contracts to assist sfpuc's path and to supplement the engineering design efforts on an as-needed basis. including initial planning, design, engineering support

during construction and start-up, and knowledge transfer for water conveyance, water, wastewater treatment, water distribution, wastewater collection and power projects. the sfpuc issued a single request for proposals to award four contracts to the top four ranked proposers and as madam secretary said, each of the four agreements awarded is for a not-to-exceed amount of $4.5 million and for a duration of five years. thank you very much for your time and i'm happy to answer any questions that you may have. >> president maxwell: any questions or comments on this? >> i have a question. >> president maxwell: yes. >> for me to understand how this works, is this the commenting that we do that we have these contracts with defense groups

just to help us to -- i mean, is it a common practice? i'm just trying to understand? >> sorry, i am trying to understand the question. is it common practice to solicit a number of different consultants for the same scope of work to support our efforts? >> right, on an ongoing basis. >> generally it is pretty common if we need that supplemented support and i look to johanna wong who is on the call as well who might be in a better position to speak to that. it's not uncommon that we bring these firms on. and we generally have more than one, because one might be occupied with one project. so we need to rely on the expertise of another for the same timeframe. which is for an as-needed basis, that would make sense to have multiple at one time. but, johanna, i refer to you, as you're more of an expert than i am. >> good afternoon, johanna wong and the contract manager for

agreements. we have these agreements on a regular basis. last one was about four years ago. and these are needed usually for the smaller projects when we don't know when they're going to come, but it could be any scope, and it's usually for those scopes of work where the city staff does not have the skillset or does not have the availability to do the work. >> thank you. >> president maxwell: any further comments or questions? seeing none, public comment on this item, please. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of public comment specifically on item 13, dial 1-(415)-655-0001. meeting i.d. 146 758 0343.

pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak, press star 3. limit your comments to the topic item discussed and if you do not stay on the topic, you may be interrupted and asked to stick to the topic. make your comments in a civil and respectful manner and you do not use profanity. and do not address individual commissioners or staff but as a whole. >> president maxwell: do we have any callers? >> there's one caller wishing to make public comment. caller, i have opened up your line. you have two minutes. >> caller: so my name is francesco de costa. and i have been following y'all lies and shenanigans for the longest time ever.

you don't get it. the joint venture agreements have some very, very corrupt individuals behind them. in the bay area, you have many companies that can do this work but yet you always go to jens and aecom and other companies that are part of a tool. and you commissioners are put there to investigate, because right now you do know that the f.b.i. has done whatever it can

do, that they're caught in a bind because the contract -- the contractor's office has now cannot go forward and there are thousands of documents out there, empirical data, that shows how corrupt the people who are doing due diligence have not represented the taxpayer. so stop (indiscernible) we cannot say whatever we have on our mind. we can say whatever we have on our minds because the taxpayers pay the bill. >> thank you for your comments. madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue.

>> clerk: thank you, public comment on item 13 is closed. >> president maxwell: thank you may i have a motion and a second to approve this item. >> so moved. >> president maxwell: so moved. can we have a second? well, maybe we need to go back. there seems to be a problem with this item. nobody wants to second it, so -- >> i will be glad to second it. i thought that somebody already had. >> president maxwell: no, so moved and seconded. roll call vote, please. >> clerk: [roll call vote] you have five ayes.

>> president maxwell: thank you next item, please. >> clerk: your next order of business is item 14, approve the plans and specifications and award contract number wd-2825r, in the amount of $1,511,50 and with a duration of 547 consecutive calendar days to the responsible bidders with the lowest responsive bid, anvil builders, incorporated. this is presented by brian desari. >> good afternoon. i'm the project manager. this item is to award the contract wd-2825r alameda creek recapture project. one of the last projects in the program. the project involves the construction of a facility to recapture the portions of the awards released from the reservoir into the by-pass

around alameda creek diversion dam. the released water would slow down alameda creek and some of it would naturally infiltrate into an open quarry pond where it would be recaptured and returned to our original water supply to a system of barges and pipes and pipelines and control buildings. the contract was advertised on december 18, 2020. five contract bids were received on february 4th, 2021. four of which were below the estimate. and the builders were identified as the responsible bidder. respectfully, i request your approval of the award of the contract wd-2525r. thank you, and i'd be happy to answer any of your questions.

>> president maxwell: any questions or comment on this item? seeing none, let's open it up to public comment. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of public comment specifically on item 14, dial 1-(415)-655-0001. meeting i.d. 146 758 0343. pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak press star 3. please note that you must limit your comments to the topic of the agenda item being discussed and remind you if you do not stay on the topic the chair can interrupt and ask to you limit your comment to the item topic. we ask that public comment be in a civil and respectful manner and that you refrain from the use of profanity. address your remarks to the commission as a whole and not to individual commissioners or staff. mr. moderator, do we have any callers? >> madam secretary, there are no callers in the queue at this time.

>> clerk: thank you. public comment on item number 14 is closed. >> president maxwell: thank you may i have a motion and a second to approve this item? >> i will move it. >> i'll second it. >> president maxwell: okay, it's been moved and seconded. roll call vote, please. roll call vote, please. >> clerk: trying to unmute, sorry. [roll call vote] you have five ayes. >> president maxwell: thank you, next item, please. >> clerk: next item is item 15, approve the plans and the specifications and award

contract nobody ww-711 in the amount of $29,132,100 and with a duration of 987 consecutive calendar days to the responsible bidder with the lowest responsive bid, k.j. woods construction incorporated. this is presented by saeed kaloui. >> saeed, are you with us? you are muted. >> okay, sorry. sorry. good afternoon, commissioners, president maxwell. i'm the project manager for the wawona stormwater replacement.

and this short presentation i will provide background with the agenda item that is before you. the picture as you can see is the exactly the same neighborhood as historical picture in 1938 flooding. now in this slide we are looking at the water by the yellow line, that drains into major streets. this area is around 450 acres. however, it's about 600 feet in elevation from 900 feet coming down to the intersection of 15th and wawona. and as you can see on your left, the 3d picture, you can appreciate this drop in elevations. so the specific characteristics of this watershed is the steep slopes.

and so the sewer line for all of the area passes through the existing pass on wawona to a section of 15th avenue. this intersection is lower in elevation than the surrounding areas, and when the sewers get filled and basically we lose the capacity, the excess water runoff and manhole surcharges go down the stream to the lowest point and result in the water in the surrounding neighborhoods. i'm sorry, surrounding properties. now this slide shows the amount of water that we're going to get at this intersection during the five year, three hour storm which is the level. and the colors signify different depths of water. and the total amount of water that we get at the peak at the level of service is about 1.3

million gallons. about four acre feet, or four football fields of water with the depth of a foot. this excess water reaches the intersection in minutes. as i mentioned, this is the characteristics of this watershed. and the flows cannot be intercepted by the means of green infrastructure, detention, wind velocity is that high up. next slide, please. and so i'm sorry, it went too far. can you go back if you can. okay. that's right. yeah. so early on during the planning, we looked at a combined -- a combination of green infrastructure and traditional grade. there is a ravine close to the

15th and wawona and the concept was to fill the ravine with the water as it comes down. and then it's a natural ravine, basically. a portion is field and the other portion is just the native sand and, unfortunately, when we did the technological and geological investigation, we find that the ground is not favorable. we just let a million gallons of water to go into it. and we looked even at a concrete reservoir at the bottom of the ravine to not impact the slopes, however, we have to remove about -- remove up to a hundred trees so it would have defeated the purpose. and it was basically -- we basically found it prohibitive. so, as a result, we looked at a

conveyance system, pipeline conveyance system, for the project. can i have the next slide. this conveyance system would be about 6,900 linear foot and capture water at the intersection of vicente and wawona. before it the flows get to the 15th and wawona. and this is going to be auxiliary wet weather mostly and it carries the flows all the way to 34th avenue. when we have enough capacity. as a part -- as you notice, this is about 24 blocks or something like that, and there are few

communities. but the neighborhoods along this linear project. as a procedure, we have been updating the communities, especially the folks around 15th and wawona throughout the life of this project. in addition, a few community meetings that we had early on, we have been sending quarterly focused emails and made sure that our specific project website is up-to-date and have been updating this about the status of design and construction. we also have been, in addition, because there are two other constructions going on, and there is an overlap for this schedule, we have been in contact with the public works and m.t.a. that are managing these constructions, and they have been coordinating the staging areas and the timeline for a street blocks that we occupy.

that each contract occupies. and also to minimize the impacts to traffic and parking. can i have the next slide, please. this is the scope of the sewer construction. the auxiliary construction. there are two technologies used of course, open cut construction. the standard on two ends of it and as we go through a hill after the 14th avenue, we are using trenchless/tunneling to install this auxiliary sewer on vicente. next one. in addition, we have added water to this scope of this construction. we are replacing the aging water distribution maze on vicente and on wawona and 15th avenue.

we are installing a new 36-inch welded steel potable emergency firefighting water main on vicente that goes about six blocks and as a standard practice, again, we paint curb to curb many of the streets which we impact more than a lane or so. next. well, at the end, in closing, i want to appreciate your time and your attention. and i request to approve the contract documents and the contract number ww-711 to k.j. woods so that we can start the construction, the long anticipated construction this summer and use the dry season, 2021 dry season, 2021, as much as possible. thank you.

>> president maxwell: thank you well done. any other questions or comments, colleagues? seeing none, then public comment on this item, please. >> clerk: members of the public who wish to make two minutes of public comment specifically on item 15, dial 1-(415)-655-0001. meeting i.d., 146 758 0343, pound, pound. to raise your hand to speak, press star, 3. please note that you must limit your comments to the topic of the item being discussed and remind if you do not stay on the topic the chair can interrupt and ask you to limit your comments to the topic. we ask that public comment be in a civil and respectful manner and you profane from using profanity. address the commission as a whole and not to individual commissioners or staff.

do we have any callers? >> madam secretary, there are three callers in the queue. first caller, you have two minutes. >> caller: eileen broken, i'm urging the commission to unbundle the stormwater project from the water main replacement project. and move forward with the stormwater project as it's non-controversial. the project description on the agenda doesn't state clearly that the vicente project would be the city's first potable water project. the contract summary refers to the new potable emergency water firefighting water system on the west side of the city, end quote. the environmental documents have been moving targets. at the last meeting the documents referred to were unrelated. when i submitted written comments on april 7th, the only documents related to these

stormwater projects were geotechnical studies. today they are entirely different. this is more than questionable. as i stated at the capital planning meeting on april 5th with the a.g.m. for infrastructure present, the most abundant and the most resilient source of water to fight catastrophic fires are bay water and ocean water and not drinking water. i urge the commission to continue the water main replacement project until after the hearing proposed by the commission president maxwell on potable water on the west side as it would be premature to approve it before then. as i stated before, and the state has 40% unimpaired flows and using drinking water for emergency firefighting is more than questionable. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next caller, your line is open

and you have two minutes. >> caller: can you hear he now? >> loud and clear. >> caller: great. david pell. last time today. so i wanted to refer to my comment dated today, if someone could just confirm that was received and perhaps you've had a chance to look at that as i say that much earlier. it was a bit late, but i wanted it to be complete. i have discussed it briefly with our staff earlier today. and i did have some conversations with both the project manager and arena from environmental management last week. i believe that that can respond to the concerns that i expressed. i did hear some responses just now in saeed's presentation and i can follow up as well. i do want to collaborate on this. i'm not trying to -- well,

perceive however you want about what i'm doing -- but i am trying to collaborate. i emphasize again my support on the merits and my concern for the process issues. i can appeal the exemption determination and slow down this project if need be and i do not want to do that. that is not my intent. if i have to, i will. but i don't want to do that. i ask the commission to consider my points as well as other public comment and decide what to do on this project. and, finally, i have not seen the presentation that we just saw before, and i would ask that be posted on the project website so that i can review that in detail. i'm happy to take questions, otherwise, thank you very much for listening to me today. thanks. >> thank you for your comments. next caller, your line is open

and you have two minutes. >> caller: this is ken loberg. and i have a great interest in this subject because it concerns me that it seems to accept the idea that potable water should be used to fight fires in the event of a catastrophe in san francisco. the whole subject of depressed fire after a major earthquake with potable water is very controversial and the previous thinking on all of this has said that the most effective source of water is sea water or bay water. including funding from the bonds for that project in this effort, i think, is wrong. and it makes an assumption that it is going to be, frankly, regrettable as we proceed on the earthquake project. so that's my objection and i

would wish you would do another $3.7 million elsewhere, rather than on this. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next caller, your line is open and you have two minutes. >> caller: the commissioners on this issue, the very astute residents have given their opinion. but y'all don't give a damn. nobody has (indiscernible) this presentation and you don't have the ability to review the empirical data. you are so primitive that you don't like to look at things as one would like to look at the year 2021, a multipronged model

to address the situation at hand. much like the earthquake. many of those homes, maybe 90% of them, don't even have a foundation. you know that. and if there's a fire, those homes will topple like matchsticks. so what about a multipronged attack on the fire? from the air. using some salt water, because we know that salt water corrodes the pipes, and you use flex pipes, no mention has been made so who is fooling whom? why are y'all trying to do this

in broad daylight? what's up? >> thank you for your comments. madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. >> clerk: public comment on item 15 is closed. >> president maxwell: any questions or comments on this item? seeing -- commissioner ajami -- >> commissioner ajami: just a quick question. i understand why it's important to keep these two projects together. obviously, you don't want to, you know, open up streets and then open it up again in a year or two to do the same thing. but i wonder if either mr. toloui or someone else can address this issue with the

fire, the management, and potentially using some of that water for that purpose as well. you are muted. >> good afternoon. >> commissioner ajami: mr. toloui you are muted. >> that's okay. sorry. >> good afternoon, commissioners. kathy howell, assistant general manager for infrastructure. we have spent quite a bit of time with our consultants and the experts on the potable system on the westside for emergency firefighting water systems and we still owe you a presentation on that. i think we've got that scheduled on the calendar. but putting in this pipe does make sense. yes, there's still a lot of details and still design issues to work out, but there was a loop that was presented to the

board i think last year and we will be coming back to you to present the entire emergency firefighting water system plan for the westside. >> president maxwell: commissioner ajami, does that answer your question? >> commissioner ajami: not really. but i'm trying to -- go ahead, president maxwell, i think that you were trying to say something? i'm just a little -- i'm sort of unsure. so the pipe that you're trying -- you're replacing an old pipe, right? >> yes. >> commissioner ajami: so what does that have to do with the firefighting piece? i'm just -- i'm not kind of -- i'm not understanding the comments that are being made and how it's related to this. because my impression of the presentation that you're replacing an old pipeline and then we're also doing the stormwater management strategy, cannot do other things because

of the limitations that we have geologically and i'm trying to see how these two are connected to fire at this point. >> so the -- the sewer pipe is not connected to the emergency firefighting. you are correct in the sense that we're in the same area and so we thought that we would do the water main replacement. normally, we would use a lower pressure material for the water main replacement. but in this case what we're doing is we're upgrading the pipe material for the water main so that it could potentially handle the higher pressures from the emergency firefighting water system. so it's a change in the materials for the water main replacement. >> commissioner ajami: but that doesn't necessarily mean that we would end up using this as a strategy for firefighting? >> we -- we can. it gives that option for us to use that for emergency

firefighting. on the east side of the city we have two separate pipelines. there are two separate pipe systems. we have one for drinking water and then we have one specifically for firefighting. but what we're proposing on the west side is basically to use -- potentially to use the same pipe both for drinking and for firefighting. what it would mean is that we'd have to have special valving and other thought put into the design in order to use it for those purposes. >> commissioner ajami: just a quick question on this then as you're sort of talking on this whole topic of stormwater management. what would that be -- would it be a possibility to kind of potentially to use some of this system water or store it somewhere? i know that there was a mention that we can't do it at the site but as it comes down the hill, is there an opportunity to say that then they use it or store it somewhere that we could used

it later for firefighting? >> we had considered that at some other part of the city. i think that it was around folsom where we had considered having a reservoir and capturing the stormwater and potentially reusing that. but there were a lot of water quality issues around that and using that for firefighting. and then there's the need to have pump stations in order to pump this water out of the reservoir where we store it underground. but it was considered at a different low-lying area where we had flood issues. >> commissioner ajami: okay. and then what of quality, because of the runoff, or other water quality issues? >> just because of the urban runoff, actually, the runoff is actually worse than the sewer water, because of the cars and everything else that is on the

surface. >> commissioner ajami: but if you're capturing at a site -- oh, just because this is a low-lying -- like, it's capturing a lot there. >> yes, yes. >> commissioner ajami: so then is the two pipes -- will you use it for drinking water and then in an emergency it would be used for fire? >> that is the idea behind the dual purpose for the water pipes. >> commissioner ajami: thank you. so it's not just for fire, it's for use and then in an emergency you can switch the valve and use it for fire? >> yes. >> commissioner ajami: thank you. >> president maxwell: any further comments or questions? thank you. then that gets a motion and a second?

>> sounds good to me, commissioner paulson, motions -- makes the motion. >> president maxwell: thank you >> i'll second it. >> president maxwell: good. moved and seconded. so may i have a roll call vote please. >> clerk: [roll call vote] you have five ayes. >> president maxwell: thank you, next item, please. >> clerk: madam president, i will read the items to be during closed session and then if you would like i will call for public comment on those items. >> president maxwell: will you please do that, that is fine. >> clerk: thank you. measures of the public to make two minutes of public comment specifically on the following items to be heard during closed session, item 18, conferring

with or receiving advice from the city attorney regarding existing litigation in which the city is a petitioner and pacific gas and electric company is the adverse party. item number, conference with legal council. and item 20, existing litigation san joaquin tributaries vertus california state water resources control board. call 1-(415)-655-0001. i.d. 146 758 0343. pound, pound. you must limit your comments to the topic of the agenda item discussed and to remind if you do not stay on the topic the chair can interrupt and ask you to limit your comment to the topic. we ask that public comment be made in a civil and a respectful manner and that you refrain from the use of profanity. please address your remarks to the commission as a whole and not to individual commissioners

or staff. mr. moderator, do we have any callers? >> madam secretary, no callers in the queue. >> clerk: thank you. public comment on items 18, 19 and 20 are closed. >> president maxwell: okay. next then, may i have a motion -- or the next item. >> clerk: your next item is a motion whether to assert the attorney-client privilege with the matters listed as conference with legal counsel which we just read. >> president maxwell: may i have a motion and a second on whether to assert the attorney-client privilege, please. >> move to assert. >> second. >> president maxwell: okay, it's been moved and seconded. roll call vote please.

>> clerk: [roll call vote] you have five ayes. >> president >> we are exited closed sex at -- session.>> there's no actio. >> there's no action taken in closed session. may i have a motion regarding whether to disclose the discussion during closed session? may i have a information and a second. >> move not to disclose. >> is there a second.

>> i'll second that. >> thank you, roll call, please. [roll call vote] you have five ayes. thank you. thank you madam secretary. is there any further business before this commission? >> no, that concludes your business for the day. >> this meeting is adjourned. thank you, all.

>> special meeting of the san francisco public utilities commission. i am president maxwell. madam secretary, call the roll, please. >> president maxwell. >> here. >> vice president moran. >> here. >> commissioner paulson. >> commissioner paulson. he will be joining us a little late today. >> commissioner harrington. >> here. >> commissioner a