I've got six welcome everyone is this on you can hear everybody here okay it's not very good no maybe we can turn that up a bit no it's six it's six o'clock now what it's six right now you wanted to get to you are people still coming in we'll find out once we get the cards yeah all right welcome everyone thank you for coming to tonight's meeting for the Soco Creek Water District we have one item that is the the roll call will show all the directors are here and then our first item there's no public hearing tonight the administrative business the first thing is to certify the election and take oath of office for directors Jaffe, Christensen, and Lither so I'm happy that they're sitting here with me and we'll let Bob take over sure you want to stand free of feet after me except for the names that are yours I do solemnly swear or firm that I will defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California that I take this obligation freely without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I'm about to enter congratulations thank you I also wanted to acknowledge our new board clerk M. Olin it's great to have you on and I also wanted to thank the our staff that filled in when we needed their help to perform those duties so both thank you to Tracy and to Ryan and Ryan and Ron do you want to have a word yeah yeah I just like to say you know it was amazing when our previous board clerk fell in love and and left us for a better option I guess what staff did was amazing I mean it yeah Tracy and Ryan took the bull by the horns and each took a different task and then at one point they had to switch so while Ryan prepared the board packets and and Tracy did the board clerking actually Ryan had to fill that role and see him working side to side but it wasn't just them every manager stepped into some role and we're so glad to have Emma she's just right in there with us now in that team spirit so thank you great thank you so the next item on the agenda is item 2.52 the pure water so-called groundwater replenishment and seawater intrusion project and I'm going to read an introduction to that but I also just wanted to make a personal comment that you know we've all come here because we care about what happens with the water of our area and I just want to have us just enter it into kind of with an attitude of listening to each other and respecting each other and you know and that's all I just wanted to make that point that everybody's trying their best but the next item I'm concerning pure water so-called groundwater replenishment and seawater intrusion prevention project which purposes to supplement the natural recharge of the Santa Cruz mid-county groundwater basin with purified water the proposed project concludes producing purified water from existing secondary and fluid through treatment facilities located in either the city of Santa Cruz and or in unincorporated Santa Cruz county purified water would be conveyed in recharge wells conveyed to recharge wells to recharge and replenish the groundwater basin as most of those here tonight are aware this proposed project has been the subject of much study over many years and a lengthy environmental and public review process pursuant to the California Environmental Quality Act which we'll call CEQA tonight the board has asked to consider the results of these processes specifically the board is before it staff's recommendations to approve resolution 18-30 which would certify the final environmental impact report for pure water so-called project and to approve resolution 18-31 which would adopt environmental findings with regard to the project DIR adopt a statement of overriding considerations and a mitigation and monitoring and reporting program regarding the project and approve the project so for this item we're first going to hear from District Special Council Michelle Willett regarding the proceedings which will govern tonight's meeting on the project so Mrs. Willett thank you President LeHue my name is Michelle Willett I'm a partner with the law firm of Best Busting Krieger and I'm serving a special council to the district and the board with regard to the pure water so-called project I'm also a proud banana slug a 1980 graduate of UC Santa Cruz college eight and a pass scots valley residence and I'm happy to be back as president LeHue indicated tonight the board will first be considering resolution 18-30 which have approved would certify the final environmental impact report for the pure water so-called project and if the board votes to certify the EIR then to consider resolution 18-31 which would approve the project which we'll talk about in more detail later tonight the board will first hear a staff presentation led by Ron Duncan the district's general manager a presentation on the EIR and the EIR processes by Alisa Moore from ESA the EIR consultant for the project and then a final presentation by district special projects communications manager Melanie Schumacher regarding the resolutions before the board tonight the board will then have the opportunity to pose any questions to staff and environmental consultants and of course lawyers following this the public will be given an opportunity to speak could we have a show of hands of who would like to address the board tonight I didn't see about 15 or so 15 to 20 people great given the number of people that are planning to speak then and to order to ensure that everyone has an opportunity to be heard we are limiting public comment to three minutes per person to speak the board welcomes your comments and feedback and encourages anyone who wishes to speak to offer their comments tonight even if you didn't raise your hand we want to hear what you have to say however we would like to remind the public that speakers may not reserve time share time or give their time to someone else we also we would like to remind everyone the public comment period of the meeting is for the public to provide their comments and feedback to the board as such the board will not be engaging in dialogue with or answering questions from the audience additionally we encourage everyone to refrain from disrupting other speakers staff and members of the board by clapping cheering booing this will give everyone the opportunity to present their comments and ensure productive and efficient meeting if you have not already done so and if you wish to do so please fill out a speaker card and give it to one of our staff people in the back of the room yep pulling up the card so we know you wish to address the board on this item after everyone has provided comments we will take a short break when we come back staff will respond to comments as needed following completion of public comments and staff responses the board will then ask any final questions of staff consultants and legal counsel deliberate and consider taking action finally to ensure that all the documents are provided to the board if you have brought written materials or comments tonight could you please provide it to either someone in the back of the room or Emma so or Bob so that we can make sure it's distributed to the board and can be digested thank you okay thank you michelle and so now um hey ron it's you're out okay great thank you president lehu there are a few new faces in the crowd so i'm ron duncan the general manager for so-called creek water district i've been with the agency about 15 years most of it in the capacity of the conservation manager i've been in uh in water my entire professional career i went into it to basically clean up aquifers and help promote stream enhancement my i've lived here for about 20 years my boys were born here they're actually in the crowd tonight the first meeting they've ever attended thank you and uh my wife teaches in the art at uh mountain school so a little background about me so next slide it's been a long and winding road to get to this spot we've been chasing solutions in this community about 70 years for a supplemental supply project or some kind of solution in the early 50s or mid 50s uh that's when the problems were first identified it's the city of san kruz that they had a water shortage in the 60s the usgs said seawater intrusion is a real threat and we better get ready for it then we we go down the road and actually in the in the late 60s was kind of the big dam error we looked at about seven or eight dams when i say we i mean collectively it was before my time at the county and then diesel was actually considered in the in the 70s then recycle in the 90s and ever since that time we've been basically rehashing um the same old potential solutions to this point so let me bring you to modern history in about 2014 the district uh sought out a new journey to try to create a sustainable reliable water supply the we we knew that public involvement and engagement was key just absolute key understanding what the public wanted we'd learned from the past so we went on a 14 15 month journey just to define the values the values that the community wanted in a water supply not so much the water supply but what's important to them and then the board said if we determine that we can use science to define what what backs those values what what matches those values and so that's the approach that we basically have uh taking and up here you'll see on the left this is our community water plan actually have a copy here they're online and available to to anybody encourage you to look at it the community water plan basically composes of two big things one on the two items on the left there conservation and well management those are cornerstones uh that's that's fundamental to what we do and our customers and they've done it well thank you to everybody who has been conserving the four icons on the right are the various supplies we identified early on that might have potential um to succeed and so we've been evaluating those throughout the community water plan I will say that that's okay um that you can say it's a long history so why is it so important to to move now there's two big things one the sustainable groundwater management act in 2014 the governor said no more overdrafting of basins this madness has got to end and they made a law you've got to create a plan in two years and you've got to solve the problem by 2040 otherwise we're going to come in before then if your plan doesn't look good or you don't meet your milestones and we're going to lay the hammer down and actually somebody did this on the fist on my desk in my office when I asked what happened if we don't meet the plan they said we're going to come in and cut everybody carte blanche so that's the regional water board stands the other big thing was we had a technique that was brought to us by the danish government that identified seawater intrusion is right at the shoreline where it's not already on shore we thought maybe we had maybe it was a half mile out or a mile out is right at the shoreline and that's been in collaboration with the uh us geological survey to some degree in stanford university so what you see on the screen here just to bring a little perspective or appreciation this is a water drop exposed to positive energy kind of a mandala if you will next slide these are the six community values that were identified in that journey to find out what's important to our customers you can see them up there I won't read them just take a minute to look at them because I am going to go through them each individually so the key is we used a science-based community values driven process to derive to get where we're at okay so I'll jump into each one real quickly water quality at the bottom line if you don't get past this it's a no go for whatever project you're considering you've got to have good water quality our board has shown that they've gone beyond the call of duty with um cleaning up we have naturally occurring chrome and arsonic in our aquifers they've always said do more than what's necessary we've been on the leading edge of that so to make sure that the project when we started looking at pure water soquel could provide clean water they said we want an independent third party review we want so they went out and commissioned the national water research institute a panel of the people you see up there I think the person on the left is from a professor from Berkeley the next person's from EPA and down the list representing a range of uh fields from toxicology to risk assessment to recycled water hydrology the whole gamut and what I want what I'll read and and they did several community meetings and these are online uh you can go to our website and you can watch them if you want very interesting if you're if you want to see the leading edge science but this is what they concluded the project is plausible feasible and can produce water that meets all drinking water requirements and is protective of human health and the environment that was their bottom line I think that was noted kind of by the sentinel article with the thumbs up there you know recycled water is heavily regulated by EPA and the state regulators and it's also going on in 30 places in just the state of california this map shows to 30 places I think what was important to our board was to see what others were doing so they actually flew to different places drove to different places to check it out kind of a boots on the ground kind of thing besides all the paperwork going on they went and talked to the operators the board members toured the plants tasted the water the whole the whole nine yards one site we went to down in orange county they've been operating for about 40 years doing groundwater punishment very similar to what we're doing just on a bigger scale they actually now give out bottles of drinking water from that that they produced before they put it back into the ground they're allowed to do that arizona also has been doing that so the water is very pure and as you can see there are many plants going on pure waters Monterey is constructing right now over the hill in silicon valley they've had a project going on it's been completed and producing water for a while now so the next thing is is that time when I don't have my glasses okay we'll have to do it this way besides water quality the most important thing really that our customer said they said action I mean we've been doing we've been spinning our wheels for 70 years they said we want something done dang it actually they phrase it slightly differently but I think you get the picture and they said do something so next slide and so we've taken that to heart as a priority now since that time since they said you must act we've got to do something to protect these aquifers since that time the state water resources control board our department of water resource and in conjunction with the department of water resources identified our basin as critically overdrafted there's only 21 bases out out of 500 in the state of california to have this scarlet letter and we're one of them now since that time this is when reality came crashing down the danish government came to us and they said we know you have this problem you don't know how far seawater intrusion is offshore in your aquifers and they said we have a technology that that can show you and we said really do it they did it they flew it and it showed it now what's amazing is the state now has entered a memorandum of agreement to share this tech get more of the technology and to share this so it worked and that's the beautiful thing the terrifying thing in my mind is what it showed is that the ground walk the seawater intrusion and that is right at the shoreline and so our hydrologist showed a while back if we did not move our pumping inland and conserve you know just temporarily to adjust we would our wells could be hit and our main well field could be hit in two years and we didn't even know how far it was off but the board took a proactive action at that point now mind you customers said act the state then identifies our critical basin then we do the geophysical technique and then a couple months ago Mr. Pete Cartwright who's sitting in the front row walks into our office and says I need to talk to somebody you guys serve my house but I have a 10 acre farm and it's served by a well and he said my rent the farmer who rents the property can no longer farm and it's gotten hit by seawater intrusion he had to give I think approximately $25,000 back to the farmer because the well it's just recently got intruded so timeliness matters in a solution and you know if you don't believe that ask Mr. Cartwright reliability of a solution is also paramount I don't think anything probably speaks about reliability a little more than recycled water as somebody said the other day it may not rain for long periods of time but hopefully people will always take showers so that kind of stuck in my mind there's also a couple other things about reliability that are not so much about pure water so kale project but we just have to keep in mind and is that that is about two weeks ago the state mandated that some of the streams of tolamine river and some of the other ones a cutback of 40 percent now this through water agencies you can do a frenzy you probably saw it san francisco public utilities commissions and others i'm not saying that's going to happen to us but it it happened to them and they didn't think it was either there's also a embedded recently in the kind of doctrine of what the state wants to do is that they're recognizing the beneficial re-use of the water now that goes out to sea there's approximately eight million gallons a day of treated effluent by the way that goes out to the ocean at santa cruz and they they're starting to say they've actually embedded this in the goals that if you are sending treated effluent out to the ocean you need to make it a priority number one priority to reuse some of that now on top of that senator herzberg and others have been doing legislation and we hear it's going to come back up to actually limit us some of the from the fluent going out so we'd have to find a way to use it and we think we have a way you know scalability we didn't see this one coming from our community but they said they want it they want a solution that's scalable that if if it doesn't need to produce so much it doesn't have to say we were getting some excess taking more water from the river that's a beautiful thing we could scale it back say the drought hit harder maybe we could we could we could pump the full amount or do the full amount something that was adaptable so it was more efficient so we think that that that covers that affordability um you know that's always everywhere somewhere in everybody's values I think because money does matter it may not be the top priority and it wasn't the top priority there was another headline that said it wasn't the top for our people but but it's important um so we we looked at what projects you know what projects cost now here are as a comparison and you can see it two of the water scenarios that the city of Santa Cruz is considering and that maybe you know we'll have a chance to partner with if they pan out that's the engineer's estimated cost and then there's the uh cost for pure water soquel right there I should also say that that's the total cost when you break it down just for the project's total cost to cost per unit of water pure water soquel is also less expensive now what these graphs don't include is that the state was down in our office the other day and they've already invested about two million dollars in grant funding for planning and education and the feds have also uh uh provided us a hundred and fifty thousand dollars for a feasibility study so they've invested in us and that's important not just for the money but it sends a signal of a third party review having belief in the project they don't invest in these things unless they want to succeed and think it should succeed so they came down after giving us the two million wanted to see our project actually said they think we have the poster child poster child for preventing seawater intrusion and so what they did when they went back for the from that visit they went to mr car rights property matter of fact they said we want to invite you to apply for a fifty million dollar grant and we've set the money aside and we want you to come back and apply and so they wrote us a letter and we're we're going to be applying for that so that's what the project would look like it would cut the cost to our rate payers for the project in half and there's also federal money out there and they've been talking to us but it's not even shown so cost is one thing but values another and so we commissioned Dr. Houdad who's actually here in the audience tonight he's a professor up at UCSC he's written some books on water and economics to do a economic study on the project we said here's the material do the science contact us if you needed him and a phd student went and did it the result of that study is that pure water soquel project would be contribute total economic benefit of almost one billion dollars what it showed is for every dollar invested you get nine dollars return on your investment to the economy it also showed that if you had to do it by conservation if that would even work and you scale back you'd pay for three or four times as much and have to use less water so I'll round it out with the environment because that was also a core value and you know it's one of mine so I went into water and I know it is for a lot of people out here I see some familiar faces and I know you value that go to the next slide so there were a lot of emails sent to our board and they were saying we're concerned about this project using a lot of energy and producing carbon emissions and believe my board is very concerned about that I'll just say Dr. Bruce Daniels that I don't know what age you went back but it wasn't too long ago and got your phd in hydrochloric pathology from UCSC but so it's always on our mind and I'm glad to report out that while pure water soquel may use more energy and probably would than some of the other alternatives we're looking at you have to realize that it's not you get what you pay for actually you get more than what you pay for when you're talking about cleaning up water you can invest a little bit more and get a much much much higher quality I'm talking about hundreds of millions of times more and that's what pure pure water soquel would do versus just traditional treatment on our sources so beyond that though it would be all the energy thanks to Monterey community power I'll put out a shout out to Jenny Johnson uh because she led this effort uh all the power would be carbon free and produced from green sources such as solar and the and the facility would also have solar on it I should add but from solar wind and hydro 100 carbon free energy you know reducing 20 25 of the 8 million gallons a day on average a fluid that goes out to the ocean seems like a step in the right direction than me this is actually out down the street from my house I love this guy I've seen him surf with his dog okay next slide um I'll back up one because I do want to say that on the environmental lens something that that that socked me in the stomach when I heard it I actually want to see what the exact quote is somebody said to me uh when I was telling about these projects and saying hey we're getting a little we're trying to get some water from the north coast creeks and from the sailor into river and do recycle and they looked at me and they go and and from the groundwater and they said isn't it time we stop taking and start recycling and you know when they said that my whole my I shifted I just went oh my gosh isn't it time we stopped taking and start recycling but with that said I've kind of built up the virtues of pure water soquel um okay run that slide uh and and we and we've shown the science we've gone through the science it it it it this project aligns with our community values I don't think there is one single solution in this in this region I'm pretty sure of it I think it's going to take a host of solutions and certainly that creates more reliability so recycle purification groundwater recharge uh sharing with neighbors the whole bit uh when we did the opening of the uh water transfer the other day uh water commissioner Doug Imfer our vice chairman of the uh water commission said you know water systems take a lot of time and there's probably no magic bullet and I really think he summed it up well so we really are one community and I think collaboration is is is the key it's we can't do it alone no entity nobody can do this alone we need each other and so I thank each of y'all who have contributed comments put time into it and for being here tonight thank you thank you um I'll turn it now over uh to Elisa Moore from environmental sciences thank you she'll go through kind of the process portion of pure water soquel and then I think Millie Mel Schumacher will come up and kind of get into the uh more meat of the project thank you thank you um thanks for having me here tonight um again this is Elisa Moore with environmental science associates and for the past 25 years 21 of those with USA I've been focusing on supporting the environmental planning of water supply and um public land use projects in with a particular focus on helping public agencies complete their obligations under the California Environmental Quality Act or CEQA and tonight I'm going to walk through the CEQA process that was completed for this project um and and just as a reminder to everyone what CEQA is it is applied it applies to state and local uh agency projects and requires that agencies consider environmental impacts before decisions are made which are the decisions that we're here tonight to to think through um and for this project we've prepared an environmental impact report which evaluates in environmental impacts of a project and demonstrates that the impacts can be avoided or reviewed reduced and also requires that you consider environmental alternatives to the project so how we started this process was with a public scoping period and the release of a notice of preparation in uh November of 2016 um for a public review period that ended in in January 2017 and we provided this notice of preparation to a number of um individuals and organizations as well as provided notice in newspapers libraries and websites and on the district's website in in all we we um distributed approximately 7500 mail and email notices um there were two public meetings held during that time period and the outcome of the public scoping period um the main issues that we heard at that time were regarding concerns about use of raw wastewater as a source water for this project some site specific environmental concerns about the location of the treatment facilities and um some non-environmental concerns that led the district and the board to go back and think a little bit more about what the project should include and um in the end the project description was revised somewhat and a second and a notice of preparation was released um in June of 2017 um for a comment period again that that ended in July of 22nd um this similarly uh we released the notice of preparation to an um through a number of resources and made um made those documents available in public libraries as well as on the district's website we also held one scoping meeting um on the second and the revised notice of preparation before substantially launching into preparation of the EIR for the project the next phase of our project was preparation of a draft EIR um which was made available to the public in June of 2018 this earlier this year for a comment period that went through August of 2018 um and we held one public meeting during the draft EIR review period sorry folks I'm not the tail end of a colt so I'm a little bit hoarse still um and um similar to the notice of preparation there was quite a wide array of distribution of the of the availability of the draft EIR um CEQA requires that you provide the notice of the availability for the draft EIR through a few means but the district really wanted to do a fuller release and make this document available through many means as you see on this slide here the draft EIR that was made available for public public review and comment focused on um these project objectives here and means of meeting the project's need to develop 1,500 acre feet of supplemental water supply that would replenish the local ground water basin for prevent further seawater intrusion develop a sustainable water supply in a timely manner develop an affordable and reliable supplemental water source diversify and enhance resiliency of the water supply and produce high quality and safe water supply that also provides additional environmental benefits in order to achieve those objectives the project as described in the EIR includes an arrangement of um options that would include treatment facilities that would take the secondary effluent from the Santa Cruz water wastewater treatment facility and um do advanced purification and move that water to recharge well locations that are on the far side of this graphic that you'll see here um specifically um that meant that there were several combinations of treatment locations pipelines and recharge locations that were considered and analyzed in the EIR um that this just displays kind of the different variations of treatment uh that were con what's what's considered on in the EIR and then on the next slide you'll see that they're for treatment there were three specific locations that were analyzed in the EIR for the treatment facilities um and those were at the Santa Cruz wastewater treatment facility itself um at the shant what we call the shanticleer site which is at the corner of shanticleer and Soquel um and then actually the west headquarters west annex site adjacent to the district's headquarters office and it was noted in the EIR that the final configuration would be decided um based on what we heard from the public and during the scoping period as well as the draft EIR um analysis uh if a review period um the environmental analysis other engineering and feasibility considerations as well as continued outreach and outreach and technical input under CEQA we're required to consider the physical environmental impacts on a number of environmental topics at UC here and the EIR included all of the topics at UCB for you here and in the EIR there was consideration of both construction and operational impacts the construction phase is expected to last a total of 36 months but with different phases of the project and facility types requiring different construction periods the EIR concluded that most of the environmental topics would result in less and significant impacts and those are the items you see in blue um but some of the construction impacts were determined to be significant um but that could be mitigated to less and significant levels with mitigation measures those are the items that are kind of in the orange and they included topics such as air quality biological resources um potential cultural resources if they were present um and energy conservation needs hazards and hazards materials surface water hydrology and transportation and traffic there's one topic that was determined to be significant but unavoidable even with mitigation measures during the construction period which was noise because with um even with mitigation there wasn't a feasible means to reduce the the short-term noise um levels from some construction equipment types um during the construction period so that item you'll see in red is determined to be significant unavoidable with mitigation for operations after conducting the impact analysis it was determined that all impacts from operational activities would either be would have no impact because the resources are not present or there would be less and significant impacts as mentioned CEQA requires alternatives be considered um for in within an EIR and the and what is required is that the EIR evaluate a reasonable range of alternatives that would feasibly obtain most of the project objectives but also avoid or lessen one or more of the significant impacts of the project in looking at those requirements under CEQA there were three alternatives that were considered in the analysis in the alternatives analysis the no project alternative which is required under CEQA a reduced project that would include a 1200 acre foot per year compared to the 1500 acre foot per year facility under the project combined with a treated surface water purchase of 300 acre feet per year the third alternative we considered was a seawater or brackish water desalination plant at 1500 acre feet per year the the discussion of alternatives also considered whether other options or alternatives could meet the objectives of the project and obtain and reduce or avoid one or more of the significant impacts and be feasible so there's also a discussion of several alternatives that we determined cannot meet the requirements of CEQA the project was determined to be the environmentally superior alternative amongst the alternatives that were analyzed following the completion of the draft year comment period we began preparing the response to comments document which which was based on consideration of the 107 comment letters that were received as well as the eight oral speakers that came to the public meeting and presented comment there the main themes that we heard and and and were provided during the comment period were request to extend the comment period discussion of CEQA alternatives preferences amongst the facility sites that were discussed in the project description as well as water quality or public health impacts and some non CEQA considerations we also prepared at the as a result of those comments as well as some staff initiated changes to the project description a text revision section which is a which is a brief section of about 30 or so pages that that includes text revisions as well as the text revisions that were acquired as a result of these changes do not bring any new impacts or substantially change impact analysis that was prepared in the draft year so the response to comments and the draft year together are the final year and as as completed or is not substantially different than what is in the draft EIR the response to comments document was completed and CEQA requires that you make the response to comments document available to agencies that have commented on the draft EIR at least 10 days before considering CEQA certification so that document was distributed to commenting agencies on December 7th in addition while not required the district made the response to comments document available on their website as well as at their district headquarters and provided a distribution to commenters on the EIR that the document the response to comment document was available with that that leads us to today and I'm going to now turn this over to Melanie who will talk about the two resolutions that are before you tonight great thank you Lisa just for an introduction my name is Melanie mouse Schumacher and I'm the special projects communications manager here at Soquel Creek water district I'm also the lead staff person who has been overseeing the evaluation of the proposed pure water Soquel project my background is I am a registered civil engineer although most of my practice right now is in planning and paperwork but I've also lived here for over 20 years and I am proud to be a groundwater guardian I'm blessed to have been able to raise two boys here and live and work in this community I would just like to again say thank you to Ron and to Ms. Moore I do have just a couple of slides and then we do want to turn it over to the board comments and the public comments so as the lead staff engineer I've been overseeing the environmental analysis for about two and a half years or more importantly we counted it's 888 days and through that time we're here today to have the final EIR presented to the board for consideration of certifying the EIR following that step if the board does decide to certify the EIR then they can then consider whether or not to approve the project so what exactly does certifying an EIR mean in simple terms it means that the Soquel Creek Water District Board of Directors as the lead agency considers the information within the EIR as complete the staff recommendation related to certifying the EIR and adopting the resolution that Ms. Roulette had referred to which is 1830 states that the final EIR including the comments I mean the documents incorporated by reference have been reviewed and considered by the board the final EIR has also been completed in accordance with CEQA and the CEQA guidelines and the final EIR adequately describes the environmental impacts of the proposed project the final EIR also reflects the board's independent judgment and analysis and that it is adequate accurate and objective and finally the response to comments document contains no significant revisions to the draft EIR as we mentioned we did make the responses to comment document available on our website and at the district office as of last Friday since that time we have received additional input from the public with most of the communication focusing on the topics that you see on the screen most of the topics raised included both project support and project opposition the request for additional time to review the final EIR the request to have the availability of the responses to document comment in hard copy which we did have one copy even though it was not required at our district office there was also a lot of discussion related to the project timeliness relative to water transfer evaluation that I hope Ron addressed there was also some considerations and discussions related to project cost and energy consumption relative to water transfers the water transfer efficacy and the water system in aquifer capacity and finally there were some general dissatisfaction with the responses that were made to the comments in reviewing the communications that we've received and we continue to review them and we will review them tonight the sequel team thus far has not identified any new environmental issues that were not addressed in the final EIR and we continue to be in compliance with the sequel requirements and the sequel guidelines and thus our recommendation for the board to certify still stands so on the screen before you and it's also in the staff memo this is the actual text of the motion that we have are proposing to the board to by motion and roll call vote adopt resolution 1830 certifying the final EIR for the pure water so cal project the other action that we are proposing to the board tonight is also for project approval if the board decides to certify the EIR this would be the next step again this is just a process chart showing that if the board decided to approve the project they could direct staff to continue to move on with the design and permitting of the project as you've heard from the speakers before me the full environmental review was completed for all project components described in the final EIR this provided a comprehensive analysis of the range of options and the potential environmental effects as Ms. Moore has mentioned the final EIR evaluated these potential effects at three different treatment sites numerous pipeline alignments and five potential recharge well sites for project approval staff is recommending that the project consists of the following components a water treatment facility at one or two sites a pipeline alignment for secondary or tertiary effluent a pipeline alignment for purified water and a pipeline alignment for the brine concentrate and then and finally recharge well and apperances add up to three sites further for project approval staff is recommending an approach to advance the development and the siting of the components for the pure water soak health project to be tertiary treatment at the Santa Cruz wastewater treatment facility advanced water purification at shana clear site and the recharge wells that have been identified to be twin lakes church Monterey Avenue and willow brook lane i'd like to just take a couple moments to go more in detail of those locations so at the Santa Cruz wastewater treatment facility we are recommending to the board to develop the tertiary treatment that would be located at the Santa Cruz wastewater treatment facility right next to the existing sedimentation tanks this wastewater treatment facility is near neary lagoon once tertiary water was developed over at the Santa Cruz wastewater treatment facility it would go through pipelines and over to the shana clear site which as was mentioned before is on soquel avenue in shana clear very nearby staples in west marine at this site location we're proposing that the purification process be developed there that would include the advanced treatment which would include reverse osmosis and advanced oxidation once the purified water was created at that site then it would go out to our recharge well sites the recharge well sites as shown here are two district owned properties at Monterey Avenue which is near um kennedy drive and willow brook lane which is just off of soquel the third option would be at the twin lakes church which is um near cabrio college and off cabrio college drive so up on the screen is the actual language again that we're proposing that our board approve which would be if resolution 1830 is adopted by motion and roll call vote adopt resolution 1831 this would also mean that not only adopting the project they would adopt the sequel mitigation and monitoring program the findings and the statement of overriding considerations that would be based upon the project that is before them tonight thank you president mario all right thank you so um we will have public comment in a minute and I just wanted to see if there are any questions um from board members first first staff not from me want to hear from the public you know it's I would like to do okay all right I just wanted to make sure all right so um we're gonna open the public comment portion um we should have some speaker cards available um and we have how many okay so that's still you know an hour and 20 minutes of comment but I think what I want to make three minutes is our standard so we'll stick with that you'll we have um I'll call each speaker to the microphone and you'll have those three minutes to present your comments to the board and just as a reminder we're we want to have everyone have a chance to speak um there's no donating of time to other speakers and we're not going to get into a back and forth dialogue we're here to just listen um and so it might be efficacious to have the second person come up and stand in I will I will give the I'll give the speaker's name that's coming up and then I'll give the one who's on deck for those of you that so that you're ready to go when you do take the microphone um please speak into the microphone and spell your name and identify if you're commenting on behalf of any groups or organizations and if you'd like to state your address for the record and so number one I have Mary Bannister and then in on deck we have Vince Baraba. Good evening. Thank you President LaHue staff board members all my friends and community members in the public. I'm Mary Bannister B A double N I S T E R. I live in the Pajaro Valley water management area 498 White Road in Watsonville. I'm here as a member of the public although I did work at the Pajaro Valley water management agency for almost well 17 years and I've recently because I couldn't get enough I've just joined the board of directors there right is that funny to you all might think that's kind of interesting but thank you for the work that you all do I can't think of a board that has more talented individuals on it and having been in the business for so long I know what a commitment it is any of us could be out drinking eggnog tonight but here you are and I appreciate that from everyone here who's committed to water resources in the central coast area so being part of the neighbor to the south I just want to tell you that we developed recycled water about 10 years ago and it saved our central coast farming the Pajaro Valley farming in that area in the central coast area of the Pajaro Valley there there were wells inundated with seawater and once they are they're done and there were farmers that were not going to be able to farm but we developed a clean drought proof supply of recycled water that now has been being supplied to that agricultural area for over 10 years uncooked crops fresh raw crops strawberries celery lettuce all of those are being irrigated never a problem never a documented problem with that anywhere that I'm aware of edible row crops is that three minutes nope that's just a warning that you've got a minute left because I'm just warming up our board of directors made a very risky decision and it took guts for them to commit to the project that we built we were in lawsuits as many of you know we were under lots of criticism the farmers are very nervous about using that water but here we are 10 years later this year no water went out the outfall so all water is good water it just needs to be treated and used for what it's appropriate for and so our board made a gutsy decision and I encourage you all to do the same once our project kicked off it wasn't the perfect project it still isn't yours isn't perfect either they don't have to be perfect but they have to be a project that makes sense that the community can commit to and once you get going the pieces will fall into place grant funding came to the tune of 80 million dollars we got in grant funding and this is an agency that was on the verge of bankruptcy when we broke ground so that's remarkable um as your neighbor to the south and as someone who's got some trail dust maybe a thick coating of it I encourage you to move forward keep up the good work and thank you thank you man all right thank you and next is Vince Baraba and then on deck is um Dan Creege thank you um I wanted to just put a little background on why what I want to say a little bit later I had the opportunity to serve in fairly large government positions as the director of the census bureau as I look around I think I counted you all in 1980 and I've also had executive positions in very large corporations the reason I bring that up is that I reviewed the report that was done by the professor at UC Santa Cruz and I think it was very well done because it's the type of report that is hard to do because there's so much uncertainty related to the assumptions that have to be made about the future and I think they did a very good job of addressing that issue and putting it in a in a form that allowed the the reader to see and to understand that the conclusion they came to seems pretty solid there was one thing however that I was thinking about I came to capital in nearly 30 years ago and I I got to admit I came here because I was looking to invest in property thank god I did it then but the one thing that didn't pop out of that report that was important to me is there was very they listed very well the concerns related to what could happen to businesses and things of that nature but you know when you make an investment in property you do so with the understanding that the economics of the society could have an effect on the value of the property and that's the risk that you're willing to take but what not having water does it has a significant risk on the value of your property because if you ever wanted to sell it you'd have to explain to somebody that what we normally do in our houses with water you can't do here because we're under limitations as to the access to the water so as someone who now has two pieces of property in capitol I really thought that job was well done and I'm very much in in support of what is in front of you today thank you thank you so and next we have Dan Kreege and on deck would be Craig Wilson good evening he said I'm Dan Kreege I've been in the water business for about 60 years and served on this board 40 years and was a member and chairman of the California Water Commission I just like to make two or three points tonight one of them is that I was responsible for advanced wastewater treatment in Palo Alto years ago and we not only took the secondary treat the water Palo Alto but we made it primary water and drinking water but more interesting was NASA was our partner in that project and they were testing how we treated water and how we treated that water to a drinking water level because if you're going to go to Mars you're going to drink your water many many times so they had to cycle this water quickly the process works and as Ron pointed out the process is working in many areas throughout California another point is I was responsible for three large water treatment plants in Silicon Valley Los Gatos Elmenden Valley and east San Jose and around these plants are homes and many people are worried that if you build a treatment plant in your home you'll reduce the value of the property those homes sitting above the rink and out of water treatment plant in Los Gatos are multimillion-dollar homes and I might say that there's probably not a home along Capitola Avenue that's quite valuable as those homes are I looked around I know there's going to be people tonight who will speak against this project and they'll have valid concerns but also you have to remember there are tens of thousands of people who are not here tonight and these people are the ones that are saying to you we've given you the responsibility to have a water supply for us and to protect our groundwater basin you've given that you have this responsibility now and I would say approve this project and get it moving and also I would also encourage this board to get off their collective rear ends and get out to the public and explain to the public that they need this project and you have to have this project otherwise these hammers that I've talked about are going to fall on this district and so you ran on the board you ran for this board telling us you had great leadership I'd like to you to go out to the public and show us that leadership thank you Dan so next is Craig Wilson and on deck is Adele Gardner I am Craig Wilson I live on North Main Street in Soquel I've been following the general water issues in our troubles for many years now I'm very pleased that we have an opportunity to move forward now because it's been a long time since we had any options so I would ask the board to certify the EIR and approve the project thank you thank you sir Adele Gardner and then next will be Monica McGuire hi my name is Adele Gardner it's spelled A-D-E-L-E-G-A-R-D-N-E-R I live at 319 Loyola Drive in Aptos I've lived in this district for 20 years it's been a problem for 20 years I am so happy to see you guys on the brink of taking action you have worked so hard I want to congratulate the people that just got elected I think that the voters spoke and said they were really excited to have you guys take action follow through on your plan follow the science and and I would say that supports the previous speaker saying that all the people not in this room are saying do this get something done I appreciate how much work you've done over the years in conservation that the work you do to cooperate with partners throughout our community not just in our district but across the district and the county your diligence and research has so paid off you guys have been so dedicated in getting this job done detail oriented the outreach you've done has been spectacular thank you your job is to protect and preserve our aquifer for the future generations to me this is the biggest environmental project and the biggest environmental threat that our community faces and it's in your hands it's your public trust we are trusting you to do something and I hope that you will take the time now tonight to be brave people take action and do something for us and for future generations people that will live here thank you thank you so Monica McGuire is next and then on deck we have Kenneth Gerard I'm Monica McGuire I still work in this district in Aptos and I now live at 20 Mahalo Meadow Drive in Coralitos I wholly and heartedly disagree with everyone who's spoken already as members of the public I find having come to multiple meetings that you have not honestly addressed most of the concerns that I and others who have donated thousands of hours attempting to assist you to see the plain facts that this is a boondoggle over expensive choice at this point it could very well be that this is something that has a place after the water transfer pilot project is complete however having put that off the multiple years that you've put it off and not knowing whether that could solve our problem at a fraction of the cost and saying that your reason for not doing it is because you don't trust Santa Cruz City is reprehensible and I have met dozens and dozens who agree entirely they are not the thousands out there thinking you've done a good job they're the thousands who didn't learn about the meetings that you said were public meetings that I attended and found out that they weren't public meetings they were places for you to do more cover-up misrepresentation and strange play with words in order to make this sound better than it is we have enough voices that have been misrepresented on these slides here tonight again making very real concerns evident and clear and they have been ignored and not answered and we feel incredibly frustrated by this we feel misled misrepresented and quite angered you might get from my voice at this point knowing that you have people standing here saying that they believe you need to be brave to do this we think you're crazy without finding out what less expensive options have been laid at your doorstep with great care for years we hope that you will take more time to let the water transfer pilot project complete and find out if we could save the small number of ratepayers in this district enough money to let us continue to live here a 9% raise for nine years straight or whatever it is is ridiculous if we have this massive growth coming with the Silicon Valley coming over wait until they are resident here in the overcrowded housing planned by this very strange set of choices in this county and let them help us pay for it we should not be paying for a whole future of the Silicon Valley taking over our jobs so that they have better water in case they want it and there is so much more you could be doing first please take a recess and don't push this through thank you so next is Kenneth Gerard and following him will be Larry Freeman good evening my name is Kenneth Gerard I live at six three nine baby drive in Aftos California I've lived here since November of 88 I'm a retired water wastewater engineer um during my career in that field I work for the city of Wattsville San Lorenzo Valley water district and also the sunny bale water district in which I worked in various water recycled water and wastewater projects I do um like to first of all congratulate the board here the staff as well as the board and the staff of the city of Santa Cruz and the county of Santa Cruz for recognizing the importance of recharging the mid-county groundwater basin this particular project is a step in that direction as discussed in the EIR this particular project would meet all of the community standards and requirements it would meet all the project objectives it would provide safe water in a cost-effective manner I strongly support this project the proposed project um does not depend upon seasonal water which is only available in wet years as some of the other proposals were for transfers it also has a lower energy cost and uh global warming impact than it other alternatives of desal it does not compete with the city of Santa Cruz use of surface water it will utilize a resource which is currently underutilized i.e wastewater it will successful to recharge the mid-county groundwater basin which is important to do in a very timely fashion before more people lose their wells to groundwater intrusions I do urge the board to consider carefully the EIR and the process for the EIR and take the appropriate action after reviewing all comments this night finally as a member of a joint task force before when I worked at sunny slope county water district we had the members of staff of all the institutions review the project as well as two members of the elected boards of the project review it along with the consultants uh this technical advisory committee made a final recommendation regarding the exact location of each and every facility and um all boards and staff were very confident of the project after that and it moved forward very successfully so I would uh encourage you to make sure that the staff of both agencies the board of both agencies and the consultants working for all agencies are comfortable with all the components of the project thank you very much thank you um next is Larry Freeman followed by Barbara Graves hello my name is Larry Freeman F-R-E-E-M-A-N I'm a resident of Capitola and a customer of Soquel Creek Water District first I'd like to say congratulations on the completion of the final EIR for the pure water soquel project I've been watching the evolution of the project for nearly three years now attending numerous board meetings public workshops and participating as a public member on two uh supplemental water supply committee and the water resources management stand the committee this project is vital for the protection of our groundwater supply against seawater intrusion and for providing a safe reliable and sustainable water supply the project is really the only current option on the table that is under the control of the district surface water transfers from the city of Santa Cruz will be feasible at some point in time but that is several years down the line it's worth reiterating that surface water transfers from the city beyond the curtain small pilot project cannot proceed until the city has received approval from the state to update their water rights to the San Lorenzo river the city posted a notice of preparation on october 15 that document gives a clue as to the length of the time required to change water rights the link to that document is highlighted on page 243 of the board packet tonight um this approval process will take several years when and if the city gets the okay from the state it could take several more years for the city to decide how they would like to share those rights and then go through the EIR process for any plans and projects the city the district does not the only local water agency interested in obtaining water through the changes to the city's rights there have been concerns expressed about the ability of the advanced water purification technology to provide a safe water supply and prevent contamination of the groundwater basin i prefer to base my opinions on facts produced by sound science and the input from experts in the field this technology is not new and it is constantly being improved the national water research institute has given its expert blessing to the pure water project i trust the science and i trust their opinion numerous comments on the draft EIR reflect a concern about the location of the advanced water purification facility many support the project but not the west annex site i see that the board plans to approve the project for the shanticleer location i think that's a wise move for a number of reasons given the critically overdrafted designation of our groundwater basin and we cannot afford to wait for a project that might happen at some point in time in lieu service water transfer deep water desal and stormwater capture are still on the table as part of the district's community water plan and should still be pursued eventually some or all of these options will be necessary for a resilient water supply not only for district's customers but for the sanikers county region a diversity of water supply options will provide stability there is no single solution to this regional problem i want to say thanks for the hard work and dedication of the district staff the numerous highly skilled consulting firms the numerous constructive public comments and the astute guidance by the board of directors we are now able to take substantial action towards achieving a safe reliable and sustainable water supply thank you for your time thank you mr freeman um barbara graves and then followed by barbara would be um becky steinbrunner my name is barbara graves i live in capitol and i have been an environmental activist for half a century in the area of water it started when my family and my friends began to die from polluted groundwater and make no mistake salt is pollution it's time to absolutely stop this i mean the staff was very polite leaving out the study that showed that salt water is active and has been active drawn in under live oak by initially by the belts wells by the city of sanikers i mean it's very bad we cannot wait any longer and on the little road that um ron duncan put up on the on the screen there i started on that road 25 years ago when i represented the conservation committee of the sierra club on the cities the city of santa cruises water input committee at that point desalination was unanimous as the most environmentally friendly option then i served on the um soquel creek water advisory committee and i also served for the democratic party on the um and commission on the environment for the democratic the california democratic party and through all of those i have never seen a board that is more qualified more dedicated to the environment than you folks are i respect all of you i don't have to agree with you but please certify this eir i'm one of those crusty old anal retentive environmentalists i actually read the eir and it's it's good it's really good you should certify it and move forward with whatever's fastest and prevent this pollution thank you thank you um after um bekke steinbrunner on deck would be steve wart i think or wheat it's interesting weight he's a large contractor bekke steinbrunner from aptos hill steinbrunner st e i n b r u n e r i feel there are a number of inadequate responses and a lack of information and downright um inaccuracies in the draft eir that you're bored with good due diligence needs to address to keep your board and the ratepayers from being sued in the future um i don't have time to go into all of them but briefly um i have not even had time to comment on my own or review my own comments responses instead choosing to pay attention in these 10 very short days that you have given the public to focus on mr ricker and mr adler's expert opinions and concerns and the lack of response to them in the eir um in mr ricker points out that the draft eir did not show true locations of any private wells in the models they were all simulated this was dismissed in the response mr ricker also points out the draft eir does not adequately address potential soil contamination sites and actually says that it is inaccurate information because there are many contamination sites that are closed but were closed because of their high cost and low benefit but they are in direct locations that your conveyance lines would go this is dismissed in the response um mr ricker and mr adler both point out that this project dismisses cooperation with county's plans in the forced main alignment projects and there needs to be a new bridge put across the san lorenzo river that it would behoove both agencies all agencies to cooperate your response says you do not intend to do so the draft eir says that the um rodeo basin is over capacity mr adler states that the response dismisses that and i may point out there is a five-story medical facility in a 700 car parking garage planned for that area um i want to say that your it is uh inaccurate that your draft eir says there is no plan for anything except groundwater injection into the uh basin for seawater when your board approved last to uh meeting to use as a gift to give twin lakes three and a half acre feet of purified water every year for 50 years to irrigate their their athletic fields that is an irrigation project but the draft eir said there is no plan for using the treated water for irrigation finally i want to give you a petition of 190 people who want to vote on this as we as we have been asking for since you began thank you very much i'd like to see steve weight will be next and after him will be um rick guanjanati sorry how do i pronounce your last name sir i didn't quite read it correctly did i yeah my name is uh steve weight i'm a resident of san jose county and soon to be a customer of silk hill water district hopefully house still going through in january um i have a recovery oceanographer um i've been in the water business for almost 25 30 30 years uh but my children have have a unique probably the the only kids have had tasted wastewater reuse from five water reuse plants and two desal plants so i don't think any more kids have done up more than my kids and i so as in the business but as a resident of the county i want to make sure that the board understands that this is the right way to go this is the future this is one of the portfolio management tools that many districts are are considering and it is the positive way to go there are a lot of options out there and it's a tough job to do to do to mitigate you know all the different um um issues but i think from a water shortage point of view and based management time timing management point of view this is the address to go to and uh i have no effects of drinking wastewater for many years so i can be be proof to that so thank you thank you um and then rick longinati and then after that will be john leopold good evening board members um just want to start out by recognizing you with appreciation for your dedication to restoring the aquifer i think around 2002 three gentlemen on the on the board here uh gone on the board with a district that was ignoring for 20 years and overdrafting of the aquifer and and you all have turned that around and uh first of all with the desalination proposal which uh i would have supported had it been the only way to recover the aquifer because i think it's a worse uh outcome to lose the aquifer than it is to build the most energy intensive kind of water infrastructure there is which is desalination and now you're on to a better solution from an energy point of view about half as energy intensive as desalination i was disappointed that the ir did not fully consider the water transfers with santa crews we had uh i was on the water supply advisory committee we recommended in the city council unanimously adopted water transfers as the number one strategy for drought resilience for santa crews and you had a letter from water director rosemary minard saying that she was looking for a synergy with the district that uh santa crews is problems and the so-called districts problems could be solved um the the ir did say that the water transfers had the potential of supplying 1500 acre feet per year which is your goal um so i don't know why it wasn't uh looked at it was put into the alternative for not not to be considered further so i don't think you've missed that opportunity entirely um i would suggest that uh that actually the district uh take a leadership role in looking at water transfer possibilities because otherwise you're just going to be responding to whatever santa crews puts forward and santa crews is going to put forward what's good for them which is what they should put forward but it won't necessarily be optimized for the recovery of the opera crew that you're looking for and i haven't seen the district up to now become active and actually looking at the strategies for water transfer that might be optimal for you guys i'm worried that if you if you approve the project tonight that you won't have the money to do uh much of anything else um and so i'm i'm sad about that so i'm i'm asking if you can think on your feet here tonight if you can find a way that if you do approve of this project or or set yourself on a path towards it that you can find ways to leave it if you find a better solution um uh that you maybe do the investments that make sense for you first that could be used you know for example install the injection wells which could be used for uh wastewater recycled water or could be used for river water i mean do the kinds of things that uh don't delay your project but that could be used for various alternatives thank you thank you um john leopold and following him will be gary lindstrom uh good evening board my name is john leopold i'm a santa cruz county supervisor i have the great pleasure of representing both live oak and soquel i live on gross road and i'm here tonight to say that i support the need for the soquel creek water district to pursue a treatment facility to meet the water supply needs and mitigate the impact of seawater intrusion along the coastline i've shown that support by writing letters of support for grant applications for the pure water soquel project speaking to my constituents and sharing information with constituents in my district about this project i understand that the scope and scale of this project there were some early concerns about what it really was about did it involve raw sewage and i worked hard to help educate uh my constituents and dispel the rumors about what this project was really about i think the eir has validated those early discussions and showed what this project really is and i think it's a good eir but i have two concerns as a representative of a unincorporated area the water decisions that get made in live oak are currently made by a board that has which live oak residents have no representation on that board on page two and three of the item discussing the cir the district considered multiple project sites to allow for flexibility and responding to the interest of local jurisdictions technical uncertainties environment and environmental and economic considerations first given that the staff is now recommending shanna clear to the preferred location for the santa cruz waste water treatment facility and advanced water purification treatment i wanted to clearly articulate that in my opinion this site is not in the interest of the county of santa cruz from an economic development standpoint because the newly proposed medical office building being proposed just down the street will significantly change the economic value of the property and the opportunities that we have for that property there is less than a 12 percent of the properties in live oak are commercially zoned this is one of those places having a major facility in the medical office building means that this property becomes more valuable to the economic health of our community second by recommending the shanna clear site staff is recommending that district and customers support the most expensive alternative since the district would have to buy this property instead of using it at either of the two other locations proposed the medical office building greatly raises the the cost of that and it will probably be between two and three million dollars and my understanding is your grant will not cover those costs so i asked that that your staff who's been well aware of these issues for a while work with the county i will continue to work with you to advocate for sites that are more appropriate for for this facility and i encourage you to think about those people who do not have a voice in this process but deserve to be considered as part of your considerations thank you thank you so gary lindstrom is is up now and after him is robert singleton hi gary lindstrom resident of aptos for over 50 years a few things i want to bring up there was only one copy of the eir that people could look at i've been out of town several days and found out that today was the last day for the responses so i just don't think that the board or the staff have done everything they can do to get this out and let the public have a look at it and surely a 740 page document can't be looked at and and deciphered in 10 days especially when there's only one copy of it at the office at the district office should have been in the libraries and not everybody has a computer so if it was on the computer on the website then you know that's fine for people that have computers but some people don't some people live in areas where they don't get reception to use computers second i wanted to bring up the oh the comment on the reports and the studies that were made that the pws pure water soquel is less expensive than the transfer program it doesn't make any difference what you pay somebody it's what what you want out of the reports and if you give them certain information and things like that and you pay them the right prices you get the answers you want i'm sure that on the same reports if i had paid for them the answers probably would have been different um the other facilities that you mentioned that are using the pure water system are much much larger districts by tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people this is a horrible economic burden on the ratepayers of this district the grant money that you talk about is reimbursement grants there's no there's no guarantee that that's going to come through so to gamble like this without having the money in the bank to pay for it or at least make it reasonably affordable is wrong another thing on the transfer program why is it taking so long for this to happen this water has been there for hundreds and thousands of years why wasn't it thought of earlier why did it take citizens to put the program together thank you um next is robert singleton and after him will be jane paradise good evening my name is robert singleton and i'm speaking on behalf of the santa cruz county business council my name is robert singleton so again i'm speaking as representative of the santa cruz county business council we're consortium of the 80 or so largest employers throughout the county we've been following this project closely for as long as i've been on the council so about six plus years if not more hearing directly from district staff some of your board have come and spoken with us about our concerns for the business perspective the most important consideration for us is having access to a sustainable and reliable source of water that is paramount consideration and to us after years of development 20 years of studying the issue and you know a partnership with the city of santa cruz that didn't work out the way people thought it would this is by far the best project that could be brought forward to meet the needs of the district and hopefully recharge the aquifers not only is it scientifically proven having vet by experts from all all ranges and countries and you know Stanford university to look at the actual impacts and what it would do but it's gone through the whole community consensus building process that involved joint district meetings that involved the water supply advisory commission and those are still uh still inputs that we've all taken to get to this point right now to make a decision unfortunately you can't rely on the city of santa cruz precedent says anything it's that while the partnership exists and and to transfer water potentially you don't know what the city is going to do you don't know what that council is going to do and you can't rely on them when your future your aquifers are the ones on the line in regards to economic development and the site in particular the chana clear site there is no housing near there right now there's a lot of underutilized dilapidated facilities there yes it may be a valuable commercial spot in the future but right now the most pressing economic concern for our businesses and for the business community as a whole is having a safe reliable access to water that's hampering tons of different projects in the so-called district from your ad you will serve permits to larger development projects which could help ease the housing crisis that we're in which is the worst our community has ever faced so taking all these considerations to the decision before you tonight it pretty it's a pretty straightforward decision this is the clearest alternative to helping to meet the needs and providing water for the future of all the mid-county district residents so I urge you to support this project and you have the full support of our board of directors thank you next will be jane paradise and following jane would be andy gear hi sorry short okay here we go hi jane paradise p a r a d i s e um i live on rosedale avenue right next to the west annex site i literally if you wave out the window i can wave back that's how close i am to the west annex site first thank you for giving me opportunity to comment on the final eir and and the project approval before the board tonight i'm speaking on behalf of myself as well as the others from our so-called village neighborhood community which surrounds the west annex site on all four sides we completely support the district's well researched recommendation that the industrial wastewater recycling project be appropriately located at the shanticleer site and the santa cruise wastewater site both of which are zoned industrial to reemphasize both the shanticleer and the santa cruise wastewater sites are already zoned industrial people who work and live there already do so with the full understanding and acceptance of the industrial use location however placement of such an industrial facility at the west annex site which is zoned our one residential would be a violation and a misuse of this highly residentially zoned neighborhood because these industrial zoned sites are available for this industrial use it would be difficult to justify placing this type of industrial facility in a residentially zoned neighborhood such as the west annex wastewater treatment whether it's raw sewage or secondary or tertiary treated water it's not appropriate in a residentially highly residentially zoned neighborhood i wanted to also give you a context of so-called village there's a master so-called village plan where they downgraded the zoning in the 90s to minimize industrialization and commercialization so a m1 went down to a c1 and then they made on the majority residential because they wanted a livable community and in fact in fact the west zonics annex site is on that map and it's designated residential that community made a commitment to minimize commercialization and industrialization so that west annex site is it would be violating that so-called village plan by putting anything but something that would be residential oriented thank you thank you next is andy gear and then followed by brent haddad thank you president lou and members of the board thank you for the opportunity to speak to you tonight about taking the next step towards a new water supply for the region i'm a long time resident of the city of santa cruise i'm registered civil engineer and i've worked my entire career more than a quarter of a century in public water supply in california starting out as a an engineer with the division of drinking water in so-called quick water district was a system that i regulated way back when so i'm very familiar with the area and in fact that's what brought me to to the region since then i've worked 23 years with the sand was a water company started off in uh water treatment and water quality and uh you stick around long enough they make you president and that's what i do now so i'm very involved in water supply planning and um have made a career out of that i'm very passionate about it i go to a lot of meetings for my job but i'm here tonight um as a private citizen that just has a passion for water and for sort of doing the right the right thing um i understand that uh there's limited resources uh for water supply in the county and i also understand that integrated resource planning makes a lot more sense than i'm doing planning by uh you know political jurisdictions or service area boundaries um and accordingly um i think that this project uh is is beneficial uh both to the so cal creek um water district customers as well as in the city that that i live in and you know the integrated resource planning we've heard a lot about um water transfers and things but in water supply there's there's never just one solution right and um but you do need to solve the most important problems um first so um in my company i'm supporting um our wholesale agency in a similar partnership in a very similar project just on a much larger scale so San Jose water company serves about a million souls in uh six communities in silicon valley we get most of our water from the Santa Clara valley water district they're planning a very similar project and it's um getting the support of my company for three really important reasons one it's a reliable drought proof source of water it's a new source of water uh for the for the county um the treatment processes are robust and proven the science is there i think um you've sort of demonstrated that through your own research you haven't taken anybody's word for it um and it's a sustainable supply that makes use of water resources that would otherwise uh go to waste um the Santa Clara valley water districts have been operating their advanced water treatment um advanced water purification project for uh about four years now there's a tremendous amount of data there i've drank the water i think we can kind of put to bed the issue that there's a safety issue um i think that those three principles apply in so-called creek water district um with one other that you have this looming problem of seawater intrusion so i urge you to approve the EIR and um move forward with the project thank you thank you um uh Brent Haddad is next and following um Mr. Haddad will be uh Bill Smallman my name is Brent Haddad i live in Santa Cruz um i recommend that you certify the EIR this evening um uh it's thorough and uh clear and uh i think the comments were well uh responded to um there was a concern about getting a time extension uh because some people felt they didn't have enough time to comment uh my sense is that although not everyone had time to comment um their neighbors came through for them and there were uh i i felt that the uh discussion covered all the bases and and the responses were thorough uh now uh as as a professor who studies water i've studied multiple EIRs and the processes in which they were either adopted or not and i just wanted to comment that it's common to get a comment that there's a panacea that was not properly considered and that's why we should postpone the decision uh and in this case the panacea is the water transfer project my sense is that the EIR was correct in giving it consideration but saying that it's not a viable alternative uh for the the needs that the region has so um so i would just say that it's it's not surprising that that comes up because that's that's the the panacea in this case in terms of whether the project should be green lighted tonight um i also recommend that you go ahead with it the study i did over the summer showed that for every dollar of cost to build this project it's going to produce 8.6 dollars of benefit for the region um there are some things that weren't mentioned uh those were the uh in the absence of this project uh our study found that it would exacerbate the region's homelessness and it would also cost four percent of the employment in the district region and so there are and i'd say what's different today between the last 70 years and now and why the uh more should act tonight is that uh the crisis is real and it's now it was recognized 70 years ago but but now the extent of it is is known and so it's time to act thank you thank you mr hadan um and mr smalman is next and following him is george mead hello bill smalman servant directors of san ronald rens of all the water district congratulations to all the new members that were reelected onto the board i will do believe it's a bit premature to approve this eir you know i i do believe that the response is back from the the um the that were not efficient i was i wasn't really happy with the actually the responses back from my um my comments um i'm not you know that i'm on the side of recycled water i was here about a couple years ago promoting toting recycled water and hey i won you know because you know i totally agree with everybody's comment about um recycle water the water i believe it's such a positive thing to do now i know there's there's some wiggle worm with the design and i've i promoted and i'm i i actually submitted my resume as a construction estimator as mr geard knows i've worked i've submitted estimates for san jose water construction projects for years so i'm an expert and that's the reason why i put my resume on the comments and but the comments came back and they didn't really understand that fact that i believe that you can put a large pipeline on the railroad corridor and basically to achieve the same purpose of what you want to achieve is to inject this amount of water but my i believe that since it's you're talking about 90 million dollars of the tax your ratepayers money or the public's money at this project so i believe please consider careful design to develop a project that can expand you've stated that you're possibly interested into um getting deep water desol water or whatever i'm not saying that my project is the best design but i do believe it's the most cost effective um design to put some careful thought uh for future planning i know that you want a certain amount of water but just think about perhaps done we can pump this water down the Watsonville perhaps we can pump this water to the north coast farmers or whatever let's try to make future plans that you can make full use of the water that comes out of the wastewater plant and that's all i'm saying i'm not saying the thing but if you just go ahead and put a simple pipeline plan with small pot diameter of pipeline you might might not have that possibility so just give that keep that in your thoughts thank okay thank you sir um george mead is next followed by john mucar muk har i think hi good evening i'm george mead i'm a customer of the city of santa cruz water department i would like to remind everybody of something that seems rather obvious to me it's not just monorail bay it's monorail bay the marine national sanctuary and your project is going to keep hundreds of millions of gallons of wastewater each year from flowing into a national marine sanctuary that is a good thing for the environment i wish the city of santa cruz would follow suit and also reduce their discharge of wastewater into the national marine sanctuary there would be a good thing for not only the national marine sanctuary but it would be helpful for them to meet the fish flow requirements speaking of fish flows that is a concern that you should collectively have in terms of relying on water transfer from the city of santa cruz what you need to provide your customers is a safe and reliable water supply reliability from the city of santa cruz is a function of the fish flows and also the weather drought that's something to be concerned about very very much in closing i would also like to mention that it may seem like there have been a lot of comments on the eir and there are a lot of people attending these meetings but it's actually only a very small percentage of your customer base and if you want to see a large volume of people coming out in massive numbers then don't go down the road of not supplying the safe and reliable water supply and that when people turn on their tap in their home either nothing comes out or it's salty water then you're going to see a large public reaction thank you thank you um the next on john mukhar and then uh following him is bill coker good evening um honorable board president lati and uh board members thank you for giving me the opportunity to speak to you my name is john mukhar and i live in on sample avenue in aptos i've been working in the water and wastewater environmental issue for about over 30 years now and i have um worked with different cities and consultants and i've seen this i uh support and recommend that you uh certified that eir tonight and approve the project i've talked to agencies and worked with agencies up and down the state and uh ron had showed the map of how many agencies have adopted projects similar to this one and in all cases this is the way to go to go um you have to um go into a pure water so cal and implement a project like this in every case that i talked to an agency or a district that looked at water rights transfers they're avoiding that because of the uncertainty and the other all the other legal issues that go will go with it the issues with uh in droughts who gets the water first uh and all of the other uh concerns that go with it and thus almost all of them avoided it and again a lot of the same things that other people said about rely safe reliable and economical and this is the approach to go i teach part-time at san jay state university civil environmental courses advanced courses and i give a challenge to my graduate students in wastewater treatment to stop we need to stop calling it wastewater treatment and start calling it pure water treatment and not design these plans or update these plans where it's being treated to be discharged but it's being treated to be reused uh on for indirect or indirect water recharges or anything like that again i support uh i recommend that you approve uh certify this eir tonight and approve this project and thank you for your time thank you um so next is um bill koker followed by sam nye good evening um so glad to see that so cal is at this point very excited about you doing this um this board was given years ago and every board that's ever sat up here was given a water supply system that had no redundancy it had one one source and it was groundwater and the diversification of water supply is hugely important and uh your general manager alluded to it earlier and said something to the effect that it may very well be that it's going to take a lot of different approaches to roll up a portfolio of water supply that is going to be reliable into the future and so if just for that you're going to diversify your water supply by 1500 acre feet by 480 million gallons a year and that's that's huge for this district and congratulations the other thing that i want to say is um in retirement i i went back for a couple years and i was the program manager for pure water moderate and we permitted that project actually i won't say with great ease it was a lot of work but we got when we went before the regional water quality control board for waste discharge permit they were falling all over themselves saying finally finally we've got this project ahead of us in front of us and we get to approve it and they meeting was over they came out and shook hands they love it we got a um from the state water resources control board we had to get a drinking water permit and we did that with relative ease uh despite the fact that i think in pure water moderate the sources are perhaps a little more challenged actually than than the water that you're going to be using for your source water so i can think of absolutely no reason that soak up correct wouldn't go forward with this and and i would suggest as others have that time is of the essence thank you thank you mr coker so next is sam nye um followed by john dickinson my name is sam nye um nigh i live in soquel i own property just down the street from the shanticle intersection and i'm here tonight because i just heard about this meeting a couple of days ago so i basically known knew nothing about the project uh when i was first told about it i was definitely in favor of it i thought it would be a good use for that property uh which is right down the street my property is on the corner of madison lane and in soquel so it's a block and a half down the street but uh after what i've heard tonight um i'm still uh in favor of it i think it's a good idea as a potential neighbor uh in the future thank you thank you so next is um john dickinson followed by pete cartwright good evening thank you for inviting us to this make these comments um in full disclosure i should say i do volunteer work out of the projects at the district and i uh i know how hard these people work both at the board and on the staff level um i just want to say that this is sort of 30 000 foot level stuff but you know the earth only has one supply of water it's not going to get any more and it's our job as citizens of the world citizens of soquel citizens of in my case ladera lane to be stewards of that water how do we use it what do we do with it when we're done using it and how do we recover it you've never had a drop of water in your life whoever you are wherever you've lived on this earth that was not recycled water it's the only way it comes it doesn't come from the sky but the stuff that comes from the sky came from the ground before it got to the sky it's really simple so pure water soquel is a way of giving nature a bit of a hand in recycling water that was somehow otherwise getting recycled if the epsilon goes into the ocean the wave action vaporizes water it goes up to the sky it floats around the world if we're lucky we get some of it back in california most of it seems to go to the east coast these days but okay but it's recycled water and we're just saying get it while you can put it back where it came from and let's use it all over again and meanwhile take really really good care of it because it's all the water we're ever going to have thank you and please go forward with this project thank you and then the last speaker going to have is for Pete Cartwright well thank you board members and thanks to Ron I'm famous as the guy who's got a a well that's had salt water intrusion it really is there I live in uh uh la selva beach the property is on San Andreas road and my background has been in the the power industry I formed calpine and we build power plants across the united states and geothermal and natural gas and I've been a resident over here for almost 20 years now getting used to the importance of water and the role it plays in in our lives over here I'm an environmentalist I was a long-term member of the sierra club I was in the board of directors of sierra club foundation and I'm very supportive I've seen many many uh environmental uh reports I'm very proud of this one and I'm very happy to support it so thank you thank you so um at this point um that concludes all the speakers for which I have speaker cards if there's anyone else in the audience who did not fill out a speaker card that which is to address the board now would be the time okay so thank you all for your comments we really appreciate that um this will complete the public comment period so um we're going to take a little 15 minute recess so everybody kind of stretch and maybe get a drink of water or something and then so we will reconvene at eight 10 or eight 11 you're not quite ready leave it to becky to hand them in after the break usually that's always the other way yeah so uh I can go get it um ladies and gentlemen welcome back if I'm I wasn't quite as timely as I am with my students sorry about that but at this time I wanted to give staff the opportunity to you know before we turn to any discussion with the board staff and the cqa team opportunity to respond any comments that were made during the public comment period and um make any final clarifications that we that they be think is important for the board to consider so take it away thank you president um we want to thank everyone for their very thoughtful comments we want to thank you also for staying within your time and also being such a polite audience we very much appreciate it staff legal counsel as well as the ir consultants have considered all the comments that have been submitted tonight as well as the last few days we believe that by and large those have already been previously addressed in the responses to comments and elsewhere in the administrative record we did want to reiterate for the record that when reference documents have been cited by comment commenters either orally or in writing staff legal counsel and eir consultant have considered those reference documents we have reviewed them and considered them in light of the eir analysis we believe that the eir fully complies with cqa and the conclusions in eir supported by substantial evidence so with that we are ready to take any questions from the board all right so are there any board members that have any questions or comments now's the time sure um one of the questions i had was um when we posted the draft eir at various locations like the library we left it there right so it's been there for how long since june 22nd okay so there was plenty of time to review the multiple page document and it wasn't just the last 10 days i think that the that the when folks are referring to the 10 days they are for referring to the response to comments document and when that was made available and um to repeat that the secret requirements are that a lead agency provide responses to comments submitted by public agencies at least 10 days prior to a certification hearing and how many pages was that and that is about the same size as the draft eir because it does include copies of all the comment letters provided um and and i i covered this during our discussion earlier that the that secret does not require that responses are provided to other commenters than this then then um public agencies um however the district did make that document available on the website and at the at the the district headquarters and did notify uh commenters that it was available and there's um no require to respond to comments on comments there is not okay um yeah i've i had um just concerns about the river transfer i mean i'm just going to tell you what i think is that okay or do i need to wait you say whatever you like okay um i had um i'd been i worked for the county of san kreuz for a long time over 20 years and one of the things that i happened to be involved in was davin port and their water rights or lack of actually um documented water rights and i also worked with the city of san akreuz quite a bit regarding the same kind of water right issue because with san vicente creek and there is no simple answer when it comes to water rights and it you have no idea how long it was will take to get it resolved and my understanding is that it takes decades and you never know when a decision is going to come out when it's new water rights when um there already have been so it's not that i don't trust the city but i don't believe that it's that simple i know i heard that we had said that we didn't trust the city but i for one trust individuals at the city and i do um think that the river transfer is a lot harder than people realize and unless you've been in the business and tried to get water rights and understand every piece of it it's really hard to fathom how hard that is but i do know um the sewer stuff i already resolved um and grant funds my experience i have a lot of experience with grant funding and the reason it's called reimbursement isn't because they're not going to give you the money once you spend it there's an agreement and they agree to give you the money that you spend and you have to document how you spent it where it came from it has to be exactly what the grant says they're paying for and then after you spend it you give them your receipts and you could give them the receipts before you pay the contractor back and you might get the money before you have to put out your own funds but it's not a risky thing i have actually managed at least four grant programs actually more than that because for two of the projects i had two grants and one of them had two grants and alone and i did them all at the same time and it's not easy but it's not risky as far as the money goes um i would hope that we hire consultants that have professional opinions that they bet they basically risk their own professional um credibility on and that they don't just give us what we want to hear and it's not necessarily what i wanted to hear what they wrote there so i don't know why that question came up but i don't agree with that um i noticed that there's some people that were against diesel and now are against this and i do have an issue with that you know it's like what you don't you don't live here and you don't want us to have water is what you're telling me because nothing we do is good enough it's sort of like when they told me i had to use plastic because paper wasn't what you should use and then they come back and say oh plastic's bad you got to use paper and that's how it is with this water you know what water source is the most environmentally perfect there's not going to be anything like that so um and lastly and i know that maybe this discussion is going to come i think at the next one so i will wait until the next part of this um process for that one okay anyone else uh yeah i wanted to i just wanted to reinforce the energy consumption there were a whole lot of uh letters that were comments that were sent in about how uh we were expanding the carbon footprint we were this is not as bad as a diesel plant but it was still a high energy intensive process compared especially compared to water transfers and i i agree with uh mr. Nuggan's first uh his opening statement we were comparing apples to apples but i would still like to talk a little bit more about the energy consumption for the benefit of the audience and customers we have um sure that's fine you want me address that so i do not believe the city of santa cruz has any uh has done any uh analysis on their energy consumption for their conceptual projects does um no they have not i mean according to staff according to staff uh because we asked because we wanted to compare so we have not seen any values or they haven't been shared um with us uh in general uh well and and part of the reason for that is because they're gonna have they're upgrading their system as you know they have posts on their website they've detected um constituents from their septic tanks at least you know the river so they want to upgrade it and i applaud them for that their treatment system to uh bring it to a better water quality what they're serving their residents and i think that's their plan i think it's a good plan so what that in uh what their new energy footprint looks like uh when it's said and done i don't know in general um i know what they're looking at is carbon treatment and a few other things is is generally doesn't take as much energy as uh the purification process that is proposed for pure water socal um yes please i think one thing to note related to the overall energy footprint is to look at the purified water as a whole so as we know you know the 25 percent of the treated effluent that's going out to the bay the the energy take it takes to get that water to that level to basically once one time use dispose of out to the ocean is about two thirds to three quarters of the full energy to take water from raw to purified so for an extra 25 percent additional energy you're creating a beneficial reuse instead of it just going out to the ocean we add a little bit more energy becomes purified and i think that's one of the things as we go forward with the project and as we continue to work and look at the water transfer project the whole entire energy footprint of that project as well it's not just to go and put the water into the ground it's what ron said it's the treatment of it it's the conveyance it's going into the ground and then out and just to reiterate with monorail community community power there will be no carbon footprint there the energies that we'll be using would be using um is from green sources hydro wind and solar anyone else or Bruce um one thing i just want to mention is the caution and i have another bigger thing that i wanted to go through there's been a lot of talk by people about how much cheaper this transfer idea is but i think the cautionary there is that there's the state law about prop 218 and it requires that if you sell water to one person for one price you have to sell water to another person at the same price you can't have someone get a you know freebie or whatever and and that certainly holds i think with you know our current situation we do have water at a very attractive rate in fact it's so attractive that some of the north coast water users are either either already have or threatening to sue the city because they're paying a lot more than the district is paying now that the situation is is i think defensible because it's only for the next two years and the water amount is limited etc etc and it's it's this pilot and experiment and so forth but it means that once this two years is up you know the city is going to look literally on you know giving us water at anything less than the full commercial rate so i don't see how people see that you know even if the city wanted to give us water at a cheap rate but the city even could because they could very well get sued and lose and have to do it anyway so that's something to be considered the biggest thing i want to talk about though is i think some people are looking up on this as one side loses and the other side wins and i don't think that's the case at all i think this really is a win-win let me explain how i think that way look at a very serious drought year okay and so we're taking water out for our customers the city wants 1.2 billion gallons extra to make up the deficit for their customers that's a lot of water going out of the basin because it's a drought year there's not much rain therefore not much recharge if we get down below about half normal rainfall we get zero recharge here a lot of folks don't realize that and of course the city can't give us much river water because you know there isn't much and they need it all and the fish need what's extra and so there's not much going in so huge amounts going out not much going in and one has to wonder what that's going to do to the basin is that going to is that going to damage the basin i have some things if people want to see it some evidence but let me just read one sentence that was printed at the last mga the mid county groundwater agency meeting and this came from the city some modeling results presented to the advisory committee indicated water levels in key monitoring wells dropping below protective elevations during periods of drought withdrawals so in other words that situation i just mentioned might damage the aquifer which could mean that the only way to allow those withdrawals to happen by the city to go on is to have some water going in and that's exactly what the pure water system would do we would have water going into the basin partly to offset all those withdrawals going out and that might be the key difference to make the whole system work thank you bruce um you you're next i'm next i guess i really don't have questions i think that the eir was comprehensive unbiased um the staff i think gave accurate information to the consultants and i think the consultants did an incredible job of evaluating the environmental impact i read it as a critically uh to look for bias to look for things that were missed and i didn't find them so i think it's a solid eir and i want to commend the the staff and the consultants for producing the document that is is so solid i'm ready to make a motion let me just make one comment just um i i agree with your point about diversification and if i just had to boil down my whole feeling about this is that i've always tended to try and look way down the line and when we're all gone and when all the other people that are talking about this issue are gone in 30 years i want to feel like we left them with the best possible situation where they have insurance against a drought and and that our groundwater is protected so i think i honestly feel like after a lot of study by myself and everyone else that this is the best way to to do that so go for a motion i would entertain a motion i move that we adopt resolution 18-30 certifying the final environmental impact report eir for the pure water so-called groundwater replenishment and seawater intrusion prevention project okay i'll second it it's been moved in second a roll call vote please roll call director lather yes director daniels yes director jaffee yes director christiansen yes and president lehue yes um so any any um motions or comments on on the next step which would be you know a motion to approve resolution 18-31 which includes do we need to have any discussion yeah that's what i'm saying this would be a good time so to me the most efficient citing for this plant is in sanikers the shortest distance to to the discharge the shortest distance from tertiary water to advanced purified water it just makes sense for me for it to be there and i would like to encourage discussions with sanikers about the mutual benefits of having this the site there so i'm not in support of of chenna claire's being the first site and i'd like to see the language added that um indicates that we will be having discussions with sanikers and if they're receptive and again i realize that the timing is is not um optimal for them with their process the you know the wassak process but if they're receptive i'd like to um have it be strongly considered as the site for both the tertiary water and the advanced purified water bruce i wonder if staff could tell us about the status of their opinions about this if they have any and where does that stand like is it completely impossible or is it possible or is it you know they're ready to go or where do we stand thank you um the staff has been working with the city of sanikers public works department and the staff specifically down at the sanikers wastewater treatment facility at this time they do still stand um in terms of their willingness and preference that stated in the comment that they provided into the draft dir that they do prefer the tertiary treatment facility the site there is pretty constrained um they do also you know as part of the water supply advisory committee are looking at recycled water still as a source for them so i do see that there are some nexuses like director jaffy is saying in terms of a mutual benefit um their concern is the space constraints um it is very tight we had looked at that site multiple times originally in our first draft of the feasibility study that we did with corolla we had actually looked at relocation of their collection system and putting our facility down there and it'd be a single story that was not something that they did they wanted to entertain at all and so as we continued to work with them we actually came up with a proposal that was in the draft dir of the full purification facility but that it would be two story one of the the limitations on that is that if they do do go forward and they do pick purification as as their option again it's a it's a space constraint issue um i get i think that ron um has been working with the city of santa cruz on on that effort and maybe you can speak to that well yeah i think melanie said it well i mean certainly we can explore it more um that we could uh you know uh take you know parallel approach or or or see see what's available there it's um the recommendation from staff is for a reason but you know that's the board's prerogative can i add something i i think that i'm i'm actually fine with having a very robust attempt to see if that would work but also a time limited attempt because i wouldn't because i have concerns about you'd i'd have to have honestly an iron clad agreement within a few months that that site would be okay it you know before i would want to just drag everything out and lose the possibility of getting a grant or you know yeah i agree that it this shouldn't be dragged out but in the in the comments to the eir on page 3.4-4 and it's by rosemary minard the water director for the city of santa cruz water department it says the city the city's um oh wait there's an acronym there r w f p s recharge water it's something i'm sorry excuse me their water psychic facility okay in in their plan concluded that supplying the district with treated wastewater from the city's wastewater treatment facility would not impede the city's effort in pursuing its own recycled water project pursuant to the law sac recommendations and but then they go on further as the analysis of the pure water project continues the city urges the district to continue to work with the city and understanding the opportunities of the shared resource and to design and construct the project should it go forward with the other agency projects in consideration and so that to me is the hope that the city would want to have it at their facility so i can you clarify i want to make sure we're clear that yeah by approving the project we still have that option we do yeah and i actually i may be wrong on this i want to be clear but i think that was in reference to tertiary treated water right but uh as i stated um you know it supports prerogative of how we proceed forward um you know which options we pursue with the most bigger can i add one just because i want to make sure you know a lot of the next steps will be dependent upon interagency agreements and land acquisition um another point that the city of san jacuzzi staff had brought up to us was related to operator classification and permitting of the facility i think their their sentiment was um we do waste water and i think the treatment up to tertiary level is something that they currently do with their existing sand filtration and that they were they were interested in exploring and moving forward with the tertiary with membrane treatment um i do think that some of the points that you're bringing up right now are things that we can't explore i think that was what the intent was of project approval was to set forth a path for staff to go forward and and get some additional better understanding of the engineering and the feasibility interagency agreements and these kinds of issues so um i think it may be who asked to potentially look at that for the city and shanna claire if that's something you want to do what it sounds like you've already gone down that path and but things have changed in the city recently just as there's climate change in the natural system there's political climate change and that's occurred in the city and so i don't know what effect that'll have um i would just just as we want to diversify so that we you know you don't put your eggs in one basket i think the city is is aware of this the same philosophy and and the value to that so and it can be very creative on it on how the agreement is is written if they want to um they want to elevate river water transfers and it makes sense to do that that could be part of the agreement of deciding if they and something that hasn't been really explored to the level that needs to be explored is is that getting water back to the city i think we're at a point where if we do go through with with this project which i think we are going to go through with this project that's going to open some doors and explore allow us to explore offering water back and we have models that can can guide us in that i agree that we should look at the other possible things for collaboration that's really good we should do all that you know probably now that we've finished with an eir we can have a little bit of cycles to spend more on doing that kind of collaboration and discussing and so forth but i would not make any quid pro quotes like saying okay we'll only pursue you know up for storage and retrieval with you if you let us build our plant at your location i think i agree with you i agree with you i didn't mean to imply that okay because we we still need them as well for you know for our water supply too so right we have to do this calmly and peacefully and friendly and yeah it it could be that the city's you know after more more talks with them says no this is not where we want it but there's an efficiency with having it there there's also i think it does open up doors in the future for more collaboration i mean i think that we want to have those two sites be co priorities for the short term i think that's fine like i said as long as it doesn't delay anything well in my own mind i think the shanticleer site is is priority the other is a possible replacement of that or or certainly a runner with that but it's for me it's still shanticleer and the other is very speculative right now but i'm willing to say you know go and think about it and look at it and talk to them about it see if they have an interest well i think we really can't ignore the fact too that the shanticleer site does is upstream somewhat from the brahmer stormwater recharge area it's it looks like a very prime spot to recharge theographer that the belts will that they currently use in drought situations and is already been tainted with salt so i mean every site that we've considered it was still on the list in the eir for good reasons and and then there are problems with each one and i think at some point and we have to put a strict timeline on that we will have to put our feet down and make that choice and it may now that we have a certified eir we perhaps this is a good time to go back and do a rigorous review of these sites okay so how would we change the resolution we've drafted i don't think we need to something or just now i mean we can you read it sure do you want to want to pull up the resolution or should i just uh just read it okay so this is on page 17 of 442 further among the project options evaluated in the final eir the board shall prioritize project development and siding for tertiary treatment at the santa cruz wastewater treatment facility and the advanced water purification treatment at the shanticleer site while also coordinating with the city of santa cruz on the potential site of the full water purification treatment at the santa cruz wastewater treatment facility and recharge wells at the twin lakes church monterey avenue and willow brook lane i think i'd like to have one qualification to that looking at this santa cruz site which is as long as it doesn't slow up our progress so we look at it as long as we can but we don't do that and risk any upset to our schedule would i don't know that that means to be in the resolution does it could we put it in the motion when you approve the resolution that it's contingent upon we could do a separate motion about just that thing yeah so approve this you know what you just said with that adjustment i um i'm deferring to you michelle it's really at the board's pleasure you can change this resolution as you see fit if you would like to add language to what melanie indicated and say provided there's no delay to the project schedule sounds fine that's fine okay i'm michelle no tell us your concerns my concern is i don't particularly like the shanticleer site i have a problem with imposing our purification plant in someone else's neighborhood because the people in our neighborhood don't want it and i just i have an ethical issue maybe with the idea of doing that just because we have people here that don't want it at the site that is next to our facility um i it just it bothers me the other thing is that site's been used as a construction staging area for probably 20 years and who knows what's there um i would wonder if there's you know gasoline diesel you know who knows what's there riprap that will make it to do construction my number one issue has always been from the beginning with that site that i didn't like forcing it on people that aren't even our constituents even though it's legal to do that and putting it in and this is not an industrial facility there's no industry it is just a purification facility that is just a few pieces of equipment pushing the water through or you would call our district office and all of our pump stations um industrial facilities and pretty soon nobody'd have water because nobody want them because they say it's supposed to be it's an industrial facility i had a real issue with that being presented that way um i i just you know and then so i would want if there was room at the sea of santa cruise treatment plant that would be my first choice so is that language okay with the there we're also considering that as long as it doesn't delay the project excuse me could staff could we help out here and address um i won't address your concerns or questions about one side or the other but you did mention um the potential for hazardous materials to be present at chanta clear site given its past use um just did want to to talk about a little bit about the hazardous materials analysis that was done in the year um we did do record searches of all of the project locations in nearby areas and didn't identify any known contaminants at that site or any other sites in in or near the project areas um that being said uh we still do find did find a less a significant impact regarding potential to unearth or come into contact with unknown or unreported uh hazardous materials so the mitigation measures that are included in the er have um a number of safety measures to address any consider any consideration of potential you know unknown hazardous materials um and i think in particular for um and this is going a little bit into you know investigation the investigations and and planning efforts that would need to be undertaken for sites that are that are new um would include hazardous materials investigations on those sites such as phase one investigation um that being said yes there may be there may be you know gas and other materials at that site given its use um but there are measures and approaches to address that okay wouldn't we as part of our purchase decision do a due diligence examination of the site i mean i think that's a fairly standard thing right wouldn't we know a lot of boring surely as we definitely would be part of the process yes okay so it might still have something on it i mean who knows what's under right here but uh you know it's a due diligence and i think we could probably narrow it down to yeah well i have i have less concerns about the what is that called the the site next to the um the offices because that was all residential although there is that PG&E um substation substation right there on the corner so that there's always a potential um the other part is that um if we choose the shanna clear site as our first of our second priority i'd like to still have the the sokel site as the third because i also of course you know i've been wearing a lot of hats in my life and i was in charge of the sanitation engineering and as i recall the sokel avenue has a lot of utilities in there um and i had actually um experienced because it's right next to caltrans a project where we had a huge riprap that turned out to be asbestos and it turned a somewhat simple project into a very difficult one and um so that alignment of the pipeline going to that site is another concern that i have as far as constructability which has nothing to do with environmental impact but um it's another reason i didn't like that site okay so there's been kind of there's a motion with some adaptations to related to the santa cruz site anybody willing to make that motion can i read the motion yeah please i was gonna ask for that should we pull it up on the screen when we start there okay um you point out the the motion or the resolution the resolution that was it there page 17 at the resolution not the resolution right 17 it's at the end of the resolution i think sorry half 17 half yeah it goes yeah it's actually at the top of 18 mostly top of page 18 sorry it's going crazy okay okay and i'm gonna go okay so where it says now therefore be it further resolved that the board approves the following approval of the project as described in the final eir consisting of these components water treatment facilities at one or two sites a pipeline alignment for secondary or tertiary effluent a pipeline alignment for purified water a pipeline alignment for brine concentrate and recharge wells and appurtenances at up to three sites from the components evaluated in the final eir further among the projects project options evaluated in the final eir the board shall prioritize project development and siding for tertiary treatment at the santa cruz wastewater treatment facility and the advanced water purification treatment and the shanticle air site while also coordinating with the city of santa cruz on the potential to site the full advanced water purification treatment at the santa cruz wastewater treatment facility provided no delay occurs to project schedule and recharge wells at twin lakes church monoray avenue and willow brook lane and the remaining the remainder of the motion of the resolution stays the same okay i'll entertain a motion the motion for the resolution with those with those additions i'll make that motion okay i'll second it it's been moved and seconded roll call please director laither no director daniels uh yes director jaffee yes director christensen yes and president lehu yes motion carries for show i did you want to comment on your no vote or is i i think you've made it you made it clear that i'm very i'm very happy about the indirect potable reuse project i just have very strong feelings about where we locate the purification site and i'm not in all good conscious i just couldn't vote for that okay but you are you okay with this it's a santa cruz if the yes santa cruz would be great okay then i'd be happy all right well i'm in a we are going to move on to the next agenda item so thank you very much everyone i don't we will give how about a five-minute recess okay for people to allow you to clear out that's some food sent agenda now um you know are there any board members that wish to pull anything off of the consent i would like to pull 3.8 please 3.8 that's the standing committee assignments correct the minutes when i wasn't here um that would be which one uh sit in the middle 3.1 one 3.13 3.13 okay anything else any memb