Occupation of the molecular ohlone tribes Aboriginal Lands since before and after the San FranciscoPublic Utilities commissions founding in 1932. It is vitally important that we not only recognize the history of the tribal lands in which we reside, but also we acknowledge and honor the fact that the ohlone people have established a working partnership with the sfpuc and our productive and flourishing members. With the grant within the greater San Francisco bay area communities today. Commissioner rivera, thank you, president paulson, i would please like to ask for a moment of silence in memory of the untimely death last week of an active duty San Francisco firefighter, lieutenant steve silvestri. Steve leaves behind his wife and four children. Lieutenant silvestri was not only an exemplary firefighter, he was also my friend. Thank you. Let us observe that moment of silence, please. Thank you. You read item number three, please. Donna item three is approval of the minutes of april 9th, 2024. Are there any corrections or additions to the minutes . Seeing none, can we open the minutes up to Public Comment, please . Remote callers, raise your hand if you wish to provide comment on item number three. Do we have any members of the public present to provide comment on item number three, approval of the minutes. Seeing none, do we have any callers with their hands raised . Madam secretary, there are no callers that wish to be recognized. Thank you. Public comment on item three is closed. Okay. Thank you. Can i get a motion and a second to approve the minutes of april 9th . Please move to approve. Second. Theres a motion. And second, can we have a roll call, please . President paulson, i. Vice president rivera. I. Commissioner maxwell. Commissioner jaime i. Commissioner. Stacy. I. You have five eyes. Okay. Thank you. Item number four is general Public Comment. Donna, can you read members of the public may address the commission on matters that are within the commissions jurisdiction and are not on todays agenda. Remote callers, please raise your hand if you if you wish to provide comment on item number four. Were going to call members of the public present in the room first and ask if you want to provide general Public Comment that you line up against the far wall. And be ready to provide comment. Okay and as donna said, there are a lot of cards that were getting. Were not going to read every card. Wed like everybody just to get in line, and everybody will have an opportunity to speak, so we will open now to Public Comment. First speaker, please. Good afternoon, peter drekmeier. Tuolumne river trust, its a very sad day for me and for many of us because were losing two wonderful members of the sfpuc family, commissioner maxwell, you have represented the people and the environment so well. And we thank you for all youve done. And someone was telling me at our little rally downstairs, its like, are you going to get sophie on your board . I said, im going to try. But you have just from even before you started with the sfpuc, with your wonderful resolution as a supervisor in 2007 to encourage Water Conservation and efficiency and recycled water. Youve been a great leader, and were going to miss you and donna. Youve just been fabulous to work with. You show so much respect for the public. Youre always really helpful, occasionally ill see you around town and its like, heres my friend, were going to really miss you. I know youre not fully retiring until the end, but ive heard that this might be your last meeting, so i wanted to acknowledge the two of you. We have a couple of cards here that were signed by all these fans who showed up today. And some flowers. You can pick your color there. So thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon commissioners. My name is john rosapepe, first time i was before you was, i think 14 years ago, unfortunately, i wish during that time i could say the salmon on the Tuolumne River have, prospered, but, weve gone from, like, 13,000 to hundreds now, i urge you to take steps, to help them recover. Most importantly, we dont appeal your loss in the lawsuit. And weve been telling you it was stupid from the beginning. Youve just been wasting money. Youve been wasting time for the fish to recover. Also for the health of the bay, commissioner maxwell, thank you very much for your service. I really appreciate it. I thank you for all for the time you spend here. Good day. Im dave warner, thank you for your service and your passion. Its an honor to speak to you. Thank you, miss hood, for your for her service and for to the sfpuc administering these meetings so well and for contributions to making these meetings accessible to the public. Shes answered numerous questions on how to do things for me, and im just one commenter, thank you, commissioner maxwell, for her service to the commission, her passion, particularly for the disadvantaged, has been terrific to observe. And id say her passion applies to the entire middle class raising families, managing their lives, and trying to make ends meet. I think most all of us here know what a challenge that is. Miss hood and miss maxwell are examples of the tremendous depth of talent the sfpuc has at its disposal. General manager herrera has a tremendous opportunity that is about to be missed. The water and Sewer Enterprises are on a stay on the course strategy, one that was set last century. Massive infrastructure, reliable at any cost. Imported Water Supplies. Fight for every drop we can take from the ecosystem. Last century. Imagine a new future. Excite your powerful organization. As commissioner jamie has pointed out, the world is shifting away from a purely centralized system. Right now, were woefully behind los angeles, san diego in Orange County with their regional supplies. Lets hopscotch ahead of them. Can we have a future with even residential on site reuse dramatically reducing water demand and effluent . A world where the average water bill doesnt triple in 20 years . We have 20 years to do it after all. Lets turn the ship, set a new course to steal a concept from jim collins old book, good to great. Lets reject the tyranny of the or and embrace the genius of the and eliminate the idea that we can do this or that. Instead, we use genius to do both, or even more. I hope youll reinvent the sfpuc. Thank you. Thank you. My name is bill martin. Id like to begin by thanking commissioner maxwell and secretary hood for their years of service to this commission. By way of background, i am the cochair of the Sierra Club California water committee. I am also a member of the stanislaus ohlone merced working group, abbreviated stm working group, created by the state Water Resources control board as part of the implementation of phase one of the baydelta Water Quality plan update. Today i am speaking as a concerned citizen San Francisco resident and customer of the sfpuc. The stm working group has met four times. I attended all the meetings. Numerous scientists attended from the us fish and wildlife service, california fish and wildlife, baykeeper, the nature conservancy, and of course, members of the state water board, Staff Members of the sfp, the purpose of the four meetings was to update biological goals for the lower San Joaquin River basin. Over the four meetings, the scientists presented findings of several different studies regarding the health of the rivers in the lower san joaquin basin. One finding stood out the rivers need more water in them. Nearly all of the Research Presented mentioned this issue. Another key aspect is that there are plenty of good habitat for the aquatic creatures in the ecosystem, but these living creatures need more water to make full use of that habitat. Currently the sfpuc thinks that voluntary agreements are an adequate substitute for the baydelta Water Quality plan update. However there, unlike the biological goals which were ultimately adopted by the state water board, the voluntary agreements have no scientific basis. None. There is no Peer Reviewed science. There is no Scientific Research backing the voluntary agreements. Essentially, the sfpuc is antiscience. That needs to stop now. Thank you. Good afternoon. My name is francis mendoza. Im the land and water justice manager with save california salmon. To echo my colleagues here, i want to thank the commissioner maxwell, commissioner dodd as well. And i appreciate your work, and also, i want to, just point out the fact that just the last couple of years, salmon fishing has closed all over the state, and its been a tragedy for many salmon fishing communities and indigenous groups that up all up and down our state, i live in fremont, even though im not here in San Francisco, ive worked as a park ranger and naturalist in the east bay Regional Park system, and ive also, seen all of the harmful algal blooms that have happened within our communities and what its done to the not only our, you know, the lack of drinking water, but also harmful to our fish and animal relatives as well. So i really want to point to the mismanagement of water. Also talk about the voluntary agreements that are being, proposed in the state water board in the next couple of days and having a rally as well over there with many of our indigenous friends from, different places like the yurok, karuk, hoopa, tribes that are, as many of you might have heard, the Trinity River was just declared as an endangered river. So its something that speaks to the drastic measures that we need to take throughout the whole state to increase the flows as well as, have temperature, temperature protections for the fish that we love dearly. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good afternoon. Denise louis here, member of the center for biological diversity and San Francisco ratepayer. So first, thank you, Sophie Maxwell and donna hood for your service. And secondly, i strongly urge the commission to do its part for the environment and biodiversity by by not appealing the loss in the lawsuit and secondly, by withdrawing your voluntary agreements, which have proven to be useful and harmful in the fact that the, voluntary agreements have simply delayed recovery of fish species and the health of our bay delta ecosystem. And on a slightly different matter, i urge you to take a deeper look into the ten year capital plan, which apparently does not include the emergency supply, firefighting pipelines. And theres no High Pressure water available to the Richmond District at this time, recently, the sunset district acquired a hose tender, which is a machine that can provide High Pressure water from lake merced for a two mile radius, however, the hazards and resilience, climate, plan calls for 20 host tenders. So i urge you to look into the capital plan and make sure that we have High Pressure water available to the entire west side of the city. Thank you. Hello. My name is scott ardis, executive director of Golden State Salmon Association. Thank you for your time today. And appreciate this opportunity. Low flows on the Tuolumne River are directly contributing to the decline of salmon populations, creating toxic algal blooms, disrupting a once functional river, and hurting the San Francisco bay delta ecosystem. Excessive water storage, skyrocketing water rates, and low river flows are not the answer, and id like to read a message from a Golden State Salmon Association member, something that gets away from things that i often talk about, which is the loss of jobs, the economy, family impacts and things that, you know, just putting food on the table and those impacts that are happening right here in the city to commercial and recreational fishermen and businesses. And this particular message from tom, there is also an emotional price to pay for the destruction of our salmon runs. No sport fishing of salmon, which for me personally was pretty high. I love catching salmon. My wife, who died of cancer recently, loved catching salmon, which we ate and gave to friends after we found out she had stage four cancer and had 3 to 6 months to live, we decided we would fish as much as her chemo would allow. She lived two and a half years. We caught many salmon. I cant believe i cant begin to describe the joy my dying wife got from catching a salmon. I think it helped her stay alive as long as she did. The thrill of catching salmon for so many sport fishermen and so many sport fisher women, is something that has a Huge Positive emotional effect on tens of thousands of individuals who deal with stress on a daily basis. That was signed tom, these are things that we often forget about, kind of that family and cultural and aspect that impacts just from the salmon fishery and all fishing and just outdoors and river health. So we cant continue to take water out of the Tuolumne River that salmon, the environment and families rely on and are needed to sustain those healthy rivers. We cant let salmon continue to disappear. As was already mentioned, the average annual return of fall run salmon to the tuolumne was almost 13,000. Thank you, thank you. Next speaker, please. My name is nancy arbuckle. Thank you for the opportunity to comment. I live on hyde street. Im an sfpuc ratepayer and a member of Tuolumne River trust. Heres the situation we ratepayers are facing. Were paying among the highest water rates in california. We live and choose to live in an environmentally conscious green city. We expect the institutions that serve our city to reflect our values. What were getting from the sfpuc were getting a dying bay delta ecosystem, including the possible extinction of the Tuolumne River salmon population. Were getting frivolous lawsuits against state water board plans, and were getting a steady diet of disinformation, including highly flawed demand projections. What we want we want accurate demand projections rather than arbitrary design droughts. We want no more hoard and spill water storage. We want higher fresh water flows in our rivers and bay, and we want a thriving Tuolumne River ecosystem and a restored bay delta. Thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please come to the mic. Hi, everyone. Thank you for letting me speak here today. Im zarin and i live in San Francisco, and yesterday i was on my earth day walk through Golden Gate Park and i saw the earth day installation that they have by the rose garden. And it lists out california potential california climate landmarks from now to the next 100 years. And a couple of them stood out to me, one of which was that by 2055, either all the california salmon will be extinct or by 2055 we would have restored a healthy watershed that supports a local economy of fishing, farming, agriculture and recreation, and seeing this installation with these two sides really clearly reminded me that there are two futures ahead of us, and that every step you take through the park, every step that you guys take in your jobs, every day, allows for that. One of those two options to happen. So all the resources are here and in front of you by listening to the Tuolumne River trust and advocating for these higher river flows that support the salmon that support healthy ecosystems by still allowing adequate amounts of water to be stored for the residents of sf and have etiquette, drought, drought plans for the future. So yeah, this reminded me yesterday through the park that there are two clear futures ahead of us and just the simple steps make a huge difference, especially when you have all the resources of these intelligent people in the room to support you. So thank you. Thank you. Next speaker, please come to the mic. Hello everyone. Thank you so much for giving us this space. And this time to dream Beautiful Solutions to the what seem like problems, but are actually opportunities it. If we try to bubble this up the United Nations last week pretty much told us that we have two years to focus on Nature Based Solutions in order to prevent our point of no return. You in your seats, stand as a beacon for california and as a beacon to all of the nation. When we talk about this sort of preservation, it is so tied to biodiversity. Its not just restoring the water, its restoring the path that the salmon take. And sometimes when deciding budgets, it might be hard to do the cost benefit analysis. But what youre doing today is prevention. That could return 110 billion, which is whats projected for preventing flooding and creating Climate Resilience. So when you think about restoring the water and the pathways of the salmon, what youre doing with this traditional ecological knowledge is youre building Climate Resilience in the watersheds there are two futures, and one of them could save you 110 billion, as well as winning the hearts and minds of the people here. So as a longtime resident and also part of the tech coalition, thank you for your time and your consideration. Thank you. Okay good afternoon. My name is michael frost. Im