Transcripts For SFGTV Public Utilities Commission 61416 2016

Next item is approval of the minutes of june 14, 2016. You have before you the minutes of june 14. May i have a motion to approve . So moved. Any questions or comments . All those in favor. Minutes are approved. Next item is general Public Comments. Members of the public may address the commission on members that are not on the agenda. Commissioners, you have the packet of communications before you. Are there any questions or comments . Were on item 4. Im sorry, general Public Comments. Are there any general Public Comments at this time . Mr. Decosta, good afternoon. Good afternoon. Im going to address 3 issues. One issue brought up before about lead in our pipes and i am referencing the lead pipes in public housing. And i heard something in janver but i would like some Empirical Data because i work with College Students and sometimes they are very savvy, you know, they will ask me to address something before the San Francisco Public Utilities commission and then they will ask me if i have any answers that are precise, not weight. I know the wish of the general manager is that some testing be done and he is nodding his head so i know im going to get some answers so that i can provide it to the College Students, which is good. The second issue i have is about our water. So ive been away but, you know, sometimes when you are away you can listen to the deliberations because we have in this digital world, you know, all these meetings recorded. So we have too many skyscrapers. We have too much of development. And i represent and the general manager has all the documentation, the first people of this area, the malok malone i am interested in seeing how our city departments understand how resources are going to be shared in our city. So its a shame that even in the year 2016 in San Francisco with all the skyscrapers coming up they are going to be flushing their toilets with clean water, hetch hetchy that we brag about. We have to pay more money. And be somehow we have to address this by having gray water to flush our toilets. You dont need to be a rocket scientist. I have 20 seconds. I think we should reflect what happened in Great Britain and how we have invested our money and i know this is an Enterprise Department so i dont know if this is possible but i suppose you put it on the agenda further down the line how your investments are doing, the investments that we have invested in Great Britain for our information. Thank you very much. Thank you. Other general Public Comments at this time . Next item, please. Item 5 is communications. So now you have before you communications. Commissioners, any questions or comments on the communications . Any Public Comment on the communications . Hearing none, next item, please. Item 6 is other Commission Business. Any other Commission Business . Public comment . Next item. Item 7 is report of the general manager. Good afternoon, commissioners, first item is another retirement. So it is my great honor and pleasure to call up john come up, john. John gregson is a supervising senior chemist on our staff. Hes been working here for the city for 37 years. Is that right, 37 years . So hes been an important part of our team and in fact he worked for two bureaus, Water Quality and Water Pollution control. As well youve been working on our Collection System division as well. We want to thank you for your commitment with the puc and you worked dpw back in the day. Im not far behind you. But just want you to come and say a few words. Thank you very much, arlan when i started, i started in 1979 at the Old Southeast Sewage Treatment plant and for those of us who remember in those days there was no erosion side is, there was no southeast secondary site, no channel pump station. In fact, southeast was a primary plant, we used to use chlorine gas, anyone who was there remembers that smell taz comes out from the sed tanks but also i remember something else. But also i remember something else. I remember every week we would hear the loudspeakers saying all hands on deck. Scott drill will begin in 10 minutes. This was our superintendent named les spes messer and we would go into our drills to protect against chlorine, but why was that significant . Because the men who i worked with were all coming back from world war ii. They all served in mostly the pacific theater, some in the european theater, but many were exnavy men. They were built after world war ii. They were built, this is the point, by dpw it was not built by private contract. The plans were reviewed by the private Engineering Firm but the plant was built by our own people and that is something ive always felt very proud about, something i have cherished, which is selfconfidence and selfsufficiency and something that we will never give up, its in our its who we are. Many of us have had parents, fathers, mothers, who worked for the city and we came through the system and its part of us. This is the city i was born and raised in, i still live here, and i have too many people to thank but i do want to thank especially mr. Steve midberry, i want to end by thanks my wife, irene sirochivoch, she will be retiring in two days, we live in the outer sunset. I always like to tell me, you look so happy, i say yes, i am. I met my wife at the sewer plant 20 years ago and weve been happily married ever since. Thank you, everybody, its been a pleasure. applause . Yes, on behalf of the commission we really want to thank you for your many years of service and congratulate you and your wife on your retirement and please if you wouldnt mind coming up so we can present you with a certificate. Great, thank you very much. Next item on the general managers report. The next item is a drought update. The new and improved steve ritchie, please come up. Agm ritchie is at the Alameda County board of supervisors wading through a very extensive agenda so he couldnt be here. So first just looking at the reservoir storage levels, what you will see here, and you probably have been seeing since the last report as well, is that hetch hetchy is above 100 percent. We still have the spill gates in and we are still gaining in water bank, which is always very wonderful. Weve gone up about 4,000 acre feet since the last you saw this report. Here is a field visit that mr. Ritchie was on and this shows you hetch hetchy spilling. This actually is a video that we werent able to get the technology to work on but theres lots of noise and its very exciting and he got quite a bit of spray. Were happy to see hetch hetchy spilling, been a long time since we have. Our primary drought message, though, despite weve have a wetter season, water bank is only about 74 percent. We need to continue with a 10 percent systemwide demand reduction from 2013 demands. We formally notified our whole sale customers of this on june 26. inaudible directed us to do at 3 years of repeat hydroology of 2013 through 2015 using an average demand of 20132014 use and we had to demonstrate that through that repeat hydroology we would meet that average 201314 demand. We were able to meet that dpapbd through our modeling without imposing any rationing. However, because we have not filled the system we requested that the customers maintain a 10 percent voluntary reduction on their 2013 use. I know theres been a lot of Interesting Articles in the chronicle and i just want to make it very clear that while we met the state boards requirements, that isnt a planning process that were comfortable with saying that we can move forward with 100 percent delivery in were looking at a system that isnt entirely full. So hopefully well get that message straightened out in the next couple of days through the press. Looking at our total deliveries, what youre seeing is we have seen some rebound in demand. What i want to note on this slide is two things first the typed dashed line is where the state Water Resources control board reduction target was. Thats what we have been following all of last year. Now that were in a selfcertification period were showing the more separated dashed black line what our 10 percent voluntary reduction target is. While you have seen that demand has rebounded, demand is at about 218mgd and where were showing ourselves to be on that target line is somewhere around 230. So were still doing quite a bit better than we even asked our customer within that 10 percent reduction. I should also note here that that 218 mgd does show additional deliveries to the participating pumpers in the ground water storage and recovery program. We have the in lieu portion of the program turned on so there is about 4 mgd within that 418 thats being used to meet that in lieu recharge of the ground water basin. What you are going to hear later if the ayen today, theres two items that further our drought actions. One item will be additional water waste prohibitions to our regulations and also revising our Drought Program to include the new information on water supply to meet the required levels of pars4 drought conservation. Commissioner. Just a couple comments. First of all, thank you for bringing up the confusion that was in the press about what our plans are and i think its important to get that distinction very clear. The good news is we passed the stress test but a stress test isnt a plan and the plan is we will continue with rationing. I think reinforcing that is to build all our budget projections on that. You are probably planning this anyway, but weve been getting this as kind of a periodic update for the drut situation as we proceed. I think its important we keep getting these. I dont know if we have to keep getting them in exactly the same format but i want to make sure we keep track of our how were doing against our goal of 10 percent voluntary. I think its important to keep our eye on the ball and that will help us do that. Thank you. Thank you. Anything else . Public comments on the drought update . Next item. So the next item is clean power sf update. Atm barbara hale good afternoon, commissioners, barbara hale, assistant general manager for power. I have 4 items to give you a quick update on for our clean power procurement, our overall planning and the sydney plan we talked about and our efforts of collaboration with other cooperating ccas. Enrollment, our Program Continues to successfully serve and receive bill payments from our customers. We have over 7900 customer locations apblds are serving over 7400 active locations. Our total opt out percentage is now 1. 3 percent, i reported 1. 2 at the last meeting, so its gone up a small tick. We have a steady 3 percent participation in our super green offering. Commissioner caen at the last meeting you requested some information on why people are opting out of our program. Customers have, we do survey routinely survey our customers and i will be providing a written memo for you, but by way of preview the two main reasons that customers indicate they are opting out is the fact that the program is government run and secondly that they dislike automatic enrollment, the automatic enrollment feature of the program, which is part of the statutory requirements. So stay tuned, i will provide a written memo so you can see greater detail but those are the top two reasons. We continue to serve customers from our third party supply and from the hetch hetchy project while we have available generation. We also are seeing some additional sign up activity in advance of our august 1 deadline for enrollment. We have 471 preenrollments. 379 of those are for super green so more than 70 percent of the customers who have preenrolled have said they are committed to super green. We are continue to go do some work so we have the supply necessary for those august enrollees. This is for service in november. The market for the premium renewable product like we are using for our program right now is pretty tight. We conducted a and are evaluating our options, we followed the product content policy that you adopted in december and requested only product content category 1, the bundled California Renewables and are getting a pretty soft response to that. So were looking at our options. Well continue, well come to you july 26 with an action item if we find affordable supply is available. And that would allow us, that action item would allow us to exceed the 50 megawatt average demand that we currently have authority for, as we discussed at the last meeting, and to procure the necessary supply. As i mentioned, supply is tight right now because its the end of a compliance period for all of the load serving entities so its a tight market and were looking at what our options are. And as we look at our options were guided by the phasing policy that you adopted in december. And i think the main points from the there were 6 criteria in the phasing policy. I think the main points that are relevant for us for this small incremental addition would be that the Program Rates are sufficient to cover the cost and that the program supply commitments are sufficient to meet the projected customer demand at the levels of renewable that weve committed to, which for this first phase is 35 percent for our green and 100 percent for our super green products. So then the next item is our Overall Program planning. We are putting together a Program Growth road map that will help us implement our phasing policy and were preparing an integrated resource plan. Weve heard a number of times about the sydney plan so i wanted to give you a quick rundown on my take on that document. Its really quite a comprehensive review of energy use in sydney and the greater sydney area of australia, both electricity and gas usage is covered in that plan. The focus is really on Green House Gas reductions. Currently almost 90 percent of the electricity used in sydneys local government area comes from coalfired power plants. So the focus is really on getting at that problem. They are targeting 100 percent electricity demand being met by local generation by 2030 and in their plan, they are describing that 100 percent electricity demand being 30 percent renewable, 18 percent of that being inside the city of sydney as a target. So thats 30 percent renewable so that compares with our clean power sf program at 35 percent. The state school at 50, just to give you some context, and then 70 percent, the other to get to the balance of 100, 70 percent from what they call trigeneration, which would initially be natural gas cogen with the intent to convert that gas from natural gas to municipal solid waste gas, sewer system gas, and livestock manure. So their focus is to become more independent and free from the current coalfired resources that they are reliant upon. It also relies on fuel shifting within the plan replacing todays electric heating and cooling with waste heat from the gasfired generation. So thats the basis for their shift away from coal. And within the 30 Percent Renewables effort thats described in the plan, they cite a number of practices from around the globe which were informative, some of which were already undertaking, specifically solar incentives, generation from sewer system gasses, solar on municipal roofs. They are dedicated about 2 million a year it says in the plan toward municipal roof top solar, and building integrated wind. They also are studying offshore wind, tidal and wave power options are things that weve looked at as well. And then the final item i wanted to report on was our efforts at collaboration. We are working to formalize our legislative and regulatory collaboration with other operating Community Choice programs, in particular we are incorporating as an association with the operating ccas and were working on drafting by laws so well be hosting the next effort, next meeting on that in the next couple weeks and trying to become a more formal organization to help bolster our advocacy in both sacramento venues and at the california puc on issues like pcia and such that we have a common interest in. Those were my 4 items for you today. Im happy to take any questions if you have them. Thank you. Thank you. Questions . Thank you for your report. General comment . Mr. Brooks. Good afternoon, commissioners, eric brooks, San Francisco Clean Energy Advocates and all the other ones i always mention. Ill keep that part of it brief. So just to speak to that report, its once again 1. 3 percent is the best opt out rate that any Community Choice program has ever had in the country and there are thousands, theres over a thousand Community Choice programs. So thats spectacular, your staff is doing a good job. On the sydney report i want to specifically point out that the reason i keep hyping that report and talking about it and sending it to people is not because its perfect, but because its a citywide plan. It is a carefully considered city pf wide plan with financing with how to build a Renewable Energy infrastructure throughout the entire city and that is what i feel i and the other advocates feel is the one piece we dont have in place yet, is a plan for that citywide and for the jobs. Thankfully there is going to be a meeting this week with the Mayors Office and sf puc staff and department of environment and other staff to start hammering that out, to look at sydney and look at our situation and what we can build here. I should point out there is a big flaw in the sydney concept which is the idea that switching from coal even to biogas is going to really save a lot of carbon emissions. Gas has been