>> 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 ajami.

>> here. >> you have a quorum. >> today's special meeting is on the to be pick of green and gray infrastructure for stormwater management. commissioner harrington felt this was an important subject and he will lead the discussion today. commissioner harrington. >> before we turn it over, i would like to make a brief announcement. due to the covid-19 health emergency and given the public health recommendations issued by the san francisco department of public health and governor newsom and mayor breed lifted the restriction ontelli conference this is being televised by sfgovtv. there is a brief time lag between the live meeting and what is viewed on sfgovtv. on behalf of the commission i

extend thanks to the sfgovtv staff for their assistance during this meeting. this is a special meeting, there will be no general public comment period. public comment will be called for the item noted the special meeting agenda by dialing 415-655-0001. to raise your hands to speak press star three. you must limit comments to the topic being discussed and remind you if you do not stay on the topic we will interrupt and ask you to stay on the topic. refrain from use of profanity. address to the commission as a whole not to individual commissioners or staff. thank you. >> thank you. commissioner harrington before you start, i would like to thank the staff and the commissioners for this special meeting and for your commitment to the san

francisco puc. >> thank you, president maxwell. could you read the first item. >> presentations on green and gray infrastructure for stormwater management and flood resilience. >> thank you. good afternoon and welcome to the workshop for stormwater management and flood resilience. special welcome to our friends around the country taking up part of their friday afternoon. thanks to the staff and secretary. this is the the fourth workshop. they create a lot of work and i appreciate the effort to make this worthwhile for us. we understand there needs to be a mix of green and gray infrastructure for our total sewer system needs. this is for the green parts of

the collection system. we know the green infrastructure brings additional benefits like beautification and entry level jobs and others, most of our conversation will be centering on stormwater management and flooding, not the other aspects of the plan is to start with presentation from the staff, followed by presentations from utilities across the nation dealing with similar issues. we expect to end with commissioner questions and discussions followed by public comment. each section is to take one hour. if you want to ask questions or provide comments that would be time for public comment. before we begin i would like to make a few comments. i have several questions. it may be useful to start discussion about flooding.

an old story. called the river. once upon a time there was a small village on the edge of the river. the life was good. one day there was a baby floating down the river. quickly swam out to save the baby from drowning. next day there were two babies floating down the river. they were both rescued. then four babies were caught in the current and then eight and then still more. they organized quickly with watchtowers and training teams to resist the water and rescue the babies. one day a stranger asked what was going on? she said why doesn't one go find the person throwing the baby in the river and stop them? my take away is that sometimes

good people can be too focused on one solution and the time to take new perspective for more solutions. we need to look at the cause and effect for solutions. when we deal with stormwater and flooding we may need to look upstreams like the villagers. four questions. have we learned from the past? are we planning for the future? are we thinking big enough? have we gone too far to change course? have we learn from the past? we might compare thinking on how we used to do garbage in san francisco. 30 years ago the answer was to find a bigger landfill. we didn't think we could do anything to control the accumulation of garbage. when it hit home we are not getting more space we changed course and started talking reuse, recycle, people said you want me to sort my garbage, are

you crazy? now you would never throw away a glass bottle, it would be wrong. our role is to deal with flooding. we may act like early garbage orvillelageers. maybe we could look at wider definition to allow a broader set of solutions. are we planning for the future? master plan is integrate green and gray to manage stormwater and minimize flooding. that is more directly into the level of service goals of flueding in a five year storm. more intense storms expected from climate change, why do we think that will meet needs for 10 to 20 years. when today's 10 year be tomorrow's five year storm? maybe this will not meet our needs in 25 to 30 years to pay off? is our current plan good enough?

are there options for dealing with more as it increases? are current plans all we need? third question. are we working within our partners? city of san francisco and departments tend to look inside when we solve problems. often reaching out provides better solutions. remember the ocean beach treatment erosion. plan was in danger they went in to fix the problem by dropping concrete on the beach. neighborhood groups surfers all went crazy. you can't do this. the p.u.c. and d.p.w. worked with patterners. the park service was happy to help. they wanted better connection to golden gate park to the beach. army corps of engineers were willing to change practices and we saw a few months ago to put

sand where needed. we have solutions benefiting the parties. it took more than p.u.c. as we look at solutions to flooding problems in the allegheny area, are we casting a wide enough net? p.u.c. is working with homeowners to let storm water flow in the gutter? do we work with caltrans to disconnect freeways and use lands to control flooding? do we pave the streets and parking lanes. when we ask residents to help they step up. how do we want them involved? when storm intensity increases we can scale solutions by adding more as opposed to having an under sized pipe or tunnel that

doesn't meet expanded needs. have we gone too far to change course? we are talking spending $600 million to fix flooding issues in san francisco and millions more in the parts of the city. we need to make sure what we are doing is the best we can do. the master plan adopted 10 years ago. a lot happened since then. we talk about changes to the program. we will hear we spent so much we can't change course. it brings us to the cost. some costs can't be recovered. some costs are not relevance to rational decisions about the future no matter what decision is made to go forward. water under the bridge. maybe we need to pause on larger stormwater flooding issues for better solutions. this is not to criticize the work by the staff and consultants. it is to reimagine what we

might be able to do. if we pause we need to use time women by thinking big -- time well by thinking big. give it a chance for success. i am happy to hear from commissioners. then i will turn it over for the discussion. any comments? any thoughts? >> this is commissioner paulson. if i could say a couple words on perspective. first of all, i am happy that you decided to become a commissioner and you and the rest of the commissioners and the team are putting together workshops such as this one are expanding our exploration of vision. thanks for that. your analogy and what have you. what i have been doing for the last many years as day job is representing many, many

different industries. whether or not it is construction, public safety, education. one of the things that i have sat on a lot of different not commissions but committees and round tables. one of the biggest hangups i have had and i didn't bring this up in the previous workshops. has been around green issues and infrastructure. the changing dynamics in garbage here in san francisco. it is the toughest one. i end up with just an idea about platitudes to support the work we are doing as i ramble here a little bit. as a commission we are one city and this commission has a

regional footprint, obviously, but in california bay area footprint. in world war ii when somehow or another there was a collective vision that there had to be a response to the war that was happening in europe. we changed our economy on a dime. we took all of our normal manufacturing, all of our infrastructure issues and said we have one vision. that is we are going to fight for freedom and destroy the nazis and whatever else. this country has a history of going bigger when the need is there. when it comes to green power, the changing from fossil fuel to water things and management of waste and all of the stuff we are doing about new transit power and how that is going to

roll out, this is very much in the bailiwick. there is american not just regional history of doing that kind of stuff. i just, you know, applaud the efforts that some of the commissioners and the staff are working on. i wanted to put that into perspective. i haven't done a lot of speaking during these last workshops and seminars that have started to take place over the last few months. thank you for indulging me. >> other comments? >> i would like to add something. i appreciate what commissioner paulson said. that was very interesting and very informative in so many ways. my piece is more narrow. i was focusing on the fact that

i really appreciated how you were focusing on stormwater management. that is really important. i would also like to add to that additional water supply that can come from this stormwater management. often overlooked and under accounted for because it is very difficult to measure or manage. i think we should definitely not overlook that opportunity as you are talking about this. i think the biggest piece of that is also how our wastewater enterprise are sort of connecting to more actively and more what we need to, more strategically as you are investing. while we as a commission are on top of the enterprises, they are very much siloed.

i know there has been effort to create a little more synergy. it is difficult. it is not just us. it is not something that is easily done. it is definitely a big past but i think green infrastructure and the issues provide that opportunity. we should not overlook that. thank you. >> thank you. i would like to thank you for your boldness and your courage and you're looking into this and to talk about maybe doing something different. thank you for that. i am looking forward to hearing from people around the country. thank you. >> president maxwell. mr. carlin. >> thank you, commissioner harrington. you introduced the subject very well. i will turn to staff. steven robinson, take away the

staff presentation, please. >> thank you. director of wastewater capital programs. i thank you for the wonderful introduction. i don't need to say a lot. the original request for the workshop did come in january. commissioner harrington when you were looking at the project. there is a lot of discussion over the life of the sewer system improvement and green and gray infrastructure to address the problem in the system. i am the team. i know i appreciate the appreciation and thank you for this opportunity to discuss today and it is such a big topic. with that let me go to the next slide. our agenda is simple. we are challenging ourselves to provide contacts and allow lots of room for discussion. we want this to be a workshop setting. it is on the screen here for the

agenda. i want to pause to express deep appreciation to our peer agencies and utilities with us today. especially on friday afternoon and evening on the east coast. from philadelphia water department we have jeff brooks and dc walter carlton ray and the senior adviser for green infrastructure. from the city of new york we have the managing director of planning and partnerships. city of portland chief year of the bureau of environmental services. thank you for being here. i have 10 slides. we want to give system contacts for the historic watersheds. what our combined sewer stormwater system is and the

development of what we will talk about the five year storm or level of service for addressing these challenges. there may be some people today much more knowledgeable than i am about the history here. we thought this was a good place to start. this map is historic map of san francisco before it was developed full of creeks and marshes you can see them in blue and green. today, of course, the landfills have expanded the city footprint into the bay. you can see the development covers much of the steep terrain that we have. under the streets is the combined sewer system with pipes. it treats all stormwater in the vast majority of storm scenarios. in extreme stormy events that water follows the same topographic patterns as all was. now the city is built out.

the lower surfaces are impacting those areas. the challenge is stormwater management. that varies in normal conditions what we call our annual average also in a typical year. it varies in peak conditions in the larger storms and can cause local flooding. the challenge across the city it varies over time with seasons, year to year. in the long-term due to climate change. we see those implications already. significant progress is made to manage the typical conditions more sustainably. flooding and week conditions is a real challenge. we need to acknowledge that. that is why we are here today. there are multiple strategies to make those improvements. how do we define the flooding challenge?

flooding occurs when a large stormy haven't exceeds the capacity of the drainage system. our approach is to identify neighborhoods with highest flood risk to prioritize investments. at the bottom on the slide we want to emphasize the long-term challenge. something that i was trained with as a young system working on hydraulics. the big investments that are made and as the commissioner mentioned there will always be a larger storm. there have been large storms in the recent past that trigger more work. 2014 there were two extreme works with 4% chance of occurring in any given year. a 25 year storm. yet they happened on december 3 and again on december 11. they were back-to-back, one week apart. san francisco would never be able to afford a drainage system all working together that would be large enough to solve that

type of scenario. it is very difficult. demand or consideration for defining the problem in the system appreciation of what level of risk that we deem reasonable and what strategies and technologies, tools in the tool kit can we bring to make improvements? the factors that we consider when we think why flooding occurs on the next slide is about large storms, ones that overwhelm the system capacity. the natural and environment. topography and sea level rise and changing that we are seeing. land settlement in the city and blockages in the system for various reasons. level for service for stormwater goal on the next slide integrating green and gray infrastructure to manage

stormwater and minimize flooding. to control the flows from the storm three hour duration delivers 1.3 inches of rain. drawing attention to this. this is important piece of foundation of what our current understanding of the goal is. it corns to a storm in blue with a 20% chance of occurring in any given year. often reefed to as five year storm -- referred to as five year storm. our objective. where did this five year storm come from? construction of the collection system began in the 1840s. pipe size and guidelines and increased over time. if we add vance by 1941 the 20% chance of occurring was the five year storm which is in practice ever since. more recently the commission

endorsed 1.3 inches in three hours. affirmed that. take away of this piece is the five year level of service storm is not new. it has been around for some time. it is the system under our city that is built upon in level of service. we continue to apply it in the work today. at various points the pc revisited this and updated with records of new rainfall data. in 2006 and 2014 confirming 1.3 inches in two hours is a five year storm. i mention that because of climate patterns are changing. we are thinking differently about the future and being prepared. the industry standard is looking at the risk based vulnerability of the storms. what is our risk going forward? how do we manage that? how do we use this level of

service? it is not just about water on the surface, flooding. we want be to think about risk. one what are the consequences. flooding near a hospital is different from flooding an empty lot. we got it down to five categories of risk. we are creating projects to take care of level 4 and 5. -and very high. when we do work in these areas and more often than not the work helps begin to address adjacent neighborhoods that are at lower risk because it is one system that works together. for the entire city the randomness map shows high and her high risk of flueding during the level of surface storm. the historic waterways i show understand the beginning.

not surprising those overlap in that way. >> our level of service. the three hour storm. >> now that we have talked about it remember there will be that larger storm we talked about. level of service is established line in the sand but helpful to put it in perspective alongside larger storms in san francisco. this graphic represents the five year level of storm at the top left. the two larger storms 25 year, 100 year are there as well for comparison. these show intensity of rainfall on the y axis against time on the x axis. 25 year are 30% and 60% larger in rainfall depth than the five year level of service storm.

if we click in did bottom graphics we use the area around the lower project to demonstrate the corresponding from the surface is im pore informationatly larger with 300% more flooding and the level of surface storm. the relationship between storm rainfall and the larger storms and impact measured by the acreage of surface flooding is not linear. if we double standards to address bigger problems we need a larger increase in investment to address the problem. my last slide is to look at what we have been doing about it with such hilly topography.

this is the most recent chapter in the history. showing investments towards flood resilience. flooding efforts, and capital projects. we celebrate a lot of project. there is a lot of work underway and much, much more to do. that brings to the end of this initial overview. the meat of the presentation is to review the projects, policies and programs for the flood resilience. we intend to start with the project manager for the stormwater project like a case study to dig deeper to explain the context. then sarah will take us through the other projects that we have and then policies and programs that may being up all of the tools in the toolbox to address these challenges.

i am happy to move. >> commissioners. >> next slide and hand it over to saed to look at the case study. >> good afternoon, commissioners, i am the project manager for the lowerala main nestormwater improvement project. i give you background about the status of the project. the map on the left was shown before. it is the watershed in the city. it is the largest watershed. on the right is lower tributary bordered by red line part of this wa

next please. in this slide we are looking at lower alamaney flooding and level of service. different colors show different depths. five year is 1.3 in three hours will flood the area. four feet and up to 11 acres in just that area.

it does not meet the level of service. most of the residents next to the lower alamaney are lower income. in addition to market is important. farmers market is important not just for the neighborhood but san francisco is first one in california. we are coordinating with multi city agencies. there is a lot of interest to improve the area. the worke forcer and district 9 supervisors office are in discussion, have been in discussion to convert the streets that currently serve as on and off-ramps for 101 and

i-280 to more community space. including housing, farmers market, realigning lower alamaney, changing lamps, business entities. to us it is more important as we are flooding because of these coming there. developments are coming there. the project team looked at different project concepts. i go through these step by step in following the slides. storage distributed tanks, retention tanks. stormwater separation and convenience. we planned the projects and with pipe and tunnel with and without the storage.

as mentioned before this watershed is white organized develop -- quite organized. we looked at the detention areas. there was one we looked at private property to avoid additional pipe and tunnel. these tanks none of them are green infrastructure because they are not using natural resources or processes for the flow. they retain flows to enter sewer when the peak is passed. that is why we looked at it. historic it is limited in footprint. they require a pump station to function. because of low footprints it has

to be built deeper and then it requires pump stations. not the popular asset to build. by themselves do not eliminate the pipe and tunnel. it does not have sufficient area to store the flood volume in the level of service. as part of pre-planning we looked at the lighting, what was possible 30 to 40 feet wide and up through three feet of depth to have a creek. the problem with this option it requires separate stormwater for residents up to 500 acres and even 500 acres and with that it

could not add to flooding. that is why based on the open watershed, nine projects are are planned to manage 62 acres of drainage management. the area that i mentioned. we evaluated the impact of implementing the projects with conveyance and look at the results in the next slide. this is showing the impact on hydraulic grade lines for the tunnel option. it is listed in the previous slide. horizontal access shows tunnel west to east. vertical hydraulic grade line. we should present the water

surface. the line on top is the basically grade elevation profile. is blue line in the bottom is tunnel. the thin blue line is the hydraulic grade line just the tunnel and the red line shows the hydraulic grade line for tunnel dimension. you can see here that those g i's did not make a difference through the reduction of the tunnel size. the difference between the lines are minimal. it did not change the size we need for the flood. for gi to make a difference it requires 1,000 acres equivalent to golden gate park of drainaged

managed areas to reduce flood volume 4.8 million-gallon which is not practical in this water shed within the foreseeable future. looking at the wide range of concepts. here are the four viable conveyance alternatives that provided the hydraulic performance and the alternative analysis. four pipe only and one pipe detention basin in the farmers market. fourth was a tunnel. tunnel was scored highest because it has the least traffic and community impact and less expensive. this is a selection of some of the early concepts considered

for storage and conveyance in 2018. for limited cost estimates to benefit being quantified by the reduction in total flooded area. creek daylighting in the table to present the concepts we looked at. however, it was not the cost estimate was not developed because it was early on not viable. creek daylighting for the gi intervention can manage the storm water for large quantities. they are cost probative and logically -- logistically challenging in the near term. they can help shave the peak of the storm would take longer time to implement before significant benefits are realized. gavin tunnel is in the bottom in

bold and that was ultimately selected. in conclusion we selected the new tunnel alternative for 4.8 million-gallon of flueding volume. this is tight. we have a year for cr the last 10% design. 18 months to do the detail design and the construction in 024 to put the asset in working in 2027. with this i will turn it back to steve. thank you. >> thank you. we have more members with us to take questions. the next part would be to look at the other projects and policies and programs. open to questions or if you would like to wait we can keep going with sarah. >> i think we can keep going,

steve, thank you. >> sarah, to the next part. >> good afternoon, commissioners. we are really excited that you are dedicating friday afternoon to stormwater management. thank you. i am going to give you an update on our city-wide green infrastructure strategies and provide an overview of where we are right now and a few thoughts about where we are headed in the future. i know everybody in this virtual space knows what green infrastructure is. quickly before we dive in for those watching who are not familiar. we define it asset of distributed engineered stormwater management tools to capture, slowdown and clean stormwater. so you can visualize it examples are rainwater harvesting, creek

daylighting. because these are able to manage stormwater and provide benefits that commissioner harrington was talking about every time we make an intervention we are sitting at that intersection between landscape, urban design and stormwater infrastructure. traditionally, following the baby that commissioner harrington put forward. we need to take the stormwater that comes our way and convey it. with green infrastructure we use a watershed planning lens to think where the babies live, where the stormwater is first and how to manage it before it reaches the system. we know that every year over 10 billion gals of rainfall on our city. to take a data driven approach we need to know where it is coming from.

out of all of the surfaces in the city 55% of the surface is on private parcelings, 10% on public, 35% in streets. we need to have strategic mechanisms to manage stormwater in those spaces to move the needle and manage stormwater at the source. this slide here shows the different mechanisms that we use to reach notifies different impervious surfaces. if you look at the right side of the slide you can see these tools which together layering the functions together would allow us to manage a billion gallons of stormwater each year with green infrastructure by 2050. the existing performance in dark blue at the bottom of the graph. projected is the big light blue

triangle. you can see the dark green the existing capital projects. medium green is projected performance of capital projects. light green is the grant. to reach that billion gallon goal we have to scale up. there are exciting ways to bridge that gap to get into. our city-wide strategy for green infrastructure uses projects, policies and programs to integrate green infrastructure across the city. a way to think about this is to build it ourselves. that is the project. we can require other people to build it. those are our regulatory efforts or incentivize others to build it or build partnerships with others. this work has to be with robust technical assistance. green infrastructure is new to

many in the public and private sector. with capital projects we started early implementation projects. we selected one in each of the san francisco eight urban watersheds to test the different types of infrastructure and how it works in different areas, test different technologies and understand how to admit that into bikeways, residential areas, commercial corridors and parks and open space. these photos show the finished projects. at the time we proposed these projectses we committed to this commission we would monitor them to understand whether they were performing as they should and how we could do better moving forward. these facilities were designed to reduce volume and peak flow from their drainage management areas during the level of

service storm. to meet that monitoring commitment that we made, we established a monitoring program to evaluate performance, and we have been documenting the different challenges of the green infrastructure adjacent to land uses and observing how technology has performed. we are using all of that information to inform project planning and design moving forward. committed to monitoring each project for two wet seasons at least. this shows to date. let's dive to the results. results so far have been very positive. look first at the peak flow and volume reduction circle on the left side of the slide. these circlegraphs show an average of all data we collected for each project so far. they include every storm, large and small the facilities have

experienced. a quick note for those following along on the presentation that was published. there was an error and we corrected it. the peak flow reduction on the oak and green street is 56% which is on this current slide. i was asked to mention that in case people are using the other one. on the right side of the slide you can see the model volume removed by the facility in yellow and then it is compared with the actual monitored volume removed in green. you can see the projects have largely outperformed predictions and this is mostly because our models don't account for lateral infiltration in the facility. we have an entire presentation for gi monitoring for those who want to nerd out and that is on the website.

we are entering a new partnership with the san francisco estuary institute funded by the e.p.a. to look at pollutant reduction. we will report on that when we get it. >> sarah, when you say 93% or 85% of what? >> that is all of the stormwater that fell on the facility for the time that it existed. for example in most of the small storms, the facility would have absorbed all that fell on it. in the large storm it would have overflowed. we have storm by storm output so you can see. this is the level of service storm and this facility

overflowed or in the case of sunset which you can see and sunset boulevard over sand we have 40 inches per hour of infiltration. it performs very, very well. in some of the other areas it performs differently. it is interesting when you look at it storm by storm. we can certainly provide that. these are the average of all of the storms it has experienced. does that may being sense? >> that is perfect. thank you. >> i will adds for expansion on that. when you say percentage of rainfall that fell another the facility, where you have -- i am thinking of the oak and green street. there are facilities that are part of the street that are designed to capture. are you measuring just that as the facility or the street itself and the streets that lead into the streets?

>> right. let me make sure i answer your question. i will take a stab at it and i might ask will to jump in. each pat has a drainage management area that is draining to it. in the case of oak and sell the streetscape is draining to the facility. all of the rain is falling on the street and then it becomes stormwater and runs to the inlet and goes to the facility. all of that would be like 100% of the stormwater coming from the drainage management area. and this data is saying out of all of the stormwater that fell in the drainage management, 56% was reduced in terms of peak flow reduction. 75% of the volume was taken

away. will, do you want to expand on that to make it clearer or additional details? >> you summed it up well, sarah. volume is really the percentage of all flow that entered the facility during the two years of monitoring. that volume reduction is percentage of the flow that was basically removed from the sewer, no longer reaches sewer. peak flow reduction is the average reduction over stormy events that we see in the flow coming in. it is the rates versus the total volume. >> i was confused. maybe i have to go to the presentation you talk about. it sounds like the drainage

management area is perhaps bigger than the facility that we are measuring? >> absolutely. that is a great point. i am not sure, brad, if it would be possible because this is a key point to quickly go into the backup slides. there is one that explains the drainage management area at the end or will you can tell brad which one it is. while they are looking for it, commissioner moran, the rule of thumb it needs to be at least 4% of the drainage management area. does that may being sense? so that all of the drainage management area needs to flow to a facility that is at least 4%

of the size of that drainage management area. so is drainage management area said was speaking about is huge, thousands of acres that we need to manage. these are smaller. in this example we have a very generous footprint. as you can see 14%. much, much higher than the rule of thumb. that is working really well. this is our existing project at sunset circle. the blue is the drainage management area. when rainfalls on it, it all flows to the green, which is the green infrastructure. is that helpful, commissioners, to understand how it is working? >> that does help, thank you. drainage management area is a subset of a drainage basin?

>> correct. >> okay. thank you. >> we took all monitoring results and also all of the observations around issues of land use and especially institutional and government issues and did a whole lessons learned. we have many lengthy memos on design, planning, construction for each part of green infrastructure. the big take aways we want to share today on the left in terms of cost-effectiveness and general effectiveness is that in san francisco really it is determined by the size of the drainage management area and the larger the drainage management area the more cost-effective the unit cost is going to be. in the project delivery method

and the team are very important. whether or not the team is trained. what we found is that we did spend a lot of time and money on training. green infrastructure was a new business line for us. the institutional relationships how to create high functioning teams from across the city family since we are working on the surface so we don't have that higher degree of control that utilities are used to subsurface. we have to work with a lot of other people. in the early days we experienced a lot of expensive over engineering during heightened risk perception and we have improved that over time. we took those lessons and many others and came up with big take aways that you can see on the right which have influenced our thinking for the capital plan moving forward. we really worked to identify

large scale opportunities and leverage partnerships. that is where benefits can be amplified and costs can be shared. we can achieve many goals. that heightens complexity but allows more funding and more benefits. we have shifted to parcel-based opportunities. vigorously because working in the streetscape was incredibly expensive. we hope to get back to the streetscape in the future. we want to deliver the benefits to san francisco in the public realm. to do a good job we need to work hard at government, roles and responsibility and more functional cross agency project delivery. for the moment we are turning attention to large parcel-based opportunities and increasing our

technical assistance and trying to establish teams familiar with gi with the eips we showed you it was like starting from scratch every single time with eight projects. we were not able to be age to be as -- able to be assigned the same people every time. this is green infrastructure, start again with the next project. that is very, very expensive. you get a lot of training. that is what we learned. we are applying that to the 10 year capital plan moving forward. the other mechanism that we used to cap stormwater is our stormwater management ordinance which really is a workhorse for green infrastructure in san francisco. you can see in the map that we have gotten a lot of green infrastructure out of the

stormwater ordinance. we passed it in 2010. right as we were coming out of the financial crisis into a building boom. we have captured a lot of new and redevelopment over the past decade and integrate that green infrastructure and commissioner to your point. 125 of these dots have chosen to use rainwater harvesting as part of their compliance. that is a water supply nexus for toilet flushing and irrigation and other technologies. i thought i would note that. at the time we passed this ordinance, the clean water act requires that we have that legal authority in our separate sewer areas which make up 10% of san francisco to regulate development. we took advantage to pass the ordinance city-wide which is above and beyond what we needed to do to kick start green

infrastructure in san francisco. we are getting a lot of beautiful projects out of the stormwater management ordinance. we are making places for people to live and work that are more beautiful and many of these places would not exist without the smo because the real estate market was kind of maximizing built units and so we are tracking that as well in terms of open space created by the smo over time. we also have in the redevelopment areas green infrastructure is the only mechanism protecting water quality before stormwater is discharged to receiving water. in places like treasure island the entire stormwater is being managed by green infrastructure. these are exciting district wide that have come out of the

ordinance. finally, because capital projects are surgical in seeing where the drainage problems and the smo is agnostic. we can't control where development occurs. that is that middle mechanism but it gives us a lot of volume reduction. with the program that is acknowledging in san francisco we have so many existing parcels that we can't rely on development cycle to turn over as much as we would like. we need incentives to make this process happen faster. what we have done in the program space is grant programs, incentives that are small and mighty grant program in operation since 2008. over that long period of time we have given out a small amount of money $1.8 million. it is a huge outreach in

education workhorse. most projects with public schools and so we had a lot of exciting opportunities to engage with stakeholders, build curriculum around environmental science and many other exciting initiatives. we built on that program to scale up and establish our green infrastructure grant program which is targeting much larger parcels in order to be eligible for this program grantees have to manage at least half an acre of impervious surface. relaunched in 2019 and awarded nine projects with $8 million in funding. we are chasing more performance and benefits with this scaled up program. in addition, property owners are responsible for project maintenance. that is a benefit. we get performance but we are not the maintaining entity in

this case. this is just a quick example what we are able to do with that program. you can see that the school has created a dry creek bed environment with rain gardens, integrated into the science curriculum. it has transformed their schoolyard to be a better place for the kids. we are excited how the first two grant programs are going. we have a big gap in the residential space where we have a lot of coverage in san francisco that is residential. to close that gap the team is currently working on creating a pilot program for residential applicants. the goal of the pilot is not only to investigate residential space but also to test partnerships with the third-party program administrator so that we can scale up our efforts in that

space. this program if successful would inform a much larger reach in the residential space. i just have a quick series of slides acknowledging because green infrastructure is distributed technology and takes time we have to have multiple mechanisms in place to transform the landscape over time to manage stormwater before it gets to the sewer system. click through these and see an example where in blue you have the capital projects transforming the streetscape, stormwater management ordinance capturing redevelopment and new construction, you have got the watershed grant program improving that seam and working

with institutional spaces, open spaces and schools. this shows if you have enough mechanisms to get that coverage that is where we move the needle. we have the architecture in place to work upstream. it is an issue of scaling and how can we get to that point. it is the residential properties as well as that program is developed. that summarizes how the city-wide strategy comes together. we are going to quickly go into the technical assistance piece because we do still have a lot of learning to do about green infrastructure. people on our team have been working on this for 20 years and they are working to up the ante

for new practitioners. we worked for several years multiple years and city agencies for a city-wide green infrastructure typical detail set that has really kind of changed the conversation around design of green infrastructure in san francisco and used across the bay area and across the nation to inform similar projects. that is a successful effort. we have also got manuals for every step of the road in terms of green infrastructure. you can see an example of construction and maintenance. portfolio of technical assistance materials over the years to integrate green infrastructure to land use types with different technologies from rainwater harvesting to rain

gardens. i want to talk about the last piece the strategic partnerships which we try to engage in across projects, policies and programs to im fithe benefits -- to amplify the benefits and what we can do in san francisco. a quick couple examples on that. first the buchanan mall capital assessment. we are going to work with rec and park on this park space to integrate the infrastructure to their capital projects. what we are excited about is moral alignment on bond issuance and projects across the city where rec and park has a programming goal, stormwater management goal. when we connect those together both agencies get more. we are hopeful this project can demonstrate some of that moving forward. we have another example where we

have a partnership where one party is doing the capital investment and the other is doing the maintenance. this is an ex siting instance where a colleague was able to build green infrastructure into his project with development. the performance we hadn't planned for in our plan but they didn't have capacity to maintain it. we can't build it if we can't maintain it. we have money to build it. we can maintain it. we got the extra asset with them paying and us maintaining. these are the partner shrimps we want to do more -- partnerships we want to do more of moving forward. that suite of slides is how we are using the green infrastructure strategy and a few minutes on the same approach to flood resilience to much

larger storms in 2014. flood resilience came to the floor with a lot of large storms. we utilized this same way of thinking. you have heard about the projects. we are going to zip through the next slide to show the core flood areas. we intend to make that there. next since we covered that. in the programmatic space we are working in a different way. we know that even after those very large investments are made and we have that base of flued resilience we will still flood in larger storms. they are to acknowledge that and say we need to educate the public about flood risk,

leverage development same as stormwater management ordinance. how can we make new construction more flood resilient over time and investigate some new tools finally pursue advanced capital planning with city partners to get more for our money and have nor holistic designs around flooding which impacts all of us and is something p.u.c. cannot solve by ourselves. to build that portfolio we started with a technical effort. one of the leads of creating the modeling and mapping was saed. they created this map adopted in

2018. it was integrated into our website and planning where anybody can put in their address and understand this they are inside the 100 year flood risk zone to take action to further protect themselves through insurance or other mechanisms. we use that technical effort for flood risk disclosure. they would would have to disclose at point of sale or rental point if they are in the flood risk area. this is unusual. a lot of cities do this for fema. most are not in this space for stormwater driven flooding. this is an exciting effort that went forward in that way. we will leverage this information to work with patterners across -- partners across the city on the flued resilient building code. we are working to advance that

work. >> they can link to nfit insurance and other programs like adopt a drain and sewer lateral issues to become more flood resilient. i know this has been a long time of me talking. i have three more slides to tie these things together. then we look forward to the discussion. if you go to the next slide, really what we have done in san francisco so far and learned a lot to use green infrastructure

mostly for volume and peak flow reduction and water quality protection in storms at or below the level of service storm. that has been a great exercise where we have learned to do green infrastructure, the challenges, improved, monitored, but if we want to get into using green infrastructure for flood resilience, floodplain management or for really large landscape scale gestures that change the way our city works, we need to start thinking much bigger. and i think this is what commissioner harrington was referring to in terms of the other ways to look at this. our guest speakers will dive into this as well. i just want to give this one quick example of something that is happening in atlanta where

currently historic flooding has become the driver for green infrastructure instead of water quality when is an interesting shift. here you can see they are using the park space for management of a 500 year stormy haven't and rain patterns are different. we are not saying it is analogous. it is the goals and framework. large area in terms of management and strategies they are using are voluntary buyouts. this was not an existing open space. they had to purchase property to get to this point and work with many other stakeholders including trusts for public land and rec and park to make this happen. the least relevant piece of information is the budget which

is dreamy and would not happen in san francisco. that is another difference. i think that we do have the opportunity to apply these kinds of ideas in san francisco if we all are working together. the current project right now that is an inner agency project is around the creek where southeast mobility and adaptation study is looking at critical infrastructure that is vulnerable to flooding from stormwater driven flooding, sea level rise and bay runup. the inner agency team working on this is by definition having to think about much larger storms because of those drivers. i think that what we come up against many times in this work is that the technical piece is kind of there. we know these are technically

feasible. it is the policy, institutional arrangement, planning, governance that we need to get in order to support this work. i am going to stop there. i will say we are eager to dive in to those topics with our partners to understand how to set the stage for integrating green infrastructure and resilience across the boards. thanks for your time. i am looking forward to the discussion. >> thanks very much to the staff. good presentations that are very helpful. commissioners, questions or comments. we can wait or hear from people now. >> the only thing i would say, i thought sarah's presentation was very helpful as usual, i should add. it does whet the appetite for

figuring out with all of these tools how do they scale? when you look at the map of all of san francisco, what is the potential for using various tools in real life locations and to see their impact on the system as a whole. great teaser for what follows. >> quick comment. i very much appreciated staff's presentations. sarah, thank you for highlighting a few of the points i asked about earlier. i want to highlight something that sarah mentioned about the projects that are across department collaboration. the opportunities there are really there and there is a lot of interest. i am so glad to see some of them taken advantage of. some of these coordinations are

happening and i just want to say it would be really useful and i am assuming you have something in place. it would be very useful to tax dollars how much this project costs less than similar projects and how much benefit we got out of it because of this. just the better we can track the motivation, flow of money and outcome the better we can justify these projects. we can potentially go to other departments and highlight this as an example how we can collaborate with them and coordinate. thank you. >> commissioner maxwell or paulson. other thoughts? >> this is commissioner paulson. i think it was wonderful and thorough presentation. i just want to thank you for

that. i also am curious because i am going to announce now, i have to go to a medical appointment in a short period of time so i am hoping that there is a timeframe for the new york and philadelphia folks to talk. if i don't see those all i hope donna or michael or somebody can give me if there is slide shows or whatever else what that is in case i have to miss something before i leave in 10 minutes. thank you. >> thank you, commissioner. great. again, thanks for all of that. we are on to the next part of this. who wants to introduce or guest? >> it might be helpful to hear from others around the country. thank you to our guests for talking on friday evening.

jessica brooks, director of green stormwater infrastructure from the philadelphia water department. welcome and thank you. >> thank you for having me here today. it is evening here in philadelphia. like many of you on the call, i am a storm water nerd. i am happy to spend friday evening talking about stormwater across the country. i will spend a little time introducing the work we are doing in philadelphia. a quick slide show but open for a lot of questions when i get through this. i want to introduce everyone to our green city clean water programming. it is a very public friendly name that we have put forward for the city of philadelphia

long-term control plan combined sewer overflow mitigation. it is word de. we prefer green city clean waters. you hear us say in the wrong order a lot of times. i might do it during this presentation. it is about meeting water quality main dates in philadelphia with addressing combined sewer overflows. it is a 25 year program. the mandate really calls for us to be managing 10,000 --rupoff from 10,000 acres in philadelphia through green practices 85% overflow reduction.

>> what is unique is in philadelphia we have to make every dollar stretch. we felt like the funding we were going to be committing to addressing our combined sewer program really could not be buried. as much as a tanker and tunnel might have gotten us to the compliance we wanted to make sure the city got a lot more benefit out of that spending than just that end point. we felt committed to a program that would des contribute these benefits throughout the neighborhoods, bring to the surface and provide the triple bottom line benefits we wanted to make sure we capitalize on. just background on the development of that program. we actually were late to the

game in some ways in terms of compliance when it comes to cfo and that benefited us. we didn't submit the update until 2009. at that point a lot of cities across the nation including philadelphia started to have significant green infrastructure programs. you look back at good programs in seattle and portland and other places starting to develop. we were able to take advantage of that fact that we did not already have a compliance order that required us to have large tanks and tunnels to structure one that led with the green and avoid the tank and tunnels investment at that point. typical negotiation period. we submitted in 2009. couple years to negotiate. in 2011 is when our 25 year clock started ticking. there is just on there a few of the other deliverables we put in

along the way. we have had to do modeling, we had to because our compliance regulators really were going along for the ride with us on this. it is different than most compliance terms they agreed to across the nation. we did agree to monitoring plans, additional monitoring, maintenance plans. on top of that the need to submit every five years our target and to submit an evaluation of adaptive management plan. that plan approach has been something that we have been really -- we haven't taken advantage of it yet but we are glad it is in there. we recognize we were learning what we were doing when we entered the 25 year plan.

we are glad they gave us the opportunity to every five years come back to adapt the program. we have learned a lot now it is time to adapt. we will see that in some of our future as we move along, particularly to get into some of these more like climate and flooding approaching that need addressed. you can see this year is our tenth year. it is another sort of large compliance milestone for us. we did have to ask typically we would have had a june 1st deadline. given the impacts of the last year a lot of construction shut down and was delayed. our regulators did give an extension to the year of the year and they were understanding about that. we feel we will hit the compliance target by the end of the calendar year. we highlight our green acre program of this clean water

approach because that is what is unique and special about it. it is not a green only approach to compliance. i think it is important to recognize that. in addition to the green infrastructure we are doing significant upgrades at the collection system in our treatment plant. we are also doing 14 miles of intercepter lining. there are gray aspects there. we lead with the green here. not green only. realistically as we look at urban areas you do not need to be i am on the green team and i am on the gray team. we need to work with each other to accomplish these goals and take the smartest approach. what we are trying to accomplish. in any case that 9564 acres we round up to 10,000 because it is easier.

that is about a third of the impervious area in philadelphia it is 50% combined sewer area and 40% separate area served. 10,000 is 30% of the area. it is a large scale implementation. one of the things we did when we put together our par debts for compliance -- target for compliance we had exponential growth. in the early years those are the five-year term requirements we had to meet. earlier years were easier to accomplish. they had to be. it was the only way to hit them. we were creating this program at the same time as implementing the program. we have had a lot of learning and hope to continue to

accelerate the program as we move forward with it. i want to take a minute to just talk about what a green acre is in philadelphia. that is confusing. green to acre beyond being a challenging term is a measure of volume. we add in that level of challenge. it is the depth of water we manager running off from an area of impervious coverage contributing to that system. it is not the actual green space we create. it is often misunderstood when our program. we usually have about a 10-1 learning ratio. tenth of an area from the area that we might manage. that is the area that is doing the management and maybe turning into that green space, to give a sense of scale there.

the green acre we have in compliance. we can't manage 10 inches from one acre and get 10 "green acres." they have limits on that. our typical approach is manage an inch and a half from any impervious coverage. we can go up to two inches in certain areas. that is the cap. once you are past two inches from the overflow point of view you have diminishing returns. those are fewer storms you are capturing. the target is capture as many storms as possible and level frequency and address that volume. [please stand by.]

into we have >> we have first and foremost, the storm water was in place well before we started our green city clean water program and they started on that backbone. anything over 15,000 square feet in philadelphia is required today storm management. but anywhere in the city, you are required to do storm water management and as long as those

systems are cited a maintenance agreement and are recorded on the deed and we do follow up inspections on a regular basis, we're able to count those areas towards our compliance terms. so this is our capital project that the investment that the water department is making. they are significantly on public streets and parks and fire facilities and those kinds of things. all on public property. they are as previously mentioned, very expensive and challenging areas to work. one of the reasons we felt it was worth our investment is if you think about the permanency

of this area, the street grade is some of the most permanent areas that you'll see in the city. once you get off the street, those things can change. so we really tried to manage the street, off the street but in a public space like a park where we can have some access to that and continued sort of influence over what it's going to look like. with that said, there's still not enough in that space not every property is going to be developed. and so we had to create our incentiveized program. this has been a really great program for it and so that has given us the ability to give credit on the builds.

that's not enough money to give people large capital programs. at this point in time, our grant program is at about $25 million per year those funds go directly to property owners who are going to install retro fit and will sign a maintenance agreement and will have future inspections and really the sort of synergy there that investment and that credit that you get on your bill is what continues to encourage property enowners to do the maintenance because if they don't do that maintain, they'll lose their credit. these are the three really major driving forces behind how we're getting our work done here in philly. you can go to the next slide. so i actually am not going to

talk too much about how we address flooding in philadelphia because we don't do it yet. we have really had as i said, this program is driven through combined sewer compliance orders and so the target is many smaller storms. that said, we are looking at how we adapt this approach to a lot of our other problems namely flooding and climate change and what are we going to do with the fact that we know that our storms are changing, we know that we have vulnerabilities and these things really sort of play on each other. so we're actually in a moment in time in philadelphia where we're looking at what those different design standards are going to be. we had a similar kind of a situation is what siad had talked about earlier where we did have a flooding project that we looked at and broadly said what if we threw green

infrastructure at it instead of a tunnel or a tank and in the current design approach that we use, the green infrastructure wasn't all that effective, it really opened our eyes to the fact we need to be taking it slightly not that it can't be utilized, but we need some slightly different design approaches to make it effective. you can't just switch it without really thinking about what your ultimate goals are. so we're really in a world of looking at these issues really preparing ourselves for that and look forward to having conversations like these with our partners around the nation to talk about just all of the other types of issues that we can address using great infrastructure. you can go to the next slide. if anybody online is interesting in getting into the details, there's a link there to our guidelines and then i

just felt like i should end with a pretty picture. thank you, all. i think that's all i had just as an introduction to that program if anybody has any questions, throw them at me. >> thank you very much, ms. brooks. my recollection was that philadelphia started very early on with big green roofs program. is that included in your total work that you take credit for? >> yeah, we do take credit for green roofs. we take credit for anything on private property that has that maintenance agreement that we're able to sign off on. so we have a few incentives for green roof. we have accelerated review permits if your agreement instead of doing a traditional storm water approach. in a good technology for us. but, yeah, it comes down to,

you know, signing that maintenance agreement and the inspections and making sure it's used to perform correctly. >> commissioners >> i had a question. that was a great presentation. i was very curious about your presentation because i've been following the work that's happening there and i'm sure i'm not the only one. a lot of people have been keeping their eye on philadelphia on how this whole thing is going to work out. i'm just wondering as you're sort of looking back and looking forward at the same time, do you think that you would have done any part of it any differently or would have invested in something more than one program over another program? and i'm not trying to sort of say one is better than the other. i'm just trying to see in the ranking of or ordering the options for green

infrastructure or sort of working with different groups to help you to achieve your goal, how do you think this whole thing has worked out? >> yeah. of course. i would not do it 100% the same. but i'm just trying to think of some of the bigger things. i think we're still really happy and satisfied with the fact that we moved forward with a great infrastructure program just to kind of level that off. i think that commitment has really shown us, really serves the city and served our constituency in ways that we did not, you know, really even anticipate and so that's been great. we've had a lot of really great supporters in the city and that's fantastic. i think one of the actual biggest lessons that i take from the process is that when

we put forward the green infrastructure program for philadelphia, we had a lot of high level support from our mayor, from our commissioners, and those people change and their priorities change and so i think it's, you know, i think one of the biggest things i would have done differently is to have taken more advantage of that really strong leadership that existed at that moment in time to really push the partnership side and to really push the coordination between the other agencies because i think there was so much energy at that moment and then everyone, you know, had other priorities for awhile and kind of lost track and, you know, now it feels like sometimes we're pulling teeth or dragging people along and we have to remind each other about that original vision that we had. i think that would be my biggest lesson actually. >> and, that's a great lesson.

absolutely take advantage of that support when it's there. thank you and you're sticking around for the other folks too i assume. >> sure. >> great. >> without further adieu, d.c. waters mixed and vice president d.c. rivers and also joining senior vice president over to you. thank you. >> thank you, steven. and, jessica, very well done. thank you everyone. welcome and i'm so glad the part of this discussion, i commend you for having the workshops. i'm carlton ray vice president of the project. to basically make the so i think what steven and the folks of san francisco and jessica

voted i think a mix of green and grey have worked well for us and potentially i think they're just tools in the tool box and i just think that's, if you just, you know, everything's going to be a little bit different, every sewer sheds going to be a little bit different and try to layer stuff on top of each other. i think that works out well. again, d.c. water would serve both the water folks here in the district would provide water service as well as about 1.6 million people outside the district for sewer service and i can -- we, you know, have the world's largest water treatment plant. probably not as cool as ya'll's but it's pretty cool.

if you ever get a chance, come see us. we basically create energy with our bio saws here at d.c. water. we also have lots of solar. we're also gathering energy from our sewers. so we're trying to push the envelope on the energy recovery. right now, we utilize about a third of the energy for bio saw as well as solar. we've got different gears. there's 0s lots of things to learn. a bunch of great programs. >> i'm joined with seth card for d.c. water.

he's going to give the presentation and i'm going to dive in and we're just so fortunate to be with ya'll today. seth, please. >> good evening and, thanks for the opportunity to be here tonight and to tell you a little bit about our program. now, let's jump in to the next slide, please. we are part of the d.c. water clean river project. it's really a user friendly name for the control plan to reduce combine overflows to the district's and to rock creek. and so that long term is being

implemented under a federal consent decree. it's a 25 year decree that started back in 2005 and we've had a couple different iter rations. you know, to changing conditions, better data and better solutions. and so if you look at the map you see the outline of the district. on that middle green area that's identified so that's the oldest part of the city. you know, it's the single pipe that's conveying both the storm water and sanitary flow and when we get too much rain, we experience overflows to the creeks and rivers. the outer area in the grey, that's the ms4, that's the

separate system. these are responsible from a regulatory perspective. the separate system falls under the district department of energy and environments and that's the district agency and d.c. water is actually spun off and is separate from the district at this point. looking at, you know, the extent of the challenge, the combined sewer overflow challenge we were faced with, 1996 is really our baseline year that we can see on the graph to the right on an average annual year the ana costa river was receiving ability two billion gallons of overflow. about a billion to the potomac. about 3 billion gallons going into our creeks and rivers.

we've been able to make some pretty significant headway and being able to reduce that. so looking at 2021, a significant improvement and those are a result of, you know, various improvements to our system, targeted sewer separation, the first large scale infrastructure projects that have come online as well as the first half of the tunnel system that's come online. when we're done, we have have reduced system wide by 90% and by 98% in the anacostia river. next slide, please. so just to kind of, you know, understand the magnitude of the challenge, it's not just the

c.s.o.s it's also a combined surface flooding. you see the anacostia river. there's a lot of trash that's coming out when those overflows happen there's a lot of trash in the river as well and then we also have some neighborhoods in the district where the sewer system was historically undersized and it was put in place the bloomlingdale's mall, the shopping districts, the middle part of the city, the oldest parts of the city and when that sewer system was put in place, it was really undersized from day one. at that point in time, you know, the upstream portions of that sewer shed were really farms, fields, forests, and over time as the city was developed, the flooding issues and the undersized, you know, problem really became more and

more of an issue. so, you know, the residents in these neighborhoods have been experiencing these surface floodings, these backups both into their homes and into the streets, you know, going on 100 plus years at this point. and so, the project will address not just the overflows into the river, but also these overflows and backups and flooding within the specific neighborhoods district. next slide please. so in terms of, you know, progress to date and where we are, if you look at the map on the right, you know, we are addressing this again through a combination of deep tunnels, sewer separation, and green infrastructure and so, if you look in the line at the bottom, the purple line, that's the first half of the anacostia

tunnel system. and that went online in 2018. and since it went online, we've captured over 10 billion gallons of sewer overflow to date. additionally, we captured over 5,400 tons of trash and debris and other solids related to that tunnel system. we have also constructed and put online our first two large scale green infrastructure projects, that's the potomac river 1 and the rock creek project 1 and as well as 1st street tunnel and we'll talk a little bit more about that. essentially that was -- it's advanced ahead of time as a result of flooding that occurred in two thousand twelve where there were four storms, three in july, one in october that were heavily impacting, you know, that central part of

the city, the shaw and drake park neighborhoods, bloomingdale neighborhoods and so we convened a task force, the mayor's office convened a task force where it was cross agency across the departments. we had department heads from all agencies in the city as well as representatives from the mayor's office, from the city administrator and the result was, you know, resolution on over 35 issues or barriers to addressing the flooding issues. this included items such as advancing the 1st street tunnel ahead of schedule. you know, it was constructed several years before it was supposed to be constructed. we constructed it green infrastructure on the irving street corridor to mitigate some of that near term flooding

as well as receipt trudeau fitting an old water treatment filtration plant and using that for temporary storm water capture before the first street tunnel came online. it also included changes to, you know, permitting issues and barriers, plumbing code. issues and barriers and introduced a back burner valve program for residents and businesses in the intercepted area. so, you know, we're able to address some of that flooding in advance of the northeast boundary tunnel which you can see in orange, we were just completing the mining of that tunnel as we speak. that won't go online until 2023. they're still a good deal of surface work that needs to occur before that tunnel can go online, but that tunnel will address the vast majority of the flooding issues within those neighborhoods.

in terms of planning and design, we're in design for the potomac river tunnel system as we speak as well as the next rock creek green infrastructure project up in that yellow area towards the top of the map. next slide, please. so, you know, we had a bit of a reminder of this flooding issue in that central part of the city just last year. so on september 10th, at a very intense storm that occurred, it really wasn't even forecasted and, you know, received severe flooding within that area and so, you know, the map on the right is the result of a

detailed modelling effort that incorporated both rain gages data from four different rain gages, radar data and this was modeled to give us in a very detailed information in terms of the amount of rain that fell in the intensity and duration of that rain. there's red about introducing n

as well. at that point, there had been a decision to not utilize green on the anacostia side. one of them was an equity issue. this was the anacostia's

impaired water body is receiving roughly 2 million gallons of overflow a year and it also corresponds with one of the pour areas and underserved areas. in terms of bringing this solution as quickly as we could looking at and trying to incorporate green would have caused some delays under that decree and so it was decided with the tunnel only solution from the equity side and then the volume management side and that was supported by the residents within those areas. the various ngos wells epa.

let's go to the next slide, please. so that's >> okay. so we'll speed up a little bit. >> i'm so pleased that you are all here. >> why don't we just after this one go to rock creek please. >> sure. okay. there you go. >> okay. so on the rock creek side, we are pursuing a hybrid green and grey solution for csf control and so we will manage 92 impervious acres. that's primarily in the public right of way really looking to incorporate allies as a

standard expression of the public right of way. we are also incorporating parks, reck centers, school yards, and we do have a private property program where we work with residents to disconnect their down spouts and that flow and not into the combined sewer system. to construct the green infrastructure. your complex in terms of existing utilities and large trees and other issues and it's relatively low compared to the drainage area. so kind of going back to that graph looking at about 50 million gallons per year as opposed to a billion or 2 billion gallons here.

so, again, in the interest of time and wrapping up, in terms of lessons learned, it's really looking at the best solution for the best location, right. this green infrastructure makes sense for this water shed, the gray infrastructure looks good for this. the hybrid solution and the rock creek is more cost effective and then all gray or all green solution and then, you know, when you get to the anacostia, you get to volumes that are so massive that you really need that tunnel to reach the economies of scale. so in terms of our green infrastructure approach, we've shifted towards standardizing

the design. standardized the buyer tension design. this has made it significantly easier for our and so this all means that we can deliver the green infrastructure faster and we also look to couple the green infrastructure projects with other existing projects. so we work with a local district department of transportation on their program where they replace alleyways within the district. we pay for a portion of those, they pay for the additional portion. that's another way for us to keep those costs down. >> so i was just going to interject here. a couple other things is that basically, one, is that the

district has goals not only for the ns4, for storm water controls, but also for the area as well. so the ms4. basically, all the green infrastructure is going in to the anacostia for redevelopment is just going to be beneficial for us. also, we give great reductions, we give great cost reductions on people who've installed different we'll also give you a break on that. and, finally, we look out for the folks who are less fortunate. our rates have gone very high and continue to go high and so we have different customer assistance programs depending on the level of income and other criteria that we've

implemented. again, if you all need some information about that, we'd certainly share that with you. but that's really important because the cost of this is very high and let's figure out ways to how we're falling through the cracks. sorry, we took a little exercise there. >> we totally appreciate all of your comments and we have lots of questions and we always pack these things too much. >> yes. >> in the interest of time, we'll move on to the next couple of speakers and see if we can have a bit of a conversation. >> okay thank you. >> thank you, both. next to new york managing director of g.i. planning and partnerships. good evening and welcome to you malice is a. thank you. >> thank you. i'm so happy to be here and i appreciate the invitation. so i only have seven slides and i promise to be quick. my -- if you want to switch to

the next slide. new york city has a green gray approach to long term control planning in our water shed. so we unfortunately never came up with a clever name. we still call them l.t.c.p.s. and we have 14 distinct water bodies in new york. we have over 520 miles of shoreline. we are 60% combined sewer and we have 11 long term control plans that we've developed over the years to help address our c.s.o. requirements under our regulatory overflow consent order. what you see on the screen right now is a summary of our

gray infrastructure project these are projects we're actively working on now. they don't include the $40 billion of gray projects we've completed already which has helped us reduce c.f.o.s by 80% since the 1960s. where actually has a water quality benefit and in 2012, we signed our new consent order that allowed us to develop these l.t. krvmentd p.s with the baseline green infrastructure commitment. each water body has a commitment and i'm going to focus on that for the rest of my slides. so the next slide shows you our green infrastructure program

areas. there was a lot of skepticism about whether or not green infrastructure would work in an intensive populated city like new york city. so the top three images are our most implemented right of way infrastructure practices. we have a standard 15 by 5 rain garden on the left. we have what we call infiltration. these are what we designed after running into some of the problems with some more elderly residents that didn't like the way the rain gardens impacted parking or people trying to get in and out of cars, so we came up with a strategy to match existing conditions. you can do a concrete top and

it has a subsystem much like a rain garden or you can do it with a grass top and they're actually, they've been proving to be very effective in terms of construct ability but also management. then we have these storm water streets and we implement those in areas where department of transportation likes to see some traffic measures into the

same recommend that we're doing with our public funding program. so next slide, this is just a quick snapshot of where we are today. the image on the right is from our public green infrastructure map. each of those dots represents a green infrastructure map that we have a final design on. so, to date, we have over 12,000 constructed assets. again, if you look at the circle graph on the left, you'll see that the right of way practices i mentioned make up the bulk of those asset.

so over 10,000 assets, that's the same acre that philadelphia is using, the volumetric acre but it's a green acre equivalent. so right of way projects make up the bulk of our program and i'm going to talk about why on the next couple of slides. but we do anticipate with our new storm water regulations that pale, lighter blue color starting to make up more of this graph because we'll be bringing those properties into our strategy very soon. so the next slide describes the way we started our right of way implementation. so we took our 14 water bodies and we prioritized the c.s.o. tributaries that we wanted to target with green

infrastructure. and so, again, i mentioned that our long term control plans have green infrastructure built into them. part of the baseline assumption for those plans. we went into each of the water sheds and we tried to saturate as much as we could within the right of way. so our c.s.o. tributary trees

bidding contracts out right now at the size of around 400 practices per contract. we started off with much smaller contracts and we were paying a hefty price for those and we found a way to aggregate those contracts a little better to get a better cost. but the real reason we've been able to do this is because we spent the time creating standard designs that we use and we replicate over and over and these are all on our website if anyone is interested and we have workshoped these designs with every partner agency that is involved in the

right of way. we get their signoff, their buy-in. they get to look at all of our final designs as the practices are being cited and help us determine if that's the right place to put the asset. that has been one of the reasons we've been able to be so successful. and the next slide, quickly just shows you our metrics. so i saw that this is one of the common themes in the request for speaker notes and, you know, this is something we started our program off without really knowing what the equivalent metric was for impervious acre manage and c.s.o. volume reduced and that was a downside to our program. starting it without having that information. so we started with a metric that wasn't quite the metric we needed to be communicating.

our combined sewer overflow consent order required us to establish the real metric, the c.s.o. volume per acre managed reduced annually and we did that for extensive modelling of our program. and what we learn is that with saturating 10% of the impervious area of the city of new york which is 80,000 acres, we would achieve a 1.67 billion gallon c.s.o. reduction per year and that is what we're striving for. we've already crossed this 1.5% impervious area managed. so we're already achieving 1.7 and that is a third of the volume that we need and the best part, we learned through this process is that our retention practices that were constructing in the right of way are performing eight times more efficiently for c.s.o.

reduction than the retention practices that were being constructed under the current storm water regulations. so that has helped us rewrite those regulations. we couldn't have done it had we not constructed as much green infrastructure and now we want to apply those lessons learned to the redevelopment community and say we've demonstrated the effectiveness of green infrastructure, now it's your turn to help us green infrastructure citywide. we're going to continue this billion gallon per year metric and our goal is to hit that by 2030. lastly, this last slide covers where we're heading. i don't have a lot of time to talk about this, but we just completed a citywide storm water model. it's the first citywide 2d precipitation model that has ever been completed for the

city. we are releasing storm water flood maps next thursday on earth day and we're really excited about that. it seems like everybody on this workshop is headed in this direction. we're really trying to figure out how we can design practices whether they're distributed green or overland or gray practices to better target flooding. it seems like we're all trying to figure that out. so we're really excited to move in this path and look at these solutions. we also have a partnership with copen haggen that we've been working on for the last two years. we have two large cloudburst pilot projects that we've been working on one this year and the second one next year where we have specifically designed overland solutions for very large cloud burst events up to a 50 year storm.

these are practices we've never constructed before and we're really excited to see how that works. but we did extensive modelling. can't use your extensive practices for this type of work, but it seems like it can be doable. and then, finally, we're also integrating more water conservation and stormwater reuse into our portfolio and that is something that our development community is really asking us to do to help them take credit for some of these fist skated reuse systems they're building where there's not a lot of solutions to do anything but roof top. heating and cooling and so forth. and so we're looking forward to understanding the cso reduction for those as well. so i'll end there and i'll let the next speaker go. >> wow. i wish we can spend about an

hour talking about the things that you just talked about. that's really amazing work. >> thank you. >> and last but not least, we go a little closer to home to portland. chief engineer carey ru of environmental services. >> yes. good afternoon. so my name is carey ruben and i'm the interim chief at the city of portland's bureau of environmental services. environmental service social security responsible for the waste water and stormwater essentially within the city of portland and in my current role, my responsibility is over design, construction, and project management for all of our capital programs for waste water and storm water. that said, my background is in infrastructure planning and design. ibeen with e.f. for about five years and, before that, i was in san francisco for many years. i've had a 20 year consulting

career as a green infrastructure specialist and so i know something of what you're dealing with because many years ago, i did work with the sfpuc on the sewer system improvement program. so this is very nice for me. i feel like i'm coming home a little bit to be quite honest and i can sort of bring you information of what i have learned coming to a new city and seeing sort of a new context of how they're implementing green infrastructure. and the city of portland is a very interesting case study for green infrastructure. we are also a combined sewer city. our journey started a little longer ago. it did start with a regulatory mandate in 1991. we spent most of the 90s trying to convince epa to let us

include green infrastructure into our stipulation order so we can do it we swear with the down side tunnels or disconnection or things like that. but that was completed, you know, completely met 10 years ago. so we are a city, we implement green infrastructure voluntarily. we don't think of it that way. we are nonmandated. we use the tool of green infrastructure to best address our system needs, our system risks. and our program has really evolved over the last 30 years as our understanding of our risks have evolved as our understanding of how to apply the tools have improved. we do use a capital and a lot of others have talked about this. we use a capital program. and i'm going to talk about

that. and, we've taken each of those in their separate way and we have worked as a city to what i would say develop an at scale approach, like a citywide, you have to scale up in order to use this tool to address system needs and that is what we've worked to do and you can see there on the image on the bottom right planting trees. for instance, we've planted 70,000 trees as a bureau for storm water management, climate resiliency and so that's our attempt to go to scale. next slide. so what are our drivers? so we don't have a mandate. what are the reasons, the primary reasons we use green infrastructure. the first and foremost is localized flooding and basement sewer backups, but that's our really big onement this is the reason we'll use green street planters a lot of the time and

private property retrofits. and we have two major rivers, many creeks that run through our city, providing flow control, temperature, improvement along our creeks. and then, the third which is really kind of a bigger picture driver is to reduce flow. we did have our and infiltration is part of that. next slide. so we have a lot of different things that we do. i think portland's sort of known for green streets and i'll talk about that a little bit because we do install a lot

of right of way green streets but i wanted to put up what we consider to be our green infrastructure, like the elements of our overall program these are integrated into the way we do business. because we don't have an infrastructure team and maybe chief engineer, you know, it's like it's integrated in the way we do it because we've been doing it for so long. so what i'll do is just highlight a few of things that are what we do a lot of or that are a little more unique.

we build about 150 green streets a year now. green streets are the first option we look at. it is the first approach that we take. we have two reasons that we use it in those areas. localized flooding or regional approach which is where we're trying to reduce flow to our trunk system and so that takes a lot more green streets, but we do use green streets for that approach. just to give you a scale, we have hundreds of capital projects that are active, like 400 capital projects and we probably have 35, 40 capital projects that have green storm water infrastructure right now.

next slide. what we have more of is private green infrastructure and that has resulted in over 6,000 private systems built in the city. we also have a very low trigger. anything over 500 square feet of disturbance triggers storm water management in the city of portland. next slide. so i think i mentioned the disconnections. that was a big part of our program for our regulatory order, this is something that's really evolved for us. now we have private property

retrofit usually these rain garden types of facilities that go in parking lots or businesses and we have found that these also help us mead our localized goals and they're much more to construct. so this has been a very successful and kind of a belove program in our neighborhood. which is great. and the last one that i'll highlight is our land acquisition the goal of this program is to protect and enhance natural areas. a big part of it is flood

control. we have purchased and preserved and restored 800 acres. and for me, the reason i think i was so impressed is that this is a 25 year program. they fund this and we have areas that we know flood or areas that we know if we have enough parcels we can provide flood control and we wait. we will be here for decades and decades and eventually, we will move, this is our that reduced flooding along one of our major creeks that does have a major

flooding issue within our city so i just gave you some highlights of things i thought you might be interested in and i'll end with a pretty picture as well. you know all of these different ways of doing business is just so amazing. different people are at different stages of this moving through. but that mix of green and grey, what starts first, what works in different ways. it's nice to hear the synergy happening in different places. commissioners, thought, comments, questions. >> i have a question. thank you so much kerry and i want to thank alyssa and everybody else who presented. i want to ask a sort of fundamental question. had you guys, any of you, did you have to change the way you

measure perm answer of these systems to be able to finance them or find funding for them? i'm just wondering if you changed the way you do business as usual in order to justify some of these and, kerry, i really appreciated your comment about buying land. i think that was fascinating. absolutely. these utilities have been around for a long time and if you have a long-term perspective and you just have strategy and money in place then you can take advantage of it when the time comes. the key is where the money is going to come from. how do you have a sustainable funding source that's always there depending on the time and the place and the situation you're in i really appreciated the comments you had about

these developers who are actually interested to do things because they are trying to sell either sell their properties of the green property or be able to sort of get credit for what they're doing which is actually often a problem with water. we do have a lot of systems in place to measure emission reduction and building efficiency when it comes to energy, we don't really have much so it's very hard for people to kind of monetize that. so, you know, to see how either of you you and melissa. do you have to change anything internally for the financing part of this. and i do think that will be a different story every utility because the financing and the

funding comes down to leadership and community support most of the time. and it comes down to management within the bureau being able to make long limitations around what we can bond fund and not and so that sort of comes in and can become a little more tricky when you're not in a c.s.o. mandate program. we've been around that to make that work. but, to me, it's about having the leadership and community support and portland was an example where essentially we swung on the penjulum.

we were to prioritize above all else. we have the momentum and we grasped it and we took it, you know. now, because it's become so much of a part of who we are and what we do, we have that community understanding. that's led to sustainable funding. >> i was just going to say we had a couple of different financing mechanisms. basically, looked at our social as well as our environmental goals and had a third party group come in from europe and

evaluate us you guys did that as well as recently implement environment impact. again, we were basically we hadn't done this green infrastructure, so we wanted to basically finance the first project $25 million of green infrastructure using this environmental impact bond. if we got better than expected results, they got the extra

payment hopefully that was helpful. >> we were all watching the e.i.b. to see how it was going to work out. >> yes. exactly. >> yes. so it was interesting. again, there's opportunities other ways to do it as well and some of these unique solutions that have been talked about here i think that might be something that would be a good approach to do. other folks were interested and there was lots of folks that were interested in the green bond as well. we had i think four times the number of buyers than what we had to offer there. >> the puc is probably issued more green bonds probably more than anybody else. so that's -- we are all in on that one. >> very good.

>> anything you wanted to add to this discussion or the question? woe can hear more. is there a preference. >> i'd rather hear from them and then we can summarize at the end. >> that'd be great. staff, can you bring up the public comment. >> madam secretary, you may be muted. secretary can you hear me now? >> yes, we can.

>> secretary: members of the public who wish to make 2 minute comments. meeting id 187 903 7276 pound pound. to raise your hand to speak, please press star 3. you must limit your comments to the agenda item being discussed. the public comment be made in a civil and respectful manner. please address your remarks as a whole not to individual commissioners or staff. do we have any callers? >> there are no callers that

wish to be recognized at this time. >> that means that we wowed them with all of this wonderful discussion that people had. that's perfect. thank you so much. commissioners, other comments? if not, go ahead. >> commissioner: i have a comment it was a great presentation by both our staff and outside guests. i took notes and there's lots of things i need to follow up on. by this time, there's things you can summarize. based on your opening comments, i think we need to do some follow-up and if the commission could point us in that direction, that would be very useful for staff. >> good to hear. thank you. commissioner, did you have something you wanted to add. >> yes.

and i lost my mute button so thank you for coming back. i am impressed also by the commonality of the themes that all the agencies are pursuing and there are certainly some unique aspects that we can pick up from each one which makes our part of that richer. it really does make me want to see how it all knits together and i don't know exactly what the process would be for doing this but also taking more of a back of the envelope but basically in the trial saying here are things that we -- here are tools that we have, here are parts of the city that have particular funding issues or topographic challenges that we need to deal with and to see how those tools might map out across the city. it will be interesting to see

that and also, you know, if you can do some estimate of volumetrics instead of what the effect of that would be. and not to be precise or come up with something that's a final plan but just to get a sense of what the scaleability of all of this is. we've done some pilot work, we've done, we've given a lot of information. whatever we think's possible within san francisco. >> okay. i'd like that. through the chair. >> commissioner, yes. >> commissioner: i'd like that and i also think everything should be on the table. acquisitions, everything that we could possibly think about because you just never know. i mean, we buy a lot of property and there could be that opportunity and i just think it all should be on the table. if we could have a wish list. so let us look at it and then

we can one by one take it off the table, but i think what we're doing and i hear that we are doing some of that and i just think we should do more of it on every single parcel, every single problem that comes up. i'd like the fact that they look at the green solution first and maybe we do as well. so that's a good thing. >> and, i've seen things in other agencies where they've made a list of issues and they did a gray, green comparison with effectiveness and cost and cost per gallon of water controlled and stuff and it really does make you works here, doesn't work heres that's great. you have a chance to see that idea that everything's on the table. i think there has been a concern by the staff that we can't could this or this would be a problem and i think we really want to open them up and

free them to have that imagination about what might happen >> you can do green with a somewhat similar effect. but people really want the green. they really want all the aspects of that, not a hidden tunnel somewhere. so even when it may be equal, there are real benefits and then you start to add on and have that conversation. i've been told there are people that want to do public comment. if you wouldn't mind if we go back to that for a moment and then we can come back to this. madam secretary, please reel public comment if you would.

>> yes. so if you want to make public comment dial (415) 655-0001 id 1879037276 pound and pound again. press star 3 to speak. we'll give people a moment to raise their hand to speak. if you could let us know if we have people in the queue. >> madam secretary, there are two callers wishing to be recognized right now. >> thank you. >> can you hear me. >> hello, caller. i've opened your line. >> is that me? >> i think you're going to need to turn down your radio or your stream. we can hear it in the meeting. >> i turned off the meeting. that's what you wanted. am i speaking now?

>> yes. >> hello commissioners and staff. my name is bonnie o'shushg founder and director of life inc and living library i want to thank all the commissioner staff and all the guests it's such an exciting and fabulous presentation. i have been working in the us lie us creek water shed and i have also worked there. i have been developing many opportunities including looking at the whole water shed which i appreciate commissioner harington introducing those babies. we need to look at this whole water shed upstream and downstream and in this

particular case, northern fork that comes down chavez in the southern fork that comes down. and we've identified, first of all, our program has been working since the mid 1990s on the l-shaped piece of land, the southern part of which was balboa high school. the students. hands-on learning plus all screen futures. we're looking at upstream as daylighting creek around balboa high school which i've figured out it's several other high doll gist. the opportunity is there and

downstream midstream i'm proposing i'm upping the ante from the triple bottom. >> sorry, caller, your time has expired. thank you for your comments: next caller, your line is open, you've got two minutes. >> thank you, this is peter

with the quality and i usually just comment on water supply issues that's firm water management oversight committee and we're very interested in storm water infrastructure and i thought this was a fabulous workshop. so i want to thank the presenters staff and those who joined us from a far. great stuff going on out there and i really want to thank commissioner harrington for initiating this and i loved your introduction. thank you, i feel excited and hopeful and look forward to seeing things progress. thank you. >> thank you for your comments. next caller, your line is open, you've got two minutes. >> can you hear me now? >> loud and clear. >> great. david pillpell. thank you for re-opening public comment. i was about to completely freak out after listening to the

discussion for two and a half hours. so i served on the p.u.c. citizen's advisory county for three and a half years and the waste water sub committee for a total of 10 years. i would be remissed if i didn't say i didn't remember are lean staff who passed away. she would very much appreciate this discussion and it's great to see and hear from the staff especially sarah minnic and all of her work over the years. i'd like that the presentation started with historic watersheds and waterways, buildings and diversions have altered the natural flow and that's why we're dealing with flooding in ways that affect people. i agree and i hope i don't have to say this again, but it's not green versus grey infrastructure. they both have a place here and

we need cost effective solutions and not cosmetic ones. i wanted to spend a moment on the alamany cuyuga diversion. that would build or expand grey infrastructure under alamany and brotherhood and ultimately route flow along alamany and cuyuga to ocean side plant. that could be done in phases and i think that would have the effect of moving some of that flow from that water shed to the west side rather than having it flow to southeast. i totally agree with commissioner arerington. we should focus on upstream as much as possible and finally,

on my comment -- can i finish my. >> sorry. your time's expired. thanks so much for the comments. madam secretary, there are no more callers in the queue. >> one of the interesting things about being online for these discussions, if someone was in person, we could say here, please continue or ask a question. it's very different where the machine just kind of makes you disappear into the either. so we appreciate that people understand that. and thank you, mr. pillpel, i had forgotten about that brotherhood way to. i see sarah minnic. did you have something you wanted to add? >> no i was just becoming question in case there were questions. i just wanted to thank david for bringing up arlene so,

david, thank you for mentioning that. >> yes. very much so. so -- >> commissioner: i just want to comment about a few things. i did sort of mention a few of these items earlier as well, but i think there was a conversation that came up, commissioner arerington you mentioned it's good to have a table where there was a cost of gray and a cost of green and how these things compare. i want to maybe propose alternatively we are looking at it because it's very easy to say from an economics perspective it's good to invest in this infrastructure because it's going to do xyz and it's easy to measure it. it's not as easy for some of these green solutions to stand

up next to the grey from an economic standpoint. but i would argue that if you think about their lifeline and their design life and the cost of fixing them 50 years from now versus what's versus what you're looking at today and i actually really want us to think about it that way and i really appreciated staff's presentation on earlier, especially the presentation and i'm it's a new project for me so i was just trying to wrap my head around it. one thing i want to mention is, often, i do this -- one thing i want to mention it's easy to stand here right now and say i'm stuck in this box and i do whatever i can to make the box work. another way of thinking about

it can be if today i was where i am and i was designing this system 50 years ago, would i do what i have done there and made me end up where i am right now. sometimes i know it's a little if i wanted someone to deal with it 50 years from now. would i do this design or would i change the way i do things or would i maybe push the boundary a little bit here or there. and i think a great example was golden gate park. it's massive, it's there, it's doing a lot of things for us and something at some point had a vision to put that together. just thinking about the reality

of the and how they sort of last over time. the third thing i want to say is, you know, when i was on the regional board, we were looking at the napa river and flood protection work that was done and that work ended up lasting for 15 years to land on a solution and it was built and it was ended up being this multibenefit project that actually it has this multiple layers, you know, it has public space and then the public space becomes sort of a retention stacy and then, you know, it just has this movement in it which is quite flexible and wonderful to look at and i'm not saying we should do all of these things but sometimes it's easy to overlook some of the opportunities we have. it's good to think about how we can bring more people to table,

think about these alternative solutions in a different way and, again, i want to reemphasize what sarah presented which was as i said i was very excited to see. was a collaboration between the different departments and to take advantage of dollar amounts that are out there and make these projects economically more appealing to take advantage of those resources and be able to sort of build a city that we would be excited to leave for our children and grand churn as they come back in 50 years and back and say what are we doing. i do appreciate we talk about the bottom line. i realize i sometimes fall back on the economic part of the so a reminder to have that broader view is always welcomed and in talking to mr. carlin about this,

the city did make some big decisions a while back.

>> mission housing welcomes you and welcomes our political partners who join us today and will be speaking shortly as well as the members of both mission housing and bridge housing board of director. we want to thank you for your leadership. we want to take this opportunity to tell you the celebration doesn't end here after our ribbon cutting. please make sure you join us on our facebook join to premier the documentary, which is titled, together, designing the la fenix, the story behind how this amazing mural came to

life. please help me welcome an advocate for affordable housing, someone who five years ago, when 1950 was still the navigation center in the mission, she stood her and let the neighborhood know she was on her way to washington, d.c., so she could get support. please help me welcome the mayor of san francisco, london breed. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: well, thank you, everyone. i am so excited to finally be at la fenix. this project is so exciting for

me because i remember when we were first opening navigation centers in san francisco, and this was one of the first locations that we opened a navigation to supervise shelter and support to people who were experiencing homelessness. but before that, we remembered there was a continuation high school. sometimes, when kids got into trouble, they had to go somewhere, and this was a place that provided an opportunity for kids to get their diploma. it was also a place where labor folks learned their activitie. it's been so much for the community, and so it is so fitting that we're able to transform this space into 100% affordable housing for families, 155 units. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: and it is absolutely beautiful.

i want to thank mission housing and bridge housing for partnering on this project. i was here when it was a navigation center, i was here when we broke ground on this place to build, and you would think that, in bureaucratic years, ann cervantes, that we would be waiting for this to be built, but the fact is we have 50 families that are housed here as we speak. [applause] >> the hon. london breed: one of the things that i'm also really proud of is that not only will 40 formerly homeless families have an opportunity to live here, but when i announced that i was on the board of supervisors that i was flying to d.c. on a redeye to get h.u.d. to change their mind -- josh, you remember this -- about neighborhood preference,

the latino community stood with the african american community. we talked about how the government would come to cities, to communities, and say we're going to build this housing, and this housing is going to make a difference in your community. but then, we would look around and say, well, wait a minute, this housing is built, but no one from this community lives there. so neighborhood preference, not only did we get h.u.d. to say no to neighborhood projects, the state is actively engaged to make sure when they provide funds, we're able to do it, as well. we have at least 29 of these units that will be available, right of first refusal, to people who live in this community. that's significant because we get thousands of applications for the housing that we build, but we want to make sure that when we do build housing, people in the neighborhoods feel like it's being built for

them, feel like they have a fighting chance. and roberto hernandez was there with me on the day that we made this announcement because he and so many folks in this community, they have been fighting to make sure that the people who create the vibrancy of what represents the mission, the thriving latino community, that they didn't get pushed out like we did, the african american community in the western addition. that's why it's so important, the work we do, to make it possible for them to reach out to places like this, is more important than it's ever been before. san francisco is changing so much. it's not the city that it was when i was growing up, and that's why it's important that we recognize the inequities, the injustices that exist in our housing stock, and that's

why we make deliberate changes to deal with those inequities. providing access to affordable housing is so critical, but making sure that those that are struggling with homelessness, those that are struggling with access, it is our role to continue to partner and make sure that when we provide projects like this, we're able to ensure that they are a part of this, too. so we created not a new community, but we enhanced an existing community as a result of this project. le fenix, the phoenix, the symbol of san francisco to rise again under this global pandemic, after being sheltered in place for over a year, we are emerging stronger, we are

emerging even better than we were before, and we are focusing on equity in everything we do. whether it's dealing with this pandemic or dealing with access to affordable housing, this is one of the most important things we can do. this project started with sam. i know you're semi retired, but this project started with sam ruiz, who made sure there will be child care on location, that there will be a bike repair shop -- i don't know about you, but i don't ride a bicycle anymore, but for the younger folks who do that, it's all good. this will be a community place for kids, for families, for folks here in the mission, and i am so juiced over the fact that everyone who lives here can just walk around the corner

and go to pancho villa any time they want. that's the thing i'm most excited about. but at the end of the day, as we come out of this pandemic, we know there's still work to do. we know there's housing that still needs to be built. we know that we will continue to work with this community to make sure that we are investing in affordable housing, making the right decisions, being inclusive, using neighborhood preference, and building our partners and building our bridges so that everyone has a safe affordable place to call home. thank you all so much for joining us here today. [applause]

>> thank you, mayor breed, for your powerful remarks and for taking the time to celebrate this important event with us. good morning. i'm e.v.p. for development at bridge housing. our mission at bridge housing is to strengthen communities, but we recognize that our developments can only become thriving communities if they provide safe, stable, and affordable housing for those who cannot find a home in a place where they once had a sense of belonging. as cesar chavez [inaudible] despite the unprecedented challenges imposed by the pandemic, our presence here today to mark this moment is a testimony to the tenacity of countless people who came together to make this dream come true. bridge is honored to be a part of a beautiful mission that

began with mission housing several years ago, and we are thrilled to commemorate this huge milestone with our residents and our joint partners. we're proud to deliver the first 100% affordable new housing development in the mission in many years, with 40 units set aside for former homeless families. in addition, the development provides ground floor space for a variety of community serving needs, including a head start and gallery and work spaces for local artists who are such an integral part of this community and of this neighborhood. i would like to thank all our financial partners for their support, starting with the mayor and her staff at the mayor's office of housing, the california department of housing and community development, and the strategic growth council, the california tax credit and debt allocation committees, wells fargo and

b.n.y.mellon, and the federal housing bank of san francisco. i also want to express my gratitude to the architect, david baker and associates, to our general contractor, and to several other consultants, subcontractors, and most importantly, construction workers who helped turn our vision into reality. and last but not the least. a big shoutout to the incredible project teams at both bridge and mission housing for their relentless perseverance over many years. i want to thank supervisor hillary ronen for her support and invite her now to make a few remarks. thank you. [applause] >> supervisor ronen: hello,

everyone. we are having a great day in the mission. we just came from the second -- not one but second vaccination site just a couple blocks away, and now to cut the ribbon on 1950 mission is really, without exaggeration, a dream come true. i was looking up -- i don't know if they're still there, but there was two little girls peeking out at this press conference from one of those windows, and all i could think to myself is that's all we have to do is point to those two little girls and know why we're doing this work and why 1950 mission matters so, so much. i think it was eight or nine years ago, as a legislative aide to my predecessor, david

campos, i testified at the legislation meeting, asking the city to swap this piece of land for another piece of land so that we could build this incredible place, and to still be here, to be able to cut the ribbon and to look at what has become, to know that not only do we have, you know, over 100 units of affordable housing, many for formerly homeless families, but that we have an art center and a child care center and a bike repair shop doing their amazing work here, it's a dream come true. and i cannot get over how gorgeous it is. is everyone just jaw drooping or wide open, going, who wouldn't want to live here? it's incredible. i just want to give my thanks to the mayor's office of

housing, to mission housing, to bridge. you guys are just performing magic constantly. to our mayor, london breed, who are just -- who is just such a champion not only of housing but for the mission, to ensure that people from the neighborhood get the priority for these incredible opportunities and apartments, so thank you. with no further adieu, i have the absolute pleasure of introducing gustavo velasquez of the department of state housing and urban development. >> greetings and buenos tardes.

i'm here on behalf of the government, on behalf of the administration, on behalf of the state housing department, and i was listening to madam mayor. after so many years, i don't know if you remember, back in the office administration, i was with the office -- with the obama administration, i was with the office of the assistant director of h.u.d., and i get this phone call , and i remember some of the things that she was talking about in terms of the local preferences, and i just remember her passion, her commitment, her

resolve from getting from h.u.d. the commitment to approval. [inaudible] as the state director of housing is just such an amazing experience to be here and hearing you talk about taking the redeye to h.u.d. for fighting what you know was right, and now i'm here many years with you on this project. it's fantastic, this opportunity. this is not you thanking us, bridge housing, mission. i see my pal, eric shaw, from the mayor's office, who i worked with in the past, all of my partners, not only from the state but also being a part of your vision and your resolve to finding solutions to increase affordable housing in this city. as we all know, something that we -- every day we and the city

look forward to to continue to achieve. and our contribution here, it's a small but significant part of the affordable housing but sustainable community housing programs, which has financed 5,000 units of affordable housing up and down the state. this is a marriage, in addition to all the wonderful things this project has, a marriage of affordable housing and a better environment, and, you know, transit so close. we're making funding available for units but gardens and rooftops that make it more efficient and sustainable for the communities, so that's part of the purpose of the housing and sustainable opportunities

program. we're proud to be able to share our congratulations and our thanks to you for making over 150 units of affordable housing in such an incredible community. so again, on behalf of the state, thank you for having us, and now, it's my pleasure to introduce rich ibarra, the c.e.o. of mission neighborhood centers. thank you. [applause] >> thank you, gustavo, and thank you, marsha contreras, sam moss, everyone from mission housing as well as bridge housing. i want to thank you and congratulate you for this great accomplishment. it's an honor to be here today with mayor breed, who -- whose

work i ad mired long before coming to the city a couple of months ago. it's also great to be here with hillary ronen, who i believe will be an important delegation going down to the border with some of the local leaders, to san diego, to celebrate and support the children and teenagers who are there, being housed at the san diego convention center, who may eventually come here, so the more love and support we can give them with the floricanto caravan who have been through hell and don't need to go through anyone else.

we had an interstate highway go -- i'm right at home here in the mission. in the last seven weeks, it's been amazing. also want to thank josh arce, with the office of housing and workforce development. it's also a pleasure to mention ann cervantes for her work, kevin and ali from list, kim edmonds and her team, our team who did a great job here, as well, and of course, my predecessor, who set the table

for my future success, santiago sam ruiz, for his vision, tenacity, and partnership, because he helped, like so many others, make this dream a reality. thank you so much, santiago. in a few months, we'll be opening up the early child care and education center. we'll be giving families comprehensive services, including mental health management and comprehensive activities. i'm grateful to our staff and our board as mission neighborhood centers. as sam moss said, we wish you many years here of love and success. thank you. >> the hon. london breed: all right, everyone. let's cut this ribbon.

five, four, three, two, one. [cheers and applause] >> how i really started my advocacy was through my own personal experiences with discrimination as a trans person. and when i came out as trans, you know, i experienced discrimination in the workplace. they refused to let me use the women's bathroom and fired me. there were so many barriers that other trans folks had in the workplace.

and so when i finished college, i moved out to san francisco in the hopes of finding a safer community. >> and also, i want to recognize our amazing trans advisory committee who advises our office as well as the mayor, so our transadvisory community members, if they could raise their hands and you could give a little love to them. [applause] >> thank you so much for your help. my leadership here at the office is engaging the mayor and leadership with our lgbt community. we also get to support, like,

local policy and make sure that that is implemented, from all-gender bathrooms to making sure that there's lgbt data collection across the city. get to do a lot of great events in trans awareness month. >> transgender people really need representation in politics of all kinds, and i'm so grateful for clair farley because she represents us so intelligently. >> i would like to take a moment of silence to honor all those folks that nicky mentioned that we've lost this year. >> i came out when i was 18 as trans and grew up as gay in missoula, montana.

so as you can imagine, it wasn't the safest environment for lgbt folks. i had a pretty supportive family. i have an identical twin, and so we really were able to support each other. once i moved away from home and started college, i was really able to recognize my own value and what i had to offer, and i think that for me was one of the biggest challenges is kind of facing so many barriers, even with all the privilege and access that i had. it was how can i make sure that i transform those challenges into really helping other people. we're celebrating transgender awareness month, and within that, we recognize transgender day of remembrance, which is a memorial of those that we have lost due to transgender violence, which within the last year, 2019, we've lost 22 transgender folks.

think all but one are transgender women of color who have been murdered across the country. i think it's important because we get to lift up their stories, and bring attention to the attacks and violence that are still taking place. we push back against washington. that kind of impact is starting to impact trans black folks, so it's important for our office to advocate and recognize, and come together and really remember our strength and resilience. as the only acting director of a city department in the country, i feel like there's a lot of pressure, but working through my own challenges and barriers and even my own

self-doubt, i think i've been try to remember that the action is about helping our community, whether that's making sure the community is housed, making sure they have access to health care, and using kind of my access and privilege to make change. >> i would like to say something about clair farley. she has really inspired me. i was a nurse and became disabled. before i transitioned and after i transitioned, i didn't know what i wanted to do. i'm back at college, and clair farley has really impressed on me to have a voice and to have agency, you have to have an education. >> mayor breed has led this effort. she made a $2.3 million investment into trans homes, and she spear headed this effort in partnership with my office and tony, and we're so proud to have a mayor who continues to commit and really

make sure that everyone in this city can thrive. >> our community has the most resources, and i'm very happy to be here and to have a place finally to call home. thank you. [applause] >> one, two, three. [applause] >> even in those moments when i do feel kind of alone or unseen or doubt myself, i take a look at the community and the power of the supportive allies that are at the table that really help me to push past that. being yourself, it's the word of wisdom i would give anyone. surely be patient with yourself and your dream. knowing that love, you may not always feel that from your family around you, but you can

>> this meeting will cometo ord. this is the april 14th, 2021, budget and finance committee meeting. i'm matt haney, the chair of the budget and finance committee. i'm joined by committee members vice chair ahsha safai and supervisor gordon mar. i would like to think kaleena mendoza from sfgovtv for broadcasting this meeting. madam clerk, do you have any announcements? >> clerk: yes, mr. chair. due to the covid outbreak, the board of supervisors