EWEB Board of Commissioners — October 6, 2020

0:02 to the uh eugene water electric board's october 6th uh meeting my name is steve mattel i am the uh president of the board this year that duty will pass to somebody else in just a few months we have all five commissioners including myself here plus our general manager and several staff it looks like at least 29 people are in attendance although some of them are likely members of the public we will begin with an agenda check i assume all the commissioners have received the agenda and the materials ahead of time does anybody have any concerns that they'd like to express or make any changes all right well hearing none um i will move on um two items from board members and

0:49 general manager we will begin today with uh my good friend john brown and uh and then move down the line in which we normally sit from there john would you like to begin yeah thank you and well welcome everybody i uh just a real brief thing i um had the fortune to go up to mckenzie the other day and look at things and uh i know we're gonna get a lot of discussion about that this evening but you know how near and dear our drinking water is to my heart and so uh we got a lot of work ahead of us a lot of heavy lifting and i just want um to thank everybody for what i anticipate is to be a real cooperative effort thank you um great sonia would you like to go next i i guess i'm next actually i think i sit next to john in the in the old days uh

1:35 well anyways welcome everybody it uh was not a terribly busy month for me personally but it was an extremely busy and eventful month for you know the city of eugene folks living up the mckenzie valley and of course some eweb staff uh you know in a tragic month of course um i won't say a lot about it everybody's well aware of the details but i will just uh express on behalf of eweb members our you know heartfelt concern for the folks living in blue river in particular but all folks up and down the mackenzie valley who are affected directly or indirectly by the fires and also wanted to express my thanks to frank um and uh and the line the the the senior staff but especially the uh line staff who spent a significant number of hours restoring power and putting themselves in hard way to

2:21 get things back to normal i recognize things are not really back to normal but putting a lot of hard work um to make safe the places up and restore power and water up in the mckenzie valley so thank you and that's as much as i have right now i'm sure we'll be discussing this issue quite a bit more this evening uh next i believe is sonia thank you so i i also want to just express my sincere thanks to everybody on staff and those who helped uh restore power upriver i mean i don't need to hammer it too much but there's so much going on in our community right now and i know people are stressed in in a lot

3:06 of different ways and everything that we can do as a community keep supporting one another and um you know i just continue to be very impressed with eweb staff and crew helping in the ways that they do to make sure that we have some level of normalcy um during really challenging times so thank you so much for that i did want to note that we commissioners toured the facility the area where we'll have the um the two reserve the reservoirs being put in in south eugene and that was a really enlightening experience i really appreciated being able to see that site firsthand and um and also that i attended an alcogn meeting virtually this month

3:51 so that's it for me thank you commissioner helgeson well without repeating everything that's already been said i too would like to second the um both a concern for all of our upriver customers and constituents who have suffered great losses in the last month and also appreciations to staff for their work uh monitoring the situation and and doing um everything possible to restore service up there so we'll be hearing more about that i'm sure tonight and talking about aspects of that but i too just wanted to express those thoughts thank you thank you and uh finally um commissioner schlossberg yes

4:36 um just to echo what everybody has said about their appreciation and thanks um and also i've been volunteering with the red cross and it's been very interesting to be part of that kind of um disaster assistance and i it makes me think a lot about our goal for resiliency and the participation we did with the the workshops last year i think it was regarding resiliency for the county and i just look forward to once we've kind of moved on into the recovery phase to look at where those meetings and collaboration pick up again because i'm sure there's so much that can be learned from this response um i haven't really attended any meetings i don't think but next week we

5:21 do have a one of our meetings with the city of eugene so that's coming up okay thank you and then finally um our general manager frank lawson frank any general items you may have please feel free to share them but this is also the time where we normally get a covet 19 update to the extent that you have anything to share and we will also tack on a holiday farm fire unified command update as well yes thank uh thank you commissioner help us and uh president mattel commissioners good evening um i have a number of updates this evening uh

6:07 most of those center around the holiday farm fire as well as cobit 19. i'll go ahead with the next slide please yeah the two subjects um just just uh point of reference first of all actually if you go back to the original slide one thing i did want to point out is that during this presentation you won't see a lot of general photos of destruction that's out of a sensitivity recognizing that the tragedy is still really fresh at hand and don't want to i want to be sensitive to the community upriver the the photograph just as a note the photo on the left says thank you for visiting the leeburg fish

6:52 hatchery and so you can get a little sense of uh how close the fire was to the fish hatchery itself go ahead with the next slide please so the first thing to acknowledge is just the devastating human impact on the mckinsey valley community um as you can see from the statistics roughly 173 000 acres 7 000 people displaced 430 residences destroyed there's almost 400 eweb accounts that were which really represents probably over a thousand people uh within the fire perimeter and you know our hearts and

7:37 our prayers go out to those impacted including some eweb employees very directly who who reside in the mckinsey valley or were raised in the mckinsey valley and so we we want to appreciate the fact and and unfortunately there was one fatality a mr perry who perished in the fire and so that's really the first thing that that comes to mind um from the the aspect and the the impact of the fire i'd also like to note here that eweb is fully cooperating and participating in the formal investigation into the potential cause of the fire uh and as noted there uh this is the first time eweb has been in a unified command mode

8:23 and and what i mean by that is that we had multiple incident command structures operating simultaneously including electric water communications and generation and i'll get into those individually a little bit more for much of this incident we were operating under the direction and the priorities as set forth by fire command and had little or no access for quite some time to certain areas that were in the evacuation zones under normal storm conditions were the ones typically setting the priorities in this case we were working under the direction and guidance of fire command go ahead with the next slide please

9:15 so as part of our response we uh instituted both a bill and a loan forgiveness program for the customers in within the fire zone uh and we've also participated in the weekly mark recovery events um because people are looking for assistance and that's a place that people congregate and and it's been have come together for different types of aid we've had some infrastructure impacts and just you know it mentions their the number of polls and transformers you know over 250 polls will be replaced and just for some context we generally replace about 150 poles in a normal year and so just this one particular

10:00 event we will replace almost double the poles that we would in an entire year as a result of the fire e web personnel had to evacuate both leeburg and walterville generation projects in compliance with our ferc approved processes eweb opened the roll gates at the dam to prevent debris and clogging from piling up behind the dam essentially returning the flow to the natural river and or the river to natural flow later for firefighting reasons we restored the lake to keep for firefighting so that they could use it in the fire recovery

10:45 we'll probably keep it as a lake until roughly the end of october and then we'll reevaluate the conditions luckily other than a bathroom on the far east end of leiberg park there were no other generation facilities that were damaged by the fire go ahead with the next slide please so as as part of our response also i mentioned multiple ics's our water department has been in and out of ics primarily to make adjustments to changing raw water conditions while the finished water has been continuously safe throughout we did have to address some initial taste and odor issues by making adjustments to our treatment

11:30 process and then allowing those changes to work through the storage and distribution systems we eventually got it dialed in you'll note the reference to additional testing data that we've also been posting regularly on our website which shows both source and finished water are well within the guidelines and now essentially returning to normal for this time of year although we are anticipating a lot of changes with rain and runoff conditions uh and changes within the watershed not only do the reports show what's been detected they're also have a long list of the substances that have no detection as well that we've tested for go ahead with the next slide

12:21 the photo on this side is what shows mount what used to be the mount hagen site the mount hagen site is part of the lrig system which is the lane regional interoperability group which is a system that that's shared by state police county sheriff eweb and others eweb is participating with our other partners to get the site repaired as soon as possible and lane electric is working to restore power up to the site as well go ahead with the next slide so commissioners as far as what's left our crews have made great progress in really tough conditions they're actually still working up there to restore power to uh some kind of

13:07 slogging through the last really hard areas uh we are recommending um at the advice of some of the mckenzie valley customers we've talked to that we postpone our virtual upriver board meeting until at least november we can reevaluate it some of this is pending the availability of even basic communications for those communities although rates are not part of tonight's meeting we will recommend at next month's meeting that we do have a diff we do not sorry have a different electricity rate for the mckenzie valley there is some benefit to establishing a unique customer class even if the rate matches the urban rate

13:54 but we'll save those recommendations and discussions for for november finally we do anticipate a significant effort to repair and restore the watershed with those discussions we'll we'll get into that much more uh later tonight next slide please so with that i'd like to get into a little bit of a covet update we've been operating under you know you know dealing with the fire situation across the entire utility electric water communications generation all while still maintaining appropriate covid protocols go ahead with the next slide so as you can see

14:42 eweb went from having our first cobit positive case about a week and a half ago to now eight positive cases um and actually that 18 currently in quarantine has dropped to 14. because of the recommendations to return an approval to return to work on the right side of the screen are the latest updates from lane county and in many ways eweb is a good representation of lane county which has seen a spike in recent infectious cases and so we're really a representative representative of the community we also have robust processes in place

15:29 to try to mitigate any further spread and to also protect the capacity of our ability and our workforce's ability to respond to the fact that we have a 24 7 365 product and service requirement and so our protocols are not only designed for the protection of individual employees but also to maintain our capacity as a workforce to do the important community work that we do next slide relative to consumption we are still seeing about a a little under a four percent um impact on electric consumption

16:14 uh so far this year that we can trace back to sort of general covert economy related consumption this this means that we take out the effects of weather impacts for example um and also a couple of key account impacts and so that's pretty consistent that's about what it was in september and where it's been throughout the year go ahead with the next slide from a customer payment perspective we've seen disconnection orders kind of stabilize after a large increase followed by a decrease over the past few weeks we've experienced a slowdown in disconnects partly because of the smoky conditions and

16:59 restricting any outside work and then some customers who had special terms that were granted to them have have also started to not fulfill and live up to those terms we continue to have customer care funds available uh as they are not fully subscribed to this month as they were not last month as of yesterday for example you have received 64 customer care applications which means we have over 350 funding spots still available for this month that's as of yesterday so last slide please

17:44 so uh kind of in you know finally tonight commissioners i appreciate the comments about ewm employees i too would like to thank the employees of eweb i i can't think uh of a time that i've ever been prouder of the organization which really means of of my colleagues under some really tough conditions we've continued to respond and work together for the community for those in the field we've had some you know that picture in the middle there is the air quality that we experienced a couple weeks ago and so we anybody who's worked in the field to those providing support to those working with customers and walking them through and hearing about their challenging situations it's been a challenge because of that

18:30 i do get the sense that there's a great degree of what i would call organizational fatigue maybe you could call it issue fatigue but there's a lot of issues that are stacking up some of them economic some of them social you have covid you have some disasters you have political issues and so the executive team and i are watching that pretty closely to see if there's any things that we need to back off or adjust or prioritize differently going forward but i'm incredibly proud of the organization and our response to just a whole series of issues i couldn't couldn't be prouder of the organization but we also recognized that that gets a

19:16 little fatiguing after a while and so we're we're watching that closely [Music] with that uh commission president mattel i'd be happy to uh or staff can jump in if you have any questions or comments um about the last month or so um well that was meant as a report and less of an opportunity for folks to provide feedback but um but i suppose the special conditions may warrant that nonetheless does anybody have any comments or questions that they like to ask frank before we move on to public testimony and i can't see everybody at the sorry at the same time i'm back into that situation so

20:06 um in any case uh i can see everybody except for john and sonia so um if anybody else has a question raise your hand if those two have questions just wait for a moment yeah commissioner brown does go ahead john okay thank you um frank great report i just a quick comment if we still have 300 and some odd funding slots for uh energy bill assistance are we making sure we're getting the word out because it's hard for me to imagine that there isn't a huge demand for any type of economic assistance and so i just want to make sure not saying that you're not doing it but just make sure we get that out in front of the people that need it because um that's it's a tough one to take that we've got money there and nobody's asking for it yeah yeah commissioner brown it's we we

20:51 have done all kinds of outreach we continue to to use all of our media channels as well as um through other agency networks as well there are some restrictions to it as far as the number of aid assistance you can get per year but we'll continue to work on that even more aggressively going forward so appreciate that advice thank you president now commissioners was a good opportunity to thanks for the opportunity to update you yeah of course thank you for the presentation all right we'll move into public

21:37 testimony um and can you tell me how many folks we have uh live online in the queue yes president mattel we have four speakers for public input our first speaker has sent me a message indicating that he's spoken to staff and is happy with their response and will not be calling in this evening so that brings us to speaker number two mr herrera okay and then we have so we have four on the on the line ready to go is that correct that's correct the fourth is i'm sorry and would you tell me so we have uh chuck herrera and who are the other three so i can call them in order and they can know as well

22:23 yes um following chuck is joe mole after joe is tim cling and last is joe harwood reading public comments on behalf of marilyn cross great i'm just writing that down thank you very much all right i'm going to open up a public testimony hearing uh with the side of my iphone and i'm obligated to read um the following statement and then we'll have chuck herrera so when your name is called remember to unmute your phone if you've muted it press star six if calling from a landline or simply use the unmute button from your cell phone please then state your name and optionally your address or ward and speak clearly into your telephone

23:08 each speaker will be offered three minutes to present uh his or her testimony please keep track of time if needed the board president will notify you when your time has elapsed after all testimony is heard each commissioner will have an opportunity to speak if he or she chooses although by policy we do not engage in back and forth dialogue please note that failure for commissioner to speak shall not be construed as support of or opposition to any speaker's testimony if a question is presented by a speaker and the board does not provide an answer an eweb staff member will follow up with the speaker so that the question can be addressed at a later time okay so first up we have chuck herrera chuck the floor is yours

23:56 thank you and i hope you can hear me okay yes we can good good my name is chuck guerrera and i'm on the board of directors at the upper willamette soil water conservation district and i'm not a e-web customer but i do feel like part of the e-web family in the fact that the district and you have cooperated on as many projects over the last few years so i'm really pleased to have the opportunity particularly right now in these troubled times to talk to you about an upcoming ballot measure that has the potential impact to be a positive for both e-web customers and other folks up the mckenzie wheel excuse me up the mckenzie river and in the mckinsey river watershed

24:43 and i think from what i heard in the intro comments we can certainly use with some positive things um stephanie you have been the district we've been core partners and pure water partners for years and worked really well together on so many projects a little background the district currently relies almost entirely on lottery funds and grant funds from state and federal agencies in other words soft money and that's not really a good way to run a railroad or a conservation district so the board has decided to go forth with ballot measure 2312 where we're seeking a stable and

25:30 sustainable funding to continue and expand our projects with e-web and and other partners particularly in the mckinsey river valley this permanent tax rate would uh be at seven cents per thousand dollars valuation which would be about 16 a year for the average price property of 231 000 um we think that's very reasonable for clean water healthy soil and wildlife habitat which is essentially our our bylaw a couple additional comments inordinate amount of time of our staff time and our partners time is spent on uh obtaining and administering grants

26:16 and uh this tax base is approved we think we could do a much better job of that either by direct grants from our district funds to landowners or to leverage grants and things being applied for by our partners so with the three minutes i want to leave a little time if people do have questions and so forth that my main reason for wanting to talk to you tonight is to ask for uh you're being aware of who we are we have the disadvantage of being a small agency and this year we're not able to get into the voters pamphlet which was a huge blow to technicality within the state and the county that no special districts are allowed to do that so

27:01 again i know endorsements are tough for public agencies sometimes impossible but physicians personal positions are certainly appreciated and i refer you to our pac page which is uh clean water and healthysoil.com there's a lot of information on there so with that i'll close okay i'm here can you hear me we do go ahead joe chair my tall and commissioners thank you for the opportunity to comment this evening i'm going to comment in this period and also later um when you're looking at your 2021 budget

27:48 i'll begin by just noting that the mckenzie river trust board of directors voted to formally endorse the tax base measure that chuck just described so at some point i'd be happy to talk to you about our involvement in that as well but tonight i just have a few thoughts related to item agenda item seven the water watershed restoration and recovery you're being asked to consider a pretty significant reallocation and commitment of funds to a number of needs that have arisen in the four weeks since the holiday farms fire in short i encourage your support for this staff recommendation it's consistent with previous investments you've made in the basin on a very practical level it will provide cash match and leverage for large grants and investments that the community will need

28:33 to recover from the fire it is in direct service to the health of the river and thus the safety and security of our drinking water it makes use of the pure water partner's technical and human infrastructure for direct landowner contact and perhaps most importantly it will continue to reinforce trust among basin landowners whose property stewardship directly affects the near-term and long-term health of the river now nearly a month since the high winds carried it through the valley we are only beginning to understand the range of impacts from that fire on people on the land and on the water the assessment work proposed for these funds will provide critical information support for landowners directly affected but it will also help all of us downstream better understand how land use upstream

29:19 influences short-term and longer-term risks to the watershed in very real terms like hazardous materials erosion and slide impacts turbidity components and other measures that will be welcomed by the engineers the biologists the economists and the sociologists alike so far like commissioner brown i have only been upriver once and the changes are indeed shocking but i recognize that things could very well become more shocking before they become less so peers of ours and other fire scarred watersheds have warned us about post-fire floods so i circle back to the importance of reinforcing trust with honest support and connection to the upriver community in the months and years ahead we will be

30:04 faced with difficult individual and community conversations and decisions about how to reimagine the mackenzie river valley the dollars that you invest are part of that the relationships you're investing in will be far more impactful thank you for your consideration as a staff request again i encourage your full support thanks all right i just want to remind both joe and chuck herrera if you are able to stick around after we get through the remaining two speakers there may be some questions and follow-up that you could participate in next up we have tim cling i believe tim if you want to do a quick mic check i'll let you know that we can hear you and then we'll start the clock okay here's the check uh there you go

30:50 and i can hear you just fine go ahead tim all right my name is tim kling and i'm here representing the mackenzie masters foundation and the mackenzie masters foundation's purpose is to protect enhance the fisheries and mackenzie watershed and provide public access to the mckenzie river watershed and safe public use of the river and also to support projects benefiting the general public in the communities in the kinsey river watershed and that's kind of more that second part is what i really want to talk about um in the foundation uh there's over 100 guides and fishermen and women in the um in the foundation and they're from all over the western united

31:36 states and there's been a lot of talk in particularly amongst this there's been a lot of talk and they want to do something and even a lot of the guides that we were talking to that are part of the foundation have other clients that have visited and fished the um the river and they want to do something so a lot of them so they've kind of commissioned me to find a project that we can we can help with and uh one of the initial things we kicked around as well one of the most obvious ones is well let's you know redo the boat ramp for boat ramps and after almost a quick initial talking around that there's some real problems with that one is uh for instance e-web owns it i know the

32:22 lane county parks owns one and mckinsey river trust owns another and so we don't know if there's insurance money or disaster money um funds that are going to come that way so you know that seems we're open to that but it seems a little problematic but some of the other ideas that we came up with was uh one of the most immediate ones we just thought of uh just the navigation hazard uh removal and that is there's a lot of trees not only currently in the river but uh in the future a lot more going to drop in you know clearing out and just being able to navigate the river and in doing so we might be able to employ we what we would hope to do is employ uh these out of work guides um and using

33:08 look you know which would be local labor to remove the hazards that might be one um down the road maybe more is some uh projects around gaining access to the river for recreational use and finally a third idea that came up we thought might be feasible was habitat restoration so basically what we're turning to you is we don't want to step on toes we're looking for a project that will supplement your effort you know you've got projects and you're going to be doing some refurbishing up up and down the river and we want to find something and we're open to you to give us some ideas of of something that we can do the health to stand alone to rally these and like i said there's

33:53 hundreds of people out there that we could access that could contribute to help uh with a project so um we're waiting for an agency like you to tell us what to do and hopefully quickly because these people are um they just um they're wet they're anxious and ready to ready to help that's it thank you well you're welcome and if you'll stick around just like the other folks uh tim follow up questions that may help um direct you to uh staff folks who could recommend some projects okay all right next up great next up uh and last i do believe is joe harward speaking on behalf of marilyn cross joey just want to do a quick time or excuse me um sound check and then you can begin check

34:38 check all right sounds good this letter is on behalf of marilyn cross who lives in vida my written comments today represent the mckinsey community development corporation the recovery and rebuilding of mckinsey river valley will be a 10-year challenge and opportunity the mckenzie cdc is the strong back backbone for valley organizations in the collective impact model mckinsey valley organizations will be in the forefront of the enormous task of restoring our homes environment and community today i write in support of eweb's watershed restoration recovery plan the work is vital not only for eugene's water supply but for the safety of the valley's

35:24 residents the risk is high that this will be a winner of slides tree falls and floods our question would be is this enough investment to have impact commensurate with the devastation dollars invested now have the greatest impact on avoiding additional damage in advancing the regenerative cycle with respect to the tentative rescheduled date for the annual upriver meeting some of your customers returned to their homes in vita with eweb's restoration of power but they have no communications not cell landline nor internet without opportunity for a socially distanced gathering someplace with internet access they will not be able to join the meeting

36:10 thank you for your time all right thank you joe and thanks marilyn of course uh and i don't suppose there's anybody else who has uh joined the meeting or requested an opportunity to speak no that's all for this session we do have one speaker for the public hearing later on though okay great well um in which case i guess i will close the public testimony um frank i'm going to ask you to speak first if you don't mind specifically to tim kling's request which i believe is really a request to be put in touch with a proper staff to think through what their resources are and what eweb sees as potential needs and projects on the ground that they might respond to

36:55 yeah president mattel um i'm sure there are a number of staff members listening in we've we've got several projects going up it would it would fall into our water quality group we're looking at some organizational changes within that group to put more of an emphasis on the watershed recovery and so i will follow up specifically with karen kelly uh and rod price on what direction to take that um specifically with okay great um tim you uh assuming we have your contact information and by we i mean that as long as ann um our board secretary has that information then

37:40 i think you can rest assured that somebody will be in touch with you within the next day or two to um just to take the discussion a little further all right i will open it up to commissioner feedback and comment we'll start with commissioner schlossberg um i just want to appreciate everybody for coming to public input tonight i know it's not easy doing it over this format and i also appreciate the support for watershed restoration i am curious to learn more about the ballot measure 2312 so i'm definitely going to check out that website and i too um

38:26 like our speakers um i feel very strongly that we need to give adequate resources to watershed restoration because it's vital for so much for our water for environment all those things so thank you for speaking in support of that great commissioner helderson thank you um as far as the uh ballot measure is concerned i'd be happy to look into that as well um it sounds like the kind of thing that i know as an individual commissioner that i would support and it is unfortunate to chuck that the activities of your group aren't um more in the forefront but um i um

39:11 i don't know that there's time or opportunity for us to take a position on this is a board between now and the election but certainly um i will look into the details and and at least based on what's been described tonight it would be something that i could be supportive of as far as the investments in watershed restoration um those are the subject of further discussion uh later tonight so i'll hold my comments on those things uh knowing that that's uh sort of front and center in people's minds as we go through our agenda tonight so i'm hoping to be able to respond to the interest expressed there as after the staff presentation thank you commissioner carlson

40:03 well i really appreciate the offer to help efforts um through e-web specifically that i think that speaks a lot again to the staff and and the work that we do in the community and appreciate the outreach um also i am potentially interested i did try to do a quick search of the website and was not finding it initially so if you could email that to the commissioner link um that would be great so we can get the right information there to check it out and um thank you for for those uh giving us other input about you know the upbringer community and what we need up there and i do look forward to the conversation about how we can be involved and uh do the restoration work upriver that we need to do so looking forward to that conversation

40:48 thank you for the input there all right well i'm up next and also thank you everybody for uh your comments um they're pretty focused on um mckenzie-related issues and we'll have a fuller discussion about that uh later in the agenda so i'll reserve you know my own thoughts and um for that item when we get there i will respond more specifically to chuck herrera's request for board level support there was an idea that perhaps we might take a vote as a board tonight to support that ballot measure but uh honestly i feel that without us you know more time for the board members to study it and fully understand what its the consequences were um it doesn't seem fair to put us on the spot and time is short so instead my own

41:34 feeling um is that uh that we take advantage of our rights as individual board members to review and learn about the thing and take a position if we want but not as a full board so um i plan to do that i happen to have had the opportunity to um to spend a little time with chuck directly and learn a little bit more about um the initiative chuck if um if if as sonia requested if you share the links and a little bit of information to the um to our board uh emails it'll go out to all five of us plus our general manager and um and our board secretary and folks can look things up and if you give people a sense of what boards support individual board support might look like from your perspective

42:19 then i think that'll give folks the opportunity they need to think about how best to um to move forward with their individual support or or however they land on that i'll stop there and turn it over to john brown well thank you um and thanks for everybody that spoke this evening chuck i support your belt measure 100 i've read it i really like the provision in there that says that the rate can't change the money you'll generate it i think it would benefit for the entire watershed both the willamette the mckenzie and all the other tributaries so i support it wholeheartedly joe thank you for your comments uh i know we've got a lot of things to do in the future but we'll get there tim um thank you for your comments i know the mckenzie masters well they're a well-funded well-organized

43:05 well-connected group of people from diverse backgrounds but and i really appreciate the method the way you did this you came to us instead of you going out and doing a project you say where can we help and we could best use your resources there because i know you're a well-connected group and on marilyn thank you for your comments if you're listening to this evening but uh like everybody said we're gonna have this a little later thank you frank i don't think i gave you an opportunity to speak uh uh to the other um the other folks comments you don't have to of course but if you'd like to you're welcome too the only thing i would add commissioner mattel is is a subject that comes up occasionally um it would have come up tonight um as

43:50 to whether the board can actually take a position on a on a ballot measure um you know based on the advice of legal counsel i i would say that a bull you know you're as an elected official you may take a political position as in any time as an individual as a board you may discuss and or vote supporting or opposing a measure however you cannot use any staff time to support that effort other than ministerial support so you know eweb could not could not draft a resolution uh we could not publicize that we could not put it in our newsletter as a fellow public agency but the board

44:36 could do that on its own um as long as you don't use any public uh resources so that's just a clarification it's it's really captured in oregon statute for reference 260. 432 if anybody wanted to look up the specifics of what a board and you as individuals can and cannot do so that's just a clarification for the future all right thank you hearing that does anybody want to take any action i i realize i sort of spoke on behalf of the board i'm not i shouldn't really do that does anybody want to take any action on this this evening okay and then in which case we will look for uh

45:21 more information from chuck via our emails to explore that opportunity a little bit further we will move on to um board action items uh the first is the approval of consent calendar a and normally i don't bother to explain precisely what's on that but in the form given the format we have i'll just remind us that consent calendar a tonight consists of last month's minutes a contract with brink brothers for 165 000 spread across five years and two intergovernmental agreements one with the city of eugene for 250 000 to put towards credit for customer bills um i believe they received that money from the federal government and one with um elcog for gis services

46:08 uh at the cost of about four hundred fifty thousand dollars spread across five years do i have uh a move to um any discussion excuse me we have a motion to approve sonia moves to a proof okay there we go we we have uh um we have the movement and the second all those in favor please raise your hand and uh vote by saying aye aye i'm pretty sure that anybody said anybody want to vote nay all right uh the consent calendar a is approved unanimously and now we'll move on to consent calendar b

46:54 these are non-routine contracts and tonight we have just two the s2 contractor for a little over two million dollars for five years spread across five years that's for asphalt concrete patching services and resolution 2023 and that's uh our annual investment policy review any discussion or request to remove any of those items for further discussion all right here we go we have a motion and i believe we had sonya's hand as a second is that correct all those all those in favor please raise your hand and say i

47:39 i didn't hear you or see your hand john brown i i i can lip-sync i guess so i'll call that an eye is there any nays okay uh i believe consent calendar b is passed unanimously all right we will move on to our next items of business um and that is the watershed restoration and recovery of 2020 water expense and capital budget amendments uh and i believe we will be hearing from frank lawson deborah hart and karen kelly and um and i'm sorry excuse me if you would put 25 minutes on the clock thank you

48:26 yes good evening again commissioners um you know i just said can you hear me okay president mattel yes i can okay good evening again commissioners joining me for this agenda item is deborah harder chief financial officer and karen kelly eweb water operations manager go ahead with the first slide please thank you our topic introduction will be brief this evening uh as commissioners did receive uh two background memos uh covering both the amendment and also some of the immediate estimated watershed recovery steps that we feel like have a sense of urgency we do feel that because of the holiday fire that the watershed will need investment

49:11 by many parties in order to recover and that eweb's primary interest relates to the ongoing preservation primarily of water quality in other words we can't be responsible for all of the environmental and socially social recovery efforts but do anticipate investment in the watershed for water quality purposes and think we can take a leadership role in this this will be highly collaborative and and coordinated with other organizations and we're working within a structure that is still in development with eweb potentially facilitating some work as a task force under the county's eoc and recovery structure as highlighted in

49:58 the background material there are four categories of sort of immediate recovery including the watershed assessment and risk analysis some early stabilization actions some short-term re-vegetation as well as some initial longer-term recovery assistance so things that mostly are immediate but start to start to build toward the future from initial investment and preliminary standpoint we're estimating approximately about a million dollars this year um before reimbursement i'll add to that this is actually expense it's not a net because we have to do budget amendments based on what goes out not not also what comes in

50:43 uh and potentially looking at up to 10 million dollars over five years based on just some some initial initial work so it is important to re remind the board that there is no rate impact uh because of the amendment this year and that a budget amendment still requires spending commitments go through some kind of appropriate procurement processes so this is for the budgeting piece of that not necessarily approving the individual contracts next slide please so the request tonight is that you consider approval of resolution 2024 as stated on the slide with the intent

51:29 of eweb using a portion of those funds to jumpstart the watershed recovery efforts uh some of those which will be reimbursed by fema or or others later on um commissioners were we're here for questions and and and to answer questions or if you want to make additional comments during your deliberation so with that pretty simple there's a lot of background information work turn it back over to the board for consideration you're you're muted president thank you about thank you for that uh thanks for the presentation we'll open up a cue in just a moment just want to

52:14 remind my fellow commissioners that if you go to the bottom of your screen and click on any of the individual icons uh representing um folks on the call you click just a single time you will see you should uh my do the five of us are the six of us including frank and also a clock that uh and started and so there's about 20 minutes remaining on that clock now when i call your name do your best uh to keep track of your own three minutes so um and i can see um could i interrupt just for a second and ask um deborah hart and karen kelly to also join uh via video at this point i see both of them joining so it should it should almost look like the brady

53:00 bunch screen for uh one short i i guess um but thank you deborah thank you karen go ahead president okay uh well with that anyway hopefully is able to see the clock and each other i see everybody so if you raise your hand i'll know you want to join the queue and we can begin does anybody want to start i have john brown in the queue go ahead john you i i you know i want to get in the queue three times i got a ton of questions um so uh you know and karen if you want to answer this i you know i see that we only have 30 000 for seedlings and 25 000 for septic you know in a million dollar budget yet 300 you know um i i'm talking to the

53:47 state and the federal foresters they're telling me that urgency october 16th is about to cut off for reseeding anything and uh and you know they use a 15 ryegrass mix and they've given me all the statistics for what they do and it just doesn't seem like we have enough money to get in there because all that dirt up there is not dirt anymore it's dust and it's all going to walk into the river and i just think that we got to throw a lot more than what i see here to it in a very short period of time and could one of you talk to about those amounts especially the 30 000 for the seedlings doesn't seem like much and 25 000 for septics this is our one chance to uh to help these people out that had substandard septic systems that were legal non-conforming and things we can

54:32 go in and give them grants and say look rebuild but we're going to help you maintain the integrity of the river this is a an opportunity for us to help them and and uh and to do it right so could you comment on that the amounts please um commissioner brown i think it would be best if i asked carl morgenstern to to log in and answer that for you he has much more information on the details of this uh budget request so i'll let carl respond can you uh hear me commissioners yep we do so um yeah there's a couple questions in there thank you commissioner brown for raising those first off the reason there's only 30 000 for seedlings um is that we actually have a

55:17 large grant that's paid for uh hundreds of thousands of seedlings and so ours uh is just supplementing that we have about 300 c 300 000 seedlings already in stock and purchased and ready to go and then this money would go in addition to that so that's mostly coming from uh grant funds which is why we didn't need to put a lot in there um as far as uh comments around uh grass uh spreading grass seed and and getting that down uh we we certainly uh relate to the urgency that you mentioned um and we do have plans for for using rye grass but you know based on the the the team that we've assembled to kind of start designing the bmps for erosion

56:02 control and soil stabilization you know that has a fairly focused use on like pastures and those kinds of things um so our our solution for kind of the riparian area in other areas is really to mix native seed with mulch so the mulch kind of holds it down while the seed even though it's native may take a little bit longer to to uh to come up and it may just come up in the spring but rather than spreading a a grass seed that could become an invasive or carry weeds that then we have to use herbicides later to address um it was it was expert opinion that we go this route which is what we've embraced and and so as you mentioned the hydro seeding will occur in areas that that makes sense and then using a different

56:47 hydro seed mixture for other areas that we want to kind of make sure it's it remains native then your other question on the septic so there's a couple of septic programs that we're propping up on this obviously we have the zero interest loan and then we're providing funds for just the grant funds and then increasing the zero interest loan program for uh septics and that's another one that really there might be a a large uh investment from others to to make that happen and our investment will be essentially covering those gaps if we see there is a larger gap and and the other piece of this is a lot of that septic work won't hit us until next year 2021 when people start rebuilding so we don't anticipate a lot of septic work in 2020 that's being pushed off in our thinking

57:32 to 2021 really okay thank you great answers appreciate it i'm done sonia i believe you wanted to get in the queue next again other folks if you raise your hand i'll just write your name down in the cube go ahead sonia excellent uh so you talked about um some other groups that were investing in the project and grants can can you expand upon that i didn't see that information in the background yeah there's a number well natural resource conservation service is one big one uh that is going to be pumping money in and our role really in immediate and in the longer term is to try to help landowners match the 25 requirement to get that federal money so basically uh we would be helping fund the match of

58:17 those funds that would go towards erosion control stabilization re-vegetation um and a number of other things and then there's much larger and they would match the money that we put in yes okay i saw the 25 number in there is that does that mean that we're doing the full 25 match or is that is that just a portion of that 25 no that is assuming that we're doing the full 25 match on those that we see uh are needed in the high priority areas we want to be working in okay so our million would equate to to 5 million basically because they

59:03 would then chip in four million so we would get five out of the whole project right but not all million is going for 25 match and that's another piece of that it's like the septic system a lot of that match and money is going to be in the 2021 whenever federal funds become available um a lot of federal funding that's happening now we will be using some money for match but there there isn't a lot of opportunity to do that right now um until because it's like fema money won't hit the ground until next year which is when our match will actually be needed okay and the um i saw the there was an expansion of the septic program to include agricultural can you talk a little bit more about that about that kind of expansion and what that is

59:48 intended to do yes um so we're looking at the need to provide agricultural growers that got impacted with the the fire such as hazelnut growers uh with the ability to get zero interest loans as well for for implementing water quality projects and they can also use those uh as part of their match for nrcs money um as well and so we saw an opportunity here to essentially launch a co-program with the septic assistance program that provides zero interest loans that also benefit water quality only helping growers rather than homeowners or septic systems and how does that how does that particular item improve water quality um they'll be

1:00:34 the ability to use those funds to uh re-vegetate or to pull cattle out of the river or creeks or to do manure management there's a host of water quality essentially practices that nrcs and others will fund and recommend that if those practices are proposed by a grower then we would offer a zero interest loan to help them implement those water quality uh benefit projects okay and then last uh you said that some of the some of the grass and other revegetation projects even if it was laid down it may not sprout until the spring what's the what's the likelihood there that it wouldn't really do anything until spring

1:01:19 well the grass seed is you know as as commissioner brown alluded to we're at a very short window of trying to get a seed out and we're gonna start work next week but um but the idea is if you mix native grass with a mulch uh or uh wood chip kind of material that helps reduce the erosion from raindrops hitting the bare soil until that that seed can germinate in the in the early spring okay and is that targeted in particular areas that how are you picking the areas to actually lay that down that's an excellent question um so part of this whole effort is we're we'll be doing burn assessments on these properties and then uh mapping uh best management

1:02:04 practice for for erosion control and soil stabilization based on the conditions that we're seeing on the ground from our burn assessment so we'll design those in and then we'll have a crew following us implementing those on the ground and so some areas uh may not need much if they have a large amount of leaf litter on the ground and debris uh moderate burns say you know those can just be left as is with a severe burn you know maybe including wattles and and silt fencing and mulch and seeding uh depending on the the slope and the soil and the conditions which we'll be assessing as we move through this okay i did have one question about how long that would take go ahead how long do those assessments

1:02:49 take um well we're starting tomorrow um and so we'll have a good idea uh but our hope is we'll have about uh five to seven teams working simultaneously doing three to four properties a day and so hopefully we can do you know 20 to 30 properties a day um and yeah but a lot of it we're calibrating everything tomorrow and then we'll start work on friday those are my questions thanks dick i think you're next gotta find my mic here so obviously you know the entire community upriver and and and the community of agencies that have activities up there are going to be

1:03:34 faced with a massive and long-term effort um i'm struggling a little bit not with a sense of commitment and and the knowledge that i have that eweb certainly needs to play a role and and we've got a stake in a lot of ways particularly with respect to the quality and continued um excellence of our drinking water um but i am struggling a little bit because i'm used to kind of weighing as a board member these kinds of commitments in the context of our source protection plan where we do a vulnerability assessment we kind of rank order the things that we think present risks or issues we um have the opportunity to decide how much of that is for the good of the order generally uh and not directly related to

1:04:20 a a a an immediate source water concern in proximity to the intake um we have the opportunity to balance that in the context of you know a set of budgets notwithstanding the fact that at least initially we're in a decent reserve position so notwithstanding a a feeling and sense of commitment and need to be involved it just feels a little bit for me like i'm out ahead of my headlights and i'm not wondering how it's possible that we could have mobilized at this juncture when the fire's not even out yet to know even what to do i certainly would support assessment work anything that would help us plan and prioritize what needs to happen i'm particularly interested in the impacts

1:05:06 directly on our operations at hayden bridge you know whether or not there's any additional capital investment or lab work or staffing or things that need to be incorporated into our operating and capital plans for next year even to the extent that we need to address those things move moving forward in our operations but i just feel like it's a pretty tall order at least for me to try to just sort of commit you know a down payment on all of this um well i certainly appreciate that the size and scope of our reinvestment um is probably not in any different orders of magnitude but

1:05:51 i um i just feel like we're kind of talking about an open-ended uh initial down payment on what will become a much larger thing and i i also feel like are we the right ones to be kind of stepping out in the lead role on this recognizing that there are lots of federal and state agencies that are and will become involved and there's probably a need for some kind of coordinated response and consortium so i'll stop there and just say i'm i'm listening actively to the discussion here but just feeling like i'm a little out ahead of myself uh with all of this notwithstanding the sense of urgency and the fact that um you know there are probably some immediate things that need to happen

1:06:37 so i'll leave it there and listen until there's another round fair enough i'm going to jump in mindy and i'll get you last uh and i noticed there's only six and a half minutes left and i'll like will likely take a vote to extend uh we'll get to that in a moment so i largely want to echo some of the concerns that um dick aired and i think he's more articulate well we all know he is more articulate than me so i won't try and repeat them as effectively but in in the same way like absolutely there's some initial commitment we ought to make and there's a long-term commitment we ought to make um but what i didn't see all right what i don't see yet is that that opportunity to step back and update our um our source water protection plan in light of this significant tragedy as

1:07:23 well as what it might tell us about um what the you know what the risks are going forward i mean we didn't quite anticipate this one as a significant um impact to the to the watershed uh we didn't prioritize it as high as it turned out to um be so i can imagine that we might want to make other kinds of long-term investments in the um in watershed protection in light of this particular risk so i too want to you know demonstrate to the community that we're committed and that we want to protect watershed excuse me water quality in particular and there may be some very specific things that we want to do in the immediate term before it starts to rain um but i am somewhat hesitant i'll admit to commit a million dollars and and signal that we're preparing perhaps to commit as much as 10 million

1:08:08 without there being you know an update to our plan and that we can put it in context and get really clear about which efforts we are taking that would be best addressed at the treatment plant itself which ones are about trust building which ones are about eliminating um toxins from the river that we couldn't eliminate at the treatment facility itself which ones we ought to play a lead role in which ones we ought to play a charitable role in which ones we ought to play a supportive role in there i have a lot of questions um and but like dick i want to be very clear to say that i see that there's a need and it's important for eweb to be there well i'll stop there

1:08:53 go ahead mindy why don't you um chime in and i'm sure carl wants to respond to some of the concerns he's hearing so we'll make sure there's an opportunity for that as well all right um well i want to say that i fully support this plan i think that um i mean the the health of the watershed like that's what makes our water so great apart from all the the reasons um to support it for just conservation or environmental reasons but i feel like um that's kind of part of our job now to and to heavily invest in making sure that um just the help sorry i get very um sometimes i lose my words but anyway i

1:09:39 fully support it i think that um it dovetails nicely with a lot of the things that we're already doing like i like that we're kind of harnessing um or expanding existing programs i know that there's been a push to um update septic systems out there and so i really appreciate that this will just expand those programs so there's not like a um we're not losing any opportunity and um i think that um we're in great hands with all the work that carl's done so far and i know that he um has very good relationships with people up and down the river and i again fully support this plan all right i'll just take stock of where we are we have three minutes remaining on the clock i think it's fair to give

1:10:24 carl and other staff some time to respond to some of the comments and that the conclusion of that will uh i'll take a vote to see if folks want to extend for another round of questions so um go ahead uh i assume carl but uh whoever it is on staff side wants to respond assume karen you want me to respond why don't you start carl and then i can address some of the treatment plant questions that have come up okay yeah a lot there and a lot of you know a lot of understandable concerns um we are in a new world that we didn't envision being in uh four weeks ago in fact is the farthest thing from our minds um but i think uh to commissioner helgeson and commissioner matal's point um basically the the what we are doing right now is prioritizing where we work

1:11:09 this is uh this is really just triage um we have uh in the immediate future we see that there's about 80 or so homes that are immediately on the river that have essentially a whole hum a whole house being burned down to basically an ash pile and so when you think of that ash containing uh you know potentially insulation uh pipes uh sofas furniture and that's just so there's a highly concentrated ash pile that you know maybe a lot of that volatilized but um and then you have a lot of household houses ways from propane tanks to uh all sorts of stuff that we've been we've been looking at and assessing so our first initial effort is really in that high priority uh stabilization

1:11:55 of ash and other houses waste until epa can come in and actually pick it up and remove it which is about you know four to six weeks out so we we do see the feds is playing a big role in this the only problem is that they are not as nimble as we are and so by taking early action and stabilizing those areas quickly basically in seven days being able to stabilize those 80-some homes we do a big service to essentially preventing that ash and that has us waste from washing to the river and impacting our treatment downstream we also are working closely with our forest service and other partners basically to get the information that's coming out in a couple days into our gis so we can start prioritizing where the

1:12:41 severe burns are on steep slopes that we need to focus on and and that's in coordination with uh with federal teams and so basically the way we're working it out is our teams are in the valley floor where they're you know where we have our utility lines and we're working the county there's highways there's homes and then the federal teams are working on essentially industrial timberlands the the uplands and blm and forest service to do additional uh stabilization control and other measures uh culverts and so it's it's a it's a coordinated effort that is evolving and as we work together in this last week we've uh we've come together and really started um seeing where each of us are working in and where there's gaps

1:13:26 and all that work is being prioritized through essentially looking at the the highest risk that that that are in front of us based on the data we have um so i was just in danielle so it's essentially a hazardous waste stabilization followed by erosion control and and soil stabilization followed by revegetation this fall winter uh and then uh kicking into you know septic systems and development and helping the director help with that uh that effort as we can mostly around septic systems and wastewater i'll just stop there okay so i'd like to chime in and just mention

1:14:11 about the treatment plants the question had come up about investment there um the old adage an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure um holds fast here uh the ability for us to prevent this waste from entering our water is uh really critical at this stage and the reason is is that conventional water treatment plants around the state that were built the time ours was built were not designed to handle chemical contaminants they were they were designed for microbial contaminants so while we have added treatment since its original design specifically the powdered activated carbon that treatment process can remove chemicals but what it does is effectively

1:14:56 restricts the amount of water we can produce depending on the flows at the time and what that actual load is so when we don't address the contaminants upstream and they come down to the plant um then we're talking about additional treatment costs energy uh chemicals and waste stream processes so um you know that investment in preventing the waste from entering the system to begin with is going to pencil out there's a lot of research out there that already shows exactly what that return on investment is and i believe carl has done a really good job of proving that in his 10-year strategic plan i know that when i first came here i did see some of the information that was

1:15:42 was written into that uh that a consultant put together so that that data is there if you want to to take a look at that um so when we're talking about the multiple barrier approach to safe drinking water it really does start at the source protecting the source we can treat just about anything but it's at a cost and then when we are talking about the organics that we've seen so far the increase in that we're also talking about longer term impacts to water quality out into the distribution system specifically when we when we're thinking about disinfection byproducts and that formation is something that we we have excellent um water quality numbers prior to this event we're seeing that our uh treatment is effective

1:16:27 but it has come at an increased cost so if we can get ahead of that then we can maintain our costs at the plant um wally mccullough and i have been talking about planning for capital increases uh for the treatment plant we're also discussing um second source and what that excuse me would look like in order to address any potential impacts from wildfire going forward there are some short-term costs that we can handle uh with our current budget and then there's some longer-term costs that we have to consider but we really won't be able to tell until we know what kind of impact we can have on our source protection and what these um rain events are going to bring uh coming downstream

1:17:12 so it's one of those wait and see all right well thank you karen we are out of time i suspect there is interest in uh a second round but let me find out uh maybe just a show of hands or uh who would like to ask more questions all right well given that uh maybe we'll do uh uh we'll try for an additional 10 minutes maybe and see how that does does that work for everybody but i'm going to assume that that is a yes i saw sonya's hand up first sony why don't you start round two if others want to when others want to get in the queue just raise your hand i'll write your name down go ahead sonia great um how much of the 1.9 million would be for immediately stabilizing these 80 homes that are right along the riverfront and what do those stabilization efforts

1:17:58 include is that like actually going in and digging that out or is or is the stabilization through the this planting project you can kind of tease that out for me i'd appreciate it yeah thank you um so actually it's not 1.9 that's misleading because i guess that 900 000 is transferring from capital to o m or something it's really a 1 million but um i'll let frank explain that but but as far as that actual cost of uh hazardous waste stabilization we're looking at probably um 100 120 000 and that that funding is going to be uh reimbursed or we're we're setting it up so it is reimbursable by fema um and what that entails is not really

1:18:44 digging as opposed to scraping ash back away from the banks of the river into in some cases it might be in the footprint of the home the foundation but getting it into an area that's flat that we can essentially cover with tarps plastic label it and and just have it stable until epa can remove it and that's the same for essentially all household houses waste that we see there whether it's uh you know propane tanks or you know chemicals uh that stuff will be essentially contained covered labeled and then epa will come and remove it whenever they come through you know a month or two so so none of the none of that initial work on those 80 homes is like planting portion that's really

1:19:30 just to stabilize the the hillside okay so if that's about 120 000 or so um i guess my next question is we have staff we would be hiring contractors we're not using our so these are trained contractors that know how to do this work safely um i wouldn't want to be our exposing our staff to that without appropriate training and all that yes we're using essentially deq and epa's emergency response contractor to do this under the state contract um and so it's it's using the same contractors that are gonna basically probably come later under epa and remove them or someone similar anyway okay i i would absolutely be supportive of doing the work for the you know the

1:20:15 80 homes and potentially the you know the work to stabilize the the hillside because that seems most timely and something that we could do immediately and then when other partners and the other federal funding come in then we could reevaluate what what more you know we can do and maybe we can get some other matching grants from some of the other local partners in the region that i would absolutely be supportive of getting that other work done quickly before the rains come knowing that it's something that we can't really take back and knowing that the federal government is incredibly slow to act so i do appreciate that part thank you go ahead john

1:21:01 thank you i was a little bit confused about a couple of my colleagues comments there because to me this is a no-brainer in fact i i would like to make motion i'm just being facetious to double the amount uh it's just analogous to when we had the snowstorm and the power went out we didn't sit there and say well are we going to underground or not are we going to restore it we don't get a second shot on the top soil this stuff's going to go and it's going to ruin the river and it's going to ruin the riparian areas and they got the immediacy and the need of this is is absolutely you know it's the highest priority i've ever seen in the 14 years i've been sitting here and i'm going to pound in and work on this there's no way this isn't going to get approved in my opinion i am very adamant about this and i don't ever get that emotional about this but i am i i'm we need to save that river we can't sit

1:21:47 here and second guess and get into the bureaucracy of it so three quick points um i think our leadership or our general manager needs to send a letter to the community take one out in the weekly in the guard whatever medium you want and say community we need your help we haven't raised your rates in eight years it's gonna come it's gonna happen we need to save this number two i would hope that if we're gonna spend this money that if there's a chance to spend it locally i know that we don't have the choice of people being trained but everybody up there is out of work we're going to spend a million bucks if some of it can stay local i'd just like to see that and third i think springfield utility board has some ownership of this because they're gonna they're building a treatment plan on the mackenzie and i don't think we should be leaving with our chin on this i think other agencies especially entities that are

1:22:33 taking water from the mckenzie to drink should participate in this short and long term effort thank you anybody else like to jump in the queue go ahead dick sorry i had to find my microphone again there um just a couple couple quick questions and then and then uh another comment or two um so this is a million dollars that you're asking for for activities that take place between now and the end of the year is that is that kind of what what we're about with this and where would that money come from i realized we have it somewhere but uh specifically it comes out of our operating reserve or so i'm going to answer that car yeah deborah go ahead sorry

1:23:18 um so this year actually the water utility had a really strong revenue year or is having a strong revenue year so most of that would come out of an excess of revenues over budget uh to get to the million about 200 000 looks to be coming out of operating reserves okay thank you for that um okay just just um maybe some final comments sounds like we're going to be taking a vote here at some point so no doubt that there's a million dollars worth of investment somewhere in this i think to some extent this is a situation where we're living by the ready fire aim uh kind of

1:24:06 sequence maybe this is a circumstance where we ought to do that and we need to do that i just want to point out to the board that in a longer term view with respect to completion of 10 million dollars and three and four percent surcharges that there isn't unanimity unanimity on this board as to the size and scope of our existing source protection program we all appreciate it but when it comes up there are things in there that some of us struggle to tie in any quantifiable way to our sense of risk to actual drinking water quality no doubt when you talk about ash piles and other things like this there's a little escaping the reality there but um you know i just think there are

1:24:53 some of us on the board who well we appreciate and support and wholeheartedly trust our staff to be spending these funds wisely sometimes we have a little trouble seeing the connection between the things that as they get further and further away from the intake are harder and harder to connect to our sense of um of risk and or um urgency with respect to you know the thing that we say this is all in service of which is source water or you know water quality for the water system so um i'm not sure you know that i've yet resolved in my mind how i might vote on this but i would say certainly regardless of how much we choose to put behind this

1:25:39 in the short term i think some of those concerns continue to persist and i hate to see us kind of jumping into the lead role here when we know that this is going to be a massive investment you know investment of time and resources on the part of multiple agencies and that's with all due respect to um the comments of commissioner brown and others but i just feel like uh you know again we're a little out ahead of ourselves and i will sit and listen to the rest of you as i contemplate how i might vote should a motion be made thank you well i think maybe we can just continue down the list in this the same order in which we took it last time when i guess that makes it my turn and then um mindy if you'd like to say something of

1:26:24 course there's time and i think i just saw frank's hand uh as well so yeah i don't i think we can i hope in any case we can trust each other enough to know that we all care about the mckenzie and see the the need out there and you know are trying to figure out what's the best response from eweb so there's in my mind in the case there's no question that we're all equally or maybe not equally but uh but that we're all focused on that and nonetheless we have sort of different ideas about it i you know i i have to say i love that place as much as as probably all of you and i have gone fishing and taking my kids boating and you know and just enjoyed hikes and all the rest so there's just no question about all of that but uh as a commissioner i guess i feel like my duty to the ratepayers is to be really clear about

1:27:10 what are what we're doing up there with their dollars and our first order of business is to secure water quality and so i just want to be really clear that the dollars that we're spending that we can tie them back to water quality and don't find ourselves um you know simultaneous or actually spilling into other areas that are very important to people and people take passionate um stances on these things like salmon recovery and habitat and like uh you know and just sort of um aesthetics which is certainly i don't know how those get those are important concerns those are just two there's lots of others and that's not to say that those aren't important but it but we should certainly be taking a lead where water quality is at risk we should not i don't think

1:27:56 we should be taking the lead on some of these other concerns and values that are passionately expressed and need to be addressed up to mckenzie we should know about them we should understand how we fit in we should get clear about what our ratepayers want to do about those things but we shouldn't get out ahead of ourselves because that's gonna those things have a way of coming back to haunt us if people feel like we have over extended our um uh you know our duties up there you can see about you you can see the backlash coming so we need to be really clear about what it is that our responsibility is and where where that ends and where other folks need to um also pick up the shovel and dig in so um those are some of my concerns are basically the same as dicks i'm all for this

1:28:42 um i understand the need for some immediate action i understand that we have the hope of being reimbursed down the road and that that's a risk we may not be but it's a risk perhaps we should take just to get in the case of these 80 homes worth of um you know toxic ashes that are away that makes sense to me uh so i'm not disputing that but i want us to be really clear because it'll cause uh it'll cause some angst in the community if we find ourselves diluting our purpose up there go ahead and uh mindy all right so i'm still fully in support um and i think that we've heard time and again at least in the almost two years i've been on this board that the most cost effective thing to do is to protect at the source

1:29:28 rather than try to mitigate much later on down the line so this makes perfect sense to me and looking at the plan it seems like it really is all about source protection when it comes down to it um i don't see anything in there for like beautification projects just for the sake of beautification and um additionally i just feel like we have a community responsibility as well and so um you know if we look at all of our our values or our strategic plan i feel like this so squarely falls in line with what it is that we're about and we're trying to do so fully support

1:30:18 yeah president mattel commissioners appreciate all of your context regarding this um first of all i think that um our primary role is and should and will continue to be around water quality i i think that every time that we bring something to the board that's a follow-up to this oh there's a particular contract or a plan it should reference in that what's the benefit to water quality both in the immediate and the long term i think that's a very fair sideboard to put on this particular issue i also think it's fair to recognize that eweb is not the only one who is going to carry water

1:31:04 apart in the pond on this we there's a lot of partners some of them are governmental agencies some of them are not and they they need to carry some of that as well as well as landowners have some obligation within that as well so um now does eweb take a leadership role i i think at this point um related to water quality we do need to take a leadership role it's it's not related to other benefits but uh many times there's shared benefits water quality and other things i really do think if eweb doesn't step up and take a lead centered around water quality that's our focus

1:31:49 that who who else will in this case and so um and this isn't a blank check this is we recognize that we have an immediate need i really like the term triage there's a triage that we need to go through and as part of that then we need to assess what we need to do in the long term so that we can come back to the board with what we've survived the the icu and now here's how we go forward and so um i think we will have to play a leadership role but it is focused on water quality all right i saw sonya's hand uh go after maybe before we uh give the floor to sonia does anybody do we want to put time on the clock for a third

1:32:35 round hands up for those in favor of that all right well sonia wants to speak nonetheless why don't we give sonya a couple minutes and then i think we can maybe move to a vote go ahead sonia great thank you i just wanted to touch base on the the 0.9 million so is the sorry not 0.9 well 900 000 the the 900 000 that went in there is that the increase that's noted in the uh in the resolution for increased operating costs just regular without any of the rains coming down so the 900 000 on top of the million is moving monies from the capital budget to the o

1:33:21 m budget because our um uh because we won't be spending all of that capital budget this year some of those costs that we had expected to transfer to capital through labor and overhead are not moving so it's a shifting from one budget to the other so the resolution is just moving those funds over but then it's also some idea of actually supporting this project as it's outlined in so the the million uh a million of that is in support of this project and 900 000 of that budget amendment is shifting from capital to o m okay i guess my my thought on that is the reason that we're shifting it to o

1:34:06 m is that there's some increased cost to actually clean the water is that the reason this is uh this is unrelated but we preferred to just bring one budget amendment this year so every year when the capital budget is constructed there's an assumption that a certain amount of labor will go to the capital budget and a certain amount of our overhead costs will shift to being charged to capital because uh our capital won't be spent in its entirety this year more labor than we expected and more overhead is still living in the o m budget okay thank you for the clever commissioner carlson i would also add that much of the spending that we're talking about in this conversation does not qualify as capital and so it it

1:34:53 has to go into that into the o m or the expense account i guess i was trying to get a sense of if this work would actually prevent an increase in the o m later because you know you said earlier that the act the powder activated car charcoal was actually you know it's more expensive to operate i didn't know if that was related so i was trying to connect those two dots might be another reason to actually support the measure so that's what i was looking for all right i think we've had the discussion uh sony was there one last thing okay i thought i saw your hand up one more time um i'll give the uh honor to um uh move this to our friend john brown the most passionate uh defender of the mackenzie she could

1:35:40 ever ask for yeah i'd move to adopt resolution 2024 [Music] second and we have a second um all those in favor of the motion please raise your hand and signify by saying aye aye aye look i think you said hi dick i'm sorry i can't hear you all right you all can put your hands out any uh opposed raise your hand and say nay all right this looks like it passes unanimously so thank you um to karen and carl and debra and all other staff who were involved in pulling this together i'm sure it took a lot of work in a very short

1:36:25 period of time and i want to i can see that there's some hands i'll get you in just a moment um frank i just want to thank you for your focus on on making sure um well essentially they're sort of hearing some of the concerns of the board and assuring us that this is going to stay focused on water quality um and that we'll take these steps um as we uh as we should and that we will seek the reimbursements that we can i appreciate you saying those things and hearing the concerns of um so the minority i guess in that case and trying to address those and work those in as well we had some hands up looks like some folks wanted to make some comments i think dick was first i i just i just wanted to say that you know at the end of the day i decided to vote in support of the motion

1:37:11 uh because i think a million dollars is not an unreasonable amount to have available to deal with some immediate issues that i i do understand are urgent and i do trust staff to be able to figure out how to use that money judiciously i certainly uh inmate yeah i may time out as a board member on this but i don't want to be talking about 10 million dollars and three and four percent surcharges absent some kind of an amendment to the source water protection program so that we can have a chance in a more deliberative way to lay out and understand what that might involve and um i i i'm not even ready you know for the remainder of my tenure to be having those kind of conversations beyond the million that we've pledged at this point i know that will come later and i'll leave it to others to chew on it

1:37:57 but um that's kind of where i came down here thank you dick uh i think sonya you had a hand up no not any longer anybody else uh thank you commissioners uh president mattel i would just echo that the concerns that were raised tonight are concerns that we share these are not um these are not counter to staff or management's perspective we do agree that the focus is water quality and it the actions need to tie directly back to that so that that is something that we believe that i believe it's consistent it's not counter to what was stated tonight so thank you all right well thank you i'm just looking at the remainder of our items we have uh well i'm just going to

1:38:42 do a quick count assuming we stayed on time and we haven't been anywhere as close this evening we have uh oh about 40 minutes well a little longer i'll take it back i didn't see the next page we have easily an hour's worth of items remaining it's uh 7 10 now we were scheduled to take a break at 7 20. i don't think we're going to get to that point for quite some time anyways i guess what i'm asking for would people like to take our break now or continue through the next couple of items those in favor of taking a break now raise your hand what's in favor of holding often uh until another item or two passes uh raise your hand looks like we're just going to keep on moving through at least for a little bit mindy i'll check back in just a little bit all right we're gonna move on to general

1:39:27 business items um and that is um item number eight the 2021 draft budget long-term financial plans and it looks like deborah hart is going to be in the lead and and if you put 15 minutes on our clock please uh deborah we can't hear you i think you're muted don't worry happens to all of us all the time i do that so you can't hear my dogs in the background sorry about that good evening president mattel and commissioners this evening we are here to review and hear board feedback on draft budgets and updates to the long-term financial plans we have a pretty short

1:40:12 presentation concentrating on changes since the last time so that we can leave time for questions as you may recall from previous october presentations we typically don't revisit the capital investment over the 10-year plan at this meeting however events of 2020 have presented opportunity for management to reimagine some of the future capital investments so frank is also going to spend a little time talking about uh that potential and then after we review after the review of the draft budgets and financial plans staff will be looking for board direction and i think i skipped ahead without introducing anybody

1:40:57 so i have adam rue with me this evening he's our fiscal services supervisor and then also available for uh questions senior analyst alicia voorhees and ben sachdeva and with that next slide and i'm going to hand it to adam thanks kevin um so here's uh okay for an overview of the agenda um next slide oh yeah sorry okay thanks um so thanks deborah i'll walk through a few slides here we have an overview a real high level overview of the 2021 budget um and then the financial plans for both

1:41:43 water and electric utilities so the high level overview is tonight and the pie chart here for both the water and electric utilities combined for o m and capital budgets will bring the more detailed budget that has individual sections of the utilities um and more line item detail available next month but this is just kind of a glimpse at where we're what we're looking at so far um overall the changes are relatively minor we have relative to the total scope of the budget we're increasing the overall budget by roughly 2.1 million dollars over the 33 or 330 million dollar budget the increases

1:42:28 are kind of shown on the table to the right the changes year every year there's a big increase or the most significant increases electric o m budget that's contributed by a higher bad debt expense due to economic conditions largely related to covet 19 with some higher i.t costs as well as transmission distribution costs were up a bit relative to last year and some insurance increases uh these but these uh increases were offset by reductions in travel and training as we discussed in july we reduced those budgets significantly uh compared to 2020 and we had um different business units came in with other cost savings as well so we were able to hold the line on a lot of the

1:43:14 cost increases with those favorable variances we also had upticks in capital budgets year over year that was due to some shared services increases for i.t fleet and meter installation expenses as well as some distribution for the water side and some differences in generating capital budgets for the electric utility um we issued debt earlier this year for both utilities and did some red debt restructuring that ultimately led to modest increases in the debt service payment um but it's relatively minor change year every year for the electric utility some of the increases were offset by reductions in purchase power costs the

1:44:00 reasons behind the purchase power costs were partially because we had lower retail demand so less of a need to purchase power due to the closure of a large customer or outcome out near the rock and west eugene as well as just a general economic downturn that has reduced load um so with that kind of high level overview of the budget we'll turn to the individual utilities updated financial plans so this is a table we bring a couple times a year in july and october and the table and and below and the chart above both represent the same information which is a projection of some key financial

1:44:45 metrics uh reserves and debt service coverage um relative to the targets the change since we presented in july related to is related to um incorporating the 2021 draft budget and escalating that for the remaining 10 years so we're still modeling no increase in 2021 for the electric utility and overall rates that's the fifth consecutive year and six out of seven years with no overall rate increase as you can see all the um targets are met or all of our yeah targets are above throughout the plan in 2023 and 2024 we're approaching the debt service coverage target and we are able to use rate

1:45:30 stabilization funds to support debt service coverage so we kind of optimize that in those years to have the lowest rate increases possible while still meeting targets as you can see towards the end of the plan in 2030 we're stressed in both cash and debt service coverage so those are things that we'll be looking at as we get more information on those years a couple of um assumptions that's worth uh pointing out in this chart is the bond bill rate increase for would go into effect in october 2021 we typically have held any customer or any rate increase to uf customers to the next normal rate increase which will be in 2022 we're still

1:46:16 assuming the um standard assumption of a six percent bonneville rate increase which corresponds to a two and a half percent for the eweb customers we should have more information about that rate increase in next summer so we'll have we'll be able to refine that but for now we have the kind of standard uh six percent every other year assumption that exists in the other um even years new plan uh we are assuming or we're incorporated a full um year outage at the lever generating facility as the canal work is still being assumed to occur throughout the year but there's normal production through with the other generating plants

1:47:01 sometimes we highlight the market prices since we do offset some of our retail costs with wholesale markets um the current forward curve or current wholesale market price for 2021 on average is 29 per megawatt hour and that escalates to 37 in 2030 throughout the plan so that's pretty consistent with um the assumptions we had in july with that i'll go to the water utility so as you can see the water utility is also above metric throughout the plan with the healthy reserve levels and headroom for additional debt and borrowing some of the debt we've assumed in the plan is the 87 million dollars

1:47:46 throughout the 10 years largely to fund the second source uh filtration plant uh which is currently um included at a level of 55 million dollars and then we also have additional debt for some um other capital work you can see um in the in the bar charts um in the table below that we peak in our um cash levels in 2025 when we have currently assumed to start making investments in the second source plan that draws down over the next couple years as it's anticipated to be in service i'm in this version of the plan at least in 2027. another point worth noting is we don't have any additional water shed restoration investments included the extent that the extent of those

1:48:34 investments as well as the nature of them to what extent their capital versus o m and um to and then some of the funding of those whether it's reimbursed or incorporated as a surcharge or in general rates we'll um still incorporate those as we have more information but for now those investments are not incorporated um so as deborah mentioned um in july and in the background we did show financial plans with higher capital expenditure and there seems to be there appears to be a head room for both utilities to make additional strategic investments so i'll turn it over to frank to talk about some of those strategic investments and trade-offs that may be in future plans

1:49:24 thank you adam commissioners and financial people do let me participate in their presentations occasionally just just as a side note i have to beg to get into these presentations but but they did let me to do this so thank you deborah and adam over the past few years eweb's done a good job of managing our customers money and assets and and therefore rates but we also as we've evaluated things we see opportunities to recraft some of our planning assumptions and incorporating turning up the dial on some of the future capital investments this tonight is not a commitment it's not impacting the 2021 budget but the purpose is to plant a seed and get some of your feedback about the appetite to do so as noted

1:50:12 both utilities have opportunities to increase the level of investment over the next decade while still maintaining a rate trajectory that remains at or below inflation and i think that's that's an important piece of context that even with turning up the dial if you look at the compounded rate increase over the decade it's going to be below inflation in general the electric utility has some some aging issues there are some uncertainty issues to plan for along with resiliency the water utility has some large resiliency decisions to plan for and with high level support we think our engineering and planning teams can

1:50:57 formulate a lot more specific plans highlighting the incremental benefits and the returns on those investments and that's that's something that we plan to do but we would be interested in in the board's general appetite for uh increasing the capital investments over the next decade and what that might look like and what advice you might have and with that um for you to ponder i'll turn the presentation or the microphone back over to deborah thank you great thanks can i get the next slide please

1:51:45 uh so so from here after the public hearing and board feedback uh budget the budget team will incorporate that and then return on november 3rd with a draft budget and price proposals although the overall revenue requirement has not increased for either utility the cost of service may indicate that adjustments between classes are needed and the results of the cost of service will be available in november then following feedback from the november 3rd meeting staff will return in december with a proposed budget and price proposals and at that time we'll be seeking board approval so with that i'd like to open it up to hear feedback both on the uh 2021 uh budget and uh future capital spending

1:52:31 all right well thank you debra i'll open up a queue uh hold on just a moment here let me bring everybody back into a view so i can see you all um okay uh if you just raise your hand i can see everybody so if you raise your hand if you'd like to get in the queue i will call on you go ahead sonia hello hey um i i see in there that there's some more work around supporting the the fiber just given our needs in the community to use um our infrastructure there i'm certainly supportive of that overall i think the budget works um how it's been presented i would also just note that i'm also supportive of looking more aggressively again at

1:53:16 the secondary water treatment you know i know that we've been trying to work with springfield on that and would like that effort to continue however i also see the need you know to to move that along quicker and if we're not seeing you know forward progression there i don't want it to delay our work so um to the extent possible i'd like them to know that you know times have taken and at some point we're gonna turn that clock off and just go on our own because it is a need in the community and i you know we felt like due diligence we needed to see if we could partner in the community to save the ratepayers money but at some point if they're not willing to play then we're going to go that's my

1:54:02 my two cents thank you folks i'm going to interrupt this a little bit i just got a text from ann she reminded me i'm taking things a little bit out of sequence thank you ann so our next step actually after the presentation from deborah and her team was to open up a public hearing and i know that we have at least one person who's waiting um to speak once we've completed that then we'll return to um discussion from commissioners so let me open up that public hearing and and if you'll uh let us know who may be in the queue and invite i think it's joe mole to speak that's correct president maitel joe is on the line and ready to go go ahead joe thanks can you hear me again yeah i do again joe mall executive director of

1:54:48 mckenzie river trust 120 shelton mcmurphy boulevard chair my call and commissioners thank you once again for accepting a few minutes of comment this one geared to a longer look at eweb's programs revenues and expenses while i'm speaking on behalf of the mackenzie river trust tonight it's also important to know that i also represent the west central region as a commissioner for the oregon water resources department i'm not speaking on behalf of or otherwise representing any position of wrd this evening but i can say that my service on that commission and the exposure it has given me to the complexity of water issues across the state has influenced my thinking on source water protection greatly i want to begin by reiterating that those programs revenues and expenses that you're

1:55:34 considering are only one measure of how critical an asset eugene water and electric board is to this region well beyond your ratepayers and not just in terms of water quality but to water security eweb has been has long been a model for integrating natural infrastructure and gray infrastructure and i encourage you to continue to demonstrate that mix of entrepreneurial spirit and clear-eyed cost-benefit analysis the staff in the transportation and infrastructure subcommittee in congress are hungry for examples of this the investment you approved earlier this evening and are considering going forward within 2021 and beyond are all demonstrated commitments that will help attract significant federal investment in the years ahead i

1:56:20 mentioned earlier this evening that individuals in the larger community will have some difficult conversations and decisions ahead wayne county commissioners just this afternoon were wrestling with the difficulty of advising residents on how to rebuild post fire in flood plain and floodway just as they are considering amendments to code that better buffer the risks of floodplain development to the river by numbers uweb's customer base is primarily downstream but your constituency including the river itself is upstream on the mackenzie river across the upper willamette basin and by extension all the way downstream to portland you've noted a three to five percent rate increase maybe for three to five years

1:57:05 as a mckenzie watershed recovery surcharge i understand why this language of surcharge is probably being used you're wise to be sensitive to ratepayer concerns about rising costs of living at the same time i think you've collected consistent data over the years that ratepayers are supportive of additional money going to watershed health whether it's characterized as a surcharge or better yet in my mind as a wise investment in community assets by community members while traditional infrastructure replacements or redesigns or upgrades maybe a three to five year time horizon time horizon it may be more important and in fact more encouraging to rate payers in the regional public to hear that you are planning for and investing in the health of the mackenzie

1:57:50 river for decades to come finally while all eyes are on the mackenzie river i'm really encouraged to see in your memo your recognition of the wisdom of continued due diligence and planning for a secondary drinking water source yes in the decades ahead let's invest in the coast fork and middle fork watersheds and let's use the willamette confluence area immediately upstream of uweb property in glenwood as an anchor for source water protection and trust building efforts upstream as it's been noted in your memo and in comments by staff commissioners and member of the public this evening we're still uncovering the impacts including the financial costs of holiday farms fire we're also thinking ahead to the high water season with fingers crossed that we don't have a pineapple express and a

1:58:35 flashy rain and snow season eweb continues to model preparedness and responsiveness that is reassuring to me as a citizen and a part of the city often hammered by falling limbs and whole trees and as a vested member of an e-web-driven partnership that has vision grounded skills and a commitment to public trust commissioner hagelson raised the question earlier is eweb the right one to lead these efforts my answer to that is twofold yes clearly you are and second no one is looking for you to do this alone you have a great many friends in this community and we're here to work with you thank you all right thank you joe and is anybody else in the queue

1:59:20 no that was all for tonight all right well thank you i'm going to close the public hearing and uh return to discussion with commissioners so we had one we have and if you wouldn't mind putting some 15 minutes on the clock sonya had a chance to weigh in does anybody else want to weigh in on the long-term financial plan as presented by deborah and adam go ahead dick thanks for the presentation and for bringing us um the beginnings of a budget that's consistent with all of the things that we've discussed up to this point um first of all um without needing a response tonight um i'm a little bit surprised that we've been able to go six or seven years without any rate increases i know we set about to do that and it was intentional and

2:00:05 there have been a lot of really good efforts made by uh the utility um on the financial and uh cost management front in order to make that possible i also know that as time has gone up that our our on and our you know some of our internal operating costs continue to increase i'm not sure how it we can spend a savings on purchase power budget if that's coming from a reduction in sales revenue because i think there's some lost margin there but i i guess my the point that i would try to make about that is that i'm kind of losing track of um you know how we've been able to manage our way forward and seemingly project for another period

2:00:50 of time a forecast that's consistent with our earlier projections while at the same time contemplating up to 100 million dollars in an additional capital investment i don't oppose that thought and one of our worries all along has been that we would under fund capital in order in the short term to to meet our rate commitment but um i i just um perhaps somewhere along the line could be reminded of how how those pieces all fit together in order to produce such a positive picture without any comeuppance uh down the road with respect to you know future uh cost escalation um so it looks like magic to me but i'm glad that um you know you're seeing that it's

2:01:35 possible for us to contemplate uh yet even higher capital investment than our earlier plans projected i wouldn't oppose considering that but i i guess i would expect that to be vetted through the natural cycle of capital review and all the things that you do there um i i think um as far as the rate proposal itself is concerned um i have a sense that we're not we're going to be looking at rates um in november um i i um understood possibly that we were gonna defer our consideration of uh upper river adjustments um kind of for for uh obvious um reasons with respect to timing relative to public input is that still the case that that

2:02:21 that's not now going to be part of what we would consider this year um yeah commissioner helves and the the plan will be to talk about rates specifically in november and december um the this being the revenue requirement piece of it or the initial piece of it the the thought is that um having and changing the rate the actual rate paid by upriver customers while i still have some some reasons to think that's a good move in the long term i don't think that the timing is such that we could have a robust enough discussion with those

2:03:07 citizens to to feel good about changing their rate there's some other reasons to create a customer class which is different um keeping the rate actually the same there's the benefits to that as well but that the the thought is that we would discuss that in detail when we talk about rates in november so we're still undecided as to whether that's a proposal that would move forward well i'm i'm going to propose that we keep the rate that the mckenzie valley customers pay the same rate that the urban customers pay that's what i'm i'm going to propose but i may also as a

2:03:52 caveat propose a different customer class just the rate will be identical if that makes sense to you all right i didn't have a point to make about it i just wanted clarity as to where we were out with that particular initiative in light of circumstances last month so i think i understand your response thank you frank other comments concerns go ahead mindy just really quick thank you for the presentation i appreciated it um and i want to just i agree with sonia about the second source that um i think it is really important for us to start thinking a little bit more aggressively about it especially in light of the catastrophe that just happened with the

2:04:38 fires at the mackenzie so um i support that and then one very small comment on what joel mull said in his presentation it's a tiny thing but uh or what he said in his um testimony uh talking about a surcharge and mckenzie i can't find it right now but uh but a surcharge for the um restoration projects i do think that it's really important to be careful how we word things because you can call it a surcharge but i do think that we should we should call it something else that um kind of underscores the impact of what we're doing so that's very small and just semantics but i do think it's important

2:05:24 yeah if you don't mind a quick comment on that i appreciate that commissioner we we agree that what we end up calling it from a bill presentation perspective might be a little bit different there's a couple of reasons that we picked um surcharge over just embedding it in rates so joe was talking about embedding something into race first of all we see long-term watershed preservation differently than we do a watershed recovery effort so a recovery effort to us would be more of a short term where you could add this surcharge when you're recovering and then you could back out of it later when you've recovered um we don't want to embed that

2:06:09 in rates uh partially because rating agencies um while they they understand um sometimes you have things that you can increase or decrease rating agencies will downgrade us if we actually reduce rates so but if we have something for a specific purpose that comes in and then goes away and it's for a specific purpose then um there is no impact on from the rating agency perspective so absolutely agree with you the wording is important um for a number of reasons so thank you

2:06:58 well i'll jump in then um uh generally speaking i'm you know fine with the direction we're taking and skewing up for both november and december um as to you know uh thinking about an additional 50 million and 100 million on water and uh electric sites for uh you know adding them to our ten year capital plans uh yeah i guess i feel like i feel like a little bit that's coming out of the blue i'm not really ready to say yeah sure that sounds like a good idea do it that doesn't it seems a little quick i would want to see some more significantly more detail why uh and and to an extent along the lines that um dick already alluded that you know why why now i mean i get that on the water side we i i know that we have been contemplating second source and that

2:07:43 um has that comes with a lot of investment but why is it that we have been made to feel like our capital investment is on the on the electric side now i'm speaking and on the water side it actually has been about adequate and we had asked for some uh metrics and by comparison with our some of our peers across the country is are we investing um properly are we over investing are we under investing and we've been told just by looking at various metrics that you know the age of our system and other kinds of things that we would use to get a gauge on that suggest that we're investing about right so my you know my question is why do we why do we suddenly think that 100 million dollars extra is necessary and what are we going to get for that on the electric side i'm talking and ask the same question on the water side i do agree that

2:08:28 um you know the the sole source this i don't think this by the way gets to the 50 million dollar extra capital investment on the water side because i think we've already kind of baked in the money to our 10-year plan to accommodate a second source so i don't think second source requires an additional 50 million but perhaps a second treatment facility but perhaps i'm misunderstood about that but not you can answer that question in a moment frank um i i do agree that this most recent incident is a just a reminder of our vulnerability and um you know we've had a handful of near misses at different scales this is probably the biggest um of them but it you know reminds us of our vulnerability and the value of of um

2:09:14 diversifying um and so i would be supportive of moving forward that much more aggressively with um uh with the treatment facility on on our on our other river that we have water rights on for that reason um i'll stop there for a minute have some other thoughts but i i'll stop there for a moment right go ahead it seems like you might want to respond yeah yeah thank you um so i'll start on the water side since that's relatively um easy and i think probably more consistent with what the board has has discussed in the past so the we do have 50 million roughly in the mid 2020s for an alternative a drinking water plant the the question will become as we get

2:10:01 into this more and more that to what to what level of of design and water quality and operational characteristics do we design into that plant um a 50 million dollar plant might be a standby plant whereas a a full backup source would be 100 million so there's there's different and those are just sort of rough out outside brackets but as we get into the conversation the degree of investment needed whether we have partnerships or not that's where there will be variance between what was put in there as a placeholder which is 50 million and what we eventually get to as a as the scope and the design of the up of the the plant so

2:10:47 um started at 50 that's what we you're correct we do have that in there now but as we get into the scoping of of a new facility um that that could vary so that that'll be part of that discussion um on the electric side um you know absolutely there's some things that that we're learning as we go um i think that it's been appropriate what we've been doing we haven't um pushed the i think that the term that we talked about last june was the i don't know the lump in the anaconda or i don't remember all the different analogies we used the lump in the snake that we weren't pushing something down the road but we've also run into a number of uncertainties recently and i'll just

2:11:32 cite the canal work as an example i don't know exactly how many millions of dollars we're going to have uh to invest either in in just water management or actual generation that's that's something that we need to start preparing for um but i think you're absolutely right when we come back to the board we want to have the board understand if we turn this dial up here's the benefits that we're going to get we do have an aging system it's been aging for a long time a lot of the infrastructure on the electric side was put in in the 60s and 70s um those are now um 40 and 50 years old reaching into life so

2:12:18 what was appropriate 10 years ago we're we're learning a little bit more but i think your your request is is valid that we do need to come back to the board with okay if we're going to do it use a different baseline for planning here's the assumptions that we're going to make and here's the benefits that the board should expect from us when we do that so that's that's a fair ask debra i want to make sure that um you're getting out of this what you need in order to come back in november and again in december so that we can ultimately pass a budget thank you yes i think we're getting out of it what the budget team needs as frank had mentioned the capital

2:13:03 plan would come back next year so i think we're good all righty well uh i i believe that that there are no more questions but if i'm wrong somebody can jump in all right well in that case we will move on thanks to adam and debra both all right uh let me see here well now we have scheduled a break um we will take it it's 7 45 according to my clock we've only allocated five minutes that seems like it ought to do so um i will see you all at 7 50.

2:18:46 all right folks if you put your cameras back on i guess that's how i'll know when our all the commissioners have returned i see john brown and i see dick helgeson i don't yet see sonia or mindy i see mindy and looks like sonja is joining all right looks like the gang's all here we have just a few minutes a few items remaining item number 12 is base level storage tank upgrades frank um i believe uh you're taking the lead on that one yes president metal commissioners uh once again good evening uh joining me uh for this presentation once again karen kelly our water operations manager and laura farthing who's our senior project engineer and project

2:19:31 manager for the for the project i'd like to you know really this item as requested by the board last month staff prepared an update on the base level storage project status which we included in your board packet this evening the purpose of today's agenda item is for the board to ask any questions or make comments as to the direction the project is heading and with that president mattel we are here basically to listen and respond to the board as necessary so i'll just leave it at that and i don't know if there was another slide i guess we could advance the slide um just for discussion purposes

2:20:16 this is kind of where we are that also between last meeting and this meeting the board met staff at this particular site and which was on east 40th just off of east 40th and so we'd be happy to answer any questions that you may have i might actually ask karen kelly and laura farthing to turn on their videos so they can join the conversation as needed all right well uh looks like we're all here sonia i just want to make sure that you're part of this discussion i don't see you so i'm just making sure you're you're here

2:21:03 yeah i'm here i just turn my video off for a minute that's fine you can do that sorry sometimes a little hard to know what's what's what's going on with the format it looks like we're all here i'll proceed you and feel free to turn your camera off if that works better for you well i'll i'll um we'll open up a queue in a moment in a moment i just want to on behalf of the board just really thank laura in particular for running a great field trip for us i think i think we all valued it and got a lot out of seeing what it looks like on the ground and being having our memories refreshed as to why uh how it fits within the um the network of storage facilities that we have and why the sequencing is important and how long e-web has owned that property and the outreach work that's been done to the neighbors already and the urgency with which eweb feels that we need to proceed in

2:21:49 order to stay on task and get the college heel reservoir done by the state's mandated time so i know that all of that stuff is out there and that's some of the information that i um was reacquainted with and again just want to appreciate you i have some other thoughts to um share about that but i'll open it up to um a cue i just remind folks before i do that um the reason why we wanted to have this item on the agenda is a month ago or i guess it was last month there was some public testimony from a former board member but not in that position she happens to be one of the neighbors most directly affected by the site as to you know some modifications that we might consider making um to accommodate nearby neighbors that's a reasonable thing we get that kind of request all the time

2:22:35 but because we agreed to go out there and take a look i think it caused staff some alarm is probably not the right word but they but uh some potential confusion as to where the board stands in terms of its long-term support for this project so this is an opportunity for us to get clear with uh community in general because it will be recorded in the minutes but also for staff's sake as to where we see the the priority and the need for this project so i'd ask folks to make sure that their comments are clear about um about that so that staff can walk away with uh the direction that they need or or return to us if they need more of it but that's the purpose of this i'll open up a queue

2:23:29 so um with that guidance um steve i i i want to state my full support for the project i've never had any uh major concerns about the approach that staff's taken um just sensitivity to the uh neighborhood and the trade-offs that obviously come up in the context of a project like this so i'm i'm confident that you as staff are appropriately sensitive to what those trade-offs are and doing the work necessary to make plans for the design in a way that balances all of those interests and i realize also that that's not an easy thing to do and that at the end of the day it's possible that not everybody is

2:24:14 completely happy with what we're able to do but i i came away from our um field trip both reacquainted with the site and our plans and also um uh uh kind of re-emphasizing my appreciation for staff's sensitivity to all of the issues that go into a project like this and i really on my part you know to the extent that i was part of asking for this opportunity was just kind of looking to have an opportunity to go out there reacquaint myself with the site and also just have an update a high level update on on kind of where we are with the project and so from from my standpoint those purposes have been accomplished and i would just encourage

2:24:59 you to continue on with your work so thank you for uh helping us see all of that and i'll pass it on to all right well i'll jump in the queue and basically to reiterate dick's um perspective uh i'll still feel full steam ahead i was fully satisfied with staff's um you know responses to questions that were asked out there at the field trip and uh in especially in regard to the ways in which that we are accommodating neighbors and the length of time for which we have had this on the books as a plan um and the ways in which i think um after the whatever it is two or three year construction period we would probably be seen as a good neighbor and helping to maintain what is uh you know a quiet residential um area so i feel good all

2:25:45 the way around about the plans on file and in full support of what staff wants to do if anybody has an alternative perspective i think that would be a useful thing to share all right well hearing none i am going to assume that uh maybe sonia wants to say something i i just wanted to say thank you again for the opportunity i fully support the project and um i i do really appreciate uh i did really appreciate seeing how far away much of the residents are from the project um it seems like there is a particular group obviously that

2:26:30 that will be impacted more than others but the site on the whole seems like it is well away from a number of the neighbors um on the whole it's it's not kind of a around the the whole project it's really that one corridor there that will be mostly impacted and i really that for me that was one of my biggest takeaways so i just wanted to put that kind of out there on the record that um i think staff did a great job in trying in in placement of the project to try to mitigate the you know the impact of those neighbors that's it thank you mindy go ahead

2:27:17 um i don't have anything different in terms of the my opinion but i do want to say that this the field trip was really an excellent way to synthesize the information that you've been presenting to us for quite some time and so just a recommendation not to have field trips all the time but when things like this come up in the future i think it is really helpful at least for me personally to be able to grasp some of the stuff that you're talking about and actually will save time in the deliberation when we when we have more of a sense of like the physical space so i'm a fan of field trips in the future within reason me too uh here here let's uh go ahead john i'm 100 in support of it i trust staff that they're going to do everything that

2:28:02 is necessary to to take the extra step to address the neighbors concerns but it's it's something that's necessary in the community and it's part of a public infrastructure so i supported 100 thanks um well that seems about as uh resounding of support as you could ask for i think laura but if there's anything missing please let us know if you'd like to say anything go ahead you don't have to i i'm not trying to put you on the spot you don't have to if there were things that were missing that you felt like need to be dressed i want you to feel that you have the space to do it i know that frank also wants to say something um so yeah i just wanted you to have the space to say something if you so choose i just wanted to quick say thanks to all the commissioners for coming out to the

2:28:47 field trip it was a good opportunity to show you what we've been talking about and thank you for the support great uh frank did you want to say something yeah i was just going to um make note that the commissioners really just wanted to get outside for a little while um that that was probably the biggest benefit for you all um but i also you know i wanted to thank um laura as the project manager wally mccullough and also jen connors who's been doing a lot of the public outreach which is a a big challenge for these projects so i wanted to um at least acknowledge those three and then the lots of support that they get behind the scenes and and support uh of them as well so thanks for getting

2:29:32 out of the house for a little while and and seeing a beautiful part of eugene um we'll do it again at uh commissioner schlossberg's suggestion so alrighty we will um i think we can close this item out we'll move on to number 13. that's correspondence and board agendas frank the floor is yours yeah president mattel before we move on i thought i saw commissioner helgason racing i missed something uh dick i'm sorry about that if i missed you uh you're i think you are muted i was gonna pass but since you gave me the opportunity um i think the critical thing to pay attention to going forward is that you

2:30:17 know impacts during construction i just remember when all the road work was done up here uh on crest and story and and uh that actually went on for about six months and it seemed um interminable so um i'm hoping that there without raising the cost of the project there are some creative things that we can do to offer those folks some relief from what will be you know kind of probably a two-year sort of industrial scale construction project and on their back porch and that's i know what a challenge that's going to be but i'm hoping there are some creative things that can be done to make that more bearable um even as i wholeheartedly support the project yeah absolutely thank you commissioner all

2:31:02 right well now we'll move into item 13 go ahead frank yeah um thank you president mattel um there was one correspondence item that was an update on the advanced metering project or or program really several projects embedded in that i don't know if you had any questions on that if there were no questions on that we can move on to agenda planning uh coming up um well i know i believe uh commissioner schlossberg asked a question about that i didn't have actually the time to read the response i'll do that afterwards or tomorrow but if there are any other questions about that yep we we followed up on her question all right which one's a good one fair enough

2:31:50 well yeah moving on just to the agendas um we do have um november gosh we're november and december uh which are heavy into budgets and rates um we also have the uh publication of the electrification study the first publication that'll be coming up in november as well so we are going to suggest that we pull off the upriver board meeting from the calendar and just take a look at that almost on a month by month if we see that that there's an opportunity to do that or technology has changed and so we're planning that both of these will be virtual it doesn't look like we're going to return to face-to-face

2:32:37 this year but i think it's all published there for the board to see if you have any comments or questions be happy to answer them otherwise you can we can move on to to closing items i have a quick question um i don't have the date for the november meeting um uh uh you know at my disposal right now have we accommodated the national election i can't remember what we decided on that we still have it scheduled for that evening which is which is fortunate that we live in a vote-by-mail state we hadn't received direction to change that uh to a different night other than um

2:33:23 it's it's presently scheduled for election night um and uh before we take any further question on it is is there any let's just say that we wanted to move it to the second tuesday to accommodate the election is it too late to do that or does that does that create problems for you and or staff the the only caveat that i know of and i'll call on deborah hart there are certain notifications that we have to publish ahead of time for any kind of rate discussion um and so i don't know deborah is there any kind of notification issue with if we wanted to change it you know a day or two either side that you're aware of we we do have a

2:34:08 timeline requirement a notice requirement and we could meet that with a little bit of movement it gets trickier if the november meeting moves way out into november and then we need to notice for the december meeting all right so there's a little room but not a lot yeah well i i know i have interest in in uh and potentially moving it uh we'll take a quick cue uh if we can keep the um focus on this item before we move to other items that'd be great go ahead mindy we've actually talked about this before sonia proposed this months ago um i agree and then i lost track of like i just suddenly realized oh my gosh i've lost track of what happened with this

2:34:53 one yeah and i think we were told that it would be too difficult but i am totally supportive of changing it um to not be on election night well so if it was your proposal i for one i apologize if i dropped the ball that's that that's essentially on me that's my job to move that forward uh but since you propose it once are where are you at with it now i mean i'm i'm still supportive of it moving it i think it's it's really important to acknowledge that time i also think that there's potentially risk um that i'd like to mitigate not having people in places that they don't want to be because our meeting is held at that particular time

2:35:40 i i feel about roughly the same by the way i just feel like this is a different kind of an election year than than your average you know presidential election go ahead dick i i'd be willing to move it um i guess i'd be i wouldn't feel the need necessarily to push it out a whole week i mean maybe even later in the week i i too like everybody else will probably need some recovery time um i i also want to point out without um taking away the seriousness of these things that that our timelines for rape action are self-imposed and there's probably a way that we can make exceptions to them i'm not necessarily proposing that we solve this particular problem by doing that and maybe just pushing it a day or two to later in the week would do the job but

2:36:25 but i just you know since we do make reference to those rate requirements those are not federal or state laws or standards or regulations they're they hearken back to a time when we set our own standards for how we would conduct our rate actions and and um and and they're self-imposed john you want to win no i can uh i can count and so i see it's going to be moved uh like i say we we did this before we said no uh and now we're bringing it up again at the bottom of the ninth and two out i you know personally it doesn't matter to me one day we meet but uh there are going to be some logistics in trying to get that done because i know that we have executive sessions planned for that meeting two of them and then we have the regular session and

2:37:11 then we have the budget issue and so i just didn't know why we brought it back up again if we've already vetted this once and uh it was voted not to do it and now we're voting to do it so i don't know what's changed [Music] but like you said you can count go ahead sonia i mean for me the political climate is more volatile than ever and i again i i just worry about the safety of staff who are you know potentially on site supporting our efforts here i mean for me that's that's one of the biggest issues i also think that it's very distracting and to actually expect that people are going to come out and even be involved in in our budget or budgetary process on that night it's it's not very

2:37:58 respectful of people they're they're not going to pay attention at all i'll tell you what i'll be doing during the meeting if we actually hold it on november 3rd you'll be seeing me going like this a whole bunch and checking you know the new york times for the latest results so and right it's going to be an incredibly distracting night i don't know honestly whether it's an unsafe night any more so or any less to have a virtual meeting but the the distractions are intense uh i i certainly will be distracted so president mattel i think what what um we can do is um propose some options to the board if that's acceptable to the board i'm i don't know if this takes an actual vote for us to do that um if you'd rather do that and make it formal or if you would just like us to go ahead

2:38:43 and and propose some some alternative dates that would be relatively close to that time i mean for my part i'm fine just moving in a couple days like thursday or something you know um just to kind of get clear of the day itself yeah i think what i'm hearing is you know somewhere between a day two days and but not more than a week and perhaps uh you know maybe it's not the best setting right here now to figure out who's available when and for how many hours and all that kind of thing but there could be a poll taken in a day or two uh with the expectation that everybody respond promptly so that we can settle this um within 48 hours as to when our next

2:39:29 meeting is going to be but it seems like there's enough interest uh you know we can all count that um that um it's clear that we don't want it on the third um i could imagine by the way that if if we were doing if if you felt um some urgency around our executive session items which were only scheduled to take a half an hour and we were gonna do that at five o'clock that that's relatively early and perhaps people did have the attention span to um handle that as proposed and we would be done with that with you know at 5 30 on the west coast not too much is going on just yet that that's a possibility as well i'll leave it in your hands frank to throw out some proposals but i'll ask everybody to respond to look at their email and respond immediately so we can settle it yeah president mattel that i'm they're

2:40:16 we're we're a nimble organization now so we can make a lot of adjustments um i i might even suggest that we do it before election night i'm not sure what the climate is going to be for a day or two after the election um and so an independent of the result um but um we'll we'll propose some options to the board and um hopefully you you all can get back to us uh quickly on that that would be helpful yeah i agree by the way the monday night might just be fine and i agree that we might all be kind of on pins and needles for several days if not longer so um so that sounds fine all right well um does that do it for number 13 are we in board wrap up or maybe that's where we already wear i forgot yeah we're on board wrap up president

2:41:01 mattel hey i just want to throw out uh one thing and then other folks can take their opportunity as well i know it's early um with regard to you know changes in the way the ways in which we um think about our how we manage risk up river um but the one thing that became somewhat uh you know clear for me is that there's go there needs to be some policy change and i'm sure that staff is thinking about this already with regard to how whether we um uh you know preemptively turn power off in light of um dry season storms we'll call that we'll call it that right we haven't had to do it in the past because big wind storms generally happen in the winter

2:41:46 um when everything's really wet and so there's very little if any fire risk well if it turns out that we're going to have more storms during the dry season especially september the driest month of the year around here that might be something worth um us considering and then the other thing is uh additional and more aggressive tree trimming um i uh you know to to me and one of the biggest things that we can do in terms of protecting that watershed long term leaving aside the restoration efforts is um is more aggressive tree trimming and thinking about those so i i just want to put that out there i'm sure staff and other commissioners are thinking about those as well but um it very well might be that this is not just a once in a hundred year you know september reverse wind event but something that could happen more frequently and so we

2:42:31 ought to start um thinking about the ways in which we manage ourselves up there differently so that's a thought that i had um i'll open it up to other folks who might have um other board wrap up items we can maybe just go right down the list from there uh if starting where how we normally sit so maybe i guess that makes it your turn yeah um i wanted to make a quick comment on something that frank said before when we were talking about the watershed restoration and he talked about how it was important for eweb to take a lead in water quality and um it just made me think of my experience thus far volunteering for the red cross and red cross is an amazing organization and they have a lot of experts and they

2:43:16 brought in a lot of people from all over the country who've done disaster training but something that has was has become very apparent to me is that they don't know the local landscape when they're um when they're looking at addressing either rapid response or recovery and so i don't want to diss the red cross at all but there just seems to be a lot of redundancy and efficiency um and not harnessing some of the local knowledge that's there and so i know what we're doing upriver is of a much different scale but i just do think the importance of us having local knowledge and a presence here is really important it's just as important as this working with partners um like fema or epa or whoever we're going to work with

2:44:01 but just to make sure that we're aware of kind of the the power that we harness here and um our importance and that is all thank you commissioner schlossberg all right sonya uh wait did i get that right wait a minute no dick helga said i cannot keep track of how we the order in which we sit i'll be quick and just say that um there are a couple of references once again tonight to um uh eloquence on my part and and i have to say that i i take that in part as a compliment but also kind of wonder about it because it sort of sounds like you're saying uh well we didn't agree with anything you said but we sure liked the way you said it [Laughter] too that's not at all what i meant by the way i i almost always agree with what you say there's a couple of exceptions good meeting tonight thanks

2:44:47 everybody sonia great uh yeah good meeting thank you for all the all the discussion i really do appreciate the candor that we have and you know the ability to to disagree and talk through points i did want to kind of throw out the idea and maybe it's a crazy idea maybe you're thinking about it already i don't know um but i'll ask uh upriver now that we have to replace all these poles and electrical lines and all that i mean we're talking about tree trimming is this an opportunity to underground would it have been helpful in this situation would the wires have just melted i don't know but um it's maybe something to consider since there's a more clear landscape there i i know

2:45:33 that it's you know obviously a very devastating situation but maybe there are things that we can do in the future to mitigate that i mean if you don't have trees landing on the lines and potentially starting fires you know i mean however however you know things happen i mean that's what we saw down in california we don't know what's happened up river but um you know down down in california they saw that it may be an opportunity now that there's a clear landscape to just look at the potential risk to the region and what you know what we could do to uh to fix that moving forward so that's my two cents alrighty um i think i already had my say so i will um pass it on to my good

2:46:19 friend john brown who's feathers i'm sure i ruffled quite a bit this evening but hopefully we are still friends uh here at uh at 8 18 p.m john do you have anything to say well uh president mattel uh john had a computer issue i don't think that he i asked him if he had any comments for me to pass along and he and he said nope i'm done so um i don't know so so that's it so i guess that it by default moves along to me um you know i just want to thank the commissioners for for the discussion this evening it's always helpful to us to get different perspectives some of the questions that you posed around

2:47:04 policy around undergrounding around mitigation those we we are at the very beginning of some of those um i know that um we have contemplated a lot of those already um and and more work still to come i i don't want to elaborate too much there's just a lot to it we did see some underground service laterals melt by the way so in some cases that may or may not help but but there is an opportunity um when especially if things can be done um like we did with the 16 projects after this the ice storm where we had fema reimbursed system upgrades for

2:47:50 resiliency that we could do there's there's some opportunities for that as well um and so a lot more to come on everything that was mentioned here in wrap-up and so we we appreciate that and and i think um the comments around the red cross and developing relationships and having a local knowledge that's important um a lot of the relationships that that our water quality group developed over the last few years with watershed preservation is now bearing results in watershed recovery so those are not those are relationships that took a long time to build and and we'll have to leverage those and and work with those people now so

2:48:35 um thanks for all your comments um appreciate it uh we got a lot out of it but more a lot more to come too so um that's all i had president mattel alrighty well um with that um i think i will uh conclude the meeting you think it's an iphone but um actually it's a gavel good night everybody see you in about a month good night thank you you