EWEB Board of Commissioners — August 1, 2023

0:04 to order August 1st a quick facility and safety awareness uh briefing thank you for attending this evening's board meeting you have management and such a kind of expert okay if you win management subject matter experts are here with us in the room and bird Community during tonight's presentations presenters will appear on the screen please make sure to speak loudly and clearly so everyone can hear you guests are invited to sign up at the table in the back room so they wish to provide public testimony Luther access is limited to the board meeting room and the restrooms the restrooms are located on the first floor the exit through the right hand door the front of the room and across the hallway in case of an emergency such as a fire alarm exit through the glass door at the

0:49 back of the room amen Melissa is not safe to do so the alternate emergency exit is located at the rear of the building just be on the restrooms from an evacuation follow staff's instructions and stay together for safety tonight's meeting will be recorded reporting will start when the meeting is called order and we'll continue until adjournment room will be muted during break aside from that period virtual participants on the screen and in public audience will be able to hear conversations in the room until the meeting is disconnected uh real quick we have uh agenda check any what's the agenda all right we will move right along to items from board members and the general manager

1:39 one and I'm looking John brovsky is joining us virtually oh think from me thank you thank you okay all right well we just met a couple of weeks ago so maybe not mixed up then um to Frank Frank do you have anything nope nope okay easy correspondence Commissioners there was one item of Correspondence in your package for this evening's meeting had to do with the draft Communications and Outreach plan for maybe upcoming large and impactful project at College Hill our request we do have agenda time

2:24 scheduled for next month on this item to walk it through with Commissioners as well as take your questions you are encouraged if you have questions to either email those to me or if this correspondent has brought about any other comments be or if you want to just ask them now the staff will be prepared for next month but if you do have some things that are coming to flying up front the sooner you can reach out the more we can research it and be ready for next month so um this was just a preliminary item for next month and we'll look forward through that conversation thank you did anybody have any questions

3:13 they don't certain thing from John grosski John if I miss you please just pick up and interject so I know that you're there because it's not your visual is not coming up on my computer screen uh yeah nothing for me and the person who and we have one by telephone but my understanding state of America right yes so we will have we'll call on telephone to come last so when your name is called please come forward and clearly state your name and optionally your address or board the speaker will be offered three minutes to present their testimony please keep track talk about watching the timer at the front of the room or by listening to the audio notification when

3:59 three minutes has elapsed if you are participating by telephone remember to unmute your call after all testimonies heard each commissioner will have an opportunity to speak if they choose although by policy we do not engage in a back and forth dialogue please note that failure of a commissioner to speak shall not be considered as supportive of our opposition to any speaker's customer the question is presented by a speaker and the board does not provide an answer a new web staff member will contact the speaker so the question can be addressed at a later time okay so uh I have a number I'm going to list off the first three so that people know who's up next so we have Jake Risley I apologize if I have butchered any of these names um will Rutherford

4:46 followed by Tim Morris I'll give the next ones out here I think this is where I said yes please thank you good evening my name is Jay Grizzly I live at 44895 Lieber Dam Road in Vita I'm here tonight with my wife nian several of my neighbors who live on Lieber Dam Road NewsHour drive and good path to road we weren't supportive of eweb's decision to remove the dam I would bet if you lived or owned a business up River you probably would feel the same way but we're not here to talk about eweep's decision to decommission to Dam we're here to assist you in making your next decisions one that will affect all of us that live on these three rural roads access to our homes access to our businesses and access to our park for

5:33 example Jim Russell who owns a White Water Ranch a large organic blueberry farm and Timber operations located across Lieber to him currently Harvest about 750 000 pounds of blueberries each year and all of them across the dam to Market eweb's proposed route cross good pasture Bridge would create excuse me enormous impact on his operation his trucks won't fit under that bridge increased traffic belonging this proposed route will also impact the hundreds of residents that live and work on the south side of the McKinsey River by creating safety issues through congestion of the intersection of good Pasture Road and Highway 126. Russell reached out to Adam Spencer and Jeremy with emoji and related to me that you have intends to bring on a consultant to assist with the transportation analysis

6:18 that will look at access to Alternatives I'm told this will happen later this year or early next year we also understand that there will be opportunities for public feedback of your analysis which I'm sure many of us will want to take part in Adam asked him to get back to him what traffic concerns to help him with the analysis those are just those of us that live up know the obstacles and disruption that will occur if your proposed route connecting Lieber Dam to Lee Shore Drive is chosen I have listed just a few that you may not be aware of first there's Property Owners along this route who are adamant that they can sell their land or have a road run through their property are you going to have to resort to combination of their property second existing topography and exposed Bedrock along this route will make it very expensive to construct a two-lane

7:03 road that Lane County standard there's a private water system for the resident residents that live along the shore drive the room that runs alongside and under the current road which would need to be replaced as well as the treatment facility at the corner of Lake Shore Drive and good Pasture Road support the existing intersection of Cleopatra Road and Highway 126 that's Port four Sidelines in both directions and traffic across historic good pasture bridge is limited to a single Lane in order to make this intersection safe ODOT would need to widen the road and create an left hand turn lane with soundtrack which would be very costly due to the large rock wall runs along the north side of highway 126. these are just a few of the physical challenges that need to be considered when there's routing examined other

7:48 impacts other impacts include first widening rural neighborhood roads and changing the livability of existing residents to accommodate increased traffic avoid Knox Park the McKinsey Fish Hatchery and whitewater Ranch second flooring of home values along the Oregon Road Lee Shore Drive and Highway 126 by removing Libra blade third what will happen avoid Knox Park Beaver Lake is its primary draw for current price the link is removed who will come and what will they do we fear the negative impacts they might bring to those of us that live along this proposed route thank you very much sorry your three minutes is um but thank you very much for providing the rest of your testimony and written form

8:45 thank you very much we really appreciate your time thank you for providing it an email or in a different points good evening I'm will Rutherford I'm a president obaida uh and list all the controversy and dialogue that's going on I guess I would like to just provide you web with a little feedback on transparency I'd like to compliment the people that made the presentations at the June up

9:31 Riverview a lot of work I know I think for those presentations and some of what was said wasn't heard because there was a there was a very serious a challenge in front of folks at the time and it remains but those people did a great job and then I'd also like to acknowledge people like uh Ashley Adam Jeremy and others for the Reach Out campaign that eweb's doing with with the current connections and all of the other information that's available to us in the public and many people don't know that they can get copies of presentations that are

10:16 going to be made to you folks off the agenda if they go to the eweb website so you give me a lot of information available to everybody and I hope that we can use that information as part of our dialogue as we wrestle through challenges of upriver beaver root canal Libra dance Lake and all of that thank you for what you're doing keeping the public informed about the processes next up we have Tim Morris followed by Clipper open and then Don

11:01 I love it uh I apologize my notes are on my phone so I promise I'm not texting uh thank you for the opportunity to speak tonight chair Carlson and staff and Commissioners for the record my name is Timothy Morris I live at 1272 Willamette Street unit number 110 right next to the fire station I live in north um I'm here today as the executive director of the Springfield Eugene tennis Association I'm here to introduce our organization to those who are unaware of what we do uh and to share our appreciation of the topic today between supporting renters um Ceta is a 501c3 nonprofit dedicated to renters rates and interests our goals are to assist educate and Empower tenants across Lane County uh we are one of two tenant specific service providers in the state of Oregon uh and we've been operating since 2019.

11:48 um one of our programs our primary program is our free tenant hotline where any renter or any Community member can call in ask questions share concerns uh and you're able to respond to them and that's been in operation since 2019 as well uh through a hotline our trained staff and volunteers uh can support tenants who are seeking information and resources uh we uh resolve on average about 170 calls per month are keeping hundreds of tenants in their homes and off the streets um I share all this because Ceta actively connects with tenants in Eugene uh with many things including utility assistance and ways to connect with your staff to troubleshoot concerns or issues with their own uh utilities um it has a short aside um we currently partner with uh Lane

12:33 County and other Community Partners to expedite particularly High case needs of folks who are at imminent risk of uh homelessness and um and have uh seeking right assistance and if there's an opportunity for some kind of similar collaboration with our organization we'd be very happy um but I am here today to just share that we are enthused to see that eweb is proactively seeking Solutions both to address the real threat of climate change and to also provide support to low-income tenant um do the extremely low vacancy rate here in the City of Eugene tenants don't often have choices in their housing instead needing to move into the only one that may be available at the time uh finding opportunities to support the daily lives of tenants with both providing Energy Efficiency and also

13:19 lowering the cost of their utilities is part of our mission well we look forward to this continued discussion and seeking ways to support those most vulnerable in our community and we're here to serve and happy to be honest thank you my name is Ben Poland I live at 46559 good Master Road ryda and I have been involved in developing the emergency evacuation

14:06 plans for residents on good bastard Road I'd like to speak to you tonight regarding the ldap in the future of believer the Amber Rose is both good Pasture Road we are damn road are the sole entry and exit portals for their residents the existence of emergency evacuation routes have life or death importance to these residents and therefore it should be a key component which is currently missing from the ltap if the current ldap that's enacted all of the residents of both good Meister Road

14:51 and Lieber Dam Road will have to rely on the wooden good pasture Bridge it's their sole emergency evacuation portal to risk this plan places on these residents became strikingly evident during the holiday Farm fire when a good pasture Bridge it was only saved to the heroic actions of the McKenzie Fire Department the results that they cannot be guaranteed for future fires actually the situation is worse as the correct ldap significantly increases the risk specifically for good Pasture Road

15:36 residents this is because Liberty has been identified as a chief component of the safest emergency evacuation route the good Pasture Road residence in case exit across the good pastor bridge is jeopardized without deliver Dam Road as an exit point good pasture residents would be forced to navigate long stretches of unmarked logging roads in an attempt to reach Highway 58 for safety our request therefore if you please include this very important factor in your future training efforts thank you

16:37 and finally Gary captain from the in-person respect my name is John parkas four five four five good Factory Road provided did not match the elephants of the previous speaker who pretty much I'd like to have the same issue you do with the Beaver Dam Road thanks to communities spiritually each of these have one thing in common only one way out payoff the damn road is very very important farthest subject to any adverse problems such as fire between

17:24 the wood patches Woodbury Bridge I understand that in some previous discussions here committee discussed connecting the two communities which are right now not coming their neighbors but they're not connected if you you do that and eliminate the dam the damn road the damn the damn road uh all the Lieber Community folks will have to also Channel if it better than region try to get out it's going to be like a rush hour traffic on on-ramp on the pathway and I saw that already on that famous night for Labor Day when the fire broke our thing we were evacuated at midnight

18:10 and they were cars lined up just to get through with Factory bridge both communities please find a solution where there are more ways to get both of those communities out onto 126. that's before 19 speaker said the only way right now out either good graduate residence the students treacherous travel Logging Road which goes through gated private property and even if you get through it takes you something like 30 miles to connect with probably 58 near

18:59 Oak Ridge so you know please give us some some hope that we will be able to evacuate if any of the catastrophic events fire or Hoover Dam breaks we have no way of getting on especially not if you would put all the lever and residency onto the clefacturers Bridge Road by connecting the two coming communities it's a difficult task I know that you have to rear just like the secretary lady made a big point of how to evacuate from this little room well imagine the community evacuating

19:46 having a lot more importance than just one small room I'll be evacuated thank you thank you last month's presentation at your board meeting promoting boiling water with atomic fission was one of the most outrageous misrepresentations I've ever heard the most disgusting part was the speaker's endorsement of what he calls recycling of nuclear waste reprocessing the correct term of a radiated nucleophil rods is the most

20:32 toxic and dangerous technology ever invented if anything else comes close not coal burning garbage burning nor massive clear coating that Oregon has suffered reprocessing was first developed at Hanford for the purpose of the Manhattan Project plutonium for nuclear weapons it involves dropping irradiated fuel rods into acids and then using solvents to separate out the unfisioned uranium the plutonium created by Neutron absorption of u-238 and then the mass of fission products that are extremely radioactive and therefore thermally hot this technology Purex plutonium uranium extraction is responsible for the worst pollution in Hanford that is costing a

21:18 hundred billion dollars to try to stabilize cleanup is impossible because it can't be detoxified and it's pouring polluted groundwater into the Colombian commercial reprocessing was a technological and Commercial failure in the U.S and ended in the 1970s after India used it to develop their first nuclear weapon your speaker last month suggested that reprocessing the nation's commercial nuclear fuel could extract 1500 tons of plutonium for use in reactors which is more dangerous than using uranium for reactors because they can explode in contrast about 100 tons were separated from reactors solely operated to make

22:03 plutonium for weapons at Hanford in South Carolina it takes five kilograms of plutonium to make a nuclear weapon so 1500 tons translates into your speaker supporting a quarter million plus nuclear weapons quarter million nuclear weapons is what your speaker was recommending that we suffer in 1975 the nuclear Regulatory Commission warned an Economy based on nuclear reprocessing might require suspension of civil liberties since it would create Commerce and nuclear weapons ingredients extreme costs of the nuclear Revival and the least of our problems in a short run they can bankrupt utilities like whoops

22:48 but the real threat is creating permanent sacrifice zones we can't even build water tanks that can last a human lifetime and how can anyone expect to safeguard corrosive hot radioactive material longer than civilization has ever existed we've made a nuclear War's worth of nuclear waste and you're seriously thinking about making more you need to conserve energy reduce demand you all know this go to Big Creek on the coast where eweb wanted to build a reactor and there's no reactor today contemplate the longevity of your great great great great great great great great grandchildren's legacy thank you [Music]

23:39 um before the clock starts I'd like to say that um in the registered God session meetings are at six o'clock on the first Tuesdays of every month so um I think starting at 5 30 was a little bit misleading for a lot of people that might still show up tonight [Music] I was for our July 11th meeting our our website's the best place to check for current meeting start times okay thank you I'm Nadine Scott a homeowner on Lee bird Lake a real estate broker for Windermere Real Estate I was president of the McKenzie Chamber of Commerce for 12 years a

24:25 correspondence secretary for the McKinsey Clearwater Coalition and a concerned e-web rate pay it's my understanding to decommissioned Liebert pile canals removed the eweb Dam bridge and revert Lieber Lake back to a rhythm the estimated cost would be about 221 million dollars and not all expenses have been researched recent article in RG said you were going to have to find ways to generate more power you have an existing green energy resource that you're destroying and you recently built a substation in Lieber at the expense of 7.6 million dollars I'm here tonight to ask why the Dam

25:10 bridge be removed in the lake drained the dam does not produce any polyp and eweb recently spent 5.2 million dollars considering all three role Gates on the dam I believe eweb owns the bridge in the dam but the county owns the road over it and maintains it is the only Ingress egress to homes on the other side of the bridge a road Builder told me if he had to build a new bridge and road over the river lake it would cost around 10 million dollars if eweb kept the dam in the bridge and just maintained it it would be a fraction of the cost of removing it

25:55 because eweb contacted Lane County Commissioners to discuss the option of them taking over the existing Dam and Bridge and maintaining it rather than building all New Roads the cost of them maintaining it would be considerably less than building a new bridge in roads tourism is the main economy of the MacKenzie River Valley last September we gathered 1100 signatures from tourists that were using Lee bird Lake for recreational purposes if the lake goes away so does tourism if tourism goes away businesses will be affected decrease in business will affect the housing market and the economy of the McKenzie river valley

26:40 we need to preserve what we have instead of destroying historical land rocks and recreational opportunities for our already suffering McKenzie river valley community at the devastating fire of 2020. I wonder if your rate pays are aware of the extreme increases they will have to absorb for years to come after you have already wasted over 12 million dollars of your great paid installers we thought the meeting was starting at 65. we go to the phone

27:33 unmute number six hello oh there we are okay okay uh Eugene I'm recording about a project I've worked on since Blue River Oregon burned on September 2020 proceeded and followed by California Canada and other towns um see Kathy ging Facebook page for hundreds of posts where I have rounded up hemp Building Material information and processes worldwide and my quest to

28:18 find affordable fireproof locally sourced sustainable housing seeing the egregious oversights and current house building practices as a licensed realtor for 35 years one can join International hemp Builders Forum on Facebook also to learn from eighteen thousand persons worldwide I've been a thought leader in Oregon about the need to research and Implement more Renewables since 1975 with the three Lane County energy roundoffs and the three Oregon State Fair energy roundups and stuff like that the need for learning to build with a more permanency and resiliency is seen in an obvious lack of knowledge of building the five-person materials uh exhibited

29:03 in the MacKenzie River House is going up right now that are essentially the same fireflow type structures with a few uh firewise measures thrown in in the near future I hope to have a PowerPoint put together by myself and a local an Oregon building contractor who is also a techie who is going to try to convert his business to start building with more hemp I am informing you here and the community also that we may in the near future ask for eweb to allow us to make a presentation to the board to help educate you staff and customers I attended 11 National and international hemp building symposia including two in France and Ireland online uh and I

29:48 bought 64 copies of Steve Allen's book of hemp building and uh it's uh hempbuilding.com is the website and the 50 International case studies at that site four pages each is one of excuse me somebody's making some noise four pages each that will address everything from earthquake resistance and building a 13 000 feet elevation anyway anything you want to see in the world is in the 50s book um what I was going to also say is the secretary of the United States hemp Building Association which I urge you to join it's 99 for an individual which get now gets you the 369 dollar International hemp building directory of

30:35 400 hemp building products for uh 25 Nation topics 25 Nations to help get you quick started to do what they've been doing in Europe for 30 to 40 years uh 30 to 40 countries have been building with hemp and these buildings can last up to 600 to 800 years they are mold termite eroded soap and carbon negative not only carbon neutral so I wanted to say the steps I'm sorry what's that that was the three minute time that sound okay I just want to say Gene Lotus on Facebook is the author of The International hemp building directory thank you for your time bye bye

31:22 I did look at the Register Guard article and it says that the meeting starts at 5 45. I'm not sure why it says that but right here now a few minutes after six okay I'll leave the public comment open and if he shows up before 6 15 was that reasonable okay then we will take time and pause here that testimony in the meantime uh we'll go to comments from commissioners

32:09 thanks for the testimony from Folks at River it's super helpful to hear from you um I just appreciate you making the time and sharing your your thinking this I understand that you have unique knowledge of the area that we're talking about so I appreciate your involvement um I also appreciate the written in testimony it's super helpful to have the risk and testimony for us to um refer to um I would ask staff if we could just take a moment and talk about where we are in the transportation playing I have some understandings about it but if we just had 30 seconds to share the state of Transportation Planning regarding Lieber I think that'd be valuable

32:57 also Echo that because I went back and looked at the plans and the review the action plan and I didn't see anything in there that was very detailed and specific it was a plan to make a plan to make a study um so it sounds like there's lots of opportunities for other Transportation I mean nothing is solidified it's all in study mode so yeah I was going to address that directly so you're absolutely correct um in fact when part of this process that we go through it'll be recognized eweb is not the Transportation Authority for the area however as part of the process we will be required and we'll voluntarily as well work with Lane

33:44 County and the Oregon Department of Transportation on the transportation issues and so um it's it's great to understand and and hear from the community around things like access and emergency access I have already briefed the Lane County Administrator that this is an issue that's going to be coming forth in the next number of years and so um I think it's important to note what um's role is going to be in this and what our role is not going to be in this and in fact a presentation later today I'll talk a little bit more about the process and where that fits

34:31 yeah I just wanted to um Echo that I really appreciate everybody coming and especially speak up please yeah sorry I appreciate everybody coming and I I really appreciate highlighting specific concerns that you have about Road and safety and things like that and um I just want to make sure that we don't um keep this at too high of a level I know that we have this whole Master planning that we're doing but we've heard that there's a lot of uncertainty and anxiety from people that live there and I want to make sure that we come up with a plan that um people know what's going on and and um that that it doesn't it doesn't it doesn't stay like too high and kind of up in the up in the weeds

35:17 and that people are informed and that we um are able to listen to what people have to say all right are you Gary Fox by chance sorry that's me okay we pause so that you could provide testimony so please come on up and we'll give you your three minutes oh good fun you did where would you like me uh just at this table right here would be great kind of like a deposition kind of except there's a lot more people we for us and normally there's somebody taking uh well

36:02 there probably are here probably I'm doing the uh the exact uh M's and has thank you so much good to see everybody this is I get three minutes but I'll be Speedy on this uh look the reason I'm showing up here is because of everybody knows the Liebert issue and the dam is coming down and the water is going to flow and you know we um don't want folks to think that we've gone away because we're not speaking up enough as a group maybe we are we have a good speaker here that's representing us and we have a group of nicoro people up there that are very

36:48 concerned and upset about various things resolving the dam removal whether it be a bridge access or whether it be recreational use or whether it be just the fact that it's been there a long time so my testimony basically is to say look I'm a very uh elderly person in a way because in 1967 I'm sure a couple of us might remember those years I had the opportunity of working for the corps I talked about that last time but in that buckets in those days with the folks that we are following in life they put a great value on recreational uh locations and if I'm not mistaken at that time leiberg was one of the focus

37:34 areas for that part of the Eugene area Eugene Lane County area I didn't do survey up there at the that leaper but I did it in two or three other areas of recreational uh usage by folks that came in for Lake usage so you've got that that we need to consider you've got obviously access to the other side of the river for folks you've got a lot of us doubting the fact that you can't uh at least up state that facility and if and make it work and profitable the last I heard water was free now I know you have to take the water and you have to be able to channel it in

38:19 a way that makes you money but from my perspective to tear something down is expensive it'll also affect a lot of people and adversely and you're affecting so many pieces and parts which three minutes doesn't allow me to do and I didn't have a three-minute speech can't but I do have the feelings of people up that River and those that have been using it whether they're in local people or not and those that live on the river and those that Overlook them we don't know the size of that River in 30 seconds so we'll go down to 20 or 30 feet we don't know that we don't know why Mr Brown over here hasn't uh maybe he can give me some light on the recreational uh usage of the river and

39:06 the licensed fisherman and people that take people up and down the river why that would be a good idea for those that do that for a living so in looking at it from a broad standpoint and with all of us neighbors and what have you I flew up here for my three minutes to say this is wrong and somehow we're going to do something about it I don't know what it's certainly not going to be expressing ourselves to you here and getting somebody to make a decision it probably is going to have to be some Wizardry of knowledge that will allow us to do something to stop this now one last thing from my vantage point if I'm not mistaken you talked about 20 years is that is that right to decommission this and tear it down and probably a 15 to 20 years 15 to 20 years

39:51 well when you're my age 15 to 20 years is like three so it's an important thing for me and a lot of other people out there plus those that come behind me my family and their families that do the best we can while we're still here to talk about it so I appreciate your time and I appreciate the opportunity to uh spoke to all of you and others that might have heard me speak I hope to some of their concerns that I have and I just do not fully understand that you're coping with all of the costs and expenses not only emotional expenses but physical expenses by people and money and usage of this Lake and that Dam and I don't see all of the paperwork about how it's going to be so much to redo it

40:38 and what have you I just am not convinced I know or do I think our neighbors so my zero says I have to go but thank you sir for your time and that's all I have to say thank you thank you is there any other final comments okay John Brown I'd like to thank everybody from upriver um I take the comments by other Commissioners and responded um I'd like to talk to Tim about the letter thing if you look on our agenda this evening we have uh slots Sacramento municipality they're going to talk to us about weatherizing and making Energy Efficiency to the metal pool which is 50 of the housing stock in our service area

41:24 so that may be something that will interest you because they've got a pretty successful program there and uh mark thank you I I was around where you're at peak oil and I get it uh nuclear is illegal in Oregon it's been illegal since 2008 and it's been that was reaffirmed but I do know that the Biden administration's Department of energy just approved 2.5 billion dollars to study uh to exactly what you're policing against and so there's competing importance there that the doe is saying let's do it let's let's study small scale nuclear and all of that and they put billions of dollars into the research into it and uh but I get the sentiment of not only the state but our community so thank you I'm not going to engage

42:14 friends we are going to move on to our next we are taking off time here and we're going to go to the approval of consent calendar a then you want to pull anything all right uh next up we have the defense calendar week and we wish to pull anything from consent calendar B John Brown number three number three okay whenever you want to anything else oh I'm just going to move to approve consent calendar B minus item three

43:05 also in favor of a pool consent calendar B without uh number three okay moving on to number three I'd like to thank Steph for responding to my question but I still want to I have questions about a 2.3 million dollars to build a 500 foot Millennial Road always September and extended water line and prepare two foundations for mobile homes is absolutely it's really really really hard for me to accept but I understand the legislative how much it costs a deadhead staff get concrete up there to Carmen and everything but when we bid these I mean we had nine proposal bidders and only two submitted a bid they didn't want to bid it because they couldn't meet the two-year timeline we're not even building the houses we're

43:50 just building foundations in an access road for 2.3 million dollars and so when we put out those requests for this do we have an expectation of the commodity unit price like what a yard of concrete is going to cost us up there and what a living foot of a road is to know just how bad it is is that part of the procurement process or is this just whatever the lowest bid is and then Mark is also in the audience he can he can help with this um just a quick clarification on the scope of the project it is building roads it is building Foundation but they're also going to be building a large building yeah the construction of the building itself is part of that in the response

44:35 to your question um we've provided some additional details on why concrete is so expensive up there um this project is also subject to fully wages and then in addition to that Mark do you want to share some of the additional information there's you know one laundry list of complications with construction at our remote site John you were picking up on that with the concrete example um but you know we were observing as well that uh construction season at Carmen Smith another example would be the the fire precautions that contractors are required to implement while they're up there pretty much from July to the end of the construction season we're at some sort of uh fire protection

45:21 requirements where contracts are out there being waivers um they have to supply tools uh firefighting equipment they have to stop work currently as of the beginning about mid July have stopped work at 1pm um due to the so it's just another example of the challenges that a contractor faces when they're working at the carbon during our construction season which coincides with viruses limited complications so that it has in terms of costs so clarifiers we have an expectation of what this was going to cost before we got to 2.3 and the 2.8 million dollar bibs we did have an expectation of what it would cost based on our our historical experience up there the

46:07 design engineer for it Jacobs used to be ch2m Hill their reaction to the bid price was that it was lower than their expectation the competing bid for the select contactor from Laos which is a contractor is very familiar with the site and the complications that they have to manage and I think that's part of the explanation for you know where network is so just for different application so they have to stop at 1pm but they also deadhead from Salem they drive up from Salem everything and so we've got an hour and a half commute one way and and I mean I just try to yeah my head around 2.3 million dollars those are the best that's why

46:54 like on a you know perch 8 yard of concrete basis it's dramatically different at Carmen Smith than it is um in the valley all right well I'm going to vote to approve it but we have to do it and we have to do it for licensing and things because sticker shock and when we do a five and ten year Capital Improvement projects you know I'm barking about inflation of things and cost here's a classic example I'm pretty sure I know what that would cost you know 3200 square foot open sided building in that road and uh and two foundations pretty sure I'd get it out for a whole lot less than 2.3 million dollars right and that's like um Lisa mentioned too the prevailing wages typically those types of projects in the valley are not built a mirabali um

47:44 projects too and it factors in a lot of little things that add up to a head scratcher I think it's really good yeah all right well thank you I'll move approve uh item three can save a discussion all those in figure say aye aye okay can you pass this thing okay next up we will move on to the 2023 degrees north plane adoption president Carlson and Commissioners this is a separate agenda item this evening because of its importance as a milestone

48:30 yeah a 10-minute agenda item so this is going to be a very quick presentation um did want to acknowledge the team Brian Booth our chief energy resources officer and then Megan Capper and all red Karen Bush John Kreider Aaron horlowski who were really the primary team who worked on the integrated resource plan over the last roughly year and a half are asked this evening and we do provide recommended motion to adopt resolution 2315. this is adopting the 2023 integrated resource plan which is defined really as acknowledging the analytical results and approving the actions identified in

49:16 index a specifically just quick highlight um this is not the first time the board has seen information about the integrated resource plan over the last two years we've had nine separate meetings with Commissioners uh everything from looking at analysis of our loads to Resource characteristics to doing simulations with Commissioners on building portfolios as well as separately having a one-on-one discussions with staff and Commissioners and so this has been quite a process and then preceding that we spent about a year and a half to two years looking specifically at the impacts of further electrification which

50:01 became inputs into the plan a number of insights you did receive this as part of your background information so I won't specifically other than to recognize the categories and of the actions and strategies in particular those an IRP is basically a long-term view it looks out 20 years but we ultimately come back to what are the actions that we're asking to pursue in the next two to three years and those are listed the categories of those are listed out and those are specifically identified in that appendix a of then so with that President Carlson I'll turn it back to you

50:46 um do you have any discussion or entertain a motion yeah um thank you as always for the work on on the IRP I mean there's been so much this started two years ago right with you under pre-ification studies and it's um it's an immense amount of work to get us to where we are um and as I mentioned last time all the items in the action plan look spot on me I do think that there's a small piece that we could lean into um and that's specifically around building electrification I know there's a demand response action plan is queued up as a part of the action items here but we we're kind

51:33 of Silent on building electrification um at least as I read it and correct me if I have that problem um but given the investment that we've made as a utility in studying the effects of electrification on the utility and on our Energy Future and then the significance of um the impact of the case and amount of electrification of homes in particular right meeting about how much electrification happens and how fast it happens really impacts our future as a utility of what we need to buy and what that what the shape of resources look like um and then giving um that there's a level of building electrification that actually benefits the utility right the electrification study told us that there's some portion that really helps

52:19 us as a utility overall um and then beyond that and maybe it starts to become a negative um my perspective having a specific action in here around developing an application strategy for buildings would be usable and I to me it doesn't have to be anything really complicated I think we already have all the parts we just haven't said hey you know here's what we're aiming for here's the ideal for us as a utility in terms of overall building electrification and then you know some strategy to just monitor how things are moving over time I just wanted to put that on the table list my perspective the only thing that I'm love to see here um support I have a question Matt so tell me what an electrification strategy is because I

53:06 mean here we are ready to adopt our plan and we've got this um I don't know what I think you can tell me what that's to find a simplification what that strategy would be in your eyes yeah because I think you're asking a question of the other board members and I am uh I I want to know what it is because I don't understand it yeah so from my perspective it would be really just like what's the what's the ideal pace and amount of electrification for us as utility like I said I think we have some answers to this just from our electrification study we know what how much is beneficial to us as a utility and just getting clear about that and then aiming for that this is one of the few things that we have a lot of influence over as a utility right we

53:51 learned that electrification isn't likely to happen without policy support granted there's been federal policy support that's really significant but we also have an ability to lean in or pull back depending on what is the most important to us and so setting a Target about what kind of electrification we want and when of buildings in particular um to help us just better meet our goals as a utility that's really it setting a goal to start defining what types of incentives we want to put in place to get there you know and kind of throttle them and show these different rules I don't think there's a whole bunch of them but the incentives or that we have you know adding to them or detracting from them whether we lean in to support the federal incentives and make those more accessible to Residents I think if

54:38 you have available to us so it's just how much of those tools do we want to use where are we trying to go and then a method to track the pace of electrification thanks and for me I would need a whole lot more information because I think that you know we're saying we're going to mandate electrification you know this is let's say it would be nice if these homes were all electric but you know I think for me the incentivization for electrification is making a reliable affordable product so they can have a choice um but I'd like to have a kind of a broader discussion and I know that we're trying to adopt this quickly so I'm um for me I need more before I could support that and to be clear I'm not asking for a Mandy of anything we already have it say hey so it's just kind of using that tool to our advantage

55:24 and one clarification are you asking for that to be a part of this resolution tonight the other the other PC you suggested or that that'd be that's just something in my perspective but I also you know I recognize like that we haven't talked about this and so I'm you know I'm bringing this up without a conversation first and so I just want to acknowledge that so I don't really expect that we're necessarily going to come to agreement tonight about whether or not this fits in here um but I also at least the way I think about it when I'm asking for it doesn't feel like a huge lift but so I certainly understand I think the the ask from um commissioner McRae around electrification and how the utility views electrification from a business

56:10 model perspective there are different ways to view growth for example there are some benefits to growth the absorption of fixed costs for example over more megawatt hours there's a trade-off there between the cost of infrastructure and the the cost of the the actual acquisition of energy and I do think that it would be valuable for the board and management to coalesce around what some of our views are on specifically growth and then within that the electrification and the incentives and how we apply those is is a really a subsection of that I don't necessarily see that personally as being a part of an IRP the IRP is really a response to

56:55 that growth and we do have a piece of the actions in identified in here that look at the impact of the IRA and other Federal Investments but I would propose sort of a counter proposal we look in our annual goal setting period what are some of the opportunities around growth specifically and how does that fit into our business model so I don't necessarily see it as an IRP I see it as a slightly different around products and services and how we want to facilitate potential growth in our community in this case electrification being a part of that

57:44 I guess my comment is um it seems to make sense to have that be as part of our um like annual planning if that is the thing that we agree as Commissioners should be in there um in terms of not including it right now in the IRP um me this looks okay and Matt I understand what you're saying but I I think I do think they're two different questions like the planning or what are our goals but the IRP is how do we respond to the goal that we've set as a utility by the way I look at it

58:32 thank you um not speaking to electrification or anything else I'm speaking to the the motion that we have before us Frank or staff uh I just want to make it clear to myself and to the public that's watching that this is a an action plan for the next couple of years it's not the full 2042 action plan that was kind of laid out in some of our scenario plannings that brought in a lot of people with concerns about some of the choices that were modeled out and they had concerns about some things that we might be doing and possibly doing in the year 2042. this motion that we're uh going for tonight basically deals with the next couple of

59:19 years and we're planning on updating the IRP probably in 2025 when we know more about our Bonneville contracts and some of the other things this is more of a near-term uh thing with some contracts that will probably be coming up in the next couple of years am I correct in what I just stated commissioner good so that that lends me to uh to support the motion going forward I think that we have a lot of challenges going forward meeting the energy demands that our community and the the West will have coming up in the next 10 to 15 years this gets us to The Next Step where we

1:00:04 can look at it all and to Matt's uh issue again I believe that this is us looking at research resource procurement and not resource uh dissemination I think there is an uh a conversation to be had about that and I think that part of that can be melded in when we're talking about our conversation with uh incentives for uh some of the other programs going forward thank you

1:00:49 good motion as proposed I do appreciate looking at the I mean this is this is really dealing with the supply side whereas the question that you're posting is definitely dealing with the demand side which of course as a utility the supply side has to match the demand side um but I'm also okay with saying that this is the part we're moving forward with on this side and then getting the other information that we've gathered from you know we're having even tonight with SMUD and others that we've started conversations with about our Energy Efficiency programs and just getting better kpis around around what that looks like and also just see how we can how those programs can be revamped and structured maybe not revamped but you know if there are other things we can do to

1:01:35 as you said kind of dial up or dial back depending on what going on in the discussion when we went up to Salem I remember I can't remember when that was March February and we met with the Oregon Department of energy one thing that they mentioned is that they they know that all this money is coming and they're not quite sure how it's going to roll out incentive-wise and what's going to happen and I just wonder waiting to see to see what's going to happen with that money better inform us about what types of incentives that we need to lean more into or depict because they indicated that there's a lot of money coming that

1:02:20 will be available to customers that that piece of information that's missing but will come soon boom to approved resolution 2315 adopting the 2023 integrated integrated resource plan IRP acknowledging the published analytical results and approving the actions identified Independence Day all right second all right thank you okay any further discussion all of those in favor say aye aye

1:03:15 next up we have we need a hydropower fish and wildlife overview and Kurt Miller the executive director of Northwest River program it's okay if I stand or I think it's okay great so thank you so much for having me here I really appreciate it um um it's always taught me to be really appreciative at any time I'd be willing to listen to you so so I definitely feel that way and get the opportunity to be here um I think hesitation actually I think fits really well into exception you've been having around long-term resource planning it's most some of those challenges I've worked in the utility space for a couple of years I spent 20 years in Portland General Electric and mostly in their power supply side and so it's it's a really exciting time to be

1:04:01 engaged in these issues it's also super challenging I know you have a lot of big brains here so that's that's really helpful um so my organization the organization I represent is Northwestern partners and motivation is to lead the charge of the Northwest to realize it's clean energy potential with Hyper electricity is the Cornerstone we represent about 3 million electric customers that are served by community-owned Electric utilities like yours all across Oregon Washington Idaho Western Montana Nevada Wyoming and Utah and I've been doing this for four and a half years now so I can remember all those things and finally but anyway it's a great honor to actually get to represent utilities like eweb when I when I travel around the region I always

1:04:47 feel really proud that I feel like I'm fighting for better futures for these communities and it is truly an honor to get to do it um so uh since you are a captive audience um I always throw in an Advertiser if you have a podcast it's called Damn with an exclamation point no end because we don't swear it in Northwest River Partners but I um but I really do anyone uh whether you're a hydroelectric fan or not I really encourage you to tune in we have uh really bright people from all aspects of energy from all across the region and even the country coming in and talking about Regional energy issues and as you all know energy touches so many different aspects of life and so um it's I think it's a it's a really good podcast uh I'm only on the first one so

1:05:32 if you don't like me don't rule it out it's still a good podcast um and then so one of the things Frank asked me to talk about today is a little bit about what's going on with climate change and salmon and um and speaking of complicated um this is a complicated issue so this chart and I'm not sure how well everyone can see it but on the far left that's 1915 and then this goes all the way up technically 2022 and then on the vertical class that's that goes from zero to about 3 million salmon so this is total adult returning salmon to uh essentially to let's say Bonneville Dam uh now model Dam wasn't actually constructed until 1938 so everything prior to this is is an estimate and when

1:06:19 you look at this chart overall you'd say well you know it looks like salmon are actually doing better and in some ways that's true but it actually masks a really big challenge that salmon are facing and um and one of the reason that it masks this is first you don't see what was happening in the 18 like prior to 1880. so prior to essentially European settlement of the Northwest there were somewhere between 5 and 16 million salmon that would return to the Columbia River based every year so of course that doesn't show up on that chart but um the Europeans were incredibly effective at essentially fishing out the river fish wheels and other things led to actually I think the first fish

1:07:04 hatcheries were constructed somewhere around the 1880s 1890s so it gives you an idea of how far back some of the challenges for sale and go in terms of commercial fishing so we have rebounded a little bit which is great and a lot of that though is because of Hatchery so eweb and other BPA customers spend money on hatcheries and those hatcheries have helped make up for a deficit but that's actually masking what would this look like if there weren't the hatcheries out there and so I'm going to talk about a little bit about that um so again the First Federal dam was built in 1938 It Was Bonneville Dam and then just as another kind of point in time uh velor Snake River Dam started being constructed around like 1964 into

1:07:50 1970 um and it just gives you a sense of of what was going on on the federal hydropower system at that time so um the really big challenge that salmon are facing and they're facing many challenges they've faced over phishing they've uh uh you know logging different things like that uh uh dams I mean there's there's an onset of things that have been going on but the really uh what I believe is a great challenge that salmon are facing and it is a existential challenge is climate change and uh the intergovernmental panel on climate uh change the part of the U.N um a couple years ago uh I released a report and basically said that it's not not necessarily salmon but marine fish populations across the globe any any fish populations that are in uh in the

1:08:37 ocean that they are actually declining in numbers and it's a it's a really big concern and of course Sam it's been about three-fourths of their lives in the ocean and uh one of the things that people often don't know about salmon is uh and and also about climate change is it's not just happening in the Northwest we get so focused on where we live which I understand but this is a widespread problem and uh and actually it's a it's probably a bigger problem in Alaska and Northern Canada than it is even here in the Northwest in terms of salmon populations and it really comes down to this if you look um back to the 1960s these are ocean temperatures and equatorial Pacific so going from 1960 to about 2020

1:09:22 and you can see and uh in the U.N report refers to this specifically almost a straight line in terms of what's happened with ocean temperatures but over the last 50 years and that uh in that same time period um coincides with a recent funding that Chinook salmon have seen a 65 decline in survival in the ocean so we we are we are seeing as these temperatures rise that salmon populations especially Chinook which are the most prized of the salmon populations are are really facing a major threat in that decline so again you don't see that in that chart I showed you to start off with

1:10:07 because we've done very well with our hatch rates but without those hatcheries you would see uh not an upward Trend at all you would see a downward trend um so um uh what that has caused some groups to say okay well you know we we need to get rid of the dams and and one of the things I'll point out here is the lower Snake River damage which are you know kind of the most controversial of the federal dams they started being constructed and I said as I went to the 1960s um and and then finished in like the 1970s and we've seen you know wild salmon populations uh struggle since that time but one of the things I point out is that's not the only thing that was going on in that period and and we didn't know as much about climate change that as we do now but now we're seeing

1:10:52 that this is really a coast-wide challenge and um and so we took data from a study and we we put it on a map to show you graphically exactly how salmon populations are doing across the entire western coast of the United States and Canada and this cutout map here actually goes all the way up to Southeast Alaska and just like a stoplight uh red is bad yellow means go faster and I'm just kidding yellow means uh yellow means like not so good and then and then green means good so these are small total return rates uh across the entire west coast of North America and essentially it makes sense right you need to have a a sar rate of two percent or more to have salmon

1:11:38 um to have salmon reproduce and everything on this map that is yellow or red has a return rate of less than two percent so we do not have very many sustainings having populations without hatcheries even if you get up into undamned rivers in uh in Canada and Alaska and so this is a this is a really serious problem and it's not getting better the one thing I do want I do like to show people again a lot of people like to blame the lower Snake River dams for some of the Salmon's problems but if you look at the return rates for the Snake River they are not at all out of place with the entire rest of the map including Washington state in the in the Puget Sound area and including the Yukon river in Alaska

1:12:23 undamped in the undam Frasier River uh in Canada so this is a this is not uh it is a Columbia Basin problem it is a Snake River problem but it is much it's much bigger than that um so last thing on that on climate science and salmon this uh this study was produced by NOAA fishery Science Center two years ago and um and the big thing I want to draw your eye to is essentially they're showing what they think is going to happen in terms of um climate change and salmon survival and what they basically said is that yeah that climate change in the rivers can have a negative effect but it's climate change in the ocean that they believe could actually reduce salmon

1:13:09 returns by uh 90 over the next 40 years so they're very concerned that if we continue to see uh ocean temperatures warm with their current rate that what we see now in terms of a one percent return rate could drop away point one percent return rate so again this is a really big issue with climate change being the driver um so how does it all fit into hydropower um anyway I'm pretending that's what you were going to ask and so the answer to that uh is if it's a delay there's a lot of lawsuits right because uh one of the things that happens here and this happens in every region wherever uh like if you're in the Columbia River and we have dams people blame the dams in the Fraser River they don't have any dams

1:13:54 they have some uh fish farms so people blame the fish farms um in in Alaska uh commercial Fishers are being sued and they're trying to shut down that so people are looking for different ways to help and it's possible that none of those weights will actually help salmon if the if the problem really is ocean temperatures and how that's affecting their balance but uh we have in the Northwest a lot of dams and there are and we also have a lot of legal battles and the biggest thing that goes on with um with the legal battles it's a there's a big debate with the models there's a model that says that if you got rid of those lower stick figure dams that someone would do much better and then another model that's uh by from NOAA Fisheries Science Center and it says that getting rid of the dams would

1:14:39 do very little to help the salmon so that is constantly being debated in court and uh and the courts have kind of split the baby on this and basically what they've done is instead of removing the dams they've just each year required us to spill more water so more water going over the top of the dams to going through the turbines what that does is it takes to and I know you know this but it takes away flexibility right so you lose power generation um and it costs more to produce every megawatt so that's uh for people who rely on hydropower that's not good and uh as a matter of fact as many of you know um the fish and wildlife program that the Bonneville power Administration runs they've contributed uh with repair dollars I think in the neighborhood of

1:15:26 um 18 billion dollars over the past like 30 years um so as you know about 25 to 30 percent of every uh power supply dollar that you send to BPA goes to fish and wildlife so roughly half of that is from spill roughly half of that is spent on sending water over the top of the dam instead of through the turbines and there's a question of whether that actually is beneficial to fish um but the courts have ruled to do that um and then the latest uh the latest lawsuit is actually came to River temperatures and not surprising again they were competing models that say different things so uh one model by Northwest National Laboratory says the dams uh actually protect salmon from the

1:16:12 most extreme temperatures uh because they create a bigger body of water it takes more solar heat to warm that water and so it protects the salmon another model by the EPA says that the dams slow the water down enough that it actually raises the water temperature um in either case uh River temperatures are too hot uh at times for salmon but again the real threat to Salmon overall is what's going on in the ocean not so much the rivers uh but anyway that's one of the things so we are seeing a lot of a lot of litigation um so one of the reasons in my group um not surprised we advocate for preserving the dams and preserving the hyper power system and I'll and I'll try to go through this briefly because I know that you have a pretty good understanding of

1:16:58 this already but uh but also I like to use a slide because it took me so long to make um and that is so you could see that the gears actually go in opposite directions and that's not easy to do uh but in any case the idea here is if you think of energy policy there are so many different gears in the machine right and you and I see you guys dealing with that here tonight and some of the comments that are made it's like well you know this will affect one group one way and another group another way and how do we manage all that so that's you know that's what we're looking at in energy policy and all these different issues are um are impacted um and the big the biggest driver and I've been in this industry uh you know since I got out of college and uh and we've never seen change like this in this industry before and it's all driven

1:17:44 by zero carbon mandates so all those different states are looking to completely decarbonize their electric grid as you know we'll lose about 30 percent of what powers the Northwest in terms of voltage of natural gas over the next 20 to 25 years that's a really big deal because it's being replaced mostly by wind and solar power and um we support all renewable energy Northwest River Partners very much beliefs in the fight against climate change so we're not anti-wind but you know this and you've probably seen this in their IRP one of the challenges let's say with win is that you can get a whole bunch of generation when it's mild out like when the temperatures in the 80s uh 2500 megawatts that's about two and a

1:18:30 half nuclear power plants or about two and a half times the amount of electricity a city of the size of Seattle usage on a particular day so that's a lot of wind generation but you could see as temperatures get hotter this is real data that you can go to essentially no production you could go to flatlining for multiple days at a time at the time when you need the electricity the most because people want electricity when it's 100 degrees out they need that they need it to cool their homes and businesses so this is the this is the great challenge of our time on the electric grid is trying to make it decarbonize and still make it reliable and um and Weck has issued these these um These Warnings recently the Western Electric coordinating

1:19:15 Council which is a watchdog group for reliability and they basically are saying and I heard you guys say this both to the demand side and the supply side are becoming more variable at the same time you have climate change it is spiking demand and you have intermittent Renewables that is making the supply Cyclone variable and if you have to keep them balanced every second of the day I heard you mentioned that before this is this is a tremendous challenge um and they warned that as early as 2025 all Subway regions the West May face reliability problems I.E the possibility of blackouts um even if all anticipated resources are built so this is a really big deal for the entire Western grid and again and this is my this is my

1:20:01 pitch for hydropower um is that it is a perfect complement to women solar power because you can fill up the reservoir behind the dam and then when it's time you can release it and let that water spin that turbine and light up the city and the great thing about this is that you can do that again and again and again and the point I make whether it's nuclear or hydropower or something else we need carbon-free resources that can balance the intermittent resources and that is why we fight so hard to preserve our hydropower resources is because they are what's going to make the Clean Energy Future actually work and then of course many of our dams also have excellent fish passage it doesn't really look like that but I didn't have time to do the ladder so um anyway

1:20:46 um just in closing uh because I know that I've taken a bit of your time we did commission a third party to do a Power cost modeling study of what it will take the Western grid to get to 100 clean um energy by 20 essentially by 2045 or how long it would take to do that the vertical axis on the left is gigawatts so that's a thousand megawatts so 160 gigawatts which is essentially what we'll have to build in the west to achieve this Clean Energy Future um that's essentially doubling the entire generating output of the western United States uh in 20 years and it's extraordinary uh requirement uh so to do that it's like 160 nuclear power plants 160 Seattles and what what the group did

1:21:32 is they said okay let's see if it takes 160 gigawatts how soon will we actually get there and what they did is they doubled the rate of build out that we've seen over the last 10 years for Renewables and said okay let's let's assume that selectly right we're going to double what we've done and what they found is that by 2045 we will only be about halfway there and that we are much more likely not to be able to achieve that goal until 2075 if we double our historic rate if we do less than that it will take longer than that if we can do more than that then it will take less but uh this this this is an eye-opening this is an eye-opening the number for those of us who are concerned about climate change and and the challenge of course is permitting and supply chain and build outs so there

1:22:17 are some challenges there um the the thing that uh or I should have said the the sign at the top then the red dashed line that one actually looks at okay what if we lost the lower Snake River dams and essentially what that means is we uh the access intersects in 2018 so 2075 so it's another three to five years um that it would take us to decarbonize the grid uh customer rates for BPA customers would go up by 25 or more and we'd have another five to nine million metric tons of CO2 so anyway um these numbers are eye-opening um I you know obviously we want to do better than that but we are sharing in this with policy makers because I think that a lot of policy makers think that

1:23:03 we are going to get there just fine and it's going to take an extraordinary effort and that means permitting reform for transmission build outs and and um you know securing supply chain issues and other things like that if we're actually going to meet these really aggressive mandates so anyway um I'm happy to answer any questions if if there's time and folks can reach out to me that's my email address um if you have any questions afterwards but thank you well thank you for your presentation um and I have a question because this is something that we've faced in the decision that we made about Lieber is that the federal requirements make it

1:23:50 cost prohibitive for us to continue to operate that Dam and so what do you see like what are the impacts of federal regulations on the future of hydropower well that's a that's a really great question um so we work very closely with national hydropower Association and one of the big things that they are really fighting for is uh permitting reform for our reform for hydropower dams and also to get more incentives so that if you do choose to upgrade a dam to preserve it that there's more dollars available for that and um and I think that NHA they really believe that um that a lot of the marginal hydropower resources that you know that they're maybe not

1:24:35 you know super inexpensive compared to the rest of the fleet but they're very needed to provide that balancing they're afraid that people are going to make the the financial decision that you made presented with the Stark reality that you were facing so I um I what I would say in the industry is there's an awareness of that and that they are working really really hard on that and we're trying to work on that as their Partners in this uh but yeah that has to be addressed because um you know the nice thing about the federal dams they're large in scale and there's the federal money that's kept them up over the course of the year so they've been able to upgrade but for a lot of private dams that's not the case so yeah I think it's I think it's a really huge issue and um I think that we are getting our arms around it but there's still work to do yeah thank you

1:25:20 appreciate that so I get it so on that line you know like cougar they're shutting it down they're not going to get right there you know I'm getting mixed messages from the feds yes but the Corps of Engineers because that was a really good producing Dam when we put salmon recovery and a kind of a pure climb and everything and now they're just going to let it run on the river they're not going to generate power um so what's that about that so but okay I'm just making that statement my favorite question is when you build all the solar how are you going to get it to the customer yeah I know absolutely I mean the the only way we get there is by building a massive transition lines I mean that is that is it and and that is a big challenge because no one wants I mean on a localized basis no one wants

1:26:05 transmission on a bigger basis they want it just as long as it's not in their community and it's such a hard it's such a hard rock because I don't want someone to build a great big transmission lines over my house but at the same time um the only way to make this work uh with wind and solar power is to get the wind and solar power from where it's actually produced like in Montana and Wyoming and to bring it to the urban centers of the I-5 Corridor um I mean you know at the scale we're talking about like you know there's great it's great to have solar rooftops and local opportunities but the scale we're talking about about doubling the size of the uh generating grid it only works with massive transmission and and I don't know I mean a lot of people have lost a lot of money trying to build

1:26:51 transmission it takes at least you know you know 10 20 years to get these things permitted so it's a real challenge okay can you confirm it we've heard that the last transmission line that's been trying to be built is on now 17 years and it's still not approved I um I really refer to Frank on that the Boardman to Hemingway line started 17 years ago I think they just recently got like recently being in the past month or two got their permit so now they have to construct it we got no it's it's I mean it this is a huge challenge I mean some of these things were passed I always say policymakers should have to do the math right and I think that some of these things are passed without people understanding what it actually takes to

1:27:36 get there is it you know and it's good to have aspirational goals but it's also good to understand what what it really takes I think that's what you're getting at and uh and there's some big challenges thank you I agree in terms of the need for us to it's going to take so much work for us to address our clinicals in terms of patients and also meet the needs of our growing populations um I I it's hard for me to imagine Hydro going away in the Northwest I mean I I know there are challenges to some projects ours being one of them where it just like doesn't feel like it makes sense on a whole bunch of levels um so to me it seems like hydros here to

1:28:22 stay I'm curious if you feel differently are there big threats to any of the big projects or the major generators in our area yeah thank you it's a great question um I mean uh Eugene is very familiar with some of the things that were happening with natural gas uh right you know uh and natural gas and hydro are not the same one as one produces fossil you know one is a fossil fuel the other isn't but I think it's really important to understand that public policy is driven also by by perception and so I think that one of the things that we try to do is we try to educate the public and policy makers about why hydropower is so important so that it doesn't fall on the wrong side of that ledger because I think if it does

1:29:08 um I think that you'll and you know you end up um I think there are real threats I mean there are groups that uh that are really and I and I mean this very respectful respectfully there are groups that are very well-meaning uh but are focused on certain things and they are trying really hard to get rid of hydropower and they are very good at what they do they tell really powerful stories they're very well funded um and and and they have the era of legislators so I think that um our job our organization's job is to balance out that story and um and I think it and one of the things we try to rally our utilities around is to also tell their stories about you

1:29:53 know what it takes to maintain a reliable grid a carbon-free way so I think just as long as we have enough voices speaking up I think yes we're we're good if we if we don't if we if we can if we see that ground um uh or um we gave up that territory sorry uh I think that it will that void will be filled by Voices That Could uh potentially get rid of some of the dams that are very productive so that's my that's my kind of um I feel like I'm on the front lines of that and I feel like there is a risk when you talk about other groups you're speaking about salmon advocates for specifically yeah sometimes so I mean sometimes there are groups that are very much just they want free-flowing Rivers

1:30:38 I mean some have some extra salmon sometimes it's you know and I get that like I love free flying Rivers too uh but there are you know literally millions of people living in this region that also need energy infrastructure so I I think that everyone does what they think is the right thing to do but uh and we're not against those groups we just we have a specific view into what's really important for um the organizations and the and the repairs that we represent um yeah I um I don't know how else to say this I I appreciate the story that you're trying to tell um from my perspective I think as we're having conversations about the different trade-offs or different Power like

1:31:25 balance views are valuable I respect what you're trying to do I feel like you're dismissing some of the challenges that are facing our fish populations I think while running fish in my lifetime and I'm and and dams certainly contribute to that I'm not saying we should pull out all the dams we need the power but I feel like a discussion a more rounded discussion about the trade-offs would be valuable and um and I guess I'm a little bit I I'm I'm just gonna voice that like you're also funded not only by small utilities like eweb but also um of course along the west coast potato farmers and other right I mean it's like so there's a whole bunch of interests that are funding you to talk with us and others about all the benefits of dams

1:32:11 there are absolute benefits of hydropower but they're also downsides and and I felt like the beginning you're defending all the reasons that we shouldn't Focus too much on salmon and dams and I think there's some real concerns there that should wade into yeah and um it's it's there's just I feel like a more balanced conversation will be valuable from my perspective yeah no absolutely I mean I you know I understand I mean I think that you know one of our pillars is to help recover salmon populations um I do know that there are people who very much disagree with me on the drivers between on salmon declines and I respect that um you know I will say that um just so you know I mean 95 of our funding comes from Public

1:32:56 Power utilities that's you know it's you know we were born out of Public Power because uh for the very reason you actually mentioned is that Public Power was concerned that there wasn't a balanced story being told um and so our job is to provide some of that balance but yeah I I totally hear you and everything you said makes sense to me so thank you appreciate that thanks and um thank you I was just going to say unfortunately what's happened if you look back at the last 25 to 30 years the disagreements have played out in court and this has been one solid series of court cases since the 1990s and

1:33:44 judges unfortunately have become system operators of dams requiring spill battling science as opposed to groups actually sitting down with the balanced approach and looking at common objectives so that's the unfortunate side the reality of it is from our perspective is 25 cents of every dollar that we pay on a bill for that electricity goes to fish and wildlife mitigation and so that's that's the reality that we also face is that there's a just a climate impact there's there's an affordability impact and it's not getting simpler it tends to be getting more complex over time so as science even

1:34:31 there's like you said there's battles within the science which science will the real science please stand up sort of approach so um you know have I don't have a lot of concerns that the dams are going to go away within the window of our our planning window but I I will say it could affect the operations of those dams and therefore the capacity and the output of those Vamps so that's something we do have to keep an eye on well again I really do appreciate you guys have been so generous with your time and they were excellent questions so thank you so much thank you could I put a couple questions out there oh sorry thank you um thank you for the presentation

1:35:17 um you know I've kind of got a few of the same concerns as Matt has about the you know we need to hear all sides um but one of my concerns is that you talked about educate or talking to policy makers you know we've got some fairly strong voices in Washington and Idaho that have basically said we're not going to let salmon go extinct and you know your presentation led to the fact that you know ocean temperatures may be a big player in that there's really not a lever that those policy makers can use to affect ocean temperatures there are levers that they can use to

1:36:03 affect small small to an adult return rates and that would be messing with the dams figuring out what what impact the the four dams have on small too adult uh returns you know so I'm just wondering you know with with the proclamations that's been made by the governor of Washington and all of the Congressional people in the Washington Idaho area as well as some in the Oregon area that they're not going to let those salmon go extinct but they have the only levers that they really have to play with our hydropower and the things that are

1:36:48 there where do you see this moving really thoughtful it's a really really thoughtful question I mean like Senator Murray you know she uh when she did the mariency processes last year which looked specifically at whether or not uh she was going to recommend pulling out the damson and by the way you know I don't mean to disregard Governor Inslee but because their Federal dams we were much more concerned about Senator Murray's stance because as a senator she could vote potentially to decommission the dance or deauthorize them um and so we really paid attention to you know what she was saying and basically she said that Extinction is not an option which is absolutely appropriate

1:37:33 um and she also said that at this stage that technology doesn't exist to replace the dams um in a affordable reliable way but that the region should work towards getting those to a place where policymakers wanted to take out the dams they could actually have that choice so more or less what you said is we don't have a choice right now uh but it would be good to have options going forward I think that that's I I think that's really wise the the other thing I would say is there are other levers to pull um like with hatcheries that you know there's one of the things that uh if you look at the science they said that uh the larger the fish is by the time it hits the Estuary the much higher probability of return as an adult so

1:38:18 there are some things on the Hatchery side that we could do potentially to um to maybe um grow the Hatchery fish larger and and make sure that when they do get to the Estuary they're larger and then maybe we'll see more come back as adults um also there's a lot that can be done in terms of predation for marine mammals and also um avian predators of fish so I think those are other laborers um you know hydropower certainly a lever um I think that the you know the question is um we all getting rid of those dams actually result in significant small to adult return rate increases and I will

1:39:03 just say and I can say this very uh with good conscience that the science on that's really mixed and um that uh that the models that that show what would happen are very much in disagreement so the question is do you do something as costly and in some ways dangerous to the energy future of removing those dams if you don't have any certainty that doing so will actually help salmon in a meaningful way and I think that is the question that policy makers have to wrestle with um I you know I respect that that's a really really tough question and um and you know I have my own thoughts on the way that you go but I do

1:39:50 understand that reasonable people could fall on the other side of that but I think that's the that's the debate in my heart the debate is we're not sure exactly what getting rid of those dams would do to help salmon should we do it anyway and I think that's I think that's where it really falls out but I do I like I really appreciate the question and I think it's very thoughtful and then the other thing that I wanted to bring up was I read a report and I can't remember if it was EPA or what report I read that came out that said the cost to replace the generation that would be lost by losing the four lower Snow Snake River dams would run between 20 and 28 and 43 billion dollars to replace the megawatts that would be lost is that sound right yeah there so one

1:40:37 BPA study uh they they hired E3 and E3 looked at it and they set up to 77 billion um the range is really wide um you know we're looking at models the models are imperfect the the reason that the cost is so high energy itself as you know and you guys are dealing with in your IRP energy itself is fairly easy to replace it's having the energy when you need it or as we would call a capacity and the capacity that the dams provide is about up in the winter time about 3 000 megawatts that's about three large nuclear power plants worth of on-demand capacity that can be used to meet extended cold snaps or heat waves that is what's so hard hard to replace and so that's why you end up seeing really big

1:41:22 dollars because to build that much wind and solar power and batteries you end up having to overbuild what what our study found is it would take 15 000 megawatts of wind solar and batteries to replace the 3000 megawatts the dams provide on demand because you'd have to overbuild so much of there would always be something available somewhere to make sure people had energy when they needed so that's the challenge the challenge is [Applause] um we should have a lot of energy in the market as all these Renewables get built but it will oftentimes disappear when you need it the most how are you going to back that up so that's one of the big challenges that has to be solved thank you yeah thank you guys so much

1:42:14 here at uh next standard item Energy Efficiency programs another I'm just gonna do a quick interview customer officer so I am really happy to introduce Leia and turtle who is online she is the supervisor of zero carbon Energy Solutions at the Sacramento Municipal Utility District or Spud and Leia is going to share this month's approach to community impact planning and Energy Efficiency programs and there she is thanks Leia hi good evening everyone it's nice to be here thank you so much for having me here to talk to you about our programs at SMUD um and it's really been a pleasure you know having been with SMUD for gosh you know

1:43:00 almost two decades we've really seen the gamut right um before I joined SMUD I remember hearing about Energy Efficiency and what we were doing in that space and then really getting into the utility space there's just so much that has evolved and especially over the last 10 years so I'm happy to share with you a little bit about what we're doing today you want to go to the next slide so today I wanted to talk to you a little bit about our community impact plan and some of our key initiatives on how we're able to deliver um among our goals as well as engage our community with with those goals and what programs and services that we have developed um to to do so and then part of that

1:43:45 really to kind of close that Loop is what rebates and incentive programs through our residential and Commercial program delivery models have been successful and that we're continuing to develop over time next slide so just as a level set talk a little bit about who we are at SMUD um we are the Sacramento Municipal Utility District um we are a community-owned not-for-profit electric service and we are the sixth largest in the United States and we've been around for a little over 75 years pretty proud of that um we still have the same neighbors PG e still there still our our partner if you will in our region and um you know one

1:44:31 of the things that we have done though since 2020 is we have set a goal to be 100 zero carbon free by 2030. it is one of the most aggressive uh goals in the country and it's something that we're not going to do alone we definitely will do this with our partners um with our community members 645 000 customers and it's going to take every one of our employees to do that which is 2300 now in hunting but to do that we leverage our board of directors we have a seven member elected board of directors that really reports back to the community and they you know get feedback from them they give us guidance and Direction they

1:45:18 actually helped us um back in 2021 when we saw that we were moving to a new direction we needed to change our purpose statements our actual strategic Direction and statements so the the the one that we are working on today is for example our purpose statement today is that smud's purpose is to enhance the quality of life for our customers and Community by providing reliable and affordable electricity that has always been there and leading the transition to a clean energy future last portion of the statement is what is new or new since 2020 right and so we're really trying trying to continue to evolve progress towards that clean

1:46:05 energy economy while still making sure that we are providing reliable and Affordable Services to our community so it's really important for us and so next slide and so as we go into this carbon plan we had to set priorities and we had to really take a quick look and say okay how do we create the sustainable future we had a IRP that IRP created a carbon-free road map if you will and it focused on local Investments but it also said okay where do how do we still do that while still maintaining our low rates and reliability those are key things that we needed to continue to maintain and as we all know that is not

1:46:51 an easy thing to do by any means you know we while we provide Power we also need to make sure that as we're doing it we're looking at our own systems we still use not as much but we have use and continue to use a natural gas generation we need to repurpose that and so we have to our retire our own two of our own power plants retool our Fleet and then and also look at our operations and where can we have our own emissions reduced right so just for my business perspective running your own business we've got to do our own work as well and then we are working with um customers manufacturers the community to learn more about proven clean Technologies and

1:47:38 then identifying how we can achieve a 90 reduction in greenhouse gas emissions which our goal is three thousand megawatts of new renewable energy and storage equivalent to meet the energy needs and and they're telling us hey we can get there now we're looking at that as equivalent to delivering power to 6 000 homes well with 640 000 customers right that's a drop in the bucket but it's a start right and it's going to help us scale up as time goes on and to that point we are looking at new technologies every day I'm talking to contractors customers manufacturers who are saying I have a new product I'm like really so have you tested it is it out of r d let

1:48:25 me learn more and it's pretty exciting to see some of these Technologies show up and those business models and how we can pilot them to test them I had one customer tell me today that he was approached by um someone who wants to do batteries EV charging all tied to a multi-family unit we're pretty excited but then we're like well hold on what's the customer's experience like what's that tenant going to be interacting with will this change how they use the space or have an expectation of you know something different do you need is there education that needs to happen right but but in addition what are those financial impacts does it change their energy consumption does it go up go down

1:49:12 is it neutral for them and then as a utility what is the rate impact to the rate of inflation if we start to see um reduce consumption um but then you know does that affect um we still have to provide service right affordable reliable service we want to make sure that our rates don't escalate beyond what is expected and we typically see an average of two percent rate of inflation in our utility costs over time um annually which isn't unexpected most utilities see bad and so the way to do this though is to leverage Partnerships and grants to offset costs and generate operational efficiencies an example of

1:49:57 this was a recent grant that SMUD um was awarded through the cec's breach grant for affordable it was affordable Equitable electric vehicle charging for multi-family housing I'm sure I missed a word there but in any case so we are now providing and working with local affordable housing properties to deliver electric vehicle charging in the region but we're not doing it alone we're leveraging a Statewide Grant to provide charging systems to affordable housing in our community at the rate of you know they're we're expecting more than a hundred handles or charges to be

1:50:43 installed within our region in the next two years and so that's just one example there are many more that we're working with so I'm excited to see how that is going to help us achieve our zero carbon plan next slide and so really what started it off though of course was smud's board climate and emergency declaration and that's where we um identified the the need to say we only have a limited window we have to get this done and so we set the deadline of 2030 to achieve a um zero carbon um environment at that time and so we developed our zero carbon plan and as part of that emergency declaration we

1:51:30 needed to take a look at where we were at and even though our community had some challenges our own power mix um has been continues to be among the cleanest in the country um and so we are looking at adding Renewables like solar wind biomass geothermal we continue to to look at new opportunities and what's worked in the past to be 100 carbon free by 2030. um but we're still continuing to offer Energy Efficiency electrical keeps the buildings and transportation and increasing our clean power resources to help our customers our community join us on this path so that's where our community impact plan comes along to

1:52:16 talk about how we're going to get there because you can have strategy but then you've got to have tactics right that are really relevant to the community and that's really what really makes it happen next slide and so with our community impact plan we are ensuring that no Community is really left behind we developed this plan using input and feedback from our customers and what we heard from them and they said things like well we think jobs and Workforce Development are extremely important absolutely there's a clean energy um Workforce that needs to be developed so we started working with schools we started partnering um with the local community colleges uh

1:53:03 the universities with high school programs right and then we talked about you know how do we get involved with community-based organizations non-profits our non-profits building community centers are they looking at building a kitchen should we help support an all-electric kitchen right there's different ways that we can deliver it and then they become our Advocates our Outreach teams if you will to share this information and so we focused on three areas we looked at affordability Equitable Acts success and Community engagement and by doing that we were able to really segment down into the community and say okay what are the things that are really

1:53:49 important to our customers our audience which is really our residential customers that are hitting the low to medium income populations renters with higher energy burdens and underserved populations with cultural or language barriers and by doing that and of course the small commercial that are intermixed with it right and we found that you'll have a small business owner that lives right next door they're all in the same community so we're talking to them through what we are calling a neighborhood approach and by doing that we're able to focus on investing in that business Community by providing you know resources that speak specifically to what their needs are and so for example if we're talking with a community that

1:54:36 says we're interested in learning more about and this technology but we have an infrastructure capacity Gap right there there is a constraint if you will um so then we look at okay so are there tools or systems available um to help them let's say they want EVS right and they want to have charging there but we know there's a capacity constraint from the grid all right well let's talk about what are some Technology Solutions that'll help you balance the load or the requirements um to provide that charging solution to that property so they can still have the benefit of it um so we work with them right and we're really trying to make sure that they're

1:55:22 not left behind that's the key here right so we've got lots of parts of our community who who don't have that Gap or that issue we want to make sure that everybody is on the same page with us as we go through this journey next slide and so to that point we have some planned projects as part of our community impact plan and they support that so we have our existing building electrification Energy Efficiency and Equity or electric vehicle Equity programs they provide additional incentives as well as co-leveraging incentives so our Statewide program here in California clean cars for all we're continuing our partnership with them we also offer

1:56:08 um electric vehicle Supply equipment installs for low-income single-family and multi-family properties we are also looking forward to this this is about leveraging we are working very closely with um the in well I should say working not yet right is the inflation reduction Act is coming I heard that earlier you're absolutely right we are looking forward to leveraging Grants and coordination with that um and then we're also building out e-mobility hubs and Community Partnerships that are actually creating Workforce um opportunities for our community and that's really important for us but we're looking at solar and storage opportunities and then as I mentioned before the neighborhood approach where

1:56:55 we actually go into a neighborhood we have staff who conduct energy assessments of each home or business and then we assign contractors to perform direct installation of the equipment and with that we identify that specific site's capacity to manage that added load and is there an opportunity to integrate Energy Efficiency at the same time because remember Energy Efficiency doesn't go away we want energy efficient electrification that's true however we want to make sure that the community understands the impact to them how to continue to monitor their energy usage how to manage that consumption moving forward and what the benefits are for electrification as they move to a clean

1:57:43 energy future in our region keep in mind city of Sacramento adopted an all-electric code as well and so new construction now all new permits all new building requirements for new construction is all electric now so we still have Legacy gas systems and as um the I think it's going to be in 2026 2027 and Beyond when their the code adopts the retrofit market right adopts electrification for the existing built Market that's really going to make the difference and we have to be ready for it you know we have to we're we're together but separate right so we have

1:58:29 to be ready to help support the community and help them find those Solutions before they essentially have to right so it's really important for us to do that um next slide so programs that are tenant our residents if you will um our tenants can take advantage of in our territory are things like our energy assistance program rate this gives them a monthly discount on a qualified Energy bill it's it's a flat discount on their utility bill and um it also gives them access to additional energy efficient resources they get an access to a no cost or virtual in-person evaluation of their home we have a dedicated energy advisor that provides residents with

1:59:16 information on how much energy each of their appliances use they find out how much is a real vampire right you're like oh did you not know that let's go into your my account portal on the website and you can find out every every week how much you use last week and so it's it's been pretty a very successful program we've actually taken that Beyond just the home and actually put it into schools and we have some schools who run their own energy training cap if you will all the way from elementary all the way through high school so it's been pretty exciting to see that education happen in scale up as well um we also offer our medical equipment discount program that provides discounts for um

2:00:02 qualified properties that have medical equipment that's needed and then we offer load flexibility programs and um you know we've got a virtual um power program called my energy Optimizer we are currently recruiting for our residential customers to come in take advantage of of that program it offers them an opportunity for Bill savings as well as supporting some decarbonization goals as well as supporting the Region's goal for um you know a cleaner environment and community next slide and then our next slide is our rebate and incentive programs and these are

2:00:48 primarily for um our residential customers as well as some for our commercial for our residential programs we have a last year we launched a contractor Network program and what that contractor Network program does is it allows renters who have authorization from their property owners increase access to new energy efficient Technologies these contractors can do direct install of heat pump HVAC heat pump water heaters um seal and insulate packages circuit upgrades panel upgrades we even have Workforce Development built into this program it's been extremely successful

2:01:33 because completely contractor driven contracts just go out they recruit to customers they work with them and then they get the incentive directly and then it may sometimes pay upwards of a hundred percent of the project cost depending on what the measure is so there's three different packages that I can take advantage of and they just have the renter just has to have access and approval from the property owner they can also take advantage of our retail Partnerships um that would you know the large big box stores where they can get discounts on appliances air conditioners power strips there's a number of them that make it available for them and it's a direct buy down through that retailer partnership so when they walk in the discount's already embedded into the purchase so

2:02:21 they can walk away with it and and I know that it's a regional thing so people that live outside of the territory they come and buy so if happens right so just makes it easier for them to buy and invest in energy efficient Technologies um through that that process so there's no extra rebate necessary necessary or a um an additional application process for it um in addition we also offer on our website we offer information on um you know customer information and rebates but we also offer in their utility bill they get a home electricity report and then we also offer the option for them to go to our SMUD energy store where they can purchase it they just type in their address their zip code and they

2:03:08 can um then go onto the website and purchase everything from light bulbs to Smart thermostats okay so you can even order an EV charger and ask and request that it get installed there there's even that option and so obviously as a renter you probably have to get permission from the property owner but there are things that they're very easy for them to purchase I think you can even buy LED Christmas lights on there as well so there's a lot of choices there on the website but it just gives information to make the best choices from their home and even if they're looking for they're thinking about let's say they want to go out and Lease an EV or they want to buy one there is actually a link to the website where they can actually go in and say okay how far are you from your

2:03:53 from your business or from uh your workplace you know what's your travel what are your travel plans look like you know um what are your goals for carbon reduction right and then it gives you the best options based on what your needs are and what's available in the marketplace so we give them information that really goes beyond just in the home it's really about their community and how they want to engage with it and then finally we have our multi-family retrofit and this really is a program that we've had since gosh probably I don't know probably that mid 70s we've had this one a very long time and initially it really started out as an Energy Efficiency program um and and we always with that program

2:04:38 we always delivered Energy Efficiency we we provided Partnerships with our trade sheet trade shade tree program and then about three years ago we said wait a minute we're really it's not aligned with our programs we need to have this one aligned with our plan and so we flipped it up upside down and we made it about decarbonization and now we deliver incentives so the same properties in many cases um for properties with five units or more but we focus on building electrification first Energy Efficiency that supports it and then we offer electric vehicle charging now with this program we also offer Equity assistance for qualified properties and then we provide them with

2:05:25 support from a dedicated multi-family program advisor so it becomes a turnkey program that provides technical support to the property owner to the installing contractor or construction team we offer program application assistance we offer tenant education for sustainability right long-term benefits there and then we offer external program coordination because these projects I mean even a hundred unit property you want to put in hot water heating space heating oh let's just talk about induction cooking right talk about a culture shift and then let's add in maybe some electric vehicle charging and talk about a car share program let's just get it all right well guess what we

2:06:10 can't do it alone and that's going to be an expensive bill so to help them do that and make sure there's Equitable access we partner with Statewide programs we've partnered in the past with for example the state's low-income weatherization program we partnered with their Tech program we've even partnered with um the there's an sgip Statewide sgip program right and so there's a number of them that we stack and layer and across the state to make sure that these customers aren't just doing it by themselves they're also doing it with the broader community and then we're bringing in the tenants to say all right this is what this experience is going to be like for you and then for the

2:06:57 properties what's it like to manage to maintain this new equipment in the future right what's the operational impact to you and how can we help support you so that this becomes successful so for seniors I certainly wouldn't necessarily recommend Chargers that are going to support individual spaces but maybe a maybe a shuttle bus program if they already have it in place right so you just talk about what's in there that they're already doing and what could easily convert over and what are they thinking about for their business operations and how do they want to expand it and really have an impact and that really applies to all of our decarbonization programs now we really want to expand them in a way that really is relevant to our community it speaks

2:07:43 to them in a way that they know that we have heard them and it brings them along the way to our 2030 goal and I think that's it do I have one more slide and that's it any questions I'm happy to help yeah Leo thank you very much that's very informative and you kind of gave us a drink out of a fire hydrant but yeah a couple questions um on the utilization rate when you have chargers at low income housing projects the majority of EVS are new and many are very expensive um do you have a utilization rate any statistics about what percentage of those EV Chargers because I would think that buying the electric vehicle from

2:08:28 somebody's unlimited income would may be a challenge that's a valid point and unfortunately we don't have any significant utilization rates in this market that's why we are leveraging the grant with the CEC to learn more so that's exactly what we want to learn more as we um you know Implement some of these projects over time and I expect it in about two years I'll have some answers for you there thank you very much second question is when one of the qualified individuals in an apartment qualifies to Appliance like a refrigerator or a dryer or something like that when they move do they get to take that Appliance with them or does that stay with the property it stays with the property that's true

2:09:13 in in our territory appliances um don't typically move from property to property um so it's an asset so what we want to make sure of is that every property owner takes advantage of the programs that are available and we partner um with a number of organizations where we can provide either at a discount or free um the free appliances that are energy efficient um either refrigerators or reduced costs for induction um technology and such for those homes so and we're even looking at new technologies that will allow us to look at unique innovative ways to deliver new technologies such as induction to those properties because because we know that

2:09:59 that's definitely a challenge thank you my last question a ratepayer subsidy or grants or where do you get your money to buy down the cost of these appliances and these features to help renters so we do have a um so as a municipal utility for Energy Efficiency on part of our rate payer um cost if you will there is a portion of that that goes into a fund for our Energy Efficiency programs for building electrification that's a little bit different we actually set aside um a percentage of our operational funds to help our community and then this year

2:10:45 well not this year but I guess about two years ago we made an investment with our community impact plan and we doubled that investment and by doubling that investment we have set aside those funds to support specific communities within our region um so that we can really make an impact and make sure that we don't leave anyone behind thank you very helpful yeah um I have a question how successful have you been at getting landlords to invest in retrofitting um some of their their rental units oh God so we've been actually very successful I

2:11:31 would say the first year when we launched the program it was when we relaunched it was in 2019. so we've had four years of work really deep work with multi-family um properties and this year um we are actually on On Target to deliver almost three um equivalent gigawatt hours in uh gastroelectric Renovations um which is almost over last year we renovated over a thousand units this year we're on track to to renovate even more so I would say that we have been successful in delivering that but but we're not like I said we're not doing it alone we're testing out new technologies with um customers we're making sure that if something doesn't work we're going back

2:12:16 and helping them in our first year we worked with a customer who put in a essential plant heat pump water heater system with a gas backup not ideal but you know baby steps right we found out year later that it wasn't working so we went back and helped him we brought in um a team to identify what the issue was was it really about you know the piping that got installed was it not this built as it was designed turns out that there were some minor tweaks that needed to be adjusted and so the customer has been able to take those recommendations make the adjustments and now it's very happy with the system but being available and being there to help those customers kind

2:13:02 of go through not just oh adopt it and go learn about it and then you're gone it's it's along that pathway that a year or two later it's not working come back and tell us so we can see if there's an issue we need to learn from so we can help you how you've gotten landlords to invest that way like what what specifically are the um the the programs that you've offered because oftentimes there's no incentive for a landlord to do anything because the renters are the ones that are paying for the utility costs true true in many cases that's true um in this case what we found was that um if you have Central planned heat pump water heater or space heating let's say or you have so so they have to maintain those so that's an

2:13:48 issue um they also have to look at okay um at some point they have to replace them so I will say this Rich incentives do help right nice strong robust incentives that are better than what they offer um on the traditional side we don't offer incentives for gas systems and with gas systems no longer having that benefit customers were looking at opportunities to leverage it in in the technology was there to support it with a similar or better experience because they didn't want callbacks from the tenants right we didn't nobody wants that so if that issue is addressed and the incentives are rich enough to make

2:14:33 the switch then they were more than willing to have the conversation so it's a little bit of two things right reliability available product that's the other thing and then just really good incentives that really help Drive the financial package thank you you're welcome and this was very enlightening I I appreciate it this is kind of the stuff that we I myself is I'm very interested in because we do have we have 50 of our our housing stock

2:15:18 is rental stock in in our community um some of the challenges that we Face though are obviously our temperatures up here are colder so some of some of the technology you know 100 percent uh heat pump may not be the best application for us you know but so those are some of the things that we're dealing with um I guess one of the questions that I have is also a lot of our multi-family have actually separate meters for each unit that's right yeah and so have you done any type of things with the the ductless uh heating and cooling systems and and what kind of uh incentives have you seen

2:16:04 or had any luck with putting those in because I think those would be things that would be more conducive to our environment up here and and the and our customers that are using those types of things rather than Central boilers and central heating those types of things yes we offer those in our inventive program with the multi-family program we offer a variety of system types that work for an individual unit or a system or a more centralized system and we really had to take that into consideration because um it made a difference right um if you don't if at first we thought we only needed one for one unit Replacements systems now we realized no we actually needed to broaden it and and

2:16:49 broaden the um the requirements so we looked at what was available and over time we've added products and then we dropped others off we've said okay what's now code so every year we take a close look at what the code requirements are and say okay what can we do to make it better they're absolutely right foreign just a quick question so so when on the first slide or one of the very first slides um you said that that the goal was 100 percent uh clean energy Renewables by 2030. that's right and it and it was just at 50 right now is that correct or was that

2:17:34 um so we are probably a little bit closer to our 60 percent goal yeah that's that's um that side probably should be updated but it's we are closer to 60 percent zero carbon um we've got seven years to go and um I I know that our strategy team and our energy trading team they are working hard to make sure that happens and as I mentioned before we are looking at retiring um power plants and then you know going into contract for a new clean um Energy Solutions right but we also use large Hydro right so to your point um a percentage of our power is delivered actually from let's see here

2:18:20 I'll get that data for you specifically because it's it's really important to speak to that in a way that's really relevant um let me get that hang on one second I have it right here place to be at because we're talking about squeezing the last five percent yeah I will not last five percent but to get us from 90 to 95 yeah so I know yeah it is tough it's expensive yeah because we're at 30 large Hydro um we have Renewables of 11 so we're at 23 solar in wind and then we have local thermal at 35 and then we still have

2:19:06 other sources you know at two percent so so there's a mix right we have to get rid of that two percent for sure and then we've got to figure out um how do we increase it um you know so that we can get there one of the ways that we are doing that is we are looking at Innovative programs and solutions to do that um we have customers too who are joining us along the way we developed a um Community solar share or solar shares program for um single-family homes as well as for multi-family properties so a few years back we developed a developer solar shares program where developers could buy in instead of having to install on-site solar which was required by the

2:19:53 state's requirement for new um construction for new homes now they were able to partner with SMUD and the CEC accepted our community solars shares program as the way to benefit from a utility delivered solar solar offering well the office of the developers benefited from that they didn't have to install it so there was money saved right there and then we had the ability to deliver that through a utility grade program that directly credits it to the customers utility bill for the for the life of that product which is the home so the homeowner the renter they get the

2:20:39 direct benefit from that solar shares program every single month um until they sell it and the next homeowner or renter gets the benefit of it so it's just part of the um part of that you know product for that site for that home and that business so we're very excited about having developed that um and we've just had our latest update the CEC updated it and allowed us to continue that program in 2023 so programs like that really help us deliver that I'm curious what portion of uh that Gap the six the 40 books that you know what are the biggest uh solutions that you have that are that

2:21:25 are going to close that Gap so through efficiency is it through the solar program I mean I understand rocking it offline but what are you replacing it with right um well our goal is to get to Renewables um as well as to um leveraging um some of the Innovative Technologies specifically what are we going to do we're looking at large Hydro we're looking at small Hydro we're looking at Renew all Renewables right um wind and solar and expanding it so that it's broader biomass as well but it has to be relative it has to be reliable and boy it has to be affordable right so that's key

2:22:10 can I ask what your what your rates are just uh I mean maybe a residential rate do you have a flat he as well as a rate charge or do you just have rate charges so we have um we we recently well as of a few years ago we went to a demand charge for our residential customers and they have a time of day rate um in the summertime and so the on average our highest rate in the summer time would be a peak rate um four kilowatt hour consumption at 28 cents per kilowatt hour that is the highest during our Peak summertime from say six to nine PM Monday through Friday um off peak though you're probably averaging around 13 or 14 cents per

2:22:55 kilowatt hour um so it's it's while it's higher than other rates um outside of California I would say within California we're still very affordable as well as when we are compared to our adjacent Utility Partners right we're still um well below by at least 45 percent lower than other community utilities or yeah great thank you thank you thank you for your time this evening really appreciate you taking time out of your evening to come and join us virtually oh absolutely well thank you for having me appreciate that okay and we are going to take a 10

2:23:41 minute break and we'll come back at three or five we'll just make it easier

2:34:57 so we have the draft labor decommissioning action plan great good evening commissioner yes I'm Lisa Krantz generation manager joining me up here tonight is Mark Seneca he's our generation employment supervisor and Jeremy Simone player and our project community in addition to that we have a regulatory specialist rob a lady in the back as well as your communication specialist about the Spencer we're going to be talking tonight about the draft labor commissioning action plan that was provided to the board last week works and I want I did want to check make sure folks could hear me in the back thank you okay all right so the first thing I want to do is explain what the labor decommissioning action plan for the

2:35:42 valve as we call it what it is and what It Isn't So decommissioning a hydroelectric project not surprisingly is a long and very complicated process and we're only at the very early stages of the planning efforts action plan that we're developing this year will serve as our overarching guidance document that outlines the steps that we'll need to follow over the coming years including regulatory process and stakeholder engagement provides background information on the project key milestones and decision points so essentially what it is is the plan for the plan now we understand and we heard a lot of it tonight that folks are very interested in specific details around what decommissioning will look like on the ground and what it will exactly entail unfortunately the ldap does not

2:36:28 provide that information and that level of detail because it will link us of a number of years and a lot of conversations to arrive at those specifics so at this point it won't include detailed plans schedule budget mitigation efforts among other things all right shown on the left of the slide are the sections that the action plan will include there's a lot of information already in the Strath plan more than we can cover tonight so we'll focus this presentation on the items that are highlighted in yellow however comments and feedback on all sections of the plan are certainly welcome we're still in the draft stage of the plan there are several sections that have not yet been developed those are shown on the right side of the slide and

2:37:13 will be included in the final draft that will be presented to the report in December for example timelines and key milestones and Staffing and resource strategies have yet to be fully developed given the complexity of the decommissioning process and the number of stakeholders involved it's inevitable that new information will continue to surface and come to light through regulatory proceedings and some complete additional analysis so we recognize that our understanding is going to continue to evolve over time and the impacts and benefits of the decisions that we're making now and into the future will need to be weighed so given that we're going to continue to use the triple bottom line approach to assess the social environmental and economic impacts of our proposals and

2:37:58 we're going to rely on the principles that were set forth in the recommendation to decommission that was approved by the board earlier this year namely consistency with ux Mission and values alignment with the major priorities of our customer honors making decisions that mitigate risk and uncertainty to the extent possible and minimizing eweb's long-term impacts and obligations we do want to highlight some of the complexities that we'll be using the action plan to manage as there are several parallel systems taking place that interact with each other over time this slide shows three the primary parallel processes so in addition to the licensing decommission process we're also going to be performing a strategic evaluation of the Walterville development

2:38:43 decisions of the future of Walterville will factor into the licensing process decision such as whether we amend or Surrender our first license which I'll talk about more in a minute and then at the same time we're also going to be designing our near-term risk reduction measures such as routing Johnson Creek directly back to the river and those measures need to be reflected in our proposal to ferc for the permanent degree configuration of Liebert and each of these parallel processes will be coming out under the uncertain influence of a variety of other factors including whether it's our compliance requirements the results of studies and Engineering facility assessments and perhaps even General energy market dynamics these types of complex interactions between parallel processes is one of the reasons why it's so hard for us to

2:39:29 predict the very detailed outcomes for deep conditioning at this stage of the game and that so many people are wanting to know about so as mentioned before the Liebert and Walterville developments although operated independently of each other are jointly licensed under one license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission because of this any major action that we take on Liebert also affects the Walterville license the current license expires in 2040 and although we intend to operate the Walterville development at least through the current license term understanding what we plan to do with Walterville at the end of the license will enable us to choose the appropriate regulatory path forward for Lee Burke so given that we plan to begin an evaluation of Walter built in 2024 so next year

2:40:15 using the same triple bottom line approach that we used for Weaver if that evaluation results in the decision to pursue for licensing of the Walterville project after this current license term then we would apply for a license Amendment with the ferc to separate the labor going to alter the licenses from each other and then decommission just to leave workforcement if on the other hand that the decision was to stop operating Walterville at the end of this license term then we would apply for a full surrender of the license and ultimately decommission both projects the Walterville evaluation is expected to take at least 18 months if not more in large part because we don't have quite as much data on Walterville as we did when we went through the Strategic evaluation for Liebert and specifically on what refurbishment of the project

2:41:00 would need to look like in order for us to be able to operate for another 40 to 50 years Beyond 2040. regardless of the future of Walterville the work process for decommissioning Liebert is essentially the same whether we are going to do a license Amendment or a licensed surrender which is also the same as that for licensing a new project or re-licensing and existing process it's it's essentially the same three processes that you have to choose from the standard or the default process is called the integrated licensing process there's also a traditional license licensing process which requires that we request do a formal request deferred justification as to why we want to use that process and Burke needs to approve that and then finally there's the

2:41:46 alternative licensing process which requires not only a request to ferc and their approval but also stakeholder support and by that I mean primarily Regulatory Agencies the alternative process for for context is what we use when we re-licensed Carmen Smith and it often includes a settlement agreement with regulatory agencies and other partners so there are pros and cons to each of these processes and we're currently assessing the advantages and disadvantages of them we'll provide those to the board in October or November via our correspondence and then in December along with our final draft at the action plan we'll ask the board for your endorsement on our Direction provided for the pathway to choose all

2:42:31 three processes include three stages which I'll talk more about in the next slide all right so the first stage of the process is to develop a pre-application document the pre-application document is essentially to provide ferc and our Consulting parties with existing information that's relevant to the project proposal it also enables interested parties to identify issues and where additional information may be needed develop study requests and a process plan and schedule I wanted to note that studies aren't actually required for the preparation of employee pre-application document what is required is that we do our due diligence to gather as much information as reasonably available and provide that

2:43:17 to Ferg and other parties describe the existing environment and the potential impacts of the proposal to the extent we can with the information that's reasonable available the second stage of the phase or second stage is the study plan phase now this this is where we get into the real deep analysis for many of the components that will go ultimately into the license application the study plan is developed by eweb although agencies tribes and other stakeholders can request information or for studies to be conducted this is the phase at which detailed study methods and objectives are identified and then the next stage of the process which is the very important part is to submit our detailed application for

2:44:02 either a license to render or licensed Amendment this is a very comprehensive document it includes a proposed plan and schedule specifics about what the proposal is detailed environmental Rapport a biological assessment which is essentially the document that analyzes project impact the smallest species a National Historic preservation act report along with a number of other technical reports and documentation on consultation with regulatory agencies and others the application is where we get to the point where we have details on what decommissioning is actually going to look like on the ground and there's a lot of work to do between now and then until we get there all right once we submit the detailed application the process generally involves for reviewing the application

2:44:48 and perhaps requesting additional information once everything is in order then ferc would issue a public notice that the application is ready for environmental analysis that's what starts the formal process for comments protests and interventions and for federal and state agencies to get their work drafting biological opinions terms and conditions officially prescriptions and a number of other things this is what work moves through the National Environmental Policy or NEPA act process by issuing either draft environmental assessment or draft environmental impact statement that needs to be consistent with the endangered precise Act and the National Historic preservation Act although not part of the NEPA process before Robert could issue a decision they need a water quality certification

2:45:33 or waiver under the Clean Water Act and to incorporate recommendations from federal and state agencies according to the federal power act on mitigation and enhancement measures for dog species and others once all that's done then firk would issue the order so the point in laying this out is so that you recognize how much there is involved in the process and how many places that we have data that we need to put in to develop our detailed proposal all right so you've seen this slide before this is the same Target roadmap we've been using for a while it shows our most aggressive timeline estimate of when each stage can be completed this will be refined as part of the final ldap in December although I

2:46:18 expect that the timeline will expand as we dig into the regulatory process a little deeper and even after that the timelines presented in the final plan will still just be best guesses and estimates and subject to change key change as we move through various steps so in short preparing an application will take several years Fork approval is another two or more years followed by two or more years of design and permitting and before construction would begin at no earlier than 10 years from now takeaway here is that nothing substantial will change in the next decade or so and there are many steps to go through between now and then I also wanted to note that you know say we're submitting a final labor deep commissioning action plan at the end of this year this plan is really never final it's going to be a living document

2:47:04 that will continue to be updated as we move through the process so when and how will the board receive updates and provide Direction we will continue to include status reports in the quarterly reports we'll provide periodic board presentations including the annual upriver board meeting I will have additional board workshops and correspondence as needed and then also as part of our annual Capital Improvement plan and O M budget Cycles we will be playing financial information on the project as for key decision points for which we'd ask for the boards in volvement the first one is coming up at the end of the year where we'll ask for the board's endorsement of our chosen

2:47:49 regulatory pathway so that integrated alternative or traditional licensing process and then once we start the Walterville evaluation we'll be coming to the board regularly with updates and will ultimately ask for the board to endorse a management recommendation on the future disposition of Walterville um the next the the bottom two um bullets we'd like your feedback on so we recognize that you're going to want to be a price of major changes or Baseline of in our baseline's assumptions or events that may cause us to rethink our Direction changes to Baseline assumptions could include things such as economics of the projects specifically engineering feasibility or macro economics around energy pricing and renewable energy markets and then

2:48:34 also that parallel process that I showed a few slides ago so in other words you know what we're doing now and how that relates to our ability to restore to pre-project conditions in the future thank you as mentioned earlier we'll be using the the action plan to manage some really complex interdependencies between parallel processes and potential conflicts amongst multiple objectives it's not yet developed in the draft document but our team is compiling an inventory of interdependencies that will want to track in an effort to minimize surprises and conflicts when a development or outcome on one process triggers Ripple effects on a parallel process for example I'll make decisions to minimize cost on our near-term risk

2:49:20 reduction measures affect eweb's ability to maximize the return to pre-project conditions in our permanent decommissioned State that's just one example many of examples like that we'll revisit the plan on a regular basis to stay on top of these interdependencies will logging in fresh information and we want to ensure that both staff and the board are well positioned to explain why decision-making associated with one component needs to be mindful of other components that might seem otherwise unrelated and finally we request feedback from you this evening on the board involvement piece and specifically how and when you'll receive updates and the key decision points that would trigger additional board Interruption again the

2:50:07 first decision point is coming up at the end of this year where we'll ask the board to endorse our management direction for regulatory pathway that's it for the FI the formal presentation we invite questions um comments and feedback okay um thank you um so I have a question about or concern about the community I know that we are talking about something totally different than that we're talking about a much bigger picture broad look at how this project is going to be managed but I feel like at the same time perhaps

2:50:52 we need to think about a separate Community engagement piece because as you saw a lot of people came tonight and people still profits were going to be affected and we as Commissioners are going to hear a lot about this very emotional things from people because they're worried um and I'm just wondering if there is a parallel process that we can also Implement I know this isn't exactly what you're asking for tonight but I have to bring it up because I feel like for us at velocity for myself for me it's it's a really important piece um I think that staff has done a fantastic job at all the Outreach and all the planning that we did for this um Adam I think that that's all been really great but going forward I think

2:51:38 maybe it's a little bit different I wonder if we have the expertise here or if we need outside help um some of us listen to the presentation from the professor at Oregon State where she talked about decommissioning dams and I feel like she referred to um Community engagement things and how there's models for how that can be done so I'm just I'm just wondering about that that piece I have to be in in parallel with this okay both the UFO work on that kind of stuff anyway I feel like I would be remiss if I should bring up that piece because I think it's really it's really important um and then to answer like what you need from us in terms of the decision points

2:52:26 um I think time like giving us enough time to digest the information so looking at we're going to make a um a decision point in October or November we spent a lot of time getting to this decision and we put plenty of time on the agenda for that and I feel like you made similar presentations over and over and over maybe to make sure that we got it not necessarily asking for that but just making sure that we have enough time to digest the information I would like to just speak a bit to the public engagement strategy you're right there's a lot of people that really want to know and are directly affected by what happens with leader of the ground

2:53:12 there are two components to the public engagement process from my perspective in in this project there's the formal process which is which are sort of the regulatory pieces where there's formal public comment period or or public involvement piece like for example through the Nema process there is formal public engagement piece in addition to that there's an informal piece around remaining um transparent and listening to people hearing thoughts and concerns and sharing information I can't speak to whether we have the resources in-house to take on a project like that that's something that you know want to talk with our Communications team about it they've done excellent work on this project so far but it is a lot of work and will continue to be overtime

2:54:05 thank you uh just a clarification in your background it calls the pfm the potential failure modes that our study found on Walterville can you elaborate on those because is there the potential that ferc is going to make us bring Walter Bill to the standard of one in a million event uh and a one in a ten thousand dollar a year event like they're doing on lieberge because that will just absolutely keep us pretty hard financially and what is the status of that report that was done last year yeah those are the some of the studies that Lisa was referring to that are underway right now that we are going to be needing some conclusions from in order to understand exactly that question how much investment would be required to resolve the primary uh potential failure

2:54:54 mode issues which are just like at Lieber the plus scenario of multiple maximum flood one in a million a year type event the seismic the Cascadia event again is the most uh challenging seismic loading position and then just like at lieberg we had a facility that was built at a time when construction standards were very different and its vulnerability to things like internal erosion are very real and need to be mitigated so there are some comparable vulnerabilities at Walterville there's

2:55:39 also some significant differences in that about two-thirds of the Walter Hill Canal is categorized as low hazard meaning that if you did have a failure of the embankment you would not expect loss of life or property damage or undo in fact so the uh that's a pretty significant difference in terms of what the design criteria expectations are going to be you get a little bit more leniency in terms of your PFF vulnerability at low and Azure development and my second question is for me to help I mean we've got this decision about um we've heard about the access on the other side and that's the top of the dam

2:56:25 but for a consetta we're not going to generate power we can't impound the water and compete the fish and so the scenario where we had a bridge but didn't have a dam the lake goes away to help support me with that so now the regimen is such that cougar is not going to be used to impound they're not going to supplement the fool with McKenzie anymore after 20.4 20 25 they're going to just stop generating power and depending water and that's going to affect fish migration and that would affect the potential operation if we said Return to service on Lee bird we put 250 million into something we can't run and I just want to make sure that I'm understanding that correctly is that that now that the flows are going to change in the river from the historical flows when we've been able to divert 2500 CFS versus into

2:57:11 Cuba thousand we want the high probability of that occurring anymore isn't going to happen and we're going to not be able to divert getting water I mean if we return to service um money into a labor facility if you can't generate it is that it's still correct so we would need conducting that kind of a sensitivity but Walter built just like we did from Edward where we would factor in that our understanding of what the impact on the water available for generation is and the conclusion was that there would be labor portions of the year when there would not be enough water available to operate that you seasonally shut down likely a similar assumption would come into play for

2:57:57 Walterville so that would that would be something that is you would see in the economic analysis for multiple and that strategic evaluation thank you and some sometime in this process would be good for me is to be able to walk the where do you envisioned this you know we've heard this story about this road and all that is to walk that I know it's a right-of-way but it's only a single Lane thing and just to see what people are talking about because you know because I haven't visualized it I know where it is and I've I know people that have on real estate up there but I just I think it may benefit all of us to do a little field trip sometime for the monsoons and uh you can see it agreed and I did want to address just

2:58:43 briefly the transportation aspect because I know there's a lot of folks that are very concerned about it so although we have um put out a couple of conceptual ideas no decision has been made there's a lot of engineering feasibility work and um coordination with the transportation agencies which have the actual authority over any new road or before we get there so it seems like there might be a perception out there that we have fully decided that is not the case nor are you have really in the position to be able to make that decision right yeah and I was just going to say that the county does know that they have a transportation issue in that area not just with eweb's decision but with the

2:59:29 condition of the bridge and with all emergency access when I spoke with Steve moaker high school he was very aware and I think staff has talked with County staff as well they're very aware of the transportation issues and they go well beyond eweb taking out a dam perception is coming from I mean people made it sound like our staff had given it to them which I don't think it's a future so do we have any sense of where they're getting this information even I mean is the county giving you that I don't know our our original recommendation from last December mentioned developing southern accent accent Southern Accents are Divine but

3:00:16 Southern access to which would have uh referenced that road area as a possibility so by mentioning it by putting options out there it was like am I mentioning that it was oh you're going to do this and it's not going to work was there is the response that you're seeing I did see John and then unless you're the of this about taking a field trip out there to see it I think that'd be really helpful and I even consider inviting the County Commissioners to come out there and see that too because it's something that they're going to have to be partnered with too so if we're already going out there and seeing what the issues are maybe inviting them along too and I'm into this conversation well let's do it all let's get hit a buck and let's get Floyd prasowski and let's get every

3:01:02 Senate in the house and everybody that's got their hands on her strengths because this money will cure this and uh and get everybody there and let them hear some of this uh and let them determine who's responsible I had a couple questions um following up with Sonia's question about um where the concept came from um you said that we put out some ideas about animal Solutions but we didn't published who's clear at the meeting up River there had been a map circulating people were talking about oh this road comes right across my property line and so

3:01:47 um there's definitely there's details published by somebody that I don't think it's coming from eweb um between that and the misconceptions that we heard tonight I kind of I share Mindy's concern and the misconceptions we heard that River in our meeting um where yeah there were clearly some real big misunderstandings about where we are in the process you know what decisions are being made and why I don't think that we can you know completely solve all of that but it does feel like some additional Communications and conversations opportunities for people to hear us the same message a few times is going to be important not only now

3:02:34 because they're still it's clearly still misconceptions about where we are we've made a decision that we're going down the path of decommissioning and there are folks who are not instead of that or anyway so there's not only Communications I think that have to happen right now but this thing is so complicated I don't think we team taking this on thank you for taking it on on behalf of you um but clearly it's going to become a bit more important that we have regular Communications and I think the upper nerve meetings once a year are important and I think perhaps a couple of us going up with one of you um a couple more times each year perhaps it's when you do the updated for the board we also have a satellite screening upriver with a staff person who can

3:03:19 answer questions afterwards um I don't know what that looks like but I I knew that um increase Communications with the community of Riverbank essential with the perfect connections 20 years I don't I mean it feels like an Herculean lift but also part of the deal with something this complicated and your proposal for how much involvement and feedback to the board I think is is right it's the right degrees perfect building off of that I'm just going to save this to our board wrapper but it's we're talking about it now I'd love to do a copy meeting or something like that

3:04:05 up there and just you know have people come again I know that it's a pain we don't have to have giant presentations but just having us go up there and actually having a real computation with people because they can understand where we're coming from and it's not completely different settings you actually have no conversation I think with oh good um I also realize that as I read this procedure the public input it says it will reach out to people if we don't answer any of their questions but then we have no way to actually get there's nothing on the form that has contact information on it so I would love to see our form updated so we can actually provide feedback after the fact if we want to reach out to people if they like it I mean if they don't put it on there fine that's their

3:04:50 choice but I don't these people are not necessarily signed up for email I don't know the way you can contact them any other way if they drove all the way down here it would be nice to be able to reach out to them phone number email I think we should update this form and add something like that on there so we can actually do that um okay otherwise thank you I know this is a Herculean effort it truly is and it's not easy we're all going to be in the thick of it for a long time so you do the good work and we'll hang there with you okay John barrowski yeah thank you um I've got a couple of questions and then some feedback for the that you requested um first question is

3:05:35 on the alternate licensing is there an opportunity for us to sell Walterville um and you don't need to answer that right now but if somebody came in and wanted to re-license that on their own as a private entity is that something that would be possible through the re alternate licensing I'll just address briefly that we are still researching the details of all of that and so that the more details on the three different processes will be included in a correspondence either in October or November and we won't provide our Direction until December so you'll have a little bit of time to digest it that is one of the things commissioner Broski that has been brought up is how

3:06:20 does ferc um you know deal with the fact that you know if we go to surrender our license you know is there opportunity for somebody else to to take that license on so we're looking into that and we'll have more information in the future okay the other thing that you mentioned tonight that I hadn't really heard before was you mentioned that we were going to be looking at um returning Johnson Creek to uh directly to the river and I'm I'm wondering if if we're returning Johnson Creek directly to the river would it be also possible to do Cogswell and just have this thing go back to the way it was a hundred years ago and then

3:07:05 I'm not saying that now but that would be a point of uh feedback that I at that point that would be something that I would like to know because in the past I thought Johnson Creek was going to be storm water conveyance I'll just leave that there um I this is this is really uh interesting to me because right now where I'm sitting in Michigan I am one mile from the Sanford Dam that that broke in 2020 um here in Midland Michigan and so I've seen what happens when when a hundred-year-old damn fails uh the whole Community was underwater up to Second Story um in a matter of six minutes

3:07:51 um so uh it's it's really appropriate that I that we're talking about this right now because it's a very serious issue um and just to be able to visualize the you know they've got a stick that says this is high how high the water was and it came in in six minutes um when when uh when uh uh a couple of dams broke so um as far as when I would like to have uh input one of the big ones is financial um and I think there should be some sort of a financial trigger where we have to come in you know I I wasn't part of the initial Carmen Smith re-licensing

3:08:36 but ice let's see uh things on our consent calendar almost every month that our two three ten million dollar uh contracts above and beyond what was probably presented back when the licensing was was put out there so I think that maybe having some sort of a trigger that if there's a cost overrun by five or ten percent at least you bring it to the board and we we discuss why and what's going on because I can foresee this thing you know starting out now at 235 million dollars and a board in the future you

3:09:21 know in 20 30 having to set you know something comes up and it's like oh we need another 30 million dollars for this so a financial trigger would be something I don't know what that number is but I think that that would be something that I would like to see brought to us as some sort of a a trigger point where hey you guys got to check in on this because rate payers are going to have to pay for it so thank you you have what you need I think we do okay thank you we'll see you soon

3:10:08 okay next up he is resiliency policy president Carlson there's a studio for the audience at home Frank Lawson be with general manager this is an action item a potential action item for the evening basically one slide Commissioners brought up last December the request for a resiliency policy to be included at the board level that would guide decisions and actions of the

3:10:56 organization going forward foot draft in May board deliberation on the topic in June and we've Incorporated um some of the suggestions that we heard during that meeting in particular trying to paint a little bit of a more clear picture in the implementation portion as to how the board would would see and where to look for the impacts of the resilience to policy there's basically three sections the rationale the directives um again this is a guidance policy in the implementation which includes certain specific plans such as wildcard

3:11:42 mitigation plans uh certain types of reports also the inclusion when we do triple bottom line analysis or analysis of decisions and incorporation of both Normal and abnormal operating conditions so that we can look at the resiliency of those evaluations under different types of conditions and then operating policies so there is a recommended motion here and with that I will pass it back to you president Carlson very discussion I just have a question it's like really we're going to a quadruple bottom one

3:12:27 great we're still going I still say it would be a triple bottom line but within those different categories we need to look at not just making the decision under ideal circumstances but saying asking the what if so what if we get a certain kind of threat or disruption does that impact the economic does it impact the environmental or or the social so it's still a triple bottom line but it's adding a sensitivity to each of those areas okay because we'll have a we'll have a Dei portion

3:13:19 um yeah just comments um I uh I appreciate where this is going I voiced last time I don't feel like it's it's far enough in terms of providing some some specifics that I think would be valuable um so I you know I think I would respectively support this I saw John barovski yeah I just wanted to say uh thank you for the work on this I know we've gone over this over the last few months and uh made a few tweaks and adjustments to it I think we're heading in the right

3:14:05 direction to Matt's concerns I think that this is something that we can always revisit we can look at it see how it's working and hopefully uh the implementation part of it will achieve the goals that we all want it to do and if it doesn't let's we can always amend and and work to make it better just because we're adopting a policy doesn't mean that it's set in stone so I appreciate all the hard work from staff and I plan on supporting the motion sure [Music] you can make motions 2313 adopting board policy sd22

3:14:50 resiliency policy second um so I'll just just been to I I I get where your concerns are coming from I've also toiled with it I haven't quite figured out what else to put in there or how to you know add more teeth and I think some of it some of that will actually come by seeing how it plays out in the work that we do and then you know just like we did with a strategic plan we do or we plan we do we check that you know you you kind of go through this iterative process and I think that's what um you know we'll have to do with this too so I agree with brovsky's

3:15:35 comments and you know I we got to start somewhere let's get it in place and work with it okay so we have a motion on the table on any other further discussion okay all those in favor say aye aye that is that on the resiliency policy and Frank then you're might as well are you staying up there are you going back well stay here okay all right we're gonna make a strategic and operational report there's thank you again this evening um you did receive the report just a couple of highlights just just a few slides just to highlight a few things notable for the quarter primarily we did

3:16:23 um receive our money from the bonding process we did re we have Deborah has already deposited that and there's several Revenue organizations who are planning to spend it and so um really appreciate your support and the city's support on that um we also as part of that process the water Financial ratings were reaffirmed and that's that's actually an important part of this process going forward is that when you go through it you have crediting agencies come in they review your organization they review your books the product the finances and also the strategies and so quite a number of Staff members participated with these reading organizations to describe what

3:17:08 we're doing and why we're doing it and how we interact with the board and how we interact and see Trends in the industry and those types of things and so I really want to appreciate staff for for the work and the confidence that they portray to these these organizations um there was a lot of work that took place um are building vacating our building at headquarters I just I just again want to reiterate that this this was not just packing up furniture and moving out um we did disposition the furniture in some cases to agencies I think there was a little bit of background provided to the board on that but there was uh some pretty substantial and important infrastructure that we had to move uh

3:17:53 pretty quickly uh the the system controls on the water side we needed to substitute some alternative Technologies there we had fiber and Communications infrastructure still there backup control centers as well as customer service security systems that we had to to bifurcate so that we could transfer that to the city and so there were a lot of people in different departments and operational departments who who worked on that and so again here it says over 70 people 26 different departments were involved in that and so thanks to the operations staff in particular for having to an is staff and others for having to move that infrastructure and and develop Alternatives pretty quickly

3:18:40 some work continues in major projects the Carmen Smith project for example we did finish the field assessments field assessment portion of the sinkhole evaluation at Trail bridge I think that final reports due out later this year and we'll see what kind of situations and mitigation we have to do there that has slowed some of the other progress in our licensing work we continue to work on the projects that we can but there's a few that specifically around fish mitigation that have been delayed some because of that East 40th water projects looking good I would say on on scope on budget I will note that well it's not

3:19:25 the water storage project directly the accompany the company in transmission work has been very disruptive to the neighbors when you're digging up the streets in their front yard you have street closures there there's lots of noise dust so that's been very impactful we want to really appreciate that we're getting near the end we're getting near the finish line that will be done this year but we're in a stage right now for the next month or two that is is probably as impactful or more impactful on the local neighbors there in particular right there we're East 40th and Patterson comes together that's that's been pretty disruptive because of

3:20:10 the work in the streets and so we want to appreciate them for their their patience and and staff for trying to continue to communicate with them on what's going on and then you know the Ami project is another one we're starting to to hear the the little bit of the supply chain freeing up which will give us the opportunity to get back into a mass deployment um on the electric side and sort of a slow rollout continuous rollout on the water side that that's that's starting to put some good news on the water quality fronts um no uh harmful algal blooms detected in the McKenzie in particular at our intake um and we're getting close on the the Kaiser Slough monitoring project that I

3:20:58 know some Commissioners in particular have been asking about for quite some time we worked through a whole mess of Permitting um process to to get that done and then we're definitely involved right now in the summer Readiness and you think about that from a wildfire mitigation plan we also do a lot on the resource planning side because we know the resources can become scarce very quickly uh in the summer so we we through our power planning and power trading group develop things like options to to have access to capacity or or energy when times get get scarce when you get a hot spell and low water for example which is some of the

3:21:44 conditions this summer we want to make sure that we have adequate Supply and so summer Readiness is both a distribution and a wildfire side but also a resource side and we address those both going into the summer just on the on the goals front um really progressing pretty well on on the the goals as laid out at the beginning of the year um a few pauses here and there uh relative to certain things but I think overall the goals are on track um going forward and where there are there's a few yellows just on a couple of those and those are things that um you feel pretty comfortable about making up and continuing to make progress on now in the end of the year

3:22:30 as you can see most of the goals and the way the the board is involved in in many of those units direct ways uh feel pretty good about where we are so far this year on the polls but I think with that I'll just I know there's a number of smes and experts and staff in the room and Commissioners had only other questions I know you've had that 80 some page report once once again so we're continuing to refine it my favorite top I will get my disguiser slew my last one but the first one is the fiber that we had a system and I understand we we allowed 4J or somebody to use it throughout the community but did I hear

3:23:16 you say that we turned that fiber over to the city and if so did we okay so we still it's still ours and we still let the school districts use it to uh yeah okay good yeah the the backbone that we have which what really goes back into the late 90s um when we first developed the light the Apple program I don't know if you remember that we share for public purpose um the fiber that we use for our own systems so and we've we have I don't know Rod if you know how many schools and community centers and other things we have but it's it's a pretty significant number I want to say almost every school almost every school I know we don't go out to Twin Oaks I don't think for example but yeah we did actually go out to point out

3:24:02 this we went partway and Lane electric went the rest I'm glad that that stayed in fact the second one might that be Kaiser who's holding us up for we want to monitor the water quality and the temperature from International Paper to help right above our intake who's holding us up to do that that's the Kaiser's Blue Project or I don't know which uh yeah well our our difficulty was with the City of Springfield getting through the permitting process but is that their public works or sub no it was City of Springfield this is Susan on the line she might be able to add more detail yes I'm here Susan do you want to speak to the the delays from Kaiser

3:24:49 um we had just um some delays doing it was with just with the City of Springfield and at one point they wanted us to do a no-rise analysis and it was either for um a post like literally just like a piece of you know little post or a four by four foot concrete pad so um we went back into negotiations with them um to not have to do like a twenty thousand dollar engineering modeling survey result to try to make that better and thank goodness for one of our awesome Engineers Laura Farthing was able to work with them and get it so that we could get the permit through it definitely took a lot longer than any of us wanted um but it's getting installed now and we're working on getting uh the pipe

3:25:34 installed on the bridge right now thank you I appreciate that but it's just very very frustrating for somebody like me to have to sit there for two years and let them say that we can't monitor the quality and the temperature of the water coming in just a few hundred yards up from our intake because it's coming from an industrial Source I I that is what I call bureaucracy and it's not your fault but boy if you ever want somebody to take on a government agency I'm more than available but free of charge I might have some other ones that I'm holding in my back pocket that I'd like you to do maybe not that one but I mean that to me is is the ultimate bureaucracy is fighting over a 4x4 post of when we can't monitor the quality of our water and integrity of it because of some

3:26:21 one of the biggest issues with that location is that we just needed to make sure that it was very secure so it'll took a little bit extra to design and everything just because um there's lots of folks down there recreating and using that area so we just animated wanted to make sure everything's locked up super tight especially having solar panels and those kind of things down there I appreciate it thank you uh thanks for the report um just a question and we may not know the answer to this but um you know you you mentioned the all the hard work of the 70 people and the

3:27:06 numerous hours and all of the things that we had to do to uh vacate the property downtown do we have a dollar figure on that uh you know I know we sold it for 12 million did it cost us 750 000 to move out uh I mean 70 people how many man hours moving moving fiber moving doing I.T people do we have any idea how much that cost us I don't have a have that off the top of my head uh commissioner um I think we could try I don't know if we tracked the hours for that project or not Deborah do you know I was just looking to see um it also quite honestly

3:27:53 a commissioner some of that was accelerated work that we had planned anyway and the timing was the difference so we were going to move our backup control center for example anyway and so some of it was an acceleration so it wasn't all an additive cost but I think we can follow up and give you some kind of feel as a follow-up item and the next general manager's report yeah I think I mean I if we sold it to anybody we'd have to move all that stuff out anyways right so it's not like it was there but it's just kind of like what a what a really realizing and as far as money that Deborah has already spent I don't spend the money it's under people how much no we asked you last

3:28:40 month we asked you last month where's the money and you said it's already been deposited and I've spent it so anyhow it's just kind of like you know what what's the Net game out of that sale that will help our rate payers defer rate increases so that's that was just kind of where I'm going thank you log into that commissioner thank you very quick questions um one it's long range but I think I read something about the tree trimming program and that we were behind about six months but we thought we were going to catch up I was just curious if that places Us in kind of already non-compliance with our

3:29:25 Wildfire mitigation plan well the the Wildfire mitigation plan prioritizes certain high-risk areas and those are the ones that get taken care of first so it does not put us out of compliance there it does it is something it actually is starting to catch up it was further behind if you go back a few reports and we've added another contractor and some other things there are clearance requirements of which we're trimming to as well and so it's the routine portion of that that we need to catch up on probably do anything that's

3:30:10 pretty accurate but we're on a five-year cycle so that's six months off so we're behind don't get me wrong but it could be worse okay all right good stuff all right and then the question I know when some art that was in there what ended up happening so we we have cataloged and and so for example the the glass fountain it's been created and cataloged and we haven't done anything with it yet I wonder if there's something unique okay selling off repurpose it bring money back in for low income

3:30:55 programs I don't know just throwing that up there I think we we moved and we should get it out of the building and then uh it's such a large so it's roughly three stories tall it takes a large space I don't know that there's very many buildings maybe Sands the whole Center that would actually be able to fit that particular piece of art that you're referring to but I that'll be something we get to at some point of your creature that's my questions what else okay not saying anything well thank you thank you

3:31:42 and now you're talking about future board agendas but you're going back to your normal spot um securely noteworthy on future board agendas um that I would call out specifically uh we I know that um we have a problem okay I I would make one note and I'll try to be cognizant of this in the future as we approve agendas but also if we have a large group and we kind of get a sense of what people appear for and we have an agenda item that's way leader in the evening

3:32:27 um proposing that we move it up so that people can actually stay for that discussion so I'll try to do that but if I miss I would definitely appreciate it if somebody flags that too so I think that's a you know just it's just better for public option input here on board wrap up John brovsky thank you um yeah I guess the question that I have is you know we received a really informative uh presentation from SMUD

3:33:13 tonight and I'm I'm guessing I guess the question that I have is what are our next steps with that right we we got information we got some ideas but how do we move forward with that as as a board again do we we call for another work session do we say staff look into some of these things and figure out which ones would be appropriate for us to to push forward I I'm just looking for I don't want a work session where I learn things and then I don't know how to implement them and so I guess that's the question that I have going forward especially with this topic of something that we've we've asked for you know commissioner Brown brought it Forward said this other utility south of

3:34:00 us has all these great ideas they brought them forward to us and now what are we going to do with them because I don't want to just get a presentation and then move on so that's that's something I'd like to find the best way to remedy historically uh procedurally if the uh board if we get three head knots we want to make an agenda item we bring it up we say we would like further information and we'd like a proposal from staff within their work workload to uh bring it to us and so we can discuss how we Implement something some of this because I mean it has been something that we've all talked about we want to do and I'm pretty sure we're going to get maybe

3:34:45 five head nods to uh to bring it back to have us you know yeah I mean for me I don't know if it's just like you know bring back or do we give direction to say you know staff heard the same presentation we did what do they what programs do they have that we think we could replicate here in Eugene that would help address the the issue of renters uh efficiencies I don't know but you know and I'm looking to Frank or or whoever but I I like your idea I mean yeah we can direct them to bring it back but what is that exact direction that I want to put forward

3:35:31 one of the things in the IRP is we want to increase energy efficiency or conservation and this spoke directly to that so I would be curious to hear from Steph like what they gleaned from this presentation and where they see opportunities I don't know um you know if we've already decided like The increased energy efficiency by X percent and percent or whatever but I'm curious staff's take on it and how it relates to our planning for the future yeah Commissioners I I will just uh let you know kind of what I thought our next steps were going to be one of those was to take a look at what we learned from SMUD and what things we

3:36:18 could evaluate on a practical basis um now a piece of that for example Energy Efficiency and and conservation one of the things that does come out of the IRP action plan is an assessment of the the value of that the trade-off between the cost and the benefit side it's it's not just oh here's this we can get 15 more percent it's at what cost do we get 10 or 15 or a certain degree of conservation so there's there's some tie-ins with the IRP but I also want to talk to staff about um what particular programs they think are practical for us to implement under what kinds of different time frames we're in the middle of a customer information

3:37:04 system upgrade for example that facilitates certain things SMUD is on a much different pricing level than than we are for example so I want to make sure that that we can look at the Gap there and say are there some things that they're doing that we're not doing but that we can do in a in a practical way so that was going to be some of my conversations with Julie and and her team and if if the board wanted to as a follow-up have us come back and have an agenda item to discuss the findings of that definitely that wouldn't excitement that would be in alignment with what I was thinking yeah and that's something that I was hoping for is you know

3:37:49 they've got models down there they've got you know they were referencing state grants well those are California state grants and they're different than what we have and like you said the pre like like Sonya brought up their pricing is much different than ours so they they have more flexibility to spend monies but yeah I I would really hope that we could have staff go through and look at it and bring back a work session later on or an agenda item later on thank you and commissioner the other the other variable that is in process of working its way through is the um iija and the IRA funding and how that manifests itself for customers some of those will potentially be direct incentives that go through the actual

3:38:35 equipment retail side some of it might be available to utilities for their direct programs so that'll be a variable that we'll have to include in our assessment as well yeah I would just add this that all sounds right to me Frank um I would add that we did hear a few months ago about some of the programs that we have here already some that I wasn't aware of and that I know some of the people whom I've heard from weren't aware of when I told them about that are really impressive incentives for renters so I think making sure that we summarize that too so we understand some of the Baseline because there's some stuff and maybe we talk about whether or not we

3:39:20 want to further promote those programs um I think there's some solid work already done that is worth some more conversation yeah I would also add that it's not just about the product when you think about marketing the channel is important also how do we reach the right people um and so you know even the the guy who came and provided public testimony this evening you know are we how are we going to work with contractors are we going to work with people who are advocates for that particular set of our population we're going to work with landlords you know I think the channel is important part of that process as well so it's the programs and it's these other things that make it work

3:40:10 and I'm gonna feel like a little bit like it but I think they're doing a lot I think they're in a very different Market than what we're in um they're going from 50 to 100 in an unreasonable time frame that I'm have zero chance and Hell of hitting that sorry but if they do fantastic I'd love to learn from that lesson let's bring it back and and hear what happens there but that um we're squeezing the last little bit out and I think a lot of our programs are already very robust but what I did get from this and then from um the conversations that we had with the staff a few months ago is that I would still really like to have more robust reporting to us about how those programs are doing and if you know as

3:40:58 part of this process hey we bump up the reporting of those programs so that we have more information and then we layer on hey we looked at some other programs like SMUD to learn some lessons from that and from that we're going to implement this in this like I would be happy with just that kind of an update instead of making it a much larger thing but I I personally get this and it was going to be a complete game changer for us maybe there are and I would love staff to prove me wrong but my point is you know granted it's about carbon has been production of that but it's also about affordability if we can even if we're carbon neutral if we're going to stay at 90 it's 1095 but we can make people's utility bills go

3:41:43 down through efficiency this is the the vulnerable segment of our you know the the renters you know there's different levels and so I'm you know I granted I'm going to go for the carbon but I want to go for the affordability before that as long as we don't increase our carbon because we need to help people because we have a mess with range for years but once you do take that Podium full of people from up River it's going to be full of people about race and because percentages keep going they say well we'll read them seven percent eight percent well seven percent of 100 bucks is a whole different than seven percent of 150 bucks well when we raise our rates we have more incentive to do these programs too which is the whole point that I was making about just want to make it more affordable for the the the that segment of our

3:42:30 community and then if we get carbon reduction oh well my first goal is affordability the building agrees John all right another is uh I think I think what Commissioners are describing is consistent with with what we can provide we want to take a look at the stacking of benefits you know if there's opportunity to help with affordability at the same time the best carbon for energy is the energy not used there's there's a stacking of benefits that we can look at here and and

3:43:15 um and there are a lot of programs that that we already do and leveraging those and then looking if there's some practical gaps that we could fill I think is is something I also think conservation over time we have to keep in mind that we have a very high fixed cost that we're recovering and and I know this is where commissioner McRae and I've had some discussions around the programs and the benefits and how you absorb those fixed costs and so sometimes just by using less energy doesn't over time save you money because now you're absorbing your your fixed costs over less kilowatt hours which then drives up your kilowatt hour rate so there's there's a lot of things that

3:44:00 we need to do but we do need to be practical and address the economic side and and the environmental side so this is something that's we're going to have to wrestle with and and I'm sure Julie's eyes are rolling around in the back of her head as we talk about what opportunities we might see here John barowsky and then I also had a one one more thing that that was very intriguing to me was when she was talking about the the solar where people commuted in so you know Oregon just had a thing where new buildings have to have a certain percentage of their uh their building you know solar put into you know one percent or whatever it has to be put towards solar it sounded to me like they were co-opting those so that

3:44:46 you were buying utility scale solar and they're they were putting money into a fund to buy utility scale rather than putting it on each roof and if that's something that we could help pilot through the state of Oregon that would be awesome because then we could help defray our cost of buying clean energy and you know it's it kind of sounded like a very intriguing program so I know that we're mandating the state is mandating a percentage of new constructions has to have solar on it if we could look into that program and say hey California is doing this mud's doing this is that something that would be available for us to do as a utility

3:45:42 king of State we just I mean for the unit for the local we don't have the land I mean we'll get into details but where would you put a solo form no when we take the money and we we help fund a solar farm somewhere else we'd build a fund and some somebody else's furniture all right um anything else on that topic okay just a couple of quick comments we absolutely have to fix the microphone issue in here people can't hear us people can't hear Us online it's like meeting number three in a row where I've had somebody come up and memorable funny about meeting the hearing or responding to me

3:46:27 or reaching out about the you can't hear us that's it's not gonna work so each team you've got to find a solution um I'm also curious if we could have if we know again that there's going to be people in the audience on a particular topic access to a few copies of the priest or the both the presentation and the report available for people to post I know that it's not as easy to access saying it again from an equity perspective and reaching people at different um places where they're at I think that would be a good thing to have that was a suggestion that was made and I think it's a good one it could be Protestant about that

3:47:15 in the morning you know it doesn't have to be for everybody but a couple to pass around I think would be good also to reach out to the registered guard to make sure that they publish our meeting time right with our Dei time for next week I think it's six he said 5 45 for tonight next week for tonight good luck I fought them for years and okay anything else sorry well thanks everyone meeting adjourned