schombert: nine mile run watershed is the most significant urban watershed restoration ever done in the united states. narrator: small-scale projects like nine mile run have far-reaching environmental impact. but they're just one part of the regional wet weather control plan. schombert: this region needs to solve its problem by 2026. that's not that long away. this is the largest public works project ever undertaken in this region. lichte: you're looking at significant infrastructure. either tunnels or storage tanks, or, you know, treatment facilities. the cost is about $3 billion. lichte: if you look at some of the other cities that have gone through this, their rates have gone up significantly. the federal government provides a number of grant programs but the bottom line is, you know, it's not enough. there's a massive need of money out there for wastewater and water infrastructure improvements around the country. narrator: the struggle for funds is as great in small towns as it is in metropolitan areas. oberstar: the federal government has let down municipalities. the first investme

two of the branch living library and think parks are part of the watershed. another initiative that i am actively engaged in is developing a nature walk linking parks, schools, housing developments, other open spaces and streets leading to the creek at the south end of st. mary's park. we have already planted over 600 california native trees that have been funded by the california department of forestry. this is just the beginning of the opportunities to frame the watershed that linked at least 11 neighborhoods in southeast and southwest san francisco. one of the initiatives or opportunities is to develop the urban forest that frames the watershed. i have been working closely and helping them with their plan to look at the watershed. you may have heard of it. i think that this strategy can greatly increase the urban forest, and there are also opportunities to daylight and the creeks in certain open spaces such as parks. i believe that might be understanding, experience, and involvement with watersheds and creeks and underground systems -- in other words, plant

but even separate systems pollute the watershed. in developed areas, concrete and other impervious services prevent water from naturally soaking into the land. as the rainwater moves over the roads and concrete expanse, it captures trash and invisible chemicals, sending them straight to the nearest waterway -- untreated. when engineers first designed america's water infrastructure -- the drinking water, wastewater, and stormwater systems -- they were some of the most advanced in the world. but the infrastructure is growing old. and population growth and development, particularly in urban areas, have made it difficult for original system designs to meet modern health standards and reliably satisfy demand. man: our water and wastewater systems really are engineering marvels. because it's buried, it's invisible to us, and we tend to take it for granted. that's a mistake. like any engineered system, it requires maintenance and periodic rehabilitation, and eventual replacement. it's so out of sight and so out of mind, that we don't realiz

and, as in pittsburgh, as in new york, part of the answer lies in protecting the watershed. nelsen: we need to reduce the amount of impervious surfaces in our watershed, which are surfaces that don't let the water soak in and then create more pervious surface, whether it's by having driveways that allow water to soak in or different landscaping to try to eliminate the amount of runoff that comes off our land so that the system, even with the development it has, acts more like a natural system and filters that water. water quality and sewage infrastructure isn't the sexiest of political agendas, but by raising the awareness about water quality issues, we can create political pressure to get our issues solved. about 15 years ago, surfrider activists were protesting a beach for being polluted. the city council asked the police to escort them away. there was complete denial of the problem. 15 years later, water quality is on the agenda of every city council person in that local city, and that's completely a result of activists forcing the issue, surfrider and other local groups,

it would be to improve the local watershed and restore the conditions that created developments of the site. i talked a little bit about the storm water system and the creek system. the goal from redesigning all these streets is to make them key elements of the ecological storm water system, essentially carrying storm water to a centralized creek system, which sort of filter it through natural buyer remediation and carries it eventually to lake merced, and they are restoring the original flow of the watershed. this would also substantially reduce the stresses on the southwest treatment plants and would reduce the amount of -- overflows into the ocean and improve water quality. it is also important to note that you can see on the map on this slide, the city has a recycled water ordinance. certain geographic areas of the city are part of the ordinance area such that any new development has to be eventually serve buy recycled water, once the puc make that available. you can see most of the area is not in the recycled water area, but parkmerced is. so this project would not be just dual pl

we had 100,000 -- going into the watershed. we have millions of dollars, nothing was mentioned. millions of dollars, wasted by the san francisco redevelopment agency, and we know all of the corruption. this is on treasure island development -- nothing is given in detail. the san francisco general hospital, which is over their budget, much of this is not set. you have other types of -- what happened in wall street and on the national level. you have the algorithms, so far and so forth. we are very astute people. we have the board of supervisors -- we cannot afford to push under the rug certain things that the constituents of said francisco have yet to hear about. we have to do is stop attending meetings like this. we have the documentation, we have the documentation -- and thank you very much for hearing my comments. i want to thank those with the freedom of information act for doing a wonderful job. thank you. >> to the next speaker? >> good afternoon, supervisors. i have lived here for 59 years. lately, speaker mentioned that they did have jurisdiction under laguna at the genera

we are talking about here putting the watershed center off to the left side of this photo, which purchased -- pe rches on top. this is a simple line drawing encasing all the guard in a modernized cents, providing for shop buildings along the lower line. to the right is the main administration building. there are warehouse facilities to the north of this. this is consolidating and paving this whole area. it is partly unpaved and full of potholes. it is dusty in summer and muddy in winter. this is a challenge in place to work. this is a shot of what we actually displayed at the sunol event in september of some visions for the alameda creek watershed center. we envision the three buildings that would be off to the left of the temple. there would include a classroom, meeting room, and interpretive facility. this should be something people could use for educational purposes, for making purposes for us, for other public agencies, and for folks in the local area, learning about our facilities and using them as community access. we are working on trying to define those interested needs out there i

it rains and the watershed and runs into a lake. frack the lake or the watershed. you go to a thousand miles under the surface. they don't know what will happen to the water in new york. they need someone intelligent, a leader to say this is what the deal is. don't worry, watch what i am telling you. check the facts. that is all you have to do. it is not complicated. it is very simple. they want me to feel guilty. i feel like i did yesterday. [laughter] >> are you as confident about the environmental implications? >> he knows more about it. he is an oil man. i was a tv and [laughter] man. >> i trust to godte is,d. do you trust us? [laughter] >> do you -- do you believe the climate change is a natural phenomenon? fewer americans believe to be a real problem. >> your than what? it before? >> i don't know. how serious do you believe the problem is? >> i think it is a life or death issue. i am a real expert when it comes to nature and of the temperature goes up six degrees fahrenheit, it will make life on earth very difficult for most of the creatures including humans.

just one scenario and he's imposed the warming on a hydraulic model and this is the remain of the watershed, this is the sierra nevada and this is the infraction of april first and period surrounding 2060 and that around 2090, and you can see we're eroding the lower elevations of snow and by the time we reach 2090 in this case warmed by 2 degrees celsius, we lose 50 percent of the california snow pact. it's not in the snow. next one. that changes the hydro graph as you heard this morning. so this is october through september the aggravateded sierra run off. more in the winter period, and less in the spring and summer by a bit. this is a recent flood. not a big one. but in may of 05, maybe some of you remember this event. it was raining up to about 9 thousand feet in,yosim ite park this is the valley and this is the storm that did it. a very warm and moist system. we had the valley flooded that the rain fall on average was just one inch but it was raining up to 9 thousand feet and above. frank back there has a bunch of snow collectors up there and his snow sensors were - rain was going throu

we are talking about here putting the watershed center off to the left side of this photo, which purchased -- pe rches on top. this is a simple line drawing encasing all the guard in a modernized cents,

we are talking about here putting the watershed center off to the left side of this photo, which purchased -- pe rches on top. this is a simple line drawing encasing all the guard in a modernized cents, providing for shop buildings along the lower line. to the right is the main administration building. there are warehouse facilities to the north of this. this is consolidating and paving this whole area. it is partly unpaved and full of potholes. it is dusty in summer and muddy in winter. this is a challenge in place to work. this is a shot of what we actually displayed at the sunol even

>> the watershed moment was 2002 when gavin newsom passed care not cash. it turned things around and forced the city to think more about housing. that was a key movement in the right direction. >> let's talk about housing needs and what you think the board of supervisors should do. >> i was asked about this but a friend i grew up with who now lives in the peninsula. i was fortunate enough that i grew up in the district was able to afford in the district. the vast majority of the friends i grew up with in the neighborhood cannot stay in san francisco. we are really becoming a city that is either for the very rich or very poor. the middle class is losing out. that is the issue of one to focus the board on. addressing it is looking at projects like the park merced project with an open mind and consider how many middle-class units it will create. there's also the transportation impact of the project. what about the dislocation of the existing tenants? we have to value these things in a different way the we have in the past. >> let's talk about transportation. l

what i wanted to state to you, commissioners and developers, is that the tribe is interested in the watershed state of affairs in this area. so, if you happeve coal power, t kind of residue contaminants, hot spots, ammonia in the area, we want to know if you are going to do the cleanup. how will you are going to do the basement. the mitigation. that is what i would like to know. also, a record of the city of san francisco established an infrastructure group and managed a support group to realize property data management. there are a lot of continuance. as we see you, we always made available to the public whatever documentation it wanted. general management plans, we called them environmental impact studies. environmental impact reports. the people of the area, and of the tribe, would like all of the documentation to be included. once hunters point was done, the tribe was left out. when they wrote a letter, the planning team and the mayor's office of economic development and others apologize and tried to embrace the tribe. so, we do not want these want to bes that think about greenery and all

particularly pleased as an urban person to see for once that we're talking about water from the coast up the watershed, rather than the other way around. starting out this morning's program dealing with some of the very tough issues that face urban areas as they look not only at water supply but at water treatment and the energy role that water plays for us as well, both bringing us power and cooling our coastal power plants. i bring you greetings, of course, from the city of los angeles and we are experiencing, as has the entire country, the warmest year recorded. last summer was the warmest summer since records were kept. i know you've all seen al gore's speech so i don't have to recapitulate all that, but i do think it's important to bring it back to the meaning for the city of los angeles and for other cities as well that when we record record high temperature, we also record record high use of our power system, which means we also have record high numbers of outages and we have record high hours of overtime being worked by our employees and we have many other impacts that are felt greatly by the

,ipc, these we think will be better to down scaling the global effects on to a more watershed effect scale. the rest of these things are informed by the work we did so these are not things we went out and set out to do specifically but in doing all these things now we do have what we learned from our climate change. to go through these, a new wholesale water sale and it's a significantly different back an and agreement. we capped the total amount of water obligated to our customers that's away we actually took control and gained some demand control over our previous a range mend and basically were a blienled. we're upping to address summer peak use and as we negotiate with the federal regulatory agencies and our compliance. we're assessing our ground resources and future reliability and resource and working renal in thely to set up interconnection and encourage partners to conduct study of their own and their starting to do that. i'm running out of time? one minute. so i'll conclude with the additional information we'd like to see. we're still working from broad assumptions tha

the specter streets we are talking about will have a major storm water function to restore the watershed that formally linked to like -- to lake merced. we are currently sending all the storm water to the sewage treatment plant. the new system of other infrastructure would provide a major improvement to the water flow in the district and relieve a lot of the pressure on the sewage treatment plant, as well as hopefully address some of the ecological issues. the project would also be investing in new distribution piping for future hooking up to the recycle water system, which the puc is planning so that in the future a lot of water needs would not be met through hetch hetcyhy, but through recycled water. there is a commitment to provide -- to construct at least 10% of the demand in renewable facilities either on site or off site, build new generation facilities, and to exceed title 24 standards by at least 10% to 15%. a couple words about how all of this is implemented. in terms of the land use, the detailed land use controls, this is all being implemented through the planning code, throug

remediation and carries it eventually to lake merced, and they are restoring the original flow of the watershed. this would also substantially reduce the stresses on the southwest treatment plants and would reduce the amount of -- overflows into the ocean and improve water quality. it is also important to note that you can see on the map on this slide, the city has a recycled water ordinance. certain geographic areas of the city are part of the ordinance area such that any new development has to be eventually serve buy recycled water, once the puc make that available. you can see most of the area is not in the recycled water area, but parkmerced is. so this project would not be just dual plumbing the buildings, which is a legal requirement, but would be installing distribution systems in the streets with piping so that once the puc makes that recycle water available, it would be a simple connection problem, rather than the puc having to go back 20 years from now and say, "we need to rid of all the streets again at the cost of many millions of dollars and put in the distribution system." that is

it would be to improve the local watershed and restore the conditions that created developments of the site. i talked a little bit about the storm water system and the creek system. the goal from redesigning all these streets is to make them key elements of the ecological storm water system, essentially carrying storm water to a centralized creek system, which sort of fi i

concern for us and i'm sure for like san francisco we're an unfiltered drinking source and our watershed is in the mountains where there's lots of reck rauks and eventhough it's protected and there's no entry allowed our watershed we're are neighbors of an intensely utilized effort. water rights issue is only issues with our ground source but we do share that series of,aquafo r's and we have the city of vancouver on the other side that also taps that water reservoir. and fish flows we're currently in the process of pursuing habitat conservation plan to come in compliance in the clean water act so we're very concerned about any impact that could impact our ability to maintain fish flows we're currently agreeing to. next slide. so, in terms of what we've done to study climate change effects on our system. in 2002 through the university of washington through richard palmer and margaret hahn, i won't go over that now dash maybe later. next slide. a couple mayor studies we conducted is a reduction of our snow pact. the bowling watershed is not a rich environment. we do regularly get snow fall and our h

in the west you heard an interesting session just an hour or so back on the mountain watershed issue and of course, one of the principal differences there is snow lines become compared to present day or the climate that are tradition based on snow climbs are going to be higher and they raise about half a kilo meter or so degrees celsius. 6 degrees,c, perky lom tear. i don't want to try to do this on the podium. that has the effect of reducing the natural reservoir snow we could usually use in spring and summer and liberates more water immediately which is the flood water that you heard the director of the california water resource s talk about. we saw the global average picture but this is what's happened in the west part of america since world war ii, we've seen this large area - this happens to be a time averaged march, april and may. that's our classical springtime in climate terms. this red shading means we've warmed welltive to a longer term average by something like a degree celsius to as much as two or three degrees celsius and that's in central or west canada. so, we have seen

it rains and the watershed and runs into a lake. frack the lake or the watershed. you go to a thousand miles under the surface. they don't know what will happen to the water in new york. they need someone intelligent, a leader to say this is what the deal is. don't worry, watch what i am telling you. check the facts. that is all you have to do. it is not complicated. it is very simple. they want me to feel guilty. i feel like i did yesterday. [laughter] >> are you as confident about the environmental implications? >> he knows more about it. he is an oil man. i was a tv and [laughter] man. >> i trust to godte is,d. do you trust us? [lghter] >> do you -- do you believe the climate change is a natural phenomenon? fewer americans believe to be a real problem. >> your than what? it before? >> i don't know. how serious do you believe the problem is? >> i think it is a life or death issue. i am a real expert when it comes to nature and of the temperature goes up six degrees fahrenheit it will make life on earth very difficult for most of the creatures including humans. >>

and then we had divided the island further into different watersheds, based on the phasing, the soil and other issues, we can link the treatment with the infrastructure development. vice president moran: so your role is a consultant to the development? >> that is correct. vice president moran: where else have you applied for this advice? -- where else have you provided this advice? >> we have worked elsewhere in san francisco. we have helped several other large water treatment facilities within the bay area. vice president moran: right. so your expertise is really the bay area then? >> right. the bay area. vice president moran: and you think we are ok now? >> in terms of the treatment measures? vice president moran: are we taking the appropriate steps here in san francisco to do with the issue? >> yes. i think the city has made major strides. vice president moran: what are the unique characteristics u.s. found as opposed to other projects to work on? >> i think it is the question of being able to integrate at a large scale the strategies we have. so, the puc has identified a number o