Good morning all. It looks like we do have a quorum with Petaluma, North Marin, Valley the Moon, Santa Rosa, and Sonoma. Let's see. I noticed we have some alternates both from Windsor and Werner Park. I'm not sure if they're filling in. Secretary Manus, could you either unmute or promote Shannon Coutoula from Windsor and Vanessa Garrett from Werner Park and we'll see if they're filling in for their reps this morning. Morning Shannon, are you here for Windsor today? Yes I am. Thank you Jennifer. Thank you and good morning Vanessa. Are you here for Werner Park? Yes I am. Okay so I do think we are ready to go then. So we'll call the meeting to order 903 and just a reminder that if you are not speaking please keep your microphones muted and also if you are a member of the TAC if you could do your best to please keep your camera on for the entire meeting we greatly appreciate that. With that Secretary Manus can we have a roll call please and a reminder to folks to please state your name and agency when we do the roll call. Thank you Chair Burke. City of Cotadi. City of Petaluma. Hello, Santa Rosa. City of Petaluma. Thank you. City of Werner Park. Hi, this is Vanessa Garrett. City of Werner Park. Thank you. City of Santa Rosa. Good morning Jennifer Burke. Santa Rosa Water. Thank you. City of Sonoma. Hi, Matt Wargula. City of Sonoma. Thank you. North Marin Water District. Tony Williams. North Marin Water District. Thank you. Town of Windsor. Shannon Coutula. Town of Windsor. Thank you. Thank you. Valley of the Moonwater District. Good morning Matt Fulner. Valley of the Moon. Thank you. Marin Municipal Water District. Paul Cellier. Marin Municipal Water District. Thank you. Additionally it appears there are a number of attendees today. Secretary Manus real quick, Cotadi joined just a little late so can you call on them please? Thank you. City of Cotadi. Yes, Craig Scott. City of Cotadi. Thanks for looping me in. Thank you. Okay, going forward with Yes, public please. Thank you. Thank you. Additional attendees on Zoom are Brenda Adelman, Colin Close, Dale Robert, Elise Miller with Santa Rosa Water, Eric Miller, Jake Spaulding, Sonoma Water, Kent Guilfee, Kimberly Zanino, Santa Rosa Water, Margaret Dijenova, Peter Martin, Santa Rosa Water. We also have on from Sonoma County Water Agency, Scott Carter, Paul Piazza, Grant Davis, John Seymour, David Manning, and Brad Sherwood, Andrea Rodriguez. And I think I've captured everyone. Oh, and we just had another attendee join. Hang on. Jay Jaspers. Great. Thank you so much. Okay, we are now going to move on to item two. As folks may recall, we are still in a health emergency. And per AB 361, we are still making findings to be able to meet virtually. So the memo and resolution is before the talk. Any questions or comments from TAC members on this item? All right. Seeing none, before we take a motion, we'll open this up for public comments. If you'd like to make public comment on item one, please raise your hand via Zoom. If you are on the phone, which I don't think we have anyone, but if you are, dial star nine to raise your hand. And Secretary LaDesma, do we have anyone for public comment on this item? We do not have any public comments. All right. Is there a motion for this item? Second. I'll second, yeah. Okay. So I caught Valley of the Moon moved and I'm sorry, who seconded? Craig Scott, Katadi. Okay. And Katadi second. All right. And Secretary Manus, can we have a roll call, please? Thank you. City of Katadi. Craig Scott, Katadi, yes. City of Petaluma. City of Petaluma, yes. City of Runner Park. City of Cigarette River Park, yes. City of Santa Rosa. Santa Perk, Santa Rosa Water, yes. City of Sonoma. Matt Regula, City of Sonoma, yes. North Marin Water District. Tony Williams, North Marin Water District, yes. Town of Windsor. Shannon Coutula, Town of Windsor, yes. Valley of the Moon Water District. Matt Polner, Valley of the Moon Water District. Thank you. Let the record show that that motion passed unanimously. Great. Thank you. So we will now meet virtually for the next at least 30 days we can virtually. We will now go on to item three, which is public comment on non-agenda items. So we are now taking public comment on non-agenda items. If you want to make a comment from Zoom, please raise your hand. And if you are on the phone dial star nine. And Secretary LeDesma, do we have any public comment on this item? We do not have any public comments on this item. Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, we'll now move on to item four. These are the September 12th minutes. Do we have any questions or comments from TAC members on this item? All right, seeing none, we are now taking public comment on item four. If you're on Zoom, raise your hand. If you're on the phone dial star nine. And anyone wishing to make public comment on item four, Secretary LeDesma, do we have any public comment? We do not have any public comments. Okay. And Secretary Manus, can you please do a roll call vote of the TAC members? Oh, sorry. We need a motion and a second. My bad. Thank you. I'm sorry. Is anyone willing to make a motion on this item? Sorry, there was someone outside my door. They distracted me. Tony Williams, Northman Water District. I'll move this item. Thank you, Tony. We have a second. Shannon Cattulla, Town of Windsor. Second. All right. So we have a motion from Mark Marin and a second from Windsor. Now, Secretary Manus, can you do a roll call vote, please? Thank you. City of Cattadee. Greg Scott. Cattadee, yes. City of Petaluma. Dan Heron. City of Petaluma, yes. City of Roanart Park. Vanessa Garrett. Roanart Park, yes. City of Santa Rosa. Jennifer Burke. Santa Rosa Water, yes. City of Sonoma. Marigula, City of Sonoma, yes. North Marin Water District. Tony Williams, North Marin Water District, yes. Town of Windsor. Shannon Cattulla, Town of Windsor, yes. Valley of the Moon Water District. Matt Fulner, Valley of the Moon Water District. Matt, I'm sorry. I did not hear you. Can you please repeat your vote? Yes. Thank you. Let the record show that this motion passed unanimously. Great. Thank you all. Okay. So we will now move on to item number five, which is our Water Supply Conditions and Temporary Urgency Change Order. And Don Seymour, with Sonoma Water, will be making the presentation. Don? Good morning, Jennifer. Good morning, members of the GAC. So starting with Lake Mendocino, storage is currently just a little over 40,600 acre-feet, compared to last year's storage, which was about 14,800 acre-feet. So the reservoir is about 26,000 acre-feet higher than it was last year. That's good news. And a lot of that has been to do with filing the Temporary Urgency Change Position and reducing those minimum stream flow requirements. So we have observed demands on the river drop quite a bit. And in response, we've made a number of release reductions, particularly from Lake Mendocino. Releases are currently about 60 CFS. Lake Sonoma is currently just a little over 110,000 acre-feet compared to a little just under 109,000 acre-feet last year. So 1,200 acre-feet more. So basically the reservoir is in about the same condition it was last year. And it's currently losing about 200 acre-feet per day. We continue to manage the system under the existing order that was issued at the beginning of the summer. That order expires on December 13th. We are continuing to do the monitoring and reporting requirements. A couple of things. In the current order, the state board included a term and had made some typos that they're correcting. They are actually amending our order and they're removing a term that required some habitat surveys that we had done last year that would have been redundant to perform again this year. So we will be seeing an amended order probably by the end of the week. And other than that, we are moving forward to file another temperature change petition and that's really in response to the condition of the Potter Valley project. PG&E, we anticipate, will continue to just make transfers to meet their FERC obligations and their obligations in their contract to Potter Valley Irrigation District. So just like last year, will be finally a temperature change petition to have the minimum stream of flow requirements determined based on storage thresholds that I'd like you to see now. We hope to file that in the next two weeks so that the state board has plenty of time to process that order and have it in place before that December 13th deadline or expiration date. That's all I have, Jennifer. Unless there's any questions. Great. Thank you, Dawn. Are there any questions from any members of the TAC? All right, seeing none. Sorry, my computer is going a little bonkers this morning. Okay. So no questions from TAC members, no comments from TAC members. Thank you for the presentation, Dawn. Just for clarity for the TAC, the requirement in the temporary urgency change order has the reduction in diversions through the end of this month. Is that still the case? Are we thinking that there's going to be any changes or extension from the state water board? No, not anticipating that at all. And also, if we do have, do we end up getting some storm events that take the flows up to 125 CFS at Osteon Bridge before that, the term goes away also, Jennifer. Okay. Well, let's hope for some storms in the horizon. And then I also, I think I noted earlier, and I don't know, Dawn, this may or may not be an answer you have, but with the last storm that came through the state water board lifted some of their curtailments for a little bit of time, are those back in place, or are they still lifted as of this moment? They're still suspended, and that was primarily riparian rights that they suspended those curtailments. And so, and a lot of it just has to do also with, you know, demands on those, those demands on those permits really, really dropping down. So, and that's part of what we've seen in the river that there's, there's just not a lot of demand on the river right now. So you're not really seeing an impact from that system? No. Great. Any other questions or comments from tech members? All right, seeing none. We'll now open it up for public comments. We're taking public comments on item four. If you wish to make a comment, please raise your hand on Zoom if you're on the phone dial star nine. And Secretary LaDesma, do we have any public comment on this item? We do not have any public comments. All right, great. Thank you so much for your presentation, Dawn. All right, we will now move on to item six, the snowmobile and saving water partnership. Item six A is our 2022 water production compared to 2013. As folks may recall, we are still reporting based on some legacy requirements from the state water board to compared to a baseline year of 2013. And you all should see the handout, but we do show for August we had a total 22% reduction compared to August of 2013. And then a year to date compared to 2013, we're at a 26% reduction. You'll also see the chart is showing comparison of 2021-22 deliveries to 2013 deliveries. Again, we're significantly less than we were compared to that time. GPCD information also shows that our customers are doing a great job saving. And then if we look at the chart on the back page, you'll see our most recent GPCD information that shows even with increases in population, total water use is significantly less than it was in the past. And our efficiency continues to go up with gallon per capita per day showing we're really low in this region. Are there any questions or comments on item six A? All right. Seeing none, we'll open it up to public comment on item six A. If you are on Zoom, please raise your hand. And if you're on the phone dial star nine. And Secretary LaDesma, do we have any comments on public comment on item six A? We do not have any public comments. Okay. Oh, shoot. Sorry. I think I was also covering the cumulative diversion. I thought Paul was covering that, but I think that was on my agenda. Sorry about that. I'll retake public comment. But the other thing, if you look at the second handout for item six A, you'll see our cumulative question river diversions for 2022 compared to 2020 as prior by the term of the order. And as of the information from last week, we were at an over 30% reduction in diversions. So again, we're seeing our community do a great job on that as well. Any questions on that document? Okay. And again, I'll just reopen for public comment on item six A. If you're on Zoom, raise your hand. If you're on the phone dial star nine. And do we have any public comment on this item? We do not. All right. We'll now go to item six B, which is our drought outreach messaging and Paul Piazza and Andrea Rodriguez from snow and water are making the presentation. Great. Good morning, everyone. Go ahead and get us started this morning. Please Paul, feel free to jump in as we go. But here is your outreach update for the month. Next slide, please. We did our usual messaging. So thanks to our contractors and their outreach, we messaged on drip systems, tree care systems, gray water, rain harvesting and our water smart plants. We specifically had a great gray water radio show on KBBF. So we're also making sure we reach our bilingual community. You might have seen us streaming on Comcast, our print digital ads, mostly with our cinema media partners, videos, social media, and again, radio. Thank you. Next slide, please. We were out in person on a beautiful soggy Sunday morning out at the Fiesta in Depencia at the LBC with our snow water partners. And while the turnout was a little bit light and it was hard to pass out our drought kits while they were filling up with rain, it was great to be out there. It's a great annual event. So at least we were out there. Everyone was out there getting a little soggy. Next slide, please. This one unfortunately, last minute cancellation, we had one more pop-up we thought was going to happen in Petaluma and we just found out it got canceled. So unfortunately, the slide is just out of date a little bit. So but we had a great series of summer pop-ups and we want to thank all the water contractors who put on an event at their farmers markets with their hardware stores. It was a really great way to do some outreach in a coordinated effort. Next slide, please. And lastly, we have our virtual town hall that we're partnering with our county communications team. So this is coming up next Thursday the 13th. We have a lineup of Brian Garcia from the National Weather Service who's going to give a little bit more of a focused long-term weather prediction, if you will, as well as Brad Peterson who's going to talk about vineyards and how they use water and then we'll have another speaker, Jeremy, that will talk to the well owners and well health to sort of address the county well permit discussion that's going on on that level. So please tune in next Thursday for our drought town hall or feel free to share it as well on social media to let everyone else know what's happening. Those are a great resource. Next slide, please. Ah, there you go. Ta-da. If you have any questions or if you need anything, please let Paul or I know. Thank you. Are there any questions or comments from the talk on this item? All right, seeing none. Also, we'd just like to echo the thanks to everyone about the pop-ups this summer. They worked out quite well and we got to give out a lot of drought kits at least in our area, which is great. So thank you all for that. We'll open it up on public comment for item 6B. If you wish to make a public comment on Zoom, raise your hand. And if you're on the phone, dial star 9. And Secretary LaDesma, do we have any public comment on this item? We do not have any public comments. All right. Thank you very much. Okay. So we will now move on to item 7, which is our Sonoma Water Tank Maintenance Program and Scott Carter with Sonoma Water will be making the presentation. Welcome, Scott. Good morning. Thank you, Chair Burke and members of the TAC. So again, my name is Scott Carter. I'm one of the operations engineers at Sonoma Water. And I was asked to give you an overview of the recently approved tenure tank maintenance agreement. So next slide, please. So Sonoma Water owns and operates 18 water storage tanks, critical component in our water transmission system. We provide clean drinking water to approximately 600,000 residents in Sonoma and Marin counties. Total combined storage of these tanks is about 128.8 million gallons. These tanks provide operational stories to keep the water system running during power outages, provide equalization volume to meet peak demands. So good stuff there. Next slide, please. We recently entered a tenure agreement with Superior Tank Solutions. They were chosen from a competitive RFP selection process. The agreement is just over 8.2 million funded through the water transmission budget. The end date on that agreement is August of 2032 with the ability to extend up to two additional years. And we did retain the ability to cancel this agreement at any time without cause if things weren't working out the way we wanted it to. So next slide, please. So the purpose of this agreement is to initially understand the condition of each tank. And I'll talk about the 13 tanks here in the next slide a little more. But so originally we're going to do a good job of understanding the condition of each tank followed by a maintenance and repair activities through the duration of the agreement that will include cleaning of the tanks, providing routine maintenance as well as minor repairs and on-call support as needed. During this work Sonoma will oversee Superior's activities and we will continue to maintain full control of the system and the operation of the water storage tanks during the duration of the agreement. So this agreement is accomplished in a two phase approach. Next slide, please. Next slide, Diego. Thank you. So phase one of this work is cleaning condition assessment of 13 tanks. So we have 18 water storage tanks total. We recently recoded rehabbed two of those tanks, the Forestville tanks, and then we are actively in our design section are working on the rehabilitation project for three more tanks. So those five tanks are already underway. So the remaining 13 tanks in this phase one work, we're going to do a very thorough assessment of that. That's going to involve draining the tank. So we're going to drain the tank back into the system so we're not wasting any water there. We're going to isolate the tank, valve it off. Almost all of our tank sites with the exception of Castenia, we have multiple tanks at a site. And so we're going to take one tank offline at a time such that the system, nobody will be affected in terms of service and what have you. So we're going to again, we're going to drain that tank. We're going to as the photo shows there, we're going to put scaffolding inside the tank. We're going to get in there and do a chemical rinse and get the tank as clean as we can get it. So just, you know, as clean as we can get it, we're going to do, we're going to test the coatings interior and exterior to make sure that there's no problems with matching with the coating that we're planning to do. We're going to put a magnetic flux leakage survey equipment on the floor of the tank to look for metal thickness, any signs of deterioration or what have you on the floor of the tank. And then we're going to put a structural engineer up on that scaffolding inside the tank to get up close and personal with every part of that tank, both inside and outside. And so with that information, that'll all be put into a report. So for these 13 tanks, we're going to do as comprehensive a survey as we can that includes all this information. That's going to feed over to our design section at Snowmawater, where they're going to take that information. They're going to prioritize these tanks in terms of, you know, the survey shows that one tank needs more attention or sooner attention than the other. We're going to try to move that up the list. We're also going to use that in terms of budgeting, understanding kind of what kind of repairs maybe necessary or regulatory upgrades, such that when we do that bigger project, the recode, the rehab that we have the budget and we're planning to do that. So, you know, we're trying to eliminate those unknowns. Next slide, please. So phase two of the work is for all 18 tanks. So all 18 tanks through the term, the tenure term of the agreement, this is accomplished in four parts. The first part are annual visual inspections. So superior is going to come out once a year per tank. They're going to take a look at the whole tank, you know, the interior exterior structure would have you, they're going to calibrate equipment, catholic protection liquid level indicators. They're going to inspect the site perimeter and they're going to look at the tank opening screens vents as well as safety items, ladders, platform railings, making sure that they were up to regulatory spec and what have you and they're going to produce a report on that for us to keep track of things. The next item in that work is tank cleanings. So about five years after we've done that initial cleaning, we're going to come back and like we did in the phase one work, we're going to drain the tank back into the system again, take that tank offline, pressure wash, pressure wash the tank to maintain, you know, water quality, regulatory compliance. We're going to again inspect the interior and prepare a report of that work. Now, yeah, next slide please. So the next part of that is maintenance and repairs. So if there are in one of those inspections and what have you, we've identified a need to do some repair maintenance. We've maintained a certain part of this budget to go in and do what I would categorize as minor repairs. And so in terms of complying with the public contract code, we can't do the full blown project, but if we see something in there, maybe touching up a coding or regulatory upgrade, we're going to use the ideas to keep that budget to do that and what have you. Ideally, that's going to be coordinated with that, that cleaning that I just mentioned in the previous slide when we've taken the tank offline and we can get in there. And so if we've got to do something like, I don't know, add a light station where we've got to do some welding or something on the tank, we're going to try to coordinate that with that cleaning where we take the tank offline. We can get in there and have Superior touch up that coding where we may have damaged it with our repair activities and what have you. And then the last piece is emergency and non-critical services. So on an as needed basis, if we have an emergency need for support services that are maybe beyond our abilities, Superior has people available 24-7 to support us in that as well as non-critical services. And again, everything's going to be kept in a report. Next slide, please. So this is way too, the schedule is way too big to put up on one screen. So I just took a small snippet of it. I wanted to give you kind of a flavor of how the thing is programmed, the agreement is programmed. And so in year one, this runs on a fiscal year. So 22-23, we're going to, you know, these inspections so that that phase one inspection that I talked about doing that initial inspection of the tank. So for Anadel one, the plan is this year, we're going to take that tank down and do that inspection. And then we're going to do the other inspections as well. Anadel two is going to get a visual. Katadi one is one of our tanks that is currently in design. And so it's not going to get an inspection day under this program because it had an inspection in that design program. And so we're going to do all of these inspections. Again, they're all programmed in. Those enhanced washout inspections are the phase one inspection that I described earlier. Those occur, we're going to do about two to four tanks a year. So in year one, we have, I think, two tanks. And then your two, I think it's four, four.  And then, as you see in the lower right corner, forest field tanks for those tanks that were already inspected or already recoded a couple years ago. In year five, we're going to take that tank down and do that cleaning that I mentioned earlier, where we're going to take the tank back offline and do that wash down. And then, you know, at year six, seven, eight, that's going to be the same thing for different tanks. So just kind of a flavor of how those schedules, or how that schedule kind of plays in there. And then we're going to meet internally when we're ready to take these tanks offline and make sure and coordinate all those activities. So, you know, we're having the least amount of impact as possible. And we're going to communicate that back to the TAC committee. So you guys are informed in terms of those, if there's any operational constraints or what have you. Next slide. Yeah, that's it. So I just wanted to reiterate that this agreement is part of a larger approach. It's the first step in terms of understanding the condition of those tanks and then providing that maintenance program for the next 10 years. But really, the focus or the beauty of this is that it feeds into our design section that's doing the bigger project, which is going to be rehabbing these tanks and bringing them back to like new conditions, you know, for the future of this critical component. So if there's any questions, be happy to answer them. Great. Thank you, Scott. And thank you for providing an overview of this really important project. I see there's one TAC member question. So Craig, go ahead, question, comment. I think you, Scott, the presentation, there's just a couple items that I think the public's going to be, you know, laser focused on. One is, is there a, I recognize these operations usually are very sensitive to, you know, when, when the demands are during the year, is there a drop dead kind of contracts end date for draining a tank like May 1 or something when demands are starting to ramp back up again? And then the second question I had, and I think you may have mentioned it, but I didn't catch it. When the tank is drained, is it drained on demands? Because I think if we're going to say, wow, you can't just drain water, obviously, you know, down the slope or something. So if you could just remind me what those two items were. Sure. So when the tanks are drained, we're going to, we're able to drain almost the entire tank back into the system. So we'll, we'll drain it back into the system. We're going to get down to a couple of three, two, three inches in the bottom of the tank. That part will be, will be pumped to ground. And by the way, when we're doing that cleaning and that last piece of water, that's all going to go through filtration bags through our non-storm water permit release program and what have you to control all those flows. So that's, that's all handled. But it's definitely, we're definitely going to do everything we can to minimize the amount of water that comes out. And we, you know, we get that down pretty, pretty low. As far as a date on the draining of the tanks, we don't have a drop dead date. We, you know, we're meeting internally looking at demands and what have you to do those. So for example, Anadale one that I mentioned, we're going to, we're going to do that big inspection and take it offline. The plan is we're targeting January for that. So, you know, during the winter months, when the demands are a little lower in terms of irrigation or maybe an emergency service or the fire or what have you, I don't know, but, but in trying to target those dates when demands are a little lower. Now, that may not always be the case. And before we do that work and take that tank offline, we're meeting internally to look at all of those, those circumstances and try to figure out those dates. So, Anadale one is targeted for January. The next tank, I can't remember which one it is, is targeted for February. So that tank, during those inspections, we expect it to be offline for about a month while we do that, that thorough inspection and cleaning and what have you. Subsequent, the visual inspections, the tank won't be offline at all. The cleaning, it'll be off for a couple of weeks. So. Great. Thank you. Sure. Thanks, Craig. Are there any other questions or comments from the TAC? All right. Thanks, Scott. And I'm guessing you're coordinating some water operation staff or coordinating with contractor staff so that folks know, or operation staff so that folks know when you're planning what it's going to look like, if we need to try and top off storage to some extent in our systems to help with whatever that deficit in storage will be when you take the tank offline. Absolutely. Great. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from TAC members? All right. Seeing none. We're now taking public comment on item number seven. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, please raise your hand. And if you're dialing in via telephone, dial star nine. And Secretary Ledesma, can you please facilitate? I see we have one hand. Can you facilitate public comment on this item? Yes, we do have a public comment from Brenna Edelman. Brenda, you do have permissions to speak now. Can you hear me? Thank you. My question, I was just wondering what kind of, if any, water quality testing you do of the water in the tank, do you do it on an ongoing basis periodically? Do you test the water at the bottom to see what the quality is there and what kinds of constituents would you test for if you do? So, in terms of the system, yeah, we have various test points throughout the system that test for water quality. And is there a whole standard set of tests? Not really my area, but yeah, there are. In terms of this tank program, when we take a tank offline and drain it, we're going to filter all that, drain it, and then we're going to, when we put it back online, we're going to chlorinate it, drain it, run tests, back tea tests to make sure that we meet all water quality requirements before we put that tank back online. Thank you. You're welcome. We do not have any additional public comments. All right. Thank you. And again, thank you, Scott, for giving us an overview of this program. Appreciate it. Thank you for having me. All right. We're now going to move on to agenda item number eight, which is our biological opinion status update. And we're going to have David Manning listen to my water giving our presentation. Welcome, David. We haven't seen you in a while. It has been a little while. Thanks, Jennifer. Everybody hear me okay? Yes, we can. All right. So this is probably looking pretty familiar. I know we update these, we really do, but some of these things change slowly. So on the fish flow project, you're not going to see any, any new action there, but there is work going on, certainly behind the scenes. I would say to adapt to the ever-changing Potter Valley project and its consequences for the Russian river. So rest assured, staff are working both in Dawn's group on the water resources planning and environmental side to figure out a way to predict the future in the eel and the Russian water shed, which is a challenge that I think more than a hundred people probably grapple with on a weekly basis. Moving into the dry creek project, and we'll slide down the screen just a little bit there. You do have a lot of great work going on there, Jennifer. I'm glad that you could join us a couple of weeks ago to see some of the progress out there. We're working right now, or I should say the Army Corps of Engineers is working managing the construction for phase four of the dry creek project in, in reach 13. It's a two-year construction process for each phase of the work in dry creeks. So they're, they're getting close to wrapping up their work in reach 13A. 13B has already been completed. Next year, they'll return to the site, the same contractor, McClelland Construction, and we'll work on reach 10. In total, that's about 1.2 miles of habitat enhancing on the creek, and it's, it's, it's really looking fantastic. I was out there last week with the designers, Interflue, and our internal team, and we're really pleased with what we see so far. So we're excited to, to get those projects wrapped up for the construction season, demobilize the site, and come back and do some more work next year. Our construction season runs until October 15th. If there is no rain forecasted, we can on a week-to-week basis with the resource agencies, concurrence, continue to, to do some work on the site. We're also going to plan to do a little bit of pre-work to make the construction season faster this, this next summer when we can start working in the water June 15th. So it will slide down the screen just a little bit more. You can see some images here from the groundbreaking ceremony. This may have been reported previously. The Army Corps of Engineers got a kickoff for their project. This is a total $27 million federal investment. So it's a sort of big deal for the Corps to finally get to this phase, and I think I'll let you know how long it took for us to get the authorization and the funding for this project. So we're very excited that they found it worthy of celebration, and that celebration happened on the 16th of August. Slide down a little bit more on the screen. Here's just an example of some of the work as it's being constructed, and it does look messy. You see some sheet pile in the foreground there that helps to isolate the construction area from the rest of the creek and keep the water quality, the results from the disturbance of all that sediment contained within the construction area and not released into the stream. We're going to slide down a little bit more on the screen. The habitat monitoring work is continuous. Our crews are out in the stream all summer long, measuring what was constructed previously, taking a look at the areas that will be constructed this next year to collect the pre-construction data. In total, that work has showed us that roughly 80% of the projects that have been constructed meet or exceed the National Marine Fisheries Services and the California Department of Fish and Wildlife requirements. We're really happy with the way the work is maturing over time. This next section here in the update talks about the future and some of our planning right now with the landowners in the Dry Creek Valley. Everybody knows that that's a big challenge, and we're meeting it certainly in this next phase of the work. We present offers to the owners so the poor can advertise those projects early next year in preparation for construction simultaneously in the phase five as well as the continuing work on phase four of the project. We're still in the process of negotiating with and working with landowners on phase six. That work won't start until 2024. We did meet with the Dry Creek Valley Association's board back on August 17th and gave them an update of the work in Dry Creek. Of course, our fish monitoring continues. This is something that we're there's a little bit of overlap here between the temporary urges to change petition update and the biological penguin update. Try to coordinate those surveys as much as possible with the video system operating out of the inflatable dam at Mirabelle to date in terms of the video that we have been able to monitor because we have multiple activities ongoing. We're not up to date with all the monitoring of the video that's been collected, but we did look immediately after that last rainstorm that we had. We have not seen any fish yet, but we would expect with the flows currently in the lower river to see some movement of probably Chinook salmon, sometimes a few steelhead early in the year. The month of October, especially mid-October to mid-November is typically the time we see most of those adults and moths begin to return to the river and slide down a little bit more on the screen. One happy story from this past year, last winter, was the increased number of co-samin that returned to the watershed. You can see that the counts in 2020 and 2021 were low, lower than they had been in the previous four years, and those numbers rebounded quite substantially this past year. With the relatively mild winter that we had, a lot of those juveniles fared well in the streams, so our crews were reporting seeing a lot of young co-samin out in the watershed right now. This figure here, the difference between what you see is the expanded count and a minimum count is related to how we detect fish moving through the watershed and into these streams. The raw count of those fishes in green, but through the use of electronic tags and some mark, and we capture techniques, we're able to expand the number of fish that we see, because only a portion of them carry those electronic tags, so it's a way of scaling up the number of fish. It's done a very statistically rigorous way, and it really helps us assess how well this co-program is working. You can see from the inception of the program in the early 2000s to now, we have co-samin present in the watershed, and a lot of those fish are taking advantage of this habitat in Dry Creek and being released into Dry Creek directly, so I think that's a success story. In the estuary, not a lot to report. We've continued to do our monitoring there. The estuary has been open for a very long period of time this summer and even into this fall, which is a bit unusual. We would expect as swells changed this fall to start to see some closures. On the temporary urge to change petition piece, I think a lot of this information here everybody is well aware of. Our monitoring requirements do begin to change here in the fall. So in addition to running the video, we do have to assess some of the pools in the Lower Rush River for the presence of adult fish, and we'll be doing that over the coming month. The same thing is true in Dry Creek, and then upstream into the Upper Rush River as soon as more fish are observed on the video at Mirabelle. So the resource agencies have us not just relying on the video, but also looking around our crews in the river snorkeling, measuring some of the riffles, the shallow areas in the Lower Rush River to assess how well the flows were releasing, especially from Lake Sonoma in Dry Creek are meeting the migration needs of the fish. And last but not least, the biological assessment for the new biological penguin is making great progress this week. We are receiving a complete administrative draft, an internal draft for our review in the Army Corps of Engineers review. The first time we've seen it all sort of put together. We will review that and then turn that over to the resource agencies for their first real look at this biological assessment. That's our manner of process. We won't hand over what we consider a sort of draft final to the resource agencies until February of next year. And of course, that biological penguin expires in September, September of next year. So we're hoping to have everything in place with the new biological penguin before that. That is all I had, Jennifer. Thank you, David. Are there any questions or comments from members of the TAC? All right, not seeing any. Just in terms, David, I don't know if you can talk to this a little bit, but in terms of the fish flow project and the draft EIR on the schedule with the new biological or the new biological opinion coming, is it safe to say that we're not going to see likely the draft EIR until after the biological opinion is in a final form? We're assuming that the schedule to deliver the next iteration of the fish flow project will follow into the new biological opinion, at least in terms of the expectation to have it delivered in the way that NIMS imagined it would be to the state board. So our work to continue to develop that draft may beat that timeline of the date at which the biological opinion expires, but the need to have the fish flow EIR included in the next biological assessment is a certainty because our objective to deliver it to the state board will take longer than the time we currently have to complete the existing biological opinion. Do you have a sense of, you mentioned February of next year for potentially a final draft. Do you have a sense of when a public document will be available for the biological opinion? So I had anticipated that question. A public document, it's interesting, is not a part of the National Fisheries Services process until it's a federal registered notice of the sort of complete biological opinion. So we'll talk to the resource agencies about a schedule for releasing some of that information publicly, but it is, if it falls along with the last biological opinion, there is quite a bit of internal discussion between Sonoma Water, the Army Corps, and the resource agencies very close to the time that the exploration date is anticipated of the current BO. So I don't have a great answer for you, Jennifer, about when that information can be discussed publicly, but we'll certainly, we'll take that to the resource agencies when we give them the draft and talk to them about that. But I know there's quite a bit of work up to the last minute, if you will, with that schedule. And a lot of that is driven by the resource agencies pretty exhaustive review of these materials. They get input from a lot of folks in their vertical chain, all of their counsel and coordinators that deal with this that are not the folks that we typically negotiate with and discuss terms and conditions of the existing permit with. So this is, it's a pretty big deal for them and it takes a while. So it may be sometime in the fall, if it's closed? I think no. I would assume it is sometime next year. No, fall of next year is what I meant. Correct. Yes. Fall of 2023. Correct. Okay. And so I'm guessing that the draft EIR is probably going to be somewhere along that same schedule then. I hope so. All right. Thank you. Any other questions or comments from TAC members? All right. Seeing none, we're going to open up for public comment on this item. So we are now taking public comments on this item. If you would like, this is item number eight. If you would like to make a comment, please raise your hand by a Zoom. If you are on the phone, dial star nine. And I see we do have one hand on raised. So Secretary Ledesma, can you facilitate public comment on this item? Yes. We have a public comment from Brenda Edelman and you have permissions to talk. I have some questions similar to Jennifer's. During the first round, the biological assessment, I think took a couple of years, but there was a public review process at the end of it. Then the National Marine Fisheries Service took one year or more to write the biological opinion for which there was no public review, unfortunately. And I'm just wondering, the EIR you mentioned, is that coming after the biological assessment and I guess you're uncertain as to when that would be released, but I would assume it would be before the final. I don't know. Maybe you could explain that just a little bit more. Sure. So there's most certainly a very public process for EIRs or well aware, Brenda. And the EIR and the biological assessment, the biological opinion are related, but they're not linked in terms of their timing of release for public review. If that makes sense. Not quite. So we're assuming that the current draft EIR and its timeline will extend into the next biological opinion. So it is likely we will not complete all the public review and work necessary on the current draft EIR by September of 2023 when the new biological opinion is issued. If that makes sense. Is that clear? So the two timelines are not linked in that way and the resource agencies are well aware of this. So you are correct in terms of the timing of review for the previous biological assessment. The length of time it takes to prepare that biological assessment was actually almost 10 years. And a lot of the work that occurred under that biological assessment was very new information gathered about the Russian River watershed and our system and how it relates to impacts on some minds. The current work on this by us with us follows very closely the existing biological opinion. So there are no big surprises in how we describe the operations of our system. The impacts that those operations have on some on us. But it really follows very closely the existing biological opinion. So the amount of time it takes for resource agencies to review that information is expedited. And the information that would be available to the public should the National Advisory Service choose to allow that is very similar to what you find in the existing PO. So we did not, we started with that existing biological opinion as the template and described our progress in meeting the goals of the biological opinion. And that's the basis of the biological assessment that we'll hand to the resource agencies. So very different. We've learned a lot in the last 20 years or more of biological assessment, assessment and biological opinion implementation. Does that help? I still have one follow up. It sounds to me like the EIR will take place after the biological opinion is released, which would mean it would have no impact on the biological opinion. Am I correct about that? I'm not entirely sure what you mean about impact on a biological opinion. You know, the National Advisory Service would still like to see what they requested and what we've suggested is implementable in a draft EIR completed as part of the biological opinion. I should say the Section 7 consultation process, right? So they will ask that we continue to work on submitting and getting that petition to the State Water Resources Control Board. Does that help? It will be a requirement of the biological. It will be a requirement of the next biological opinion that we complete the EIR process. I guess the only thing I'm trying to figure out is, is there any influence the public can have on the biological opinion and what the requirements are in that document? I think the short answer is probably limited impact that the public can have, honestly, on the biological opinion. But there's a lot of influences you know, Brenda, that the public will have over the EIR and flows in the river. Well, maybe I'll talk to you further another time on this. Certainly. All right. Thank you. All right. Thank you, Brenda. And I think, I think if I'm summarizing correctly, similar questions we had asked in the past, but just trying to better understand the public process. And I think we've been told that this is a, this is really a Section 7 consultation, which is in between the agencies. And we're not going to really see anything until there's pretty much a final product. So, all right. Any other questions or comments on this item? We do not have any more public comments on this item. Great. Thank you, Easter. And thank you, Secretary LaDesma, and thank you, David, for the presentation. Thank you. All right. We are now going to move on to Item Number 9, Potter Valley Project Update, and Dawn Seymour with No More Water, making this presentation. So, there's not a lot to report since PAM's update, or since PAM reported out at the last TAC meeting in September, Jennifer, there hasn't been any updates on, from PG&E on where they are with the surrender process. However, they are underway. Perk did approve their work plan and scheduled back at the end of July. I would report that PG&E is still managing the Potter Valley project under the Perk order that approved their variance request. That will stay in place or it won't expire until storage at Lake Pillsbury exceeds 36,000 acre-feet. And right now, they're about, I believe, around 34-5, and declining because of a consultation with Fish and Wildlife and Nymphs on releasing block water for improved habitat conditions below Scott Dam and Cape Horn Dam. So, they're planning on releasing approximately 2,500 acre-feet. I think they're about getting close to halfway through that amount. And then, so, this variance will remain in place until we start seeing some storm events, which means inflows into Lake Mendocino are going to be pretty darn low. PVIDs really cut back on their request. That is, of October 15th, their maximum delivery request goes to five CFS. And then the eSport minimum release under this variance is five CFS. So, starting October 15th, we'll see about 10 CFS coming in through the project until the variance inspires. That's all I have. Don, I don't know if you can talk to this, but I believe it's related. Can you just give a quick update on the work that's happening on the DWR grant in relation to the Russian River Water Forum and the invitations that just went out late last week? Yeah, so, just to remind everybody, Cinema Water received $2.1 million for three different tasks related to Potter Valley. The first being basically a risk analysis due diligence of the diversion facilities and what type of capital projects would be necessary to make them function without Scott Dam and risk abounding those facilities and ongoing O&M costs. That scope of work has been finalized and it's being incorporated into an agreement right now. It should be going across grants desk in the next week or so. And so, that works right about to get started with that. And the consultant that was selected for that work was McMillan Jacobs, who's very familiar with, they've done a fair amount of work with the two basin solution parties previously. So, they're really familiar with the project. The second task is for basically an integrated water management evaluation of Potter Valley. So, looking for what opportunities there are for the Potter Valley to continue and have an adequate water supply under that run of the river scenario where you would only have a seasonal transfer of water. So, looking at alternatives for maybe managed aquifer recharge, groundwater banking opportunities, even some surface water storage opportunities. We're working with Jacobs Engineering not to be confused with McMillan Jacobs. It's a completely different firm. Jacobs is the firm that's doing the resiliency work for snow water and the contractors. So, we're looking at hopefully finalizing their scope of work in the next week or so and getting that work underway by the end of October. And then lastly, as you mentioned, there's that Russian River water users forum. I'm not quite as familiar. That's really being run by Mike Thompson and Brad Sherwood, who I would actually pass it over to probably provide a better update than I can. Thanks, Don. We do have a steering committee of staff and stakeholders working on the Russian River water forum. With the invitation from Grant going out for those interviews, those interviews should be conducted within the next month. There's roughly 45 stakeholders who will be interviewed on behalf of the Russian River water forum. And Kerns and West is helping us with that along with Mark Malwan. So, I will just say that perhaps at the next WAC and TAC meeting, we'll have a more informative update on that effort as the stakeholder interviews progress. Great. Thank you both. And just as a reminder, I did let everyone know that an invite was coming to the WAC and TAC members. So, you should have seen that go out on Friday, as well as everyone else who was identified to be in the stakeholder group. So, with that, any questions or comments from TAC members on Potter Valley project? All right. Seeing none, we will now take public comment on item nine. If you wish to make a comment via Zoom, raise your hand. And if you're dialing in via phone, please dial star nine. And Secretary Ladesma, do we have any public comment on this item? We do not have any public comments. All right. Thank you so much. And thank you, Don, for that update. We're now going to move on to agenda item number 10, which is our Cinema Water Government Affairs update. And Brad Sherwood will be making the presentation. Good morning. Good to see everybody. This will be a brief update on the federal of the house here. Your water team is going to Washington, D.C. in two weeks with a coalition of agencies from throughout the West to advocate and educate Congress on seasonal to sub-seasonal forecasting needs. As I reported out last meeting, we did get a million dollar appropriation for an S2S potential pilot project in the West Coast on this type of forecasting need. The head of delegation for this trip is Janine Jones from DWR, the Interstate Water Resources Manager and representative from the Western States Water Council. So our small delegation, which is essentially just Grant Davis and myself, will report back on those outcomes of those meetings at the WAC contact meeting. On the state side, as you all know, the governor had until last Friday to sign well over 1,100 bills. As of Tuesday the 27th, he had vetoed 60, and we are still coming through his actions. One action that we're familiar with, and Jennifer knows this, is a Senate bill 222 did get vetoed by the governor. That is something that Aqua closely watched for us. And I'm happy to send around the governor's message on that. But essentially, the Water Rate Assistance Program and Water Rate Assistance Fund would have provided a water affordability assistance for drinking and wastewater services to low-income rate payers through the state water board. However, it would be a permanent program with no funding tied to it. So the governor said once there is permanent funding sources allocated for this program, he would reconsider that. I will send out that letter to everybody. On the government affairs side, we've got some tours coming up with our amazing water contractors here. We're revving up for the Valley of the Moonwater District to come out and take a tour of our Woller Maribel, Sonomo Water Booster Station. We're going to see the Spring Lake Tanks. So that's this Wednesday. Looking forward to having those folks out. We have a pending tour with Santa Rosa Water and also North Marin. So we're just looking to get those schedules nailed down and welcome you all out to do similar tours. Again, please, feel free to give me an email. If you and your staff or board would like a tour of our system, we're happy to have allies to do that. Staff meeting for presentations. Again, we welcome invitations to you all to come present to our staff. It's kind of the water contractor 101 talk. Our strategic plan. We're finalizing our key objectives. We hope to have our final strategic plan, something we can present to the WAC and TAC at the next meeting. We're going to have probably an internal rollout of that sometime in late November, early December. We have a new infrastructure video coming out. Yours truly, Mr. Scott Carter, who just did his VIP presentation here today. We're going to do a nice video on that storage tank maintenance project. And these videos, again, are made for all of us here on this call. So while we post them to our YouTube and social media videos, but love to collaborate with your communications, PIO staff, to get as many eyeballs on these videos so folks can learn more about our infrastructure projects. Speaking of that, we do hope that you all are participating in the day without water. It's October 20th. I know our communications PIO team is they're working on a social media campaign on that day. So please do reach out to Andrea Rodriguez of our PIO team to coordinate potentially as needed. And of course, it is water professionals appreciation week. So I just felt like just making sure that we all know that and that hopefully everyone is appreciating your staff. And we've got a social media campaign again that our communications team is engaging right now. So just just a heads up in case you didn't know that. And that is it, Jennifer. Short and sweet. Great. Thank you, Brad. And thank you for bringing up water professionals appreciation week. I know we here in Santa Rosa are very much celebrating this week and we adopted a proclamation at our council last week. We're going to be having some board members and other members come out and speak to our staff and just thank them for all the great work they do. So hopefully everyone else is recognizing your staff this week. Any questions or comments from any tech members on Brad's report? All right. Seeing none. We'll now take public comment on item 10. You wish to make a comment by Zoom? Raise your hand if you're on the phone. Dial star nine. And Secretary LaDesma, do we have any public comments on this item? We do not have any public comments. All right. Okay. Thank you very much, Brad. And good luck to you and Grant back in DC. Just bring all that money back to us, please. All right. We will now move on to item 11, items for next agenda. A reminder that next month's meeting is a joint WAC TAC meeting and that will take place on November the 7th and we will be meeting in person, in person only at the WAC TAC meeting on November 7th. So just wanted to remind everyone, are there any particular items that folks are hoping to see on the agenda? All right. Hearing none, I think we'll have our typical updates. And if there are no questions or comments, I'll open up for public comment on item number 11. If you wish to make a comment, please raise your hand by a Zoom or dial star nine on the phone. And Secretary LaDesma, do we have any public comments on this item? We do not have any public comments on this item. All right. Great. Thank you very much. And with that, we will adjourn Happy Water Professionals Week. Happy New Water Year and have a great day, everyone. Thank you. Thanks, Jennifer.