SLVWD Board Meeting Summary
November 10, 2021
Mark Dolson
Highlights:
Water Master Plan.
Next Board meeting is at 6:30 PM on December 2.
Preliminaries
There was no non-agenda-related public input.
President’s Report
Rick Rogers reported that SLVWD received notice on November 8th from the state Department of Water Resources that it had approved $3.2 million in funding for two miles of interties with Bracken Brae and Forest Springs. The grant will also fund upgrades to nearly 4,000 feet of San Lorenzo Valley Water pipeline. Work can begin as soon as agreements are in place with the two agencies.
Unfinished Business
Water Master Plan
In 2019, the District contracted with Akel Engineering to develop a Master Plan and Capital Improvement Plan for the District’s existing infrastructure. The plan was presented by Tony Akel. Tony described the Water System Master Plan as a document that identifies water system improvements and quantifies and prioritizes these with estimated costs. This provides the District with an analysis-based guiding document for capital improvement projects for planning and budgeting. Tony briefly reviewed ten key tasks in the development of the plan:
1. Characterize land use. (The District spans 5677 acres; future expansion is predicted to increase this by only 108 acres.)
2. Characterize water demands. (The District produced 1.57 million gallons of water per day, down from 2.1 in 2013; the maximum monthly production ranged between 2.89 million gallons per day in July 2013 and 1.93 million gallons per day in August 2015.)
3. Inventory existing water facilities. How does water flow? (The District has 190 miles of pipelines, 35 pressure zones, 55 tanks (with a 9.26 million gallon capacity), 33 booster stations, 40 pressure reducing valves, and 7 surface water diversions, divided into a North System and a South System. The largest pipelines are 12", but there are many undersized pipes.
4. Develop a GIS-based hydraulic model. (This was a major investment.)
5. Calibrate the hydraulic model. (This utilized data from 13 temporary pressure loggers (in late 2019), 29 storage reservoirs, 6 sources of supply, and 7 booster stations.)
6. Evaluate existing system. (Pipelines should meet fire flow requirements (would like 1000 gallons for two hours in residential settings, but many are below 500); service connections should meet pressure requirements; storage tanks should meet storage requirements; booster stations should meet pumping criteria.)
7. Recommend improvements to mitigate existing deficiencies. (The current system is significantly undersized. Risk assessment looks at the product of Likelihood of Failure and Consequence of Failure. There is also an energy efficiency and reliability analysis.)
8. Recommend improvements to service growth.
9. Develop Capital Improvement Program. (Estimated spending requirement over the next 20 years works out to between $3.3 and $4.2 million per year from 2021-2026 and between $2.1 and $2.8 million per year from 2027-2041. This is roughly ¾ pipeline improvements and ¼ reservoir improvements; booster station and valve improvements are comparatively minimal. Maybe 10% of this total is attributed to Disadvantaged Communities.)
10. Complete and adopt Master Plan Report.
The full report is available at:
https://www.slvwd.com/sites/g/files/vyhlif1176/f/uploads/2021_slvwd_master_plan_final_report.pdf
Environmental Planner Carly Blanchard said funding for this study was provided, in part, from the Safe Drinking Water, Water Quality and Supply, Flood Control, River and Coastal Protection Bond Act of 2006, administered by State of California, Department of Water Resources through a grant awarded to the Regional Water Management Foundation. She also briefly described the Rate Assistance Program which provides a $15 monthly discount to qualifying ratepayers (67 customers are currently participating with three applications still pending approval).
Director Smolley asked how the projected expenditures compared to what the District has been spending on capital improvements over the past five years. District Engineer Josh Wolff said the average has been $4.8 million per year, so the Master Plan expenditures are in line with recent spending. He added that approximately 75% of the non-FEMA-funded projects in the past year showed up on the Master Plan as Priority #1 projects. The planned projects for the next fiscal year are almost exclusively Priority #1 projects in the Master Plan.
Director Smolley also wanted to know what it would take to expand the Master Plan to include Forest Springs and Bracken Brae. Tony Akel said adding two more zones is comparatively easy if the field information (e.g., elevations, pressures, etc.) is available. He suggested that it might require two months of effort. President Mahood sought further clarification because she knew that it took considerable Staff time to confirm this information for the current Master Plan. District Manager Rick Rogers said he expected the big challenge to be in getting information for Big Basin. Forest Springs and Bracken Brae will consist almost entirely of new mains because the current systems were destroyed in the CZU Fire.
Director Henry asked about the reference to Disadvantaged Communities. Carly explained that, when the grant was awarded, the District had some small Disadvantaged Communities based on 2012 data, but this is no longer the case. A new survey will be completed this December. President Mahood added that Disadvantaged Communities (who can’t otherwise afford big improvements) have relatively quick access to large sums of money, but most of these communities are in the Central Valley.
Director Henry clarified for the public that “storage reservoirs” in the Master Plan referred to storage tanks. She asked if the cost of a mixer (to keep water circulating within the tank) was included in the estimates. Rick said this was included, but it was a small cost. He said the big cost is for purchasing additional property for the tanks to be located on.
Director Henry also wanted to know who was inputting the information for the GIS hydraulic model and how this information was confirmed to be correct. Tony said this was a team effort, and comparisons were performed to validate results. Rick added that Tony's group came back to Staff on multiple occasions during calibration to eliminate discrepancies.
Director Ackemann spoke about the importance of eliminating non-revenue-generating water loss (i.e., leaks) from the system, and she asked how this factored into the overall recommendations. Rick said the high-priority projects are addressing water loss: redwood tanks are leaking, and undersized mains are old and leaking. He said Staff is going out 6-8 times a year to repair some of these. Josh identified three factors for prioritizing projects: (1) fire flow, (2) water loss, and (far less important) (3) operational issues. Director Ackemann suggested that it would be helpful, for communicating with the public, to translate the benefit into explicitly monetary terms (e.g., how much money the District would save). Tony spoke more generally about the need to upgrade aging (and leaking) systems throughout the United States. These upgrades will only grow more expensive with the passage of time. Rick said some customers also lose water during peak summer demand due to insufficient pressure.
Director Fultz noted that the maximum peak demand figure used in the Master Plan was not based on empirical data but, rather, was estimated from other data. He wondered how easily the model could be updated to reflect empirical data when this becomes available. Tony said this would be no problem. Director Fultz asked what it would take to get this data. (He was concerned that the estimates could be misleading since the District averages about 20% below the state’s mean indoor water use.) Rick said he wasn’t sure how this data would be obtained, but he thought that the transition to the “smart” Badger meters might play a role. Director Fultz asked if there was a way to leverage hourly data from the production system. Tony said there wasn’t enough data to get hourly figures from the production system, but he also said that a revised estimate would have no impact on storage requirements. It would only impact the sizing of the pipeline, and he did not think this recommendation was likely to change.
Director Fultz also noted that the Master Plan specifies 8” pipe as a minimum to meet fire-flow requirements, but he wondered whether maybe 6” could be sufficient. Josh said 6” could suffice for short distances, but 8” would mean that the pipeline would never be the restricting factor for fire flow. Director Smolley added that the cost difference between 6” and 8” might be less than 5%. Director Fultz argued that this could still constitute important savings. He also asked a few other detailed questions about pipeline-related assumptions in the Master Plan.
One member of the public, Patrick LaBruzzo of Big Basin, contributed to the discussion. He posed some further detailed questions about the modeling underlying the Master Plan. He asked how the “C factors” were developed. Tony explained that these relate to friction, and measuring them can be prohibitively expensive. Akel Engineering used industry-standard estimates based on pipe material, age, and diameter. Tony contrasted this with hydrant testing which was calibrated using solid hourly data. Patrick also asked whether the District would be maintaining the database going forward. Josh said the District was investigating software options that would allow for this, but it wasn’t yet clear whether it would make more sense to devote Staff time to this or to task Akel Engineering with doing this instead. Rick added that it will depend on how much the District is going to use this. Director Fultz confirmed that the data itself is owned by the District.
Director Henry asked how applicable the cost estimates in the Master Plan were to SLVWD. Tony said the plan used a standardized Construction Cost Index which can be readily adjusted to reflect changing costs over time. He said there is currently a big backlog for new construction of pipelines, and costs will continue to rise.
Director Fultz concluded the discussion by reminding the Board of his concerns about managing the District’s spending. He suggested that revenue forecasts might need to be adjusted to account for future (conservation-related) decreases in SLV water usage. He also noted that new storage tanks will need to be coated every 25 years. Considerations such as these will affect the District’s operating margin. Also, as of the last census, about 30% of the District’s population had a household income under $60,000. Director Fultz said he was very troubled by the idea that the District could set rates based on what households with 150% of this income could afford.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:10 PM.