St. Francis. Speech during[applause] [gavel] the meeting of the San Francisco retirement system i will call to order. Shall we stand for the roll call please i mean the pledge of allegiance. [pleage of allegiance] thank you. Please take roll call commissioner cohen is out of town bridges, present. Driscoll, present. Makras, present. Meiberger, present. Paskinjordan, present. A quorum is present appreciate it. At this time will Public Comment a close session items only. Again we will have Public Comment on days closed session items only. Any comment on closed session items only . He was at this time we will return to open session. We will vote whether to disclose discussions held in closed session. Vote to disclose or not to disclose . [inaudible] [off mic] we make the motion now . Okay. Did you make a motion to disclose commissioner meiberger [inaudible] will by commissioner meiberger second bite commissioner driscoll [inaudible] all those in favor say, aye [chorus of ayes] the ayes ha
Im just trying to get to the. Of urgency. In terms of your position, your job, you are the one setting this up. When we are looking through your documents saying there is a potential for a blowout that is why we were there wouldnt it have been prudent to make sure how much water was behind the wall . That is one of the issues, whether we took all the steps that were prudent. Can you understand the frustration, the position frustration, the position you put yourself in as being enforcers, experts in the field, and you are saying this is aa mystery and we are having to look back and see what went wrong . This is my district. I have talked to engineers, minors of work in that area. They would not have proceeded the way that the epa did. Let me save you some time you have zero mining engineers. Our committee has more mining engineers than the epa. Mr. Hardy. Thank you, mr. Chairman. I would like to know how many hydrological engineers you have on your team . I do not know that answer geolo
They act as Emergency Responders with us. The southern ute have been an incredible and incredibly diligent and being embedded in our command center, working on this. The professionalism has been wonderful, so we will make sure they are properly reimbursed for expenses. The 2nd process is the claims process, what damages have it occurred, and we use the federal claims tort act in order to process those claims. How does the federal tort claims act help the navajo . They lost a huge amount of irrigating water which can have longterm devastating effects of drought continues and they do not have the water now or in the future . How can they be made whole . Two things that are happening here as well. We are talking to the navajo about how they get reimbursed. We need to work with the president as well as the Navajo Nation epa to reimbursed for their expenses. The 2nd issue is the claim process. I want to make sure that we are all aware that the reimbursement process is quite different. While
Letter to you on august 15 signed by 29 other members listing out specific questions regarding the spell. When can we expect an answer . You have yet to respond. I will im sorry, when did you say you sent that . August 15. Okay, i will double check and well get you a tentative date no, that will be great. Mr. Westerman, mr. Pearce, youre saying youre going to get back to people, thats the frustration of the committee. We hear well get back to you. Sir, i havent seen it and i dont want to give you a date that i have to explain away. Well, terrific if you can get back to us on that we would appreciate it. In regards to transparency you said that epa was examining different sites that could suffer an epa meltdown as we saw at the gold keaton mine. Youd identified ten different mines now but that did not come forward until such time as there was an a. P. Report. How is that feeding in with transparnsy . Im sorry, i dont exactly know the context in which youre referring. The context of the
We do that through our rfp process. How would we know what that experience and process is if we potentially dont have the experience in our own staff to be able to hire that type of contractor to understand what you need in that process . Im not assuming that we dont have expertise to understand. I would like that answer to that question. Through this process, when a mine is open and it has gone on for at least in the state of nevada for 60, 70, 80 years. You have to provide documentation and environmental process. What happens to those records that are provided by those mine folks. What happens to that information . They have to provide to the epa. Any information that is provided. Do you believe that would be appropriate to the investigation of this mine to handle the situation before we hire a contractor to go do something . Whatever appropriate steps we should take should be documented. I think those questions should all be asked before you start that process. I believe there has b