EWEB Board of Commissioners — April 2, 2024

0:07 ex uh we'll start with an agenda check any changes or comments on agenda go all right um before we go further actually I'll give a the quick facility and safety awareness um briefing so this is for everybody uh those of you who are joining us um for uh in the public as well as staff and uh Commissioners um thank you all for joining us tonight EB management and subject matter experts are present in the room and virtually and this meeting is being live streamed and recorded please speak speak loudly and clearly so everyone can hear you I know that applies to us up front here especially that we need to uh loud clear

0:54 public testimony is welcome sign up forms are available at the back of the room hopefully everybody's had a chance chance to sign up already um we have uh public input time scheduled in about 20 minutes visitor access is limited to the board meeting room and restrooms restrooms if you need them are located on the first floor exit through the interior door over here in the corner in the back of the room and a security officer can direct you to the restroom in event of emergency such as a fire or a security incident please follow all instructions given by staff if we need to evacuate this room please proceed to the the nearest safe exit as directed by staff and evacuate W from the build of the building to the farthest points in the parking lots to allow access for First

1:43 Responders right with that we'll go to um items from board members and general manager I attend so Sonia Carlson I attended the elov dinner was lovely event and represented Cog so to see others in the future um we some really wonderful people in the community and it's a great way to celebrate a lot of the work that are we're doing regionally um yeah two things I attended an event with uh Frank presentation to I think group at but it was very informative they had a lot more questions if we had answers for and then

2:28 um I noticed that at least some my other people in my words have been having trouble communicating with EB and whether or not just just an isolated incident or others are having that but they're they getting challenged and I I know Ann and paie have been on it but I just wondered if that's an an noal or if we we have the system issue with it because I want to make sure have an open communication to that group of people so you can kind of check on that I'd appreciate it uh John Broski commissioner I had uh attended the McKenzie water council meeting this month it was uh kind of a business type meeting we were going through bylaws and governance of the of the thing so it was a very dry

3:14 meeting for a watershed Council but still a good group attending uh forward manager not on the general items I'll follow up on respondence here in a moment right correspondence then oh y we'll move right to it uh Commissioners there were four items of Correspondence um two related to our uh present status and how we approach wholesale power markets uh the first one was a general update of Trends in the marketplace how eweb approaches that the second one had to do with very specifically uh how we approach uh board

3:59 policy s D15 and our power trading compliance work um that is uh adhering to that policy if you read those uh they're are very meaty um to say the least um and I would like to propose to the board that uh we potentially take either part of a meeting or work session uh sometime mid year to U dive into the power markets a little bit deeper as they relate to e web's future position um as an electric utility and how we want to approach and position ourselves for that um this was this was a bit of a of a a deep and a deep dive into certain topics and so um

4:46 if the board is agreeable to that we can work on scheduling that for for later question about that I noticed we got a memo about them not generating any more electricity from the volam uh the wamit Bas dams like cougar Detroit Green Peter and Lookout and then it's like 13 dams are going to stop generating electricity and so we're lose that Hydro is that going to have a direct effect on us um in just a quick question the the direct effect would be uh via bonnaville um those are part of the Bonville system okay there's there's two things that weigh into that one of them is that those particular facilities are are very expensive facilities and uh

5:33 one of the issues is how the expense is allocated how much of that goes to hydro verus flood control and other other purposes that's part of the conversation and bonab is in the midst of talking with the core and others about either how those costs will be allocated or whether to uh decommission the electric Generation Um portion of that if we felt like it was an unfair allocation of cost so um so it's an indirect impact um they're also a fairly small percentage of bond fills over generating capability son's interested I'm interested as well it's so it sounds like yes please okay well work on that scheduling um the other two

6:19 items the other two items one was the legislative update from Jason huser um kind of summarizing the end of the short session uh of which he reported on um in some general sense last month uh this was more capturing of the of that for the record um and then the um wamit River second source project update there'll be more discussion on that um as we talk about Capital planning um in the roughly in the June frame so that was a general update based on the position and direction that the board provided in 2012 21 uh to the organization and so there are some uh um

7:05 if if Commissioners have questions we'd be happy to dive into those further um otherwise at least two of these will have further discussion in upcoming months great thanks Browski yeah I just wanted to uh to thank sta Megan John I did read them so we they go out and actually get get read at De I read most of yours but not everyone a lot of the ones that said compliant I said okay that's a check mark but I appreciate this I think that uh you know I look forward to the work session because hedging and how we how we buy and sell power is something that we're going to be having to look at in the future as to what our role is in that

7:50 you know in the past we've all we've done it one way and I think that markets and things are are trending a little bit different so I think it's an appropriate time to start looking at those but it was interesting reports thanks for putting them together great uh thank you all right going to the next item um which is public um and I'm gonna very briefly give a overview um just for pressure for everybody here and then um into it so welcome to the public input session for this meeting this portion of the agenda is dedicated to providing community members an opportunity to address the board about any web topic or issue we respectfully

8:38 request all speakers adhere to e web's public input instructions and code of conduct that are providing dur sign up to speak process um we have 14 folks who are signed up today um we have time set aside we added a little time so that we could make room for because we figured there would be testimony um but we do want to ask you all to please adhere to 3 minutes um just so we can make sure everybody has an equal amount of time there's a clock up front that will help you with that um I will respectfully but cly stop you if you um start to go over so please help us by by trying to wrap up in time uh once your name's called you'll have three minutes uh the public input session is now open we'll begin with the

9:24 folks on who are joining us by phone followed by the folks here in person we start with Kathy ging followed by David mcer Kathy are you on yes um this is Kathy ging and um I'm going to say that at e web's uh 2010 annual Retreat John Brown remarked during the smart meter talk I expect some resistance from Eugene rate payers he got that right right as this is an intelligent and informed community on many topics Ami trajectory has been cous folks now question if it is true as a

10:11 former eweb staff anded a rate payer eweb only has enough polls to service the third of its customers is poor planning a reason for recent unprecedented mandatory digital meter installs usurping our rights to health preservation privacy security from hacking fires and explosions please answer today two uh GM Lawson in remarks about himself at a public meeting boasted eweb differs from private IOU utilities that they interact less with people than publicly own utilities like eweb do yet California is one of seven states dominated by IOU utilities by the way

10:58 with a robust opt out program that is a true opt out program and about 50% of utilities do offer the um opt out by the way now per the uh two number three per 2023 smart meter study by OSU Corvalis engineering department hacking of between 2.8% and 8% of meters can uh provide an interruption through an oscillation um disturbance in the power lines so he's uh they say that these Ami improvements introduce New Dimensions to attack the power grid one of these consistent hacking Ami to control Smart Meter switches by altering the data or inserting false Control Data with

11:44 increased smart meter deployment it becomes more likely to experience cyber security breaches and finally I've been in communication with an engineer who worked for 30 years for the military in a civilian capacity and she specialized in sensors and satellites and everything in between regarding RF she is prominently involved in the Virginia organization against smart meters and she advises you to uh correct your course she says that the system uh engineering analysis has not been done sufficiently in people's homes and the whole system and I've already sent you a couple of reports you provided me reliable information about fires and explosions thank you for changing your course and we appreciate apprciate your

12:29 public service thank you Kathy all right David mcneir is not available so we're going to go to Cassandra BTO BTO Cassandra are you Yes uh yes can you hear me yes we can go ahead hi my name is cand and I'm actually a resident of Springfield and I'm just commenting today about the College Hill Reservoir and the public land uh usage um comments and ideas and I just would like um that area to be used kind of um as like an open space still um since people did uh really like

13:16 it being so open and I would like to suggest also keeping the children in mind um I have a family with five children and we love going on walks through there and so maybe incorporate something specifically for the children um also like a designated uh clearly marked path would be great and um if that could be accessible for everybody um also um lighting would be awesome as well um I do have a question and don't know if it's going to be answered in the future but uh to my understanding the people of um the people who pay uh eweb are going to like see an increase on their bills once the plan is set in place um and I was wondering if you guys could

14:01 possibly make it available like um so like to kind of let people know how much things would cost and how their rates would change once they start working on the public um uh land usage part of College Hill and yeah thank you have a great day great thank you Cassandra and um for Cassandra and all of you here um by policy we don't engage in a back and forth during this part of the meeting um but there is an update on the call CH Reservoir later in the meeting and it's possible that question will be addressed so moving to the folks who are here with us in the meeting room uh we're gonna go next to Joshua Korn followed by Becky

14:48 Brookner we're we're reading a sequence letter for the record smart meter opt out programs exist because there are issues with these devices we are going to demonstrate why your op up program needs immediate revision especially to meet the needs of your most vulnerable customers number one smart meter opt out genuine versus fake opt out means to choose not to participate in something smart meter optout is commonly under understood to mean the right of account holders to refuse the installation of smart meters keeping their analog meters and revert to analog meters if Smart Meters were installed if so defined in EB's it was so defined in eweb statement

15:33 of of principles for the advanced metering project Ami your decision to change the definition of optout to smart meter with radio off is one actually a pseudo opt out and two out of step with other utility companies that provide genuine optout programs EB's optout program is a sham because smart meters with the radio off are causing the same types of health and safety problems as radio on meters ewb EB customers are were taken by surprise when informed about the change to a new definition of optout as elected officials you are ethically bound to be open honest and

16:20 transparent in your decision making per the Oregon government ethics commission code of conduct question number one what was EB's public process for changing what opt out means and how was this honest open and transparent number two dirty electricity whether the radio is on or off EB's assertion about safety about Smart Meters with the radio off is strongly contradicted by evidence from independent scientists and doctors and also by the fact that they are making people sick in one case the Nevada cust Protection Bureau reached an agreement with the Nevada Public Utilities Commission to allow individuals to keep

17:06 their analog meters in part because of health problems associated with the dirty electricity created by switch mode power supplies in Smart Meters question two if diry electricity from these device devices is of little importance as you claim then why are so many independent experts such as the building bi ology Institute and National Institutes of building Sciences saying dirty electricity is an issue and why are so many people getting sick from Smart Meters whether the radio is on or

17:54 Becky Becky brockner w three um Point number three invalid claims of smart meter safety web has been presented repeatedly with evidence that smart meters are not safe and yet you continue to claim that they are eweb sites the FCC as the standard by which its decisions have been made however in 2 2021 the US court of appeals for the District of Columbia circuit ruled the FCC failed to acknowledge evidence of negative health effects effects when it decided that its 1996 radio frequency emissions guidelines protect the Public's health environmental health trust has

18:39 stated utility companies claim that smart meters and their networks meet government FCC limits however 20year old FCC limits based on 30y Old science are not protective of human health and are hundreds of thousands of times too high to protect humans and Wildlife from biological effects eweb also cites the World Health Organization as a source however the who's International Agency for research on cancer classifies radio frequency radiation as a class to be carcinogen a cost cannot be placed on health and safety and there is no Financial justification for compromising

19:25 either one number four e web's broke broken contracts and intimidation of customers eweb has promised to prioritize customer safety but evidence previously and repeated repeatedly provided demonstrates this is not the case eweb has promised to treat customers respectfully and to enable customers to make the right choices for themselves yet eweb is threatening people with service disconnection if they don't accept a smart meter put on their home a place where they have a fundamental right to protect their health and safety question three how does bullying customers to accept a product they do not want constitute

20:10 respect or enable them to make the right choice for Warner hi I'm Dennis herner from award 3 and I'm continuing this letter item number five principles and ethics demand a genuine smart meter opt out option the precautionary principle and ethics demand that you allow customers to refuse meters causing verifiable harms to to frame retaining or installing analog meters as being too costly or in any other way denying customers the ability to protect their

20:57 fundamental rights to safety for any reason is simply unjustifiable number six e web's burden of proof and responsibilities eweb Bears the burden of proof that you Commissioners are providing safe service via your meter policy you have been presented with information and asked a number of questions the questions are not rhetorical and it is your responsibility to answer them satisfactorily as we have demonstrated your optout program needs immediate revision and is out of step with other utility companies but approximately 50% across the country do not require Smart

21:43 Meters your policy must offer a genuine opt out for customers specifying that they may retain or revert to an analog meter and backed up with a permanent guarantee of that choice you are liable for your failure to do so we wait your reply there are many people who share these concerns and have come together in an informal group because we care about our lives I had a scalp melanoma and I do not want to have radiation pouring into my bedroom at night so I'm bathed eight hours a night even with the r radio off option that that you call an option option the there

22:30 is significant RF all RF has a biological effect on the body and I want I do not want that for myself I do not want that for anyone in this room I do not want it for the citizens of Eugene and I appreciate all of your work that you do I think you're completely wrong with this policy and I urge you to listen and to revise give us a an option a genuine option yes next is Market wi by Alison price what I'm reading is a notice before legal action louder louder louder

23:17 yeah yeah okay I'm reading a notice before legal action to the uh EB board Commissioners this will also be a document read by several people eweb stated in his promises to customers on February 1st 2024 promises their contracts with us this letter outlines how the Commissioners are breaking these promises and incurring liability e web's first promise the right to safety privacy and data security section one ew will perform its activities in a manner that prioritizes customer safety and demonstrate sensitivity and responsiveness to environmental concerns radiation pollution is an environmental concern so-called Smart Meters emit RF and EMF radiation that endangers the safety of customers and

24:03 Wildlife that danger extends Beyond customers homes to neighbors homes as well impartial scientists and health experts have consistently demonstrated these dangers between 2011 2013 almost a 100 customers provided evidence to you about customer safety environmental concerns related to Smart Meters uh local public interest group families for safe technology brought in National and international Public Health experts provided concise summaries of scientific smart leer research uh as well as access to experts to consult with the board after being presented with such extensive evidence the ewb Board of Commissioners as well as the mayor and City Council of Eugene agreed that the customer safety concerned should be should receive

24:48 priority uh this board in 2013 demonstrating sensitivity and responsiveness enacted PR enacted principles to prioritize customer safety and required that the general manager developed policies Guided by these principles but in February of 2018 after the appointment of a new general manager a full reverse of policy occurred without transparent disclosure of the decision-making process in carefully negotiated agreements with customers were abandoned without cause or comment the Oregon government ethics commission requires that you as public officials quote behave in an open honest and transparent manner those requirements are being violated at the meeting where an updated metering policy was authorized the board voted

25:33 unanimously to uphold the statement of principles of the 2013 decision and required new policies that that new policies conform with them those principles included the rights of customers to refus the installation of smart meters keep their anlog meters or revert back to anlog if Smart Meters had already been installed they would they would also protected customers from utility policy mandates is Al price followed by Saina seagull price War one yeah the following month of March 2018 the general manager presented the board with a new set of policies one commissioner asked the general manager if the guiding principles established in 2013 and reaffirmed the month before had

26:20 been rescinded the general manager replied that they had having self-determined that the general manager and his staff self-determined that they were not bound to the board's decisions they rescinded them and generated new policy and contempt of the board's decisions your Oaths of office your Oaths of office State you will Faithfully perform the duties of Eugene Water and Electric Board Commissioners for the City of Eugene your published promises to customers are contracts with us as are the guiding principles of advanced metering project by failing to supervise your employees and uphold all customer contracts including those related to Public Safety and environmental concerns

27:07 you have failed to Faithfully perform the management duties in your office or of your office and hence are criminally and financially liable for breaking your Oaths of office the customers of this utility are its owners who can stand who sorry who can and do hold you legally responsible for your actions section two eweb will minimize environmental impacts of its infrastructure and operations to what is necessary for Effective and efficient operations the radiation impact of advanced metering is a significant environmental impact increasing the efficiency of the operations by creating more than minimal environmental impact

27:53 is prohibited by this promise to your customers grow broken promise broken contract thank youis next is seagull followed by Ellen second promise the right to responsive service and fair treatment section one all ewf customers will be treated promptly and respectfully without regard to age gender sexual orientation race ethnicity disability language proficiency or social or economic status numerous account holders uh have

28:38 disabilities which have been created or exacerbated by the radiation emitted from mandated uh eweb metering equipment and have approached the utility with accommodation request to keep and receive service with their nonradiation producing non- dir electricity producing analog meters employees you manage have declined those requests telling customers requesting disability accommodations that failing to uh install Smart Meters will disqualify them from receiving service this violates federal law and is legally actionable the Americans with Disability

29:24 Act requires providing safe housing workplaces and access to services to all Americans regardless of disability broken promise broken contract section two we commit to addressing grievances in a timely manner including access to management the board or a formal appeals process customers have been presenting these grievances to the board for many months and these grievances have not been addressed in a timely manner you have not Prov provided access to management or the board nor uh have you provided a formal appeals process you have ignored emails and phone calls on these topics in your meetings the only

30:09 venue for public comment and questioning you do not answer customers questions or provide follow through to get them answered later broken promise broken contract in summary you are now in danger of being criminally and financially liable for breaking your oath of office failing to perform your duties breaking the utilities contracts with customers violating federal law discriminating against disabled customers and causing harm to disabled and other customers a course correction that enforces the carefully negotiated uh principles enacted in 2013 could relieve you of most of your liability and Financial Risk it is

30:55 imperative that you once again establish a genuine optout policy consumers May refuse the installation of smart meters they may keep their analog meters and if meters have been installed they may revert to analog meters and no penalty or extra fee will be allowed against customers making any of these choices completing these this correction will will keep you from from uh legal prosecution that's imminent thank you for listening next is Alan Gano qualifying Sophia well again once again I gave up going to the

31:40 ug SCBA diving club meeting be kind smart Meers and being have pushed on us so this is supposedly the community responsive organization and where is the response there's so many people that come here to say I don't want a smart meter we don't want a smart meter we have health issues we don't want extra electromagnetic radiation around us my meter I realized one night is right on the outside of the wall right next to where my head is when I go to sleep I have another friend who did get a smart meter on his house he's in the same situation it's right next to his head so we need responsiveness from you we elect you this is supposedly a

32:27 public you ility we need you to live up to that and not be making threats I wake up every morning did they turn my electricity off while I was to sleep last night do I still have electricity oh oh good the the blue light is still on for my charger oh good do you know what that's like every morning every day wondering when the Hammer's going to come down and and shut me off and not be able to afford to have it turned back on again and especially if you take away the option of even having a smart meter turned off you the option that I'm hearing from people I never got a letter but there was another threatening letter that came out said that if we turn off

33:13 your electricity we and then you don't have no longer have an option to have the broadcasting turned off on your smart meter so and as far as charging us extra for having me readers come out if we go for the option of no no radio radio go being on we're already paying for meter readers in our rates I have so much added fees in my rates here it's ridiculous so in one month my actual usage of electricity and water and waste water and storm water comes to $150 189 added fees bring that bill up to $266 now some people and talk about

33:58 being seniors on a fixed income I don't even qualify for a fixed income this figure is half of what I made in the month of March you understand what that's like why are there so many added fees on here what am I paying for delivery of electricity delivery charges did somebody come to my house and with a wheelbarrow full of electricity and put it into my house what is that for that's already should be in the basic fee it's already in the usage what's going on here here so you know here we are talking about responsiveness to community I was up on College Hill on top of that Reservoir seeing the signs that say there's not going to be any more usage on top of the reservoir in the future all these people roller

34:44 skating on it respond to community that's a beautiful wonderful thing our community has thank youone to sopia G followed by Janet G thank you for saying my name so perfectly good afternoon um I handed uh this out uh just inviting the board and Mr Lawson to follow along with my handout my goal here I'm Sophia I'm in W eight and my goal here is to take the abstract and turn it into tangible giving you pictures um my late husband was an engineer but he was a sound engineer worked in rock and roll and he would argue under the table for analog versus

35:29 digital today we're talking about a different battle around analog versus digital and this one is actually quite critical um I represent a vulnerable population I'm currently um recing from my eighth concussion and um the page one you can see I've Illustrated for you this is my apartments and my bedroom wall is right there on the second floor and I'm 5T away from eight Smart Meters eight of them doesn't matter if I opt out or not my neighbors and I are all doing our best uh to opt out some of them are scared too don't

36:14 want to pay the price but the majority of my neighbors are also on disability as I put in here this is one unit out of 30 with two occupants that are literally Curr currently marinating an emfs coming off of 8 MERS we need to have a choice on if we are going to be exposed to this level of EMF and radiation because it's not all single family dwellings and the way these apartments are designed this is atrocious you'll see on page two again taking abstract into tangible I've shown you um what the EMF reading is on my

36:59 bedroom currently without a filter at these uh ster filters uh that cizer filters it's a 100y old technology that helps to scramble the dangerous emfs without it my EMF reading was 20 this is tangible here I've invested already over $500 in technology like this to change the emfs and the dirty electricity that's happening in my apartment the last page here is an example of another board in

37:45 California the SMUD board of directors all it took was one board member to listen to the evidence and say wait a second let's stop let's research this further let's do the right thing I'm asking for this board if even if it's just one of you to put the breaks on this I'm giving you some Clues on this page if you if you research windheim EMF this is Eric windheim who specializes he has degrees up the wazo um about why this is a problem California with before it became a legal

38:31 issue the board walked it back and did the right thing today I'm asking you to do the same thing thank slinsky well I appreciate everything and agree totally with everything this group of speakers have said um my observation as a committed voter Observer of candidates aan for city council this spring is that it's become so politicized and I'm going to speak to macro and micro macro this whole idea of

39:17 switching over to these meters and a Copo like fashion that we're deprived of our energy source as a public utility is beyond obscene and I'm not just going to ask I'm going to demand that these Commissioners five three of which are up for reelection and I contacted my commissioner Ward seven Sona she hung up on me during business hours of the day and I was having a g I thought a fairly calm conversation she hung up one of the questions I asked was how do I read these meters much like my other meters when they run what do the little PES and

40:03 arcs mean there is no def definitive on how they operate when they're operating from a macro perspective I have observed elected officials that are supposed to be Commissioners board members are in lock step with the corporate or the entity that they come into to sit on their chairs and ignore their constituents we have a council member that was recalled for that very reason not communicating with her constituents you are not beholding to the president of Mr Lawson you are beholding to your constituents and

40:50 you're hearing an earful tonight from them and the that how dare you send out letters to people on fixed incomes and tell them that if you don't comply your power will be shut off and need I remind you our dear city council is thinking of shutting off our gas divers diversifying our power we can't all be on electric there are some things that natural gas does a better job of than what our power and if we're in this energy saving mode silliness absolute silliness and how many of you actually spend time

41:35 researching as your constituents do who put you on those chairs we did it is a public utility it is not a private Corporation you need to get your priorities straight and realize you were elected by community members thank you next is ay slinsky followed by Alan eight I and my family are longtime Eugene residents and longtime members of

42:22 e web's customer B my children grandchildren and extended family are all here one or another of us have lived in all the words represented we and so many others have been proud of the owner rate payers of this historically Community responsive utility our input has been welcomed and integrated into previous policymaking decisions I am standing before you tonight however because of my concern regarding e web's commissioner shifting stance around smart meter installation policy while a growing number of utilities around the country are recognizing the real health safety and privacy concerns of their

43:08 customers uh and allowing non-punitive off doubts to those who wish to keep their analog meters our own utility company is not making this possible for its owner rate payers e board members decision to install Smart Meters to all households disallowing any analog meters at all seems Draconian to me the smart meters with the disabled option will still need to be read manually as analog meters always have been analog meters and parts are easily available and have a great track record of durability much better than Smart Meters why is there a problem since the disabled meters the same as analog meters will both need to be read

43:54 manually allowing those who wish to keep their analog meters to do so e would gain tremendous Goodwill and Community respect for the current opportunity to recognize and honor the real concerns of its owner rate payers please support and protect our freedom to choose analog meters the simple straightforward and fair option that will pay dividends all the way around on into the future thank you Abby next is Alan Stein start yet um my name is Allen Stein I own a

44:39 business downtown I've been wanting to come here for months because of this whole thing the way I've been treated as a businessman and finally I closed my business early so I could be here to speak and I'm speaking as a regular person customer I want to thank the organiz ation whoever they are to give you documented information that you legally need to follow up on and I'm just going to share with you who I am I have three different and I appreciate you all listening it seems like you're really listening and I'm glad that you are so thank you for that I come here as Three Hats I wear three different hats I've been in Eugene for 40 years over 40 years as a homeowner on almidon street

45:24 as a downtown property owner on mam Street and as a business owner Stargate awareness resources for now 38 years this month as a homeowner I opted out and I was very happy that I had that choice to opt out last year or so I get this letter saying that we're going to change the meters but you could still opt out I go what do I mean opting out why you change the meter the meter is working great they go oh it's not working right and we're going to put a meter in that won't be upsetting your health well guess what I had a technician they changed it and it is affecting my health and two there was nothing wrong with that meter so I speak as a household

46:09 representative two I speak as a property owner I just bought this building before covid there's 10 different tenants there I was able to opt out few of us opted out I'll get back to that too um as a store owner in the front of Stargate where I wear the third hat as a retail store I got a letter saying that you're going to have to change the meter that you opted out on there's a new policy that commercial businesses have no choice anymore and that they said that I got to let them in to get to the meter and change

46:57 it that's very disturbing so I want to ask you right now are you willing to put me out of business because I want my meter that's analog that's if you tell me you're going to close my electricity so I am very grateful for all these people clearly documenting this information everything was summarized threatening letters illegal action what I heard a public utility means that someone has to be on the board at least two people from the public and what I observed with those public people are shunned off it's really not a public meeting it's it's a corporation thank

47:43 you thank you Alan and last is Kenda swatter name is Kenda um I'm actually a resident of Glennwood but I'm here on behalf of my friends and family and community members um I did want to speak on behalf of the College Hill Reservoir um in Eugene we have a very beautiful diverse population that includes people that want to go outside and be in a safe environment outside College Hill has actually been a wonderful safe environment for all of us um I know it just seems like a lot that has a fence around it whoop-de-do um but at that lot you have have joggers you have walkers

48:29 you have Runners you have children on bikes that are safe you have people playing hockey that's the part of community I come from is hockey Community we pay play Roller Hockey out there we play sneaker hockey out there um we are able to teach people show them what it's like we are able to do it in a safe environment that we're not having to worry about our items being stolen out there we're not worried about the people that are around us we're making new friends we're building Community out there um and I just want to bring that to your attention um both basically any evening after school after work hours you can drive by and it's going to be busy there's going to be groups of people there it's one of our friend groups Hangouts just to hey want to meet

49:15 at this lab and shoot some Puffs bring a bike we have some that don't play hockey but they'll go and they'll skate around or ride their bikes um I speak on behalf of that we're using a really integral part of our community and it's very difficult to see it's super important to all of us to have a safe place to be the fence is amazing I just to be able to see children go out and be kids they're they're just running they're having fun and they're not in traffic um commonly it's called sneaker hockey is also called you know our street hockey street hockey you bring your net out see a car coming you pull it um it's it's

50:02 not super safe in majority of areas that my friends live people are doing 35 down the road it's not a viable solution to pull a net out there um you just to see Community being built to people their first thing they do when they get a new hair skates if they want to go to the slab they want to try them out because it's going to be a safe place to skate it's an even surface escate I understand that the system needs updated and that's awesome I'm excited for that but I'd like to see a transition that it's still a community wealth welcome environment for all of us to be um and to be able to provide that it's a really cool place and I'd really like to see eweb still be able to Champion the community when it

50:50 comes to our outdoor yeah we have one more person is going to join us and provide public testimony so we'll up hi my name is Yen and uh I'd like to about 17 years ago eweb came out and did a digital leer not a smart meter just a digital

51:36 meter and I wish that I would have known then what I know now um shortly after that my wife and I both be began to experience symptoms I have her permission to say this he ended up with hard palpitations and I ended up with neurological issues um I was at the doctor's office today and I can't write I can't even write my name anymore and I've lived a healthy active life so I didn't we didn't realize until we started looking into why are we experiencing this stuff and uh one thing led to another and we did a Chron chronology about our experience

52:22 so it took 17 years to get to this point where you know I'm I'm an artist and I can't do that anymore so that's really disturbing I have a good life I have wonderful family but I can't prove it but there's no doubt in my mind that exposure to the uh persistent um what we could call Dirty electricity I like to call it uh um unscheduled RF that happens all time so you're write about the Transmissions uh occurring not continually but the dirty electricity happens all the time and it's transient

53:08 I can measure it in my bedroom I can measure it when I did some studies for other people's homes I could measure that in the baby's room next to the outlet so um I guess that's my piece I would add one thing looking at your website it's pretty clear to me well you talk about um I don't know who wrote this um it says some of our customers have refused access to for EB's attempts to exercise our right to install a meter so who's included in that R am I part of what rights do I have what rights do we have and there's several times in there where you use

53:54 that language when you talk about your accommodations for the disability people um you make it really clear you talk about uh your legal team and since we're a public utility is that my legal team too I mean can I consult them about issues or is it just uh to promote um corporate sales I don't know so you make it really clear that you feel the accommod for disabled people include just shutting off the the RF and uh you're going to fight that legally with your legal team what it says in there and that sounds pretty

54:40 pretty harsh and it makes me wonder with your stance what your Dei rating would be um taking that stance about disa and that the public input sessions of this meeting and at this time Commissioners have the opportunity to comment if yeah son well I do very much appreciate everybody that came down this evening I hear you we do listen to you we may not agree with you but that's different now there's there's certain things that I've voted on specifically after listening to

55:25 and looking at at the research that you've sent um I also have looked at the American Cancer Society website on RF frequency and uh you know it's put in line with mobile phones much lower for smart meters Mobile phones have a much higher rating um it's marked as probable which there's lots of things that cause health effects the Sun for example you get too much radiation from the Sun you also could have Health if effect so for me it's it's partially looking at it in moderation our meters transmit only 15 minutes and for all of you who've oped out they don't transmit at all and that is our accommodation that's not true okay well and I'd love to talk to

56:11 the person after this or just get a hold of me the person who's who did this okay I'd love to look at the the device that you have um outside of that I also want to to address the person who said that I hung up on them because I did talk to them for 24 minutes and 9 seconds according to my phone record I did have a 9:00 am meeting and I asked for some information to follow up and I said I'm very sorry but we've had a long conversation and I now need to go as a commissioner I'm a volunteer commissioner I don't get paid for this we're not working for any other Corporation we're here to make good decisions on behalf of you and sometimes that's really challenging does it mean that it's not

56:57 good work it doesn't mean that we're here to bll you over we're certainly not but I had to go to work and that's what I did and I said I I'd like some other information I asked for that and I never received it so you know I had to get the information we're not we're not having a back and forth right now but I I do want you to know that I've heard you I appreciate that you're coming down and you're being engaged that's part of why we are a public utility we are elected by you and others in the community decision so can I just say that gaslighting we we have given you information for years for decad We're not gonna we're not going to jump into back and forth just because it's not very well it's gaslighting it's not that's what you just did it's it's not

57:42 uh really productive I'll offer as well um my card I'll put that up on the table here um if folks want to contact me directly and have a conversation outside of this um I don't know if other board members want to do the same watch yeah barski doesn't return calls doesn't return email he does nothing it's nonresponsive is is there a form when we can do it back and forth this isn't it but yeah this isn't it but but yeah but really like a meeting oneon-one with board members or Commissioners don't meet with that the best and please Frank I'm gonna address the Commissioners here and people can listen into this and get some perspective the policies that are guiding us were developed over for 20 years with many public forums not just

58:30 one multiple this board and previous boards have looked at lots of research we've had lots of testimony and have developed the policies people may not agree with them but as commissioner Carlson said that is different these devices are safe they are useful and they will lead to benefit for the broader community and I'll I'll leave it at that this this board previous boards have made and taken a lot of time for interaction and so u under being very informed in those processes as well the organization like many of our assets we own operate maintain and choose the assets necessary to deliver our services

59:17 we are offering customer Choice as to opt in or opt out relative to the communication which is more than many utilities do you look at the people so I would again reiterate that this board has spent many hours and previous boards have spent many hours developing these policies in a very public manner which is consistent with what you're supposed to be doing as a board they're ignoring everything we have to say any comments board members joh yes I'd like to just comment to Kenda thank you for coming out and and everything and we been diligent about leing the public on College Hill Reservoir but we we got it shut down

1:00:02 author said we had to shut that Reservoir down and it's dur security reasons we can't have people engaging with our water supplies anymore only so many mountains in Eugene and it's all a gravity flow system and we've had to be play we have to tear it down we have to put in two new 7 half million gallon tanks and we have to close it off to the public however we do have a robust thing you'll hear about later evening about how we're going to do the best we can to continue to have some opportunities for people to engage not on the top anymore I'm sorry I was on the board when we put a million dollars into sealing that just to keep the dog waste from getting into the water and then you know a week later we got sued because somebody broke their ankle but that's an aside but I appreciate your passion and everything

1:00:48 and and I I encourage you to get engaged and listen to the program we're going to have a presentation later this evening and and see what you can do to help enhance it it's not going to be a roller Park sorry but uh you can get to the parks department about that but we'll we'll do our best to make it as as a as an inviting place as it can be it probably won't ever be the same but we're doing our best to we have to provide safe clean reliable drink so thank you for coming out the one or two people mentioned the reservoir and we get that kind of response yet we have a room full of people mentioning smart meters and this sham of an OP out process and we get nothing put gaslighting and we're not going to jump into back and forth I'm sorry it's just our lives are at stake

1:01:33 we're disabled EMF disabled people you can't do that to the disabled all right so we're going to move on to the next I think I did it I could close it again just for punctuation closing that public hearing thank you all for coming on to approval of consent toosi second by Carlson discussion on calendar

1:02:21 a just going for a vote then all in support I I passed unanimously appr consent calendar B I like pull three four uh so we're going to pull items three and items four is there a motion to approve consent calendar B minus items three and four moov by barosi there second second by Carlson uh approval of consent calendar minus items three and four I'll say I passes unanimously sir so I'm I'm appre staff respond for my questions but to me this thing needs F to sleep I mean last meeting we had a half a million or a million dollars in studies post the license now we got

1:03:08 another million one on providing fish habitat for fish that aren't there yeah and and may not be we don't even know how they're going to get up over Trail how long is this green of money going to continue because this is a million dollars a month and I we vot spent a ton on it and we already have our license how long does this go on I didn't know who you were looking at hello good evening elaborate on Lisa for squads please go ahead okay um yeah I do understand the concern over um spending

1:03:54 at Carmen all of the projects that are on um the consent calendar this evening are planned and have been planned and budgeted for um a long time the uh ultimate uh timing of permanent fish passage is still um dependent on Dam safety issues but we do have a requirement to install fish passage so we will be doing that and one of um one of our main goals is to implement projects that we can on the ground as required by by our license these habitat projects are required by our license and even though we don't have permanent fish passage we do have fish being moved both from the spawning Channel and from um below trailbridge Dam so this habitat will provide benefit

1:04:43 not the degree of benefit it might provide once permanent fish passage is in but it does provide benefit and helps meet our compliance obligations um under the license so um yeah I'll Frank if you want to add or commissioner Brown if you have other questions happy to answer them how many fish came out of that nine uh I believe it was eight I'd have to double check that but remember that last that was out of the uh temporary tra and Hall in the spawning Channel but remember we had some um issues last year and we're only able to run it for a handful of days maybe it was 8 days we were able to run it because we had the lookout fire that necessitated evacuation of the project this year um

1:05:28 we you know we do hope and intend to um operate the temporary trap and hall for um the full migration season as was intended uh last year but got waylay by the fire and then in addition to that um bull trout From Below trailbridge Dam will continue to be moved as they have for for many years so we're hoping for additional fish this year and um you know we are monitoring the Trap and Hall and its um efficacy uh this summer and making some minor modifications to it in hopes that it'll be more efficient next year thank you I'm I'm All For You know the environment and and protecting the fish it's just that the cost is getting to be very challenging uh we're this thing continuing and I just want to I I

1:06:15 assume that this million one or million two is going to take care of this for a period of time or is this going to be ongoing because habitat gets destroyed very easily yeah so and let me just um I remembered the numbers I think we were operated the trap for 8 days and had no fish that were moved out of it I can check on that but apologize for getting those numbers wrong uh our license requires an initial installation of habitat and then monitoring to ensure that it um you know it provides the benefit as intended it's likely that at some point during our license period we'll need to to do some modifications to that but we feel really good about the design and again um these habitat improvements are intended um to to

1:07:00 mitigate for uh habitat loss over the life of the license so that's 40 years anytime you have an asset over 40 years you expect you will need to do some maintenance on it so will we do expect that and there's a monitoring program associated with with that as well thank you thanks for the inquiry Mr Brown um I guess for me you know this Carman licensing came to fruition before I got on the board um and so you know she said that this was planned and budgeted for um I'm just wondering how much more money is planned and budgeted for because we see it you

1:07:46 know $500,000 here $300,000 there I mean is there a final Allin number for this project and are we getting close to getting to that point the I believe the last estimate and this can be part of our Capital updates as well as well as our quarterly updates believe the last number was right around 180 million or so um roughly um I don't think we're anywhere near 180 million yet um there's there's continued Investments that need to be made um the some of this goes back to the original concept behind a settlement agreement and a license and that's that you have an organization like eweb we're generating electricity

1:08:32 we're gaining revenue from that and there are a number of other parties who uh based on on our ability to use it in that way are looking for us to make investments um over the course of the 40-year license and so um you get a specific update when we talk about capital projects where we are but the last number that that was estim estimated was I think around 180 million all in um as we monitor to to lease's point as we monitor that that could oscillate some um but um I don't think we're we're near that 180 million yet and I also uh want to make the point that I know the Commissioners who have participated started back in the

1:09:20 2005 uh range um the investment in El generation versus the electric and other things the other things are a very significant part of of the investment and so we'll plan to add that to our Capital update what we come back to Commissioners thank you yeah and Frank just to to clarify Frank's Frank's correct our our latest estimate that we've been reporting out in the quarterly reports is that the total project cost of that's everything associated with implementing the license and Capital Improvements uh is 174 million we are about half spent on that so we have you know we've we've expended about half of that so far A little more than half you'll get an update at um in the next quarterly report and then also

1:10:06 just to put in a plug I do believe that we just recently are being uh got added to the June calendar board calendar to do a more comprehensive kmen Smith update and we can come um prepared to speak U more specifically about budget at that time thank you John just one add on Lisa if you're going to bring that back would you also let us know where the 40 million for the fish ladder if that if that's in the 174 I mean because that's a big question mark right now y so the 174 um includes the uh trap and Hall facility at at uh trailbridge Dam although um you know we are delayed on fish passage um we are still operating

1:10:51 under the assumption that trap and Hall is going to be the mechanism by which we will get at um uh permanent fish passage uh if that changes uh we will let you we will'll certainly let you know but that is not that's not um we aren't operating under an assumption that we need to move to a ladder and we have no um formal indication that we need to do that at this point thank you I'll move to adopt items three and four consent Kell be by Carlson uh all in support of ing items three and four from Cal ofi passes unanimously right on to the next item uh the prior year end audited financial

1:11:37 statements in perfect can everyone hear me okay yes all right should I go ahead and dive in or is anyone going to do any from the e website going to do any kickoff or anything first just a minute Keith okay sorry Oh no you're fine I think it was awkward like this last year too uh I'm Deborah Hart the CFO and assistant general manager with me Aon Balmer uh the uh acting finance manager and Rob freeg our general accounting and

1:12:22 treasury supervisor uh that is the sum of my role here will will be available to answer questions after uh Keith would you like to take over here now introduce your team fantastic thank you for that Deborah yes Keith simovic partner with moss Adams uh We've served as your independent auditor for for a number of years now and uh I've stepped into kind of the engagement reviewer partner role this year with me is iday Alvarado you'll get to hear from her and just a little bit as well she served as our manager on the engagement this year she's new to the engagement this year but uh not new to uh our firm or the utility industry as she works with me on a number of our uh engagements that uh

1:13:08 we do for for the utility industry that we serve so happy to have her join us as well as she was very uh engaged with our team throughout this process overall uh some some good news that we're going to share here and some some things that we found along the way that we'll we'll share with you uh but I think the the first thing that you want to know is that the audit is done we were able to complete that just a few weeks back um and I will say this is an audit that uh historically has been uh very efficient in in wrapping up right we we spend a couple weeks on site uh for our final fieldwork and we are wrapping up the audit and finalizing everything within uh typically a couple weeks of leaving the field so this is a a fairly quick

1:13:53 turnaround and we couldn't do that without uh all the efforts and the efficiency um of the eweb finance team and everyone else that we work with throughout the organization it's a it's definitely an all hands on deck approach to getting this thing done but we really appreciate all their efforts so we'll be going through a little bit of our engagement team yes me and iday are here today and you're getting to hear from us but there's a number of other folks that are involved uh so we'll introduce you to a few more of those that you'll get to see on screen uh we'll go through the different deliverables that we finalize as part of this process to give you a little bit more flavor for what you can expect to receive out of this process each and every year when you hire an independent CPA firm to come in and do a financial statement audit of eweb so we'll talk through those uh we'll go through and you'll hear from iday uh

1:14:39 going through a few of the significant audit areas this is something that we look at independently each and every year to say hey where do we want to spend the bulk of our time so these aren't all the areas that we're looking at that's definitely not the case but these are the areas that uh uh we're in tune with and and develop additional procedures each and every every year to make sure we're addressing new things significant things as as they come up uh we'll also go through what do those final audit deliverables say so uh you know did you did you receive a clean opinion were there uh any major findings that that we noted those are the types of things that we'll go through there but a little bit of a spoiler alert there shouldn't be any surprises or fireworks from that perspective so lots of good news there uh and then finally we'll go through what's called our communication to those charged with governance that's a separate letter that we issue that gives you a little more

1:15:24 insight into the audit process and uh you'll get to hear from us on what's included there as well go ahead and Advance the slide please so this is the snapshot of and again this isn't even all of our team there this is the kind of the core group so in addition to iday and myself Laurel bro served as our uh concurring reviewer you can think of that as a QC review role that's something that our firm requires on every audit that we do that we have someone else that's uh very experienced in the industry either at a senior manager or partner level uh that's uh really coming in as that cold viewer not involved with the engagement in any other way or fashion they're not coming on site with us they're not speaking to your team at eweb uh they are intended to come in and make sure are we doing our risk assessment appropriately are we following through on all the procedures we said we were going to do are we following our our

1:16:10 Professional Standards and do all of our uh final deliverables include the appropriate items within those so they're reviewing a lot of those key documents and we're not really able to move forward and finalize everything until we have that person's sign off so that's a key role that we have on all of the audits that we do and then JD menins is our uh in charge senior auditor he was involved on the engagement I think this was his third year on the engagement excited to have him back again this year and uh working very closely with iday at carrying out the engagement and overseeing the rest of our staff uh that aren't pictured here so that's the core group of our team go ahead and Advance the slide please I know there's a lot of words here but I'll I'll summarize these briefly this gives you kind of a snapshot of the different things that uh you'd expect to receive out of this

1:16:55 process right so you you hire us to come in and do an independent audit uh boxes one and two are really just one deliverable but two kind of separate services that we're that we're providing there uh that one deliverable is our audit report over the fairness and accuracy of your financial statements uh but box one is really how do we get to that point all the testing that we're doing all the the sampling and the detail review and analytical review and gathering enough substantive evidence that we can say following all of our Professional Standards we believe the financial Ms are free of material misstatement that is the goal at the end of the day that is the audit uh opinion that you're probably most familiar with uh but we also in box two there I have to do a technical review over that final document it's not only kind of looking at hey all all the numbers um recorded

1:17:40 appropriately are you capturing all the dollars that are flowing through the organization do you have good internal controls in place to uh vet these things uh within ewb already before we come in but also we have to make sure you PR prepare that final document as of 12 31 2023 uh that's in the form and content that's required by the accounting rules so that's another key part that we're doing that technical review making sure that's in the format uh that's required by generally accepted accounting principles or Gap um and also making sure that you're being transparent including all the disclosures that you're required to put in there based on the types of transactions that you enter into each and every year box three is a separate report that we have to issue because we perform the uh audit in accordance with government auditing standards so it's a little bit different

1:18:25 or higher level of auditing standards and Reporting that's required there because of you being a governmental organization and us having to follow government auditing standards that separate report is also included in your financial statements and this is where we would have to note if you had any material weaknesses in internal controls any significant deficiencies in internal controls or any instances of non-compliance uh have to be reported within this report as well so that's an additional report we issue box four is an additional report that we issue because you're an organ governmental organization so the state of Oregon wants us to make sure we're going in and looking at certain your compliance with certain State statutes so most notably we're looking at your procurement processes where you're parking your your

1:19:10 public funds if those are in approved depositories what uh types of Investments you're getting into are those are following State statutes uh those are the types of things that we're uh the state's wanting us to take a look at and issue a separate report reporting out on each and every one of those items as well and whether we noted any instances of non-compliance um and then box five is one that we is a report that we issue not every single year it's all dependent on the the amount of federal funding that you spend in a given year so when you spend over $750,000 in federal funding in a given year it triggers what's called a single audit you may have heard that terminology in the past EB has had these audits in the past but this is a uh kind of separate from your financial statement audit where we're audit

1:19:55 the compliance with how you're spending those federal dollars are you following through on all the requirements within those Federal grant award agreements so that's a separate report that we issue on your compliance with those Federal Awards and then finally I already mentioned our communication to those charge with governance and we'll we'll dive into that a little bit more here in a second I think with that we'll go ahead and Advance the slide I'm going to turn it over to iday she's going to go through our significant audit areas and a a few more slides after that thank you Keith hi everyone um as Keith mentioned some of the significant audit areas that we focused on during the engagement included work order classification so again ensuring that work orders that were classified as in process were indeed in process and actively being worked on as well as it

1:20:40 security and access single audit um procedures again looking at Federal expenditures as well as federal funds received revenues and expenses specifically over power trading as well as then in the current year the adoption of gasby 96 which is the subscription-based it Arrangements next slide please um circling back to our audit opinions and reports issued in the current year uh so again we issued the financial statements which included an unmodified opinion so a clean opinion which is exactly what you want to see uh as well as Government auditing standard reports which noted no findings the Oregon minimum audit CER report as Keith mentioned again noting no findings there as well well as well as then the single

1:21:26 audit report which fortunately no findings there either next slide please um as Keith mentioned some of the required communication and points that were noted in the letter provided to the port to the board included our auditor responsibility as outlined by auditing standards as well as any significant accounting policies which again in the current year included the adoption of gasby 96 so subscription based it arrange ments um any management estimate or judgment utilized um as part of the financial statement processing as well as audit adjustments which there were none noted in the current year uh proposed adjustments there were a handful in the current year and we'll hit upon in in the upcoming slide here

1:22:13 um no disagreements with managements occurred during the course of the audit as well as no difficulties in performing the audit as well um as far as audit observations and control recommendations we noted no material weaknesses um we do however have a best practice recommendation again which was outlined in the letter provided to the board next slide please turn it over back to Keith here thank you iday so this slide summarizes what we call proposed audit adjustments these are outlined in our uh letter to those charged with governance and what a proposed audit adjustment is is as we're going through and we're doing our testing once we Reed the final numbers and we start pulling transactions and determining are they recorded at the right amount are they

1:22:58 recorded in their correct period are they classified in the appropriate account in the right bucket um and are they following all of the uh generally accepted auditing or excuse me generally accepted accounting principles and so uh one of the new accounting principles out there in the current year as uh you heard was gby statement Number 96 and this changed how you record what's called subscription-based it Arrangements they're talking about with these are any Arrangements where you have a contract with a thirdparty uh software vendor and you're using that software but you don't own the software right so almost like a lease but for software and so in those cases what the new accounting rules say is you have to record those on your balance sheet or on

1:23:44 your statement of net position as an asset that you'll amortise and a liability and as you're making your payments on these subscription based Arrangements uh it pays down that liability almost as if you took out debt to finance a purchase of the software so that is the new kind of accounting rule there um what we noted in our testing is there was a couple items that uh were were not recorded uh in terms of these subscription based it arrangements or spedas as we're calling them now because we have to have an acronym for everything right so for these spedas that were not recorded they Rose to a level that was above what we call our proposed journal entry threshold the SE are not considered uh material overall but they're things that are high enough that we have to track them we have to

1:24:30 note them to you and we have to know is there a bunch of these that's aggregating to a material amount where you would need to post those to get a clean opinion so in this case they didn't rise to that level but we want to let you know about these so in in this case there's some here both on the electric and water side that uh uh Arrangements that do fall under the criteria of gasby 96 but we're not recorded in line with that standard part of the reason for that or really the reason for that is the fact that your your team has set a threshold for certain agreements if they don't uh rise above that dollar threshold uh they're not moving forward with recording those under these arrangements and again the reason for that is just the administrative burden of this new accounting standard and having to track

1:25:16 some of these so setting that threshold so you're not pulling all these small Arrangements together and uh having to track these and amortise them and all that kind of stuff so so that's what's happening here it doesn't create any concern on on our part but again just something that we're tracking to make sure there's not a bunch of these that Aggregates to our larger amount the proposed adjustments for uh gasby number uh 87 or the lease standard and that was a new one that was implemented a year ago again so this is kind of a repeat thing from the PRI prior year but these are again items where they're falling below E web's threshold they're not big enough to have to record to get a clean opinion but we're tracking them and wanted to uh or have to report them out to you and in our letter as well and then finally we had a proposed

1:26:01 adjustment related to certain work orders or a work order that we identified that hadn't been closed at year end or reflected as Assets in service on your financial statements but it was in fact in operation uh and there was one on the water side that we identified there go ahead and Advance the slide please in terms of our recommendations again these don't rise to a level that's gives us any concern or anything like that again so we're not classifying them as uh kind of the higher level of severity of a material weakness or significant deficiency we are we are um uh considering these best practice recommendations uh and this is one that uh we've had from time to time in the past and it's related to the uh proposed

1:26:47 adjustment you just saw for uh work orders that weren't closed that were in service at year end I'll say we we uh audit quite and select quite a few work orders and look at those to see if they're appropriately classified as as work orders as construction work in process and not being closed and and starting that depreciation process and uh to a material amount we are not identifying work orders that aren't being tracked and and closed out in a in a timely manner so it was these uh work orders that we identified on the water side that were just large enough that we had to report them out uh but doesn't create any material impact to your financial statements again the reason you don't see any recommendations related to the other two items that we noted the other uh proposed entries on

1:27:33 the lease side and the speeda side is because we uh have been in contact with your Finance Team all along the way as they were implementing those standards we were well aware of the thresholds they sent uh for implementing those standards and we are um comfortable with those thresholds but again it's something that we look at to see okay is there a lot that are below that threshold that are aggregating to a larger amount go ahead and Advance the slide please overall I kind of said some of this UPF front but a big thank you to everyone that was involved in this process we received all the documentation that we needed along the way we got responses to all the questions that we had we felt like everyone was very open and transparent um anytime we reached out for a meeting or a discussion uh quick everyone was

1:28:20 very quick at responding and providing us with the information that we needed so we really appreciate that and the tone that was set by the organization from the top down uh and taking this very seriously and making sure we can get through this process in a timely fashion with a good result go ahead and Advance the slide please with that uh that concludes our audit report I'll pause there if there's any questions uh from any of the Commissioners well thank you I appreciate the first slide or one of the first slides that you popped up there um um think all of you did a wonderful job I very appreciative of the work that you do to go through the whole auditing process um this is my 11th B year

1:29:06 reading the um audit reports I was a little bit cons surprised and slightly concerned because the letter the opening letter that normally says no findings no findings no findings um didn't really spell that out in a way that is clear to the UN auditor mind um so I had to really dig into the rest of it and I and then when I started seeing that there were minor findings that weren't material I wondered if that was related to it anyway I'm very used to having it spelled out very cleanly in the very opening you know paragraph of the the first summary there findings so it just a little comment um would appreciate in the

1:29:52 future to to have that in there um because it really made me I normally read through it even if there's no findings to see what was said but um it definitely gave me a little bit more concern than I've had ever before so anyway I appreciate it thank you good work so um this made for Deborah um on page 60 I did some math and it it looks like we're is this debt we've already incurred 433 million principal and interest and if so why such a significant jump in in debt in 2029 to those last four or five inrs or is that is that debt that's

1:30:38 already committed is is uh almost a half billion dollars in debt so you said page 60 is that page 60 from the I don't know it's just page 60 all I know okay I'm looking at the same one um I'm not seeing of 433 million well if you add them up the 183 million in principal 86 million in interest 101 million in principle and 62 million in interest between water I think it comes to plus or minus 433 million take a million I just wondering that's debt we so I'm read correct that's debt we've alreadying so what's the big jump in 2029 for like 50 million bucks principal for that that schedule is showing first five years single year

1:31:27 right and then it's combining five years at a time so you're doing five five year increments so we're going to 2052 so we got a 20-year window here but we still have half a billion dollars in in debt we've already correct we'll have the close to half a billion dollars of debt service in the coming 30 years that does not include Second Source or leeberg or anything I'm just trying to wrap my head about the the macro of of just how much debt can we still meet to our bond covenants with show apparently they would be telling us that we're not there but to me that's alarming for future rate increases especially going

1:32:14 electrification so you do see in the in the 10-year plan you see all of that debt service is already included uh we typically borrow 30 years and so that's why we have that so far out um our assets are very long lived uh but we um we monitor our debt service coverage we monitor our bond covenants uh that's really our role to make sure that we're not showing you financing options that that um fall outside of the bounds of those requirements not only the bond covenants but the requirements set forth by the board around our debt service coverage thank

1:33:05 yous I think this the third this four might be the fourth um I appreciate that we hire somebody and they have no findings that makes me super happy um so thank you for again having a clean audit thank you to the audit team for doing the detailed work that you do on our behalf and it always makes me um just really feel good that our team is approachable and responsive we've heard that every time and I think like that makes all the difference so reflected back from Keith that we're open and quick to respond so thank you do if there's nothing else go to the next item thank you Keith and I day thank you thank you all for your time

1:33:52 commissioners all right going on to the next item and I'm trying to make sure I have it right here which is the general maners annual performance evaluation n fori year um and favorite conversation all year all of our favorite conversation Frank um so I'll just start by sharing with everybody that we had uh work session two weeks ago and um provided uh feedback to Frank in a fairly long conversation as the whole group of five of us and and Frank um which was productive I think and and

1:34:39 helpful um and I guess with that I'll open it up to other Commissioners if other Commissioners want to make comments or UHS on that conversation a couple weeks ago president mcra I would just clarify it was an executive session thank you as opposed to a work session which is permitted under ORS regulations appreciate the clarification I just have a question um so last year the mapt employees got a 2.18% to what was it yeah what was it for this year 19 196 was the map the employee

1:35:25 I don't know I think that it was right around 2% 2% okay thank you yeah I think Brown's correct yeah other questions or comments John I mean if we're going to be consistent with what we did years past that equates if you're given it be consistent with what that that' be a $7,500 investment the one time award giv me the same percentage Isen before we jump into that I just want to say that we in our executive session that um we receive um uh

1:36:12 feedback from the executive team to hear how um we thought Frank was doing and Frank also kind of gave a um summary of where thought things were going well some areas were we wanted to put more focus on so that we had a process for talking about Frank's review and um really very positive and um that's we did Identify some questions um but that there was actually a process about we did this review thanks yeah I I would just add you know

1:36:58 just for people who are listening in it was it was a good conversation it was um a combination of yeah here's things that are going well um a lot of that is reflected in the organization and the work that we do and how we approach it U which is really a credit to the entire organization um also um specifically received some feedback uh from the board related to um how issues uh are presented or appear in the public um the board is obviously representing us uh as an organization to the public uh don't like to get surprises um and so as uh the chief executive how we communicate with the

1:37:45 board how we let them know what what is going on is something that we're constantly making adjustments to um we have made some alterations the last few years uh one of those having to do with uh Jen Connor and her group providing the board with here's upcoming media here's past media um and but also recognizing that there's a lot of things that happen when you're you're running a$2 billion organization that you need to communicate with the board and the message to me was we'd like a little bit more rather than less and so if there's areas that uh we think might appear in in the public eye we'd like a a greater degree of heads up for that so um that was something specifically that feedback

1:38:31 that I got from the board which was helpful um but then also just recognizing the the good work of the organization um as we as we um pursue our strategy and as we keep the lights on and and the water flowing and and all the things necessary to do that so that was my summary in 30 seconds um yeah so this is where Frank talked about it he's one employee with five bosses right and I come from the world where there's one or two bosses and a whole bunch of employees all right so you not

1:39:17 compensation is is kind of tricky and having to do it in a public forum is even more tricky you know usually it's when I do it in my business it's kind of a more of a confidential one-on-one you're doing a good job reflect that in some sort of compensation um I do believe Frank's done a good job um you know an example of that was played out earlier on you know we set policy and he is in charge of implementing that policy throughout the organization uh the policies were set and he and the rest of his team are working on implementing those those policies may

1:40:05 have been set by this particular board or earlier boards um but he's still charged with putting those out and I think that him and his staff are doing a good job of doing that that being said um know it's it's always tough to to to spend money when we're having asking customers to pay more we have rate increases but yet for me even though I've got rate increases and cost of doing business is is higher the cost of Labor is higher and and our one employee is the general manager and so for me I I believe that a a performance bonus is is in order um

1:40:51 and I would propose that that would be a 2% bonus only question that I would have is if we give that 2% does that go to the base salary so his next year's salary is based on that or is it a one-time bonus that the base because his base salary goes up percentage wise each year be do so the the board can do it either way commissioner um the way my compensation works via the the contract I have is that there's an automatic um adjustment to the salary at the beginning of the year based on what we're doing for the rest of the organization um and that's relative to

1:41:38 um combination of cost of living and also forecasted compensation adjustments with other organizations going forward so that's where the the actual salary piece is typically um taken care of um last year was a one time did not affect the the salary and um but the board can do it either way I would I would propose a one time 2% uh bonus performance award conversation that no I just like to clarify your proposal that it doesn't go against in base right it's a one it's a one time yeah just like I said here onetime performance award

1:42:41 barosi thank you Commissioners all five of you us but also you know really thanks to staff the people of the organization really so thank you moving on to the next item the College Hill 607 Reservoir replacement update president prey Commissioners general manager Lawson uh it's our pleasure to be here tonight to talk about the college Hill replacement project you're going to get an overview

1:43:26 of what's happening with College Hill and also a little bit of an update about our East 4th resor site uh I'm Karen Kelly chief operations officer and with me tonight Laura faring senior engineer and project engineer for this replacement project and Jen Connor is our Communications um supervisor so happy to be here um just briefly want to talk about the background of this project you've heard me talk about this before happy to do it again College Hill Reservoir is by far the most unique piece of critical infrastructure I've actually ever come across in my almost 29 years in the utility business especially in water but it's not because of the structure itself it's because of how the community has utilized and enjoyed it and you heard

1:44:12 some of that tonight um but also that said it's the structure I've worried the most about in my career not only as uh the health inspector at one time for eweb but also as a water operations manager and now as the chief operations officer and that's because of the current condition of the tank and also because of that same access that we've had that people have enjoyed um bringing in uh human impacts to that Reservoir keeps me up at night I'm really happy to say it is offline yeah so um that does help a lot of us uh sleep better at night um the tank is about 84 years old maybe 85 now uh the concrete Tank's life expens expectancy is about 50 years and it served this community well but it's

1:44:57 time to replace it with a more robust and seismically sound and operationally efficient structure that meets the modern standards sorry okay so just a little bit more here um so you've heard me talk about our that safe drinking water is Paramount to our communities Health it is also important critically important to our um healthy economy in this this community so we're investing today for a resilient tomorrow because our base level reservoirs are um such a critical part to our multiple barrier approach to Safe Drinking Water uh this the and to our resilient spine so water storage is critical to having a robust um quality product that is delivered to our

1:45:43 customers every day it's one of the last steps in the process so this is finished drinking water it does not undergo additional treatment it needs to stay secure it needs is to stay in high quality and be served to all of our customers not only for drinking water but also for fire protection and emergency uses so it does have all of our base level reservoirs have uh quite a few issues um except our new East 4th resorce so we'll talk about some of those issues resiliency and reliability is one um all of these existing base level res Wars have structural and seismic deficiencies and they're at or nearing the end of their useful life we have concerns about water quality we need to make sure they meet modern standards for quality and we're ening

1:46:29 that into our Design Elements for these resorce so we can reduce the water age and improve the flow as well as the security from vandalism and other more nefarious threats to drinking water operationally we have concerns about taking these reservoirs out of service it causes difficulty in how we operate the system and maintain pressures uh for drinking water fire suppression and so on the new designs allow us to take one tank out of service while keeping the other in use on the regulatory side um there are issues as well so you have heard about College Hill having deficiencies in the Roof System leaking um and that was required that we get that Reservoir either replaced or taken out of service by a certain date which

1:47:15 we have now met um but we also have other concerns out there and one of them being our Santa Clara Reservoir andc out here in the north end of town so one thing I want to mention about Santa Clara is that that Reservoir is actually under evaluation right now as we develop the updates to our master plan so speaking of our master plan um we have been working for the last decade at upgrading our Hayden Bridge Water treatment facility and our raw water intakes we've been moving into the distribution system since then we have many more years to go in um updating and replacing the resilient spine of our distribution and that also does include our distributed storage points so one thing I want to mention here is it's the

1:48:02 distributed storage has been in the plan for a very long time that does include the replacement of College Hill so 2015 was the last time we had our Master Plan update and it did recommend these distributed storage sites to to bolster that resilience spine but we've been talking about this project openly and publicly since about 2018 so it's not new information but happy to come and talk about it some more tonight so you can also see the 10-year Capital Improvement plan includes that construction of the new tanks at East 4th which you're going to hear more about here in a second replacing College Hill and Hawkins Reservoir strengthening our transmission system and again uh decommissioning Santa Clara Pump Station and Reservoir and over the next year as you do hear updates to our master plan

1:48:47 what the future holds for Santa Clara will become more clear so more to come on that and now I'm going to hand this over to Laura to give you the updates on the reservoirs themselves as Karen said I'm going to give you a project status um thought we'd start with an East 4th Avenue update so both tanks are fully commissioned they're both online uh We've also isolated College Hill and it's been drained so the community is now getting their drinking water 40th we've started backfilling it was initially very slow but they've gotten enough far enough have enough space they can find the gial equipment in so we're anticipating the back filling should be done at least probably in the next month or two and then we'll move into landscaping and restoration we' started working with Jen we've started working

1:49:32 on the public Outreach portion of the Landscaping I included one of the renderings that we sent to the nearby neighbors to get input and feedback on what the site's going to look like and what amenities they want if it's Trails or other things around the site and then we also have some transmission and storm water drain piping that's still continuing that'll be going on along hilard Street until about the end lat in 2024 when we were thinking about College Hill um it's important to make sure that we incorporate the lessons that we have learned we had quite a few changes to the design that happened during construction that helped us streamline the process one was uh we've learned a lesson that pipe supports with bolts in the floor can equal a leak at the end of

1:50:18 the project so we have eliminated those in the next phase we're ring how we're doing the piping inside the tank the backfill initially in the design documents was very complex it included I think five different kinds of Brock with different fabrics and stuff separating them all that would have just taken a long time and be very expensive to build so we were able to work with our geotechnical engineer simplify that to have it be a readily available Rock in town um It's Made It Go much faster so we're incorporating that into College Hill it also had a leak detection system under the tank that was made out of a pond liner it would have taken large equipment and months to build we actually swapped that out for just putting pipes under the tank and that worked just fine during commissioning so that we could determine what was happening during the process so we've

1:51:05 eliminated that that was about a $300,000 Savings in the project um and then we also learned that even though the geotechnical report they do the best they can but when you expose Rock to wind water it'll erode faster than anticipated so we kind of had to do some extra steps to protect the slope we're incorporating those steps earlier in the process in colge hill just to make sure that workers stay safe when they down that excavation also had quite a few blasting Lessons Learned um sure everyone here knows that we had a blast that was um not go as intended however it did not cause any damage to any significant damage to nearby structures overall it was safe however we did learn that we do need to extend the blast mats so we've changed our

1:51:50 specs to call out a distance past the holes that are drilled before we start the blasting so we'll be adding extra blast mats from the get-go on this one we're also included some more robust pre and post inspection minimum qualifications that gives eweb um kind of more say and who they hire and what their qualifications are before we have them go into houses and then the other thing is we just wanted to make sure that we had some sort of muscle we had no claims or damag during the East 4th but we did have a couple of questions that came up that it was as the blasting was nearing the end it was kind of hard to get the contractor to answer questions in a timely manner so we included a timeline of what our expectations are for them to respond either to the project team and then to

1:52:35 the public so we the other thing is that tank used a bridge concrete mix design that uses a really large Rock for the floor and the reservoir roof which works really well in the Portland area where they have more suppliers of concrete however here we're pretty limited so we ended up changing that kind of in the middle just because of quality concerns and availability concerns um that'll actually equal there'll be more competition on the concrete moving forward with College Hill which will save us money also is easier for the construction so it makes for a better construction uh doesn't combine the piping and the tank in this one so in spth we had them as two separate projects which caus some scheduling issues as we got closer to the end of making sure that we had the right

1:53:20 contractors working on the right pieces of piping so that we could have the transmission Mains we get water into the tanks also the big one was being able to have adequate drains because we have to drain the tank during the disinfection process so to help make that go a little smoother on this one we're running it as one project one team and then the other big thing that we learned pson Street was hard because it was a dead end street but that when you're installing piping fairly deep and solid rock it is really impactful um I think that was probably one of the more challenging parts of the project so we really changed how we we looked at how we're going to install the piping and where we're going to install it and we were able to do an evaluation so on College Hill we'll be using a trench

1:54:05 list Technologies the piping was going to be about 35 feet deep in Lincoln Street and that's unsafe and hard to get equipment in so we were able to change how we're going to do that work so we have very similar goals for College Hill that we had for East spth one you know Karen's already talked about the security and protecting water quality um there are two big ones for this for the secure facilities they will be fenced um the top will be closed off and for water quality we actually are designing all these tanks to be the same so hydraulically they'll work together right now they're all at the same top elevation but the bottom elevations are different so it makes it very challenging from an operation standpoint to keep water moving through them and to protect the water quality be designed to

1:54:50 Modern seismic standards so they available through and after an earthquake we'll have Provisions to get the water out um valves again that'll close to keep the water inside and then we'll have mechanisms to get them out after an earthquake we're also doing this to limit visual impacts to nearby neighbors and meeting all the city code requirements for landscaping we laid out the site to maximize how much space was available for recreation because we know that this is a very valued place and we as a team also value Recreation and open public spaces that we keep an eye on equity and making sure that the decisions we made are Equitable for all of the rate payers and we're also honoring the historic nature of the existing facility which Jen will talk about further later

1:55:37 on so right now from the from an engineering standpoint the project elements we're going to be demolishing the existing 607 Reservoir the smaller 603 Reservoir will be removed from the site at the beginning we also have an earthw work phase the tank Construction and then we're splitting the piping even though be one team we're going to be doing the piping from the site to the intersection of 23rd in Lincoln as trenchless to make it easier for Access and then we'll be running pipe down to wamit Street and then they'll be back filling and tank construction and then back filling and restoration so the tanks are the same as I mentioned same diameter same top elevation same bottom elevation as East 40th kept an eye on the proximity to Residence I think we have about

1:56:22 80 feet from the property line to the tank walls that provides a pretty good buffer on the South Side that's the closest neighbor we also kept it within the footprint of the tank just to minimize impacts you keeping an eye on the compatibility with the neighborhood so building a burm on the Lawrence side the tanks will be almost or on the Lincoln side on the Lawrence side the tanks will be almost fully buried those residents will see the top of the tank and not the side also looking at how the fencing fits with the nearby Neighbors and how Landscaping we also been doing an economic analysis on tank sighting and kind of what amenities were sure we have adequate access for maintenance and operations in the

1:57:07 future talked about the security the tanks themselves will be vened but we'll keep the fencing as close to the tanks as possible allowing of the site to still be open then I'll talk more about that process kept an eye on excavation and constru C so these tanks have to be 10et lower than the existing so there'll be air amount this that's to make it so that the bottom elevation is matching what we're watching up for environmental impact of the things I mentioned about the piping the easiest way to do it is to replace the existing piping that's there because the earthwork is almost um you can see the road in the picture here ping goes under all of the trees in

1:57:52 order to do that sort of piping installation we would have had to cut down all the trees on Lincoln Street so we instead of decided trenchless installation which is safer faster it'll be more cost effective that we could save the trees which provide a nice buffer the site and then we laid the site out so there's plenty of space for to do improvements or need 100 years from now space to be so we did because of the piping changes it's going to take a little extra Geotech work a little extra design did split out the demolition in earthwork see that contract come through on the board a board meeting for approval to Spain that work will

1:58:37 probably be done in late 2024 early 2025 and we'll go into tank construction piping down to the intersection of Lincoln and 23rd and the filling will all be on contract that allows the contractor to put piping access to participating that'll be a board 2024 early 2025 it's really dependent on how we anticipating the tanks will be complete by the year end of 2026 as I mentioned there's some additional transmission and storm drain piping that will go down Lincoln Street to the existing system in we're going to time that for about mid 2025 and that that work will be prior to the tanks all facilitate

1:59:23 commissioning conection then go into site restoration which will be late 2026 early 2027 all be constuction goes currently in the budget there's $34 million project um 4th had $28 million for the tank10 million for the pipeline $28 million for the tanks at College Hill has pretty similar construction and $6 million for the piping because it's much shorter distance that we have to run oh I will pass it on to Jen everyone so for the record I'm Jen Connor and I'm the public

2:00:09 Communications College Hill project with my colleague um Commissioners are familiar with thetion for the East 40th storage project and there are many similarities between that project and col Hill for example the importance clear and authentic cck about opportunities or meaningful in College Hill will not be asking for public input on design enging instruction andion directly affect water quality and safety must areas where the public can have the greatest impact on Project outcomes are landscape

2:00:57 designi to provide the community to detailed in your packet we're communicating early and often using variety of channels project websitea video surveys and commented conversations s mitigation is an important part of this process as the site is considered locally historic significant structure to that end U has entered into consultation with the state historic mitigation office shipo mitigate historic loss historic loss of thees with agency

2:01:42 stakeholders in any public process there are constraints and tradeoffs and EB will not be able to act on all reest that even some of the very popular ideas we asked for outside expert opinions on the feasibility of maintaining is not possible risk and condition of it is possible to retain portions of railing post that surround the top incorp final Landscaping input that we've heard stored mation the results of our analysis and betting TRS tradeoffs those

2:02:29 are all published on the project website for any customer to VI so the public process is kind of like a funnel started with a call for open call for ideas um open brainstorm the EB staff and outside experts Ved those ideas to narrow them down to a handful of op option we're currently collecting feedback on multiple options that in to inform Final Solution months after demolition we shift to our Focus to landscape planning we utilize public events ways and other tools to inform and engage neighbors and

2:03:14 users and the public just like historic mitigation there will be constraints and trade-offs for landscape design project team is reiterating a clear and consistent message that while the new tanks will not be open for public use that is committed to a public input process for landscape vation tring of the new tanks and low impact Recreation facilities enjoyed by everyone while aligning with broader Community Values funds safety so just as Laura covered lessons learn from East 40th on a construction and Engineering standpoint we also have

2:04:00 lessons learn fromy um I group these into two columns so introduce refers to things that we didn't do at East 40th or we didn't as well as we could first of all we want to cast a much wider net this is a gap on that for experience the College Hill project we delivered a postcard with information about the effort to all residents within one mile the of the site, households we already have more than subscribers email list we also want to do a better job reaching out and engaging with underrepresented groups we need to identify and collect

2:04:46 perspectives from first group of customers including those who live and play at the resid as well as customers who live outside of the College Hill Neighborhood are impacted by the project through water rates quality viability represented groups often have VAR participation so we have proactively reached out to several groups invite them to email list to the project team know how they would like to be part of this process some of the groups we reach out you are St and the release of P milia and and be under the continue and refine column these were things that we did for East 4th and we found them to be effective do

2:05:32 even better on the col project first one is Raising awareness around the crucial role of these in water our community first and foremost this is a drinking water quality that can sometimes get lost in the emotional connections to site second is um being clear about participation opportunities all Spectrum from important that that's communicated clearly with the public and also that there's strong internal

2:06:17 and really affected project oned on all Commissioners have mentioned that going out and visiting the East Side having to getting regular updates on the pro beneficial our goal to provide information and support we can effectively with the community and build confidence in decisions that involve tradeoffs at the last board meeting last month the commissioner uh noted that we should ensure that El other elected officials are part of this process and I just wanted to let you know that Emily SLE counselor for the W is on our um project email list she attended the first hist invion meeting also um County

2:07:02 Commissioner Lori Traer is undering and then finally we need to um expect and handle thisinformation more and more common in our world to with it but also be strategic and most respond want displacement information with clear and accurate information amplifying um as we get closer to demolition we will obviously uh notify the public while in advance to host a farewell event out at the site that's in early standing uh stages and um as we did with e 4th construction

2:07:59 so just want to thank everyone for your support of this project and the East 4th site um as been mentioned this cannot be done on schedule and on budget without your support so and questions and comments thanks John I sat here for a whole lot of these presentations and I've never been more impressed with way You' handle of all the projects I've seen I've never seen one done better this is not to diminish what other projects have been but that's off to you from me I think you've done an examplar job and thank you so much for doing it very complex project made it understandable affordable checked all the boxes and you're doing so thank you very much for Success I'm sure now I've

2:08:45 set the bar now you have to do it again so uh I do have one question on your on your um the depiction of the two tanks up the northwest corner of our site there's an old Reservoir there's a concrete is that staying okay that's going yeah that also will be demolished as part of this project we need the space for staging and parking contractors and the tower is going as well the tower will be going um the timing of that will be after the Verizon lease expires so we don't it's in 2025 it'll be a separate bid package okay all right thank you very much and again thank you for for making our job each here by you're you're taking the lead doing this right I really appreciate

2:09:33 it question um thank you for the presentation and I um really appreciate kind of the lessons learned and things that we're going to do differently and I have a question about the public participation and the public Outreach and I'm just trying to find where you it's Prim line um but I guess my question is it's going to be of a while until the public participation piece about the landscaping and what the site is going to be and that's what most people are going to have barely strong feelings about so I I maybe I'm just using out loud I don't know if I actually have a question here but it's just um I don't want people to get nervous or

2:10:19 agitated during theing period period of not knowing what's going to happen and I'm sure you've thought about this obviously and I'm just curious how you think about yeah that's a really good point we are already collecting public the comment on Landscaping even though we haven't launched the formal process yet for that very reason it's something that people are really interested in they're and he's already engaging with us and talking what they wanted to be def fight right um so we are collecting that input now we do have a timeline on our website that describes the historic mitigation process and timeline the Landscaping process and timeline and how those will eventually converge um you know at East 4th we didn't start collecting input on

2:11:05 Landscaping until now you know we're backfilling and that's when we started that process and there are pros and cons to doing it that way one thing I will say is that this site is going to be a major construction zone for three or four years so there's some some advantages I think to waiting and not waiting to collect input but collecting input throughout the process because the site how people want to use the site may change over the next couple of years as they're kind of finding other places to roller skate and do taichi and that and so um we all have a very basing what we want to see at College Hill based on how it's used in the past but giving it some time we may as a community

2:11:52 customers come up with other ideas for how to use the setting so it is a bit of a balance and we are trying to be clear with customers that engage with us now we're already listening with a formal sense how we get off and we'll span you know well into the construction process so that we can really take our time with these important decisions think also thing that we're doing is we're taking um you have to get a certain way through the design in order to be able to see kind of what the site's going to look like and we are at for the back filling and the restoration we're in between about 60 and 90% design which is about where you need to be and we are taking that and generating renderings that will show where the tanks are going to be just we did it

2:12:37 with East spth too just to generally show kind of what will be available for open space it'll be kind of a blank look grassy for now but it is it will show screening up against the fences kind of as an idea like hey we will screen this so that people do know that you know this is what's going to be available here's how the tanks will appear so that's happening at well in the parks department at all like are they or participating I just think about um you know if if this amenity is going away for for people not 's mission to space and Recreation the community but there is is a department that does do that so I'm

2:13:22 curious if they you know want to get get near this or just to hear like from the community what what the community wants I'm actually meeting with um some parks department on Friday um to discuss that they're aware of what the uses are they've been contacted as well and so TR to lean into them you know historically you they have one do with our site which makes sense but um I don't know what'll come of that or how that'll pan out but we are we have reached out to the parks Department as well thank you um I know we're early on in the design phase um but I was real pleased with the uh

2:14:08 construction crew that we had at the at the last one have we gone out and put that up for bid yet and is there any chance that the same people are going to be building this one there's always a chance because you have public you know purchasing laws so we do have to go with low bid however the Demolition and excavation phas went out to bid this morning um we have contacted the same contractor to make sure they're interested in bidding on it so they will likely submit a bid and when does the construction one go out the construction one won't go out probably until late 2024 early 2025 however they have indicated that they are to bid on that as well good but again you know we have low bit absolutely things I can't sway in anyway

2:14:55 it comes to us we make a final decision on who who the goes to even though there's policies um I was I noticed the the change in the concrete specs has there been any uh investigation into low carbon concrete being used utilized in this project yes well well from the standpoint you know the the kind of green concrete that you can add chemicals to has not been approved for drinking water yet so everything that we need to use in the tank has to be nsf61 compliant so from that standpoint know however um we carried through the changes that we made on East 4th to change the fly ash and cement ratio to

2:15:41 reduce the carbon load concrete and then we also changed the column spacing and made some changes to get our carbon footprint as low as possible so we have carried that those same concrete changes through on this project and there are local they're local uh produc or suppliers of that type of of material yes the fly ash is dependent on how much energy they're generating from coal so we don't have any um because it's a coal by product so we don't have any say over that but assuming that they are operating then yes okay and then just um I noticed it was in the last SL slide but having a going away party I think is a great idea um I think we should publish that as as much as we can and

2:16:30 also I think the one of the things that was well received at at East 4th was the uh observation Grand stands and if I don't know if there's if there's space at this place to do that the plan I'm happy to hear about that because I know there were people that brought their kids out like oh gosh we got to watch the big trucks and do that kind of stuff it's important to me so there are going to be viewing places on both lawren and Lincoln side and I would I would put that out in the communications thing too bring your bring your cheeks not every day you get to see your drinking water be um but your infrastructure be built so any chance that we can get for Education opportunities I'm all in great thank you just a couple comments um

2:17:17 congratulations to you and the team for completing the water tanks forth and having them full must be hugely gratifying and having must also be hugely gratifying there's a little bit of me that's also siging a bit of relief maybe not quite the extent that you were but um yeah it's great to see that so thank you um for your work on that project I did get some comments about tree removal um you know you know there are going to be people you frustrated with the loss and and I think we all understand that um and it was remarkable to go to our website and see a map of the project site down to the individual tree and in fact the map had been updated with one additional tree that was going to be removed I mean the the

2:18:02 level of precision and detail available to the public that wants to know what's happening on that site is kind of mindblowing so thank you for doing that work um this is in my w I'm sure we're going to hear a lot about it look forward to you taking look at the site as things progress thank you for the work you um well yeah thank you I'm so impressed and grateful that we have you on our team doing this great work um I'm not it's the it's funny because irony is not lost on me and that on the 40th site it was mostly a discussion about you know not losing trees and here we're also talking about not losing concrete and um I appreciate the the all the

2:18:48 efforts taken for the historical mitigation work and um I do think it's important that you know we include not just the electeds that are you know represent that the area there but the others that you know generally will hear comments from the public so I don't know if we've sent more invites out to them and maybe just these two have signed up but if we haven't done that I really do think it's a good idea for whoever initially raised that to have the owners involved um already informed about that process I had a couple of justs about the Santa Clara site so um you mentioned that it was under review is that under review by us specifically or is it also

2:19:36 under review by the state and are there other concerns there that thinking about as part of the master plan we have a contractor who is doing the evaluation and they're looking at the feasibility of you know do we need replacement storage what what's the hydraulics look like from South Hills to the north end of town can we operate efficiently and still meet all of our emergency flow and fire flow standards um without it those are the kinds of things that are being looked at if we replace it does it need to go in the same location it's we pump water out of that Reservoir unlike the rest of our base level which operates on gravity so it's less efficient is there somewhere

2:20:22 else to place it if we do in fact need to replace storage where might that be so those are all being considered right now do you want to add that pretty much it's got significant structural issues um given its location it has some soil issues like seismic reasons so it it's piece of infrastructure but we're looking at Alternatives we're looking at some other sites around town as well that appropriate elevation to allow from Gravity flow and so we're leing in on our Consultants to kind to give a third party independent view of what needs to happen to that facility so we may or may not need to replace it I guess I've always thought it that

2:21:07 we it was you know in the lineup how how old is it compared to the other it was it was built in the mid 70s um and it will be it will need to be replaced it can't be the rehabit between five and10 million extends its useful life about another 15 years and so it will need to be replaced it was built in the mid 70s so it's not near but it's still due to the just the nature of it and how it's built it something needs to happen to it something needs to happen but we're not under an order by the regulatory commissioner okay great thank

2:21:52 you since we open that door and that probably serves my words um I know five six years ago we replaced the Waterland we took it off the bottom of the wamit and hung it off the B line Bridge because that truck got stuck on it um so does water flow from the east side of the river to the west or does flow from the West to the east it varies on the time of day and what's happening at the treatment plant generally water goes from Hayden bridge to from the East to the West and then we pump it out and then when we pump it out of Santa Clara it can be used to send water into the South part of town so it'll go it'll go in either direction I know that EB sold glesby bu to the city passive Park years ago and

2:22:38 that that was a reservoir site and they have trouble serving the Els on the edge of gesp has there been any thought about trying to reengage them to replace that for the North End or is that I know that'd be a heck conversation for the neighborhood but uh we have opened that conversation many times um it's even if that was to go backwards there's some land use issues with being able to build there that would have to be overcome um there's an overlay Zone that limits the height and then there's also just that it's it would be a challenging site for us to build on at this point because once we sold that to the city we stopped building the transmission system and all of like the backbone infrastructure that would have to get there so at this point we would have to run a significant amount of

2:23:25 transmission piping as well as just the construction itself thank you just one quick thing first of all it's very unusual that the public provides input that asks us to maintain the slab you know of concrete which is pretty unusual for us as a public agency to hear um but I would also just like to mention that the fact is not Lo L on us that especially related to public input relative to amenities where there is a delay especially at College Hill that we have a great example in front of us to finish which is East 40th and if we can show a great example at East 40th as to how the

2:24:11 public can contribute to the amenities and the ultimate end product that will go a long ways toward the conversations uh to people about the next one which is College Hill and so I think the fact that we recognize the opportunity at East 40th is is not lost on us when it comes to its impact um on people interested in College Hill and its comments thank you all appreciate the time presentation um so that's the end of the first part here so we will take a 10minute break it's 5 till we'll come back at 5: after we'll take a short

2:34:58 the Eugene Water Electric Board and we're g to Dive Right into item number 12 guide book and uh hand it over to Kelly great hello everyone uh my name is Kelly hail I am us time policy analyst and adviser and I am joined here today by my two esteemed colleu colleages we got Adam Rue our race manager and Andrew Jano senior Environmental Specialist we're here to provide you with an update on the latest iteration of the climate guide book I wanted to start off by saying happy Earth month um as promised last year major updates to The Climate guide book are expected annually in April in celebration of Earth day which is on April 22nd a major update is

2:35:44 designed uh is designated by having a complete refresh of all the information that's included in in the guide book over the previous year and we excited to be here today to share version 2.0 with you so I'm going to cover quickly what's new in version 2 of the climate guide book I'll touch on our public Outreach plan as we are complete with phase one um and I'll be spending some time covering the um 2023 ght inventory results for ewe's internal operations as well as covering um uh e web's role in Eugene's cap 2.0 and I'll finish tonight's presentation by covering the next steps what you can expect in 20 so I do want to say um that I'm super

2:36:32 grateful to have Andrew and Adam here with me today Adam took a lead role in updating e web's rate making principles that are found in chapter two of the guide book and Andrew took a lead role in conducting our ght inventory for 2023 that can be found in chapter six um but there were more than 40 different staff members across the organization that helped contribute content to the latest iteration so I just wanted to say thank you so much to everyone it was a joy to work with so many people from across the utility um to provide this resource so what's new in version two um there's many things that are included there's um a complete refresh as I mentioned um with fully updated information in each chapter I won't go into all of the details here as um it's

2:37:18 also outlined in the associated with this agenda item in your pcket um but one thing I do want to notice um notify you of is that Within chapter two we did um add an entire section here that outlines EB's rate design principles these are nothing new uh you should have uh they should look very familiar to you you you've probably heard um about that from our wonderful Finance team over the years um but we do expect to um update those over the next year and so we wanted to include them here for transparency and as a starting point for future discussions so turning to phase one of our public Outreach plan we're excited um that when we launched the climate

2:38:03 guide book um we uh wanted to do some Outreach with folks across the community uh there were two components to our U phase one Outreach plan we did external Outreach focused on folks that were intended to be super users of this resource um so you'll see the wide range of 16 different organizations that were contacted um and we also did internal Outreach uh with customized presentations for different divisions based on the information that was most useful or most relevant to their role in the organization we have um outlined uh our website that now has information that can be read in two different ways you can read the pdf version of the document as well as web

2:38:48 content um and we received um a lot of positive feedback about the guide book so far so overall um very positive people have been um excited that it's a great transparent resource and um that it helps them to be able to selfs serve the information they need at the moment they need it so that was the the initial feedback phase two is what will begin for the rest of 2024 and phase two of that Outreach plan will continue to share updates with internal and external holders to really um uh make sure that people are continuing to use this resource so drum roll please now we get to talk about the really fun part um this is where we get to tell you the good news that with all of the goals

2:39:34 that you have set through our climate change policy strategic Direction policy number 15 um that we are on track with meeting all of these um commitments and goals so there are two components to the goals that you outlined in SD 15 the first goal is an internal emissions reduction goal and the second part has to do with um a carbon content of our power supply um and that second component the 95% carbon free by 2030 goal that was included um related to our power supply it's really outside of the scope of tonight's presentation um but we will come back at a future time and talk about that that is being managed through our integrated resource planning process so we'll get more um into the

2:40:19 details on that during those presentations in the future but we are modeling for um Meeting those goals as part of that process so we're on track there um the other two um areas that I'm going to be talking about tonight uh relate to our internal emissions reduction goals as well as the voluntary commitments that we proactively put into um Eugene's cap 2.0 so we'll be giving update on that but the spoiler alert is that it's all good news we're on track with everything so um all right so here are some of the results of our uh internal G she inventory so here you can see the years at the bottom that range from 2010 when we started that's the Baseline year for the goals that we were um setting and

2:41:05 you can see that we have our scope one and scope two Emissions on the chart um you can see that there are in the first goal that I was mentioning before there are three components to it so um we have had a goal to reduce our scope one and scope two emissions by 25% over our 2010 Baseline by 2020 and I'm pleased to share that we have continually met that goal ever since 2014 that's noted on this chart by the dotted black line the second part of that goal was that we hoped to have a 50% reduction over our 2010 Baseline um by 2030 and um we were able to meet that um first back in 2016

2:41:51 then again in 2020 uh however in 2020 we expected that some of those emissions reductions were in result of the pandemic so we expected those to go back up in 2021 which they did but we're pleased to show that they have contined to drop over the last two years and this year we are reporting a 54% emissions reduction over our 2010 Baseline so um I've included this slide you you may recognize it from past presentations um it's a quick reminder that um this comes from the uh greenhouse gas protocol uh and it's a quick reminder that GHC accounting is an important and evolving discipline and eweb follows all available guidance on how to conduct our ghd inventories

2:42:38 earlier tonight you heard about our financial audit and you heard about how in the financial World there are um standards like the generally accepted accounting principles or Gap there are similar standards in ghg accounting and generally there are two main types of inventories so um there are uh inventories that are called Community inventories and there are corporate inventories a community inventory basically goes out into the community draws a circle around a particular Geographic boundary and looks at all of the activities within that Geographic boundary from citizen business and government activities that's not this right this is a corporate inventory corporate inventory is designed to draw a circle around the activities and

2:43:24 actions of a particular entity like eweb a business or a government entity and um it illustrates the impacts on the climate resulting from how the organization is being run and as outlined in those GH protocols eweb takes a financial control approach to our inventory this means that we include in our inventory all the equipment and assets that we own or have finan cial control over and we measure the emissions associated with the fuel consumption or the utilization of those assets GG inventory protocols recommend including as mandatory all scope one and scope two emission sources for an organization so as you can see on this chart scope one emissions are considered direct or you can think of them as owned

2:44:10 those are the sources that have that an organization like eweb has the most responsibility for and control over scope two is a special type of indirect or shared set of emissions associated with the consumption of electricity in owned facilities and vehicles and scope three includes all other types of indirect or shared emissions and scope three is considered voluntary in most ghd accounting and I mention this just because last year there was some concern about taking credit for emissions reductions associated with the sale of our headquarters facility um to the City of Eugene just like when we sold that asset we removed it from our financial balance sheet it also makes sense and is alignment with ghg inventory protocols

2:44:55 to stop including emissions from that asset here in our carbon accounting as well based on the date of the sale which is what we have done in this analysis the purpose of a corporate inventory is to illuminate the opportunities that EB has through its internal operations for efficiency improvements using less energy or opportunities to use less ghg intensive fuel or refrigerants and by consolidating our operations here at the Roosevelt operations center which as you can see from the plaque on the wall is a lead gold facility um we have been able to make strategic efficiency gains we knew this and planned for this way back in 209 2009 when we set our ghg reduction goals that are included in this climate change policy so I'm happy to answer any

2:45:41 questions about ghg protocols during the question and answer session tonight but I'd like to go through one quick slide for each of the um emissions categories in our inventory so I'm pleased to start with our um scope One Source from our owned fleet vehicles and I just have to say we're so lucky to have Gary Lynch our fleet manager here he's a Pioneer in this area he's a a great leader and I just want to um call him out as being u a specific reason why we can uh say that we have reduced 66% of our emissions since 2010 that's huge and that really comes from a reduction in in uh the carbon intensity of the fuels that we use through a switch to renewable fuels this is primarily being driven by a switch to renewable diesel but we also

2:46:27 utilize ethanol and a small amount of biodiesel as well as um we have a few electric vehicles um so our fleet has grown in size um but we've also got more gotten more efficient um uh over that time period as well when we move on to the next scope One Source natural gas in our own buildings we can see that since 2010 emissions have increased by about 68% but we are recording a decrease of 26% since last year um that decrease the recent decrease um is primarily due to that sale of the headquarters building as well as some reductions here at the Roosevelt Operation Center those are two only two facilities that we currently or

2:47:12 in the 2023 uh inventory year that we owned that consume natural gas for space uh the next scope One Source um that we have in our inventory are includes refrigerants or industrial gases sf6 specifically um and these are um uh emissions that are used in our fleet vehicles or buildings and specifically for sf6 in our electrical equipment switch gear Um this can have some leaks over time but we're pleased to report that in 2023 there were no recharges of those compounds and so therefore no Fugitive emissions from these gases um electricity in our owned buildings is a um the emissions associated with that come from two

2:47:57 different components there are the emissions associated with our total electricity consumption as well as or you look at how much electricity you're consuming as well as the carbon intensity of that electricity so we're pleased to say that when we just look at the megawatt hours of consumption that we are down 11% since 2010 since our Baseline year and when we look at where that electricity is being consumed it's overwhelmingly being dominated by utilization in our water operations um and then when we look at how our emissions factor for uh the utility specific emissions factor that the organ Department of Environmental Quality calculates on our behalf based on our um owned power resources and uh Power contracts we can see that that

2:48:43 emissions uh intensity is variable um each year so that big spike in the chart on the right that shows our emissions Factor um in metric tons per megawatt hour and then you can see that the chart on the left actually mirrors the shape of that um pretty closely because um how when our emissions Factor changes it causes our total emissions to change as well so you can see our total Emissions on the left side of that chart um and that spike in 2019 was due to a bad water year uh in the entire region so that's why that emission Factor went so high in that particular Year we're pleased to see that it has dropped again all right so that is um our emissions inventory good news in almost

2:49:30 all fronts there and now I'd like to wrap up with some information about um our contributions to the city of Eugene's climate action planning process um in 2020 they released their cap 2.0 and as part of that process they reached out to a number of organizations ining eweb that they called large lever shareholders those were organizations that were are responsible for um big portions of emissions reduction opportunities in the community and um uh as part of that process they asked what are you already up to what are you already committed to that might have an emissions reduction in our community and they calculated all of that um to see how they were progressing towards their climate recovery ordinance goals so as

2:50:16 part of that process eweb contributed 15 voluntary commitments across three different categories five of those commitments were in the transportation sector seven were in the building energy sector and three fell into the resiliency sector and these were things that we were already planning to do uh are part of our mission and are part of our activities and we were pleased to be able to describe how they helped the community meet their goals and so um at on March 11th the City of Eugene sustainability staff gave an update to Council City Council on how that um entire set of commitments that are included in Eugene's cap 2.0 are being implemented so if you look at the top chart on this uh slide you can see

2:51:02 that those are the results that the city represented to council across all 115 action items across six uh five different categories so Transportation building energy fugitive emissions consumption emissions and resiliency and they calculated that 61% of the action items of those 115 are actively being implemented they did that by including two categories the two green categories so ongoing programs that have already been started and are running currently as well as completed projects those two total together to give the 61% implemented um there are other projects the ones in blue that have been uh have

2:51:48 been started but aren't ongoing project projects so they don't have they will have a completion date and they're not yet at their completion date and then the orange row there is ones that have not yet been started so I'm pleased to show ewe's results for our 15 commitments here in the bottom chart you can see that we have started all of them there's only one that's still in progress yet to be completed and everything else um the other 14 fall into the either ongoing programs or completed projects so my my last slide tonight is just to leave you with some notes that we are excited to move forward in 2024 by um updating our inventory protocols you'll notice tonight one of the things that I did not report on were any emissions associated with our power

2:52:33 supply um and the scope one sources from our owned um our resources because currently we report that separately to the Oregon Department of Environmental Quality under the ghd reporting program in the future we hope to combine all that report reping to be able to show all that in one place um and uh we are planning to bring suggested updates um uh to our sd5 climate change policy by the end of this year so with that I'm happy to answer any questions thank you so much great thank you questions many question I have a question on the um the slide scope to electricity and owned building and you yeah and you said that

2:53:18 um the spike in 2019 was a bad water like that mysterious yeah so that decreases the amount of hydrop power that's available in the region and because that's a low carbon energy source it requires that the region rely more on fossil resources that make sense yeah yeah I thought you were saying that like actually side here I that okay that makes sense yes for the clarification uh kind of following off of that I'm just curious that so I understand that 2019 was the B I was

2:54:04 also wondering how much the um the incidents that we've had ice storms and such in the winter time play into that because it affects the whole region and I I just happen to notice you know 2019 was a bump I think we had a big storm in 2021 does that really play into it or is it really just all about the the water side of it and those kind of you know uh more extreme events that we get are just not enough to um I mean in terms of the way this is reported it's really based on total megawatt hours that are generated from different generating resources uh and how much of that goes to serve load um really the main amount of uh carbon

2:54:51 that's included in our Oregon DEQ emissions Factor comes from Market purchases and so it's really about our Market purchases as well as um the Bondville power administration's Market purchases that's where the majority of the um carbon that comes into our emissions inventory um spe comes so um storms will play into that in certain components but usually they're shortlived and it's really looking at their amount of Market purchases across the year probably to a lesser degree uh people went offline in late 2028 2018 well compar to the purchases but

2:55:47 guess there's a section on here let me get p to we had a big spike in refrigerants and then it kind of just drops off what what was going on in 2021 that we had this huge Frant an industrial gas emission and then now 2023 we have none of those yeah um so uh these gases are um variable to measure right so um uh the way this works and the the methodology that is used is that leaks can happen over time in very small quantities um and usually you notice that when the leak becomes um at a point at which the refrigerant requires a recharge and so you calculate um the what was Lost based

2:56:34 on how much was recharged in a particular year so sometimes these leaks can happen in very very small quantities over a longer period of time what happened in 2021 was that there were two um substations that experien experienced um a leak uh and that got to the point where we have actually since 2017 if you look at the chart you can see that overall except for that 2021 year um emissions from leaks are are much reduced and we have gone through a process where we invested in new equipment and new training on Material Handling for sf6 um specifically uh in 2017 and Beyond so that has made a difference but there was a leak that um was noted at that particular um

2:57:19 substation in that year and so that's the year it was recharged that particular substation is scheduled for full um replacement here in a in two or three years so the planning work for the replacement of that substation is already underway I was wondering too I know that we get some from the I think it's from the Transformers maybe it's a different I thought that was a pretty high rate and we were switching out the fluid in those but yeah the these are so when you see the spikes those are when um the sf6 gas is being recharged so it's very likely that the recharging that you saw in 2021 might have been accumulated leaks in 2018 2019

2:58:04 2020 it's also safe to assume that 2023 is not zero that there but when we go out and we recharge the sf6 which is a gas that is a u Spark suppressor um that there will actually be a would be you you look at this data and you're going to go oh 20124 2025 it wouldn't be unheard of to see some level of of recharge that took place we did between 2017 and 2021 changed some of our gas handling equipment and protocols um some of that was because um leaks can occur when you're just handling it and so we wanted to minimize those but um that's when the recharging

2:58:49 is taking place not necessarily when the leaks are happening okay so this isn't the fuel that's actually inside of the Transformers that I thought was being switched out to the more environmentally FR no it's not Transformer oil this is in specifically and most of the time in Breakers or switch gear where as it's used as an insulator basically um that like I said when you have so that you can suppress Sparks and make it um safer in a smaller amount of space okay great as a refresher so for hexif fluoride is uh close to 24,000 times the global warming potential CR2 so a little bit goes a long way like I think 2021 was a little over 30 pounds of it but it's a

2:59:34 sizable emission that's why there's a effort to swap it out andol Lees and monit Le and then I just have one other question on the solar installs that like significantly jumped up in 2022 and 23 and I was just curious if you had any thoughts as inate guide book yeah yeah I actually don't know what caused um that solar installation uh to go up I know that um well actually it probably was due to a change in our solar incentive can you answer that Frank um I'd have to look into the specifics of it um the our solar program is primarily

3:00:20 funded through our green power program um and so we'd have to take a look and see if it was part of that I was wondering when we switch to having the four different categories instead of just the one if that actually had an impact okay that's it thank you yeah Frank sorry I was just going to say one thing commissioner Carlson asked about storm years um one thing that we look into is that when we're responding to storms there's a tremendous amount of of Lea and vehicle use as part of the restoration and I don't know if that if we've looked at the impact of that particular side of it but that's something that we

3:01:11 could thank for the presentation and the guide book I think that there's lots of people other agencies these things take take a a lesson from that because it's Som comprehensive um couple of questions um one in chapter two we were talking about rate designs and the how rate designs can be incentives and incentives to you know if the rates are too high then people don't do things so we'll be looking at that when we start talking about rate design and how that affects not just people afford it or can the utility afford it it's also has an effect on our on our emissions and then

3:01:57 the other question that I have is when are we going to start talking about scope 3 and E web's impact on areas of scope three there's all of these up you know there's direct ones and everybody's working on their direct ones but there's this scope three that's on the outside that's this huge elephant in the room and if you don't look at it you know I mentioned something earlier about about low carbon concrete right if we're not looking at this stuff that we are Contracting through and and requiring these people that were spending money to come in and do work for us to look at

3:02:42 this through their lens too because we don't know that they they don't have this climate guide book and they don't have these goals but it's a huge part of it so when are we going to start looking at scope three and saying how can we bring our scope three emissions down we'll answer that in a couple of different ways we are looking at a couple of areas of our scope three already so I didn't include it in the presentation today but we have been looking at especially the impact of our scope three emissions from employee Community um as it relates to our Dynamic Workforce policy and what has happened with the workforce since the pandemic um so that is something that we are already tracking and measuring we're working with Workforce Services to collect that data and and make some

3:03:27 estimates there um generally I would say absolutely you're 100 spot 100% spot on that looking at scope three can be helpful to identify even though we don't own those emissions we have some shared responsibility for them and by looking at them you give an opportunity to figure out where we can still influence them even if we hold them outright um so we are doing that in some certain certain places so um like I mentioned the commute we also look at our personal vehicle travel that's included and we do measure that um so when employees take their personally owned vehicles on behalf of e for business travel and get reimbursement for that we look at that as well um and then in major projects is

3:04:13 where we have taken a big look at our construction emissions because all of the I've probably done 60 plus greenhouse gas inventories in my life uh for organizations across the entire region and scope three can be significant and most of the time it comes from construction emissions especially for organizations like ewb that are responsible for significant construction projects um we have taken the approach of um as you mentioned last year when you talked about the green not as an initiative we actually have created a a task force looking at Green concrete we have joined with the city of Eugene's green concrete task force we are studying what the city of Portland is doing on green con um and've been

3:05:00 looking at what options are available to us you've heard earlier tonight from Laura um at what options were available for a specific Drinking Water Project our concrete usage actually jumped from approximately four to 500 yards per year um for the 40th project to over 10,000 a year for the last two years so that specific project was a big driver in that um and uh we are limited for some of that options with it being a portable source so we are exploring those things we are researching those opportunities and we are engaging with our partners who are looking into as well that's a question that I would have maybe this would be for Frank Rod is when we look at our Pro procurement when

3:05:47 we put a bid out there right we see these bids in our con our consent calendar and the CR criteria are you know have they done you know what's the lowest price have they done the work for us before and was it satisfactory at some point will we put in there what what implements are they having to reduce their greenhouse gases so if they if they do if it's a construction company and one of them is using biodiesel and the other one's not using biodiesel and there's 10,000 truckloads going to a site we considering that and that's kind of what I'm thinking about in some of the areas to look at it in scope three procurement of actual

3:06:32 materials is one but the contracts that we're doing would be another one that I would hope we can start leaning that way because it's it's as big as as any of the other ones thank you yeah I just have a real quick follow up on what G saying is that that that was one one of my concerns about some of these products were buying like you spending thousands of dollars on Transformers and things and they're made in China and some of these products are made in China some of the biggest violators change we're still we're feeding that machine building all these Sul coal plants all that stuff right right now feeding that machine by buying their products

3:07:18 and when does it cost effective say we got to buy something here for dollars buy something is that a threshold we try balance that because we got up against a lot of rate where do we make that decision as a group or you make that recommendation as staff by telling us that uh spend that kind of don't have a great answer for you at this moment we have um there is always opportunity to do a comprehensive review of our procurement policies um and we last year you all passed the Mery Equity

3:08:03 inclusion policy as well that could look at certain criteria that we look at in our we do um address any of our procurement goals there I that my I didn't sort of address the larger question I think there's a certain number of stages and steps that we want to go through when we're looking at procurement um the first one is is always does the piece of equipment um meet our specifications does it when I say specifications performance specifications um um in some cases that limits the supply and some some cases it limits where it's manufactured or where it is not um but I think when we look at

3:08:49 fact that we typically deal with assets that have ages in the decades performance becomes one of the initial criteria however I'll say that there's also a second driver here and that's the various procurement processes we have there's a difference between certain pieces of equipment where you have to bid which is basically you have a spec and you go by Price versus other things where you can do an RFP where you can look at more things Beyond just the the typical um um price and and product and those are opportunities to start expanding some of the evaluation criteria that that we use and then uh the third one is really around uh larger

3:09:34 project decisions and and and those where we start to look at the TBL approach and we did that when we looked at two tanks versus one tank for example at East 40th and how many different how many uh numbers of uploads it would say so I think it's it's going to be commissioner Brown kind of an intentional step-by-step process um start to expand that in the areas that we can um and that would be areas that would typically be things that would be not just a bid priced situation but something that is more along the lines of aest for

3:10:22 thank you for the presentation thisum isable a imagine how is suppos be to have stop shop for all this information is really doubt there are other putting toward such comprehensive description of all the things that are going to to um this misss of operations anyway um thank you for the the work putting us together it's remarkable uh I I guess I'll pick up on the scope three thread I too am interested seeing us reporting even if

3:11:07 it's not complete and seeing us reporting scope three emissions from the biggest pieces I'm pretty sure those are right Steel already reporting refrigerants I don't know I don't know what the other ones are but but you do so even if we just started reporting the ones that we're already counting I think that would be valuable just to give us a sense of like how big are these uh you know and where which direction are they moving I think that would be valuable um uh in terms of of cost I know that it's not only like buying a substitute that's more expensive but sometimes it's really buying something that's more durable so it lasts longer so we don't have to buy it as frequently and that can save us money um buying recycled

3:11:52 Metals instead of Raw Metals um sure we buy a lot of metal um buying less of something by changing our design Laura talked about changing the pillar design so there are things we can do that save us money and reduce emissions and there's opportunities there that um I'm grateful we're paying attention to I have every confidence that the organization is paying attention to and I think by reporting those things in versions of this it helps demonstrate for our partners and our customers steps we're taking that's valuable um so and then in terms of procurement I agree with you completely John that there are opportunities for us just to start asking our

3:12:39 providers procurement pce for to are you currently poing out fuels if it's as straightforward as it appears to be weing it we can encourage our contractors to do the same by just asking them or incentivizing them through our seas and um I do have a question and you already touched on it the uh scope one emissions from our our owned generation I did in the um the greenhouse gas inventory here um I'm curious a little bit about why we're not reporting him here I understand we're reporting him to DQ but

3:13:26 doesn't seem like it's duplicative for for us to also report to here is there is there a reason that it doesn't make sense for it to be included in our scope one emissions it's a great question it's something we're working to resolve in 2024 that's the next step we are planning to um follow the climate Registries electric power sector protocol that include compens of reporting on all of those emissions in one um we have been doing this the way we've been doing it for the last 10 years because of the way the goals were so there is a goal specifically about our power supply and that's separate and there are these goals that were specifically developed around this set of emissions and so we're reporting based on the way the goals were written

3:14:12 in sc5 um so that is the reason for the split in this particular way but like I said in this next year we have plans to uh follow the electric power sector protocol to have a comprehensive set of rep so the scope one and two Ren gas emissions reductions targets that we have specifically exclude the targets exclude divisions from own generation say I I I know we have a Target specifically about what we're going to buy but so so the The Originals were around what we're consuming not what we're generating so the electric seg so and

3:14:57 that's the DEQ part it's also what we record to DEQ is based on the consumption um within our service territory so it's all based on the consumption side not on the generation side we know that we generate more than we consume and that extra piece is not captured so it's um what we report to the DEQ will be different than the electric sector protocol that that Kelly mentioned and it will likely um be worse from a carbon intensity perspective um you can't cherry pick which ones you decide that you want to take to load and go oh we're going to take the the green electrons and we're going to shift the brown electron somewhere else um and so

3:15:43 the electric power sector protocol it's a different standard we can't get away from reporting to DEQ what our service territory consumes including ourselves which is the number that we use and we provide links for but this will give us a little bit broader picture as to what we are actually responsible for generating if that if that helps yeah I think so and if we were to stack that against our the existing scope one and scope two misss is it big is it small do you have a sense for how much that if if we stacked them which that's not in that's not double counting if we do that right if we stack those emissions does is it I'm just curious how the

3:16:28 sense of scale um that's part of what doing this inventory exercise will inform us right so I don't want to proect on that right this second because I they they're reported in different units um so overall we have a very clean grid mix right and the resources that we own are very clean right we own hydroelectric dams we own U biomass you know power from our our contracted power and our own resources so it's very clean very renewable so I don't expect it to be very significant but it's reported in very different units and so what we're hoping to do in the next year is bring it all into one port so that everybody can see the sense of scale of all of those sources together and we can look at what are you

3:17:14 know again back to the purpose of why we do these kinds of analyses we try and figure out where do we have control and influence and what can we do to make the world a cleaner uh climate resilient world right where can we pull levers and so that's where we're trying to figure out where we can um have power have have uh control and influence on the resources that we're procuring and that is addressed in both of those goals that are in sd15 they're just separated right now and president mcra just just agrees the the skids a little bit depending on the outcome of what we're finding we may come back to the board with some recommended changes to st15 specifically around the generation side of what we're doing we we have some of the same

3:18:00 questions that you do but we want to have a targeting policy that actually makes sense from a what are we controlling perspective we're controlling our entire resource not just what we consume and so um once we understand the scale of that we we may come back to the board and work on a new Target back to the scope three emissions that you were mentioning before I just want to say that we do uh and as a matter of course it's is part of our policy as well sd15 that says we'll do a triple bottom line approach on all major projects so we do that um it's usually reported per project and that's not Consolidated here but you remember that that was included and there was a GC portion of the leeberg tri triple bottom line there was an analysis done at the 40th water project um and looked at the

3:18:47 ghg emissions associated with the construction there so those things are being looked at it's just in a different format um where we can actually make the most effort usually by the time you're doing an annual inventory and look at construction emissions um from that perspective it's usually too late to influence a particular project so the timing makes the most sense from when eweb can actually um an analyze those emission potential and and take action in design like what I was talking about earlier tonight right yeah and to me that's one of the reasons to report the scope three is that we I think we can demonstrate that you know the changes that just that that as a team this group is already looking at emissions and making reductions along the way and that could

3:19:32 be reflected in a in an annual report so yeah I'm I'm Welly John I'm eager to see that included and thrilled with the work that yall are doing right now I guess that's just it I know you're already doing it and I think we should share it with part who frankly often times are a little reluctant to wait in trying to address scope three needs and think we're doing it we should should reflect it as much as we can um yeah please just one other point of President mcra and this is another one of those just forewarning pieces is that and I say spe specifically mention this because Adam is sitting at the table we did include our rate design principles U rate or rate making princip

3:20:17 but we have a significant amount of rate design work to do over the next couple of years and so all of those are going to be reexamined with the board um everything from how much do we want to be cost based versus how much do we want to be behavior-based I mean we're talking about really fundamental decisions and so while it's in there I um the the next versions um we would anticipate to evolve quite a bit over the next couple years yeah and on the redesign I was looking through that particular piece and I appreciate you including me here and the rigor that somebody went through to go look at the differes and them and make that into our R design principles that was work um so thank you for doing that and sharing that work

3:21:04 this and in case anybody's curious the reason it's included in the climate guide book is that there is direct connection to keeping rates low that is climate action right we help people to be able to transition to an electric future when rates are low the connection thanks anything else thank you very much all right moving on to our next item the ice storm after Action

3:21:53 good evening pres McRae Commissioners general manager lawon uh tonight has been all about continuous Improvement reporting on activities and getting feedback and making adjustments and this is yet another one of those for us so we're here tonight to talk about the big freeze uh the storm that we went through in January you were given a report in February from general manager Lawson so tonight we're going to focus more on what have we learned what were the Lessons Learned we're going to give you a brief recap um then we'll have time for a Q&A but after that we've got Brian up here with us who's going to talk about storm impacts to the region and what that means to eweb so for the record I'm Karen Kelly I'm chief operations officer and with me tonight is Tyler nice electric operations manager and Brian Booth are uh Chief

3:22:39 energy resource officer so with that um this slide has a lot lot of words on it and Our intention here is just to call out some highlights so we'll start with Tyler yeah sure so when thinking about the the big freeze the 2024 ice storm uh I myself think about it about double of anything we've experienced winter wise in the past so the numbers kind of speak to that in the in the ice storm after Action Report there's a comparison between them but you know some of the highlights stick out to me or the 38,000 number that's something that haven't seen before a lot of in or any of our staff have the amount of time IC was 17 days which means we actually stood up IC which is one good thing we did the week before uh the event and just prepped and made sure

3:23:25 our consumables are ready and that sort of thing but that that's a long time to be working 16 to 20 hour days uh also the Staffing part of it over half of our organization was invested in this for that period of time again when do you get an organization this size all headed in one direction for the community um and and the money part of $8 million that does not include a couple transmission lines that we were kind of uh gifted capital projects out of this that we're still working on right now uh but but that's the number of the repairs that we experienced the other thing that's really uh a first for us and and something that we learned from and feel like we we Rose to the occasion was the column of other service impacts uh this is the first event that

3:24:10 that we did the whole event in a full IC for every division that was involved so in the past we've had events where you know maybe we had a little bit of communications issues or you know maybe Carmen tripped off and things like that pretty much each one of these uh divisions experienced severe disruptions that that you can see on there and really that resulted in in us having one IC and and able to come together for that we hadn't experienced that widespread before I think Karen was going to talk about the customer side yeah I just add um like Tyler said we had impacts across the board was not just electric transmission distribution you know we were had having people trying to avert disasters and other ways so water for

3:24:55 example running the plant for the first time on backup generators at a reduced capacity that could have easily become a much more serious event and same with generation we had folks making sure that we didn't have any kind of damn safety issues while we're operating with no power and no Communications so I think it's just critical to to point out that um we inverted many disasters with with the work that we do in planning and preparing and exercising for these events so wanted to call that out same thing with Communications Group um and the work that they had to do with uh rerouting coms in order to keep equipment moving and working um but with our customer side of things you know uh you can see here the inbound calls

3:25:40 25,000 during this event trying to keep their response um at at a high level at 30 to 70 seconds answer time I know there was a snafu with the phone system and thankful to Commissioners for helping us identify that and running that down um but by and large we really did have our folks rise the occasion here in every aspect of our operations and you can see the work that was done proactively to try and communicate with the community with website hits with social media um with even the likes I I'm surprised at a 71% likes which is great they they don't have a dislike button on the social media um but I overall I just want to say you know you we um we responded with an appropriate sense of urgency and

3:26:26 importance without panic and I think you probably heard Frank say that before but it's it's really a critical piece to being able to uh manage an event like this uh thanks to Caleb and Audrey and our GIS group they put this this video together I found it's really good just to reflect on your own story through this and that that's one theme I have through this is everybody gets a different story through a storm like this some people might have seen a Flicker and couldn't get to school for a day or something uh or work and some people experience a separate day outage they kind of learned a lesson in their own resiliency and planning they needed

3:27:12 to amp up on for the next one and some people this is going to be something their family talks about for Generations possibly that experienced some really devast devastating uh you know either at their home or their property and really changed the way of life so uh whatever your story is I know one thing being IC for most of this event I got to hear a lot of stories especially from crw also got out about every other day throughout the event especially after we were rolling got to talk to a lot of customers but um one thing noting for the staff uh which was of course my main exposure here here and here and around uh this is the first widespread event in the whole southern part of theam valley that I would say you know I'll say everybody I talked to had some story involved and some of the the the field

3:27:58 folks and folks that were here in the office as well would leave in the dark and go home in the dark after working and some of them didn't see I know one one of our staff didn't see the tree on their shop until the last day when we were cut out early um and knew knew what their new project was they were going to do this spring so stuff like that the dedication I think really came through I think also the the piece about the the customers being really thankful out there both online but especially in person when when we're out and about so the people side of that through these these dots uh is the real part that hits me uh and the priorities kind of the the outcomes we have here the the hot wash process the hot wash is a technical term in the themea books uh really we we wash

3:28:44 down and and see all the gritty details that we need to improve on what we do is we meet we assign out each section chief which is logistics operations planning the IC and all these different departments they all get with their teams meet and go through um all the things that worked well and didn't work well then we all meet together and put that all together as a big list and discuss it we also meet with other agencies that were involved County and City and participate in theirs and then uh you can imagine we end up with uh hundreds of lines of to-dos on a sheet that we need to prioritize and so uh I'm obsessed with threes because it helps me stay honest and not uh forget things but these are kind of the three main categories both areas of emphas

3:29:29 emphasize are kind of the things we are doing and want to do more of an opportunity for improvement that we want to uh start doing I think you going to talk about the emphasized ones yeah so those things that we want to keep doing take resources so I wanted to mention them here because you'll like lik have questions about how we follow up to um these action items and uh you know eventually more consent items possibly uh you know the list could go on so so the first one here is to continue our annual IC role specific training so keeping our staff up to date making sure we have more than you know one and in most cases we try to stay three deep in knowledge and experience in each role so keeping that going is important to us um

3:30:14 also Tyler mentioned earlier the pre-storm stock up that is done and making sure that we have the appropriate materials on hand um for things that would likely impact us the most so that takes money and resources as well and then policy-driven support and resource allocation for training and response um activities so continuous Improvement efforts and and like I said that may they may come to the board at some point um where we ask for additional help with this the opportunities for improvement uh as Karen said we always have a goal in our rosters of three deep this event taught us that in many of our roles when we have a lot of employees that can't get in you know we had people that lived up River or or elsewhere that that had Pickup Sticks across their whole long

3:30:59 driveway and couldn't get in those three deeps turned to one or zero pretty quick so we we'll need to be bolstering some of that staff uh you know even at the chief and the lead level and and all the way down really uh so that's when we're going to be expanding our training and I think one thing going for us is you know last year put put in the resiliency policy and then uh you know putting in our our emergency management office those are really building blocks are going to allow us to I I I would consider us have been in the past Scrappy on our IC procedures and really serious about it but kind of uh bootstraps on it and now we have the basis from the organization to kind of be more formalized and disciplined uh the update and refined assessment and restoration processes uh everybody wants to know when they're going to be on even when there's 38,000 widgets to figure

3:31:44 out and it's it's it's uh slightly impossible to do so uh but what what we do have an opportunity on this one is looking from how we plan the work and restore the work and how we report the work that's a a project we're going to be undertaking with the operations and planning we also have some opportunities with the estimated time of restoration was with I'm sure everybody knows what e means now if you didn't before uh we do have a couple system upgrades coming both as part of the EES project but GIS upgrades that that will be looking to leverage and so so those things again the basis is there we need to do the work but that's that's definitely a main emphasis uh the public the public side of it uh the things that that we also experienced on that category were we did

3:32:29 have problems with our outage map in the middle of it that were remedied uh because we did have it staff stood up in the middle of event so that was great and then our phone system and the text feature was inoperable during the event and that is another project where uh the gis or it department is is a foot to to get a new vendor for that U practicing discipline using IC form so that's kind of the moving from you know uh we're using IC to we're fully committed IC so we did we did discover that at an event this size things like the check in and out of staff for safety and and control of resources and just uh Wellness is important and also for FEMA reporting so those are some of the major things uh we

3:33:15 also um you know some of the things we're working on in the background is around U you know tree related issues with comms facilities that's kind of something that comes up in these and also in our daily work we're partnering with the city on some things and we're also doing some assessment on that for for parts in the RightWay we don't control um and then uh also big thank you to our mutual Aid crews out there that that uh came to the call uh they were ones that we had on contract already some of them and also BPA deserves a shout out they really did some bending over backwards to get her upriver Transmission in that Brian will talk about some of the impacts but they helped us mitigate a little bit of that uh by getting us on a few days earlier than we would have uh so all in all you

3:34:01 know whatever your story was as part of this we think the story is we have a you know a lot of opportunity we learned a lot but we also have a it's look it's looking up from here I'd say uh also for the a big thank you for Robin and and player in the PR department they they put together with help from all the Chiefs the data for the after action report and just really appreciated that uh and this logo here you're going to see on a t-shirt at some point likely uh it's put together by some of our lion crew members uh you can see that we're fond of of uh some of our Sasquatch in the Northwest and and some of our equipment we use so so with that we want to invite your questions and um just want to also it's a common theme for me but appreciate all

3:34:47 of your support during the event I know I went out in the field with several of you and uh you know having having you show interest to the crews was really important to them we got a lot of feedback about that um some of them were a little embarrassed that we showed up and they were on their break instead instead of in action but uh but they did appreciate that and we appreciate it um thanks to everybody who's involved in this effort so that some Q&A and then we'll hand it over to Brian okay well I'm thankful that when I went out I didn't see anybody who looked like that had their B all of the line who were absolutely wonderful when we saw themar had been I was just Bor they were working you know 16-hour days and they

3:35:33 were all smile you mes were here people were just so dedicated and getting you know getting people back to Restoration she really appreciate that such a good camaraderie and teamwork to support our thanks Bron yeah a question and then a comment number one we saw the concrete poles that failed um is that a concern of us because you usually you know wood fails but concrete when those things just shattered is that something that we should because they they carry like on cob Road and all the main thars and the arterials they carry some big heavy lines do we need to be concerned about that in the future or was that just an

3:36:21 anomaly love to say it's a phenomena but uh we will be investigating that more you know the the design side of it and the um but yeah you're you're right that's that's one another gift that we got is to assess that some more and we've done lots of studies with that in the past with the seismic aspects and kind of we in the clear on that so that that was something new we'll be looking at go r one of the things that the failure mechanisms on those concrete p was the insulators and through the last three or four years maybe it's more than that now they've been going through and reinsulating the concrete obviously didn't happen out that is an unknown thing and so it is slowly being chipped out so there's also a continuous inspection program on

3:37:07 on the and then can you go back to the slide that shows the outages of um you go back and you show the where where the rest this are the stats you mean yeah the stats it just I mean I I it's hard for me go ahead and no not not that one the the map that show red and green right and in and populated as you can see this was the first kind a couple nights and then when it all turns red is that second so is it is it true that I mean Sonia didn't have an outage I had the majority of them lucky on that one sorry like absolutely one north north of 105 South of Belt Line east of Delta and west of uh I5

3:37:52 that's my area I just got absolutely absolutely hammered so does that mean that um our particular area that the constituents that I represent are going to get more tree trimming because it's an older neighborhood and there's a lot of more mature trees or is that just because of a system failure because I mean you look at that outage map if you look West Eugene Belt Line and bethl in that area there's no outages and you look at my particular area and I took I had to take my phone off the hook for a couple days um and because they you know rightfully upset wondering why but we had a majority of the outages in that area and that's not heilly that's all flat so are we going to get tree trimming or what's going to happen tree trimming is is one part of it but

3:38:37 anecdotally I'll say the ice was wildly different based on where you went so some places have big thick clear ice some snowy ice some just a little dusting and you know the places you're seeing as you as you went East it turned from kind of we had a snow cone it felt like in town as you went up River it was more like a solid ice cube but depending on where you were the pockets were very different it was it was odd I to tell them that be prepared for more tree trimming or something like that because we're going to have some meetings with the neighborhood groups here coming up so thank you very much ice was very I mean what I went from my house over there to bring in Springfield which this map doesn't show because we don't service Springfield but

3:39:22 I was blown away by how thick the ice was in this region versus where I live at because I mean it was like a solid inch and a half ice skating rank at bring that's totally not fair I'm G start calling you get outage you didn't have outage next time the ice could be over there and it might be nice she gets it next time he just going to move in with you right Sou prell got Hammer so it was um so I have a question about how like it's one thing for us to be prepared like I all that that's really great and the thing that will make it just that much easier if customers are prepared right so um I know we had a lot

3:40:09 of positive interactions that I heard from unhappy people especially up River kind of time their power restored um and I feel like overall if people were prepared it wouldn't I it would still be terrible to have the power out for so long but it wouldn't be um as devastating and so I'm just wondering how how we do that if you as a team maybe it's not do that but um yeah two items that were actually in the notes that uh I realized I forgot were around you know Distributing water jugs that's one thing we did ad hoc during the event that

3:40:54 we're going to put in our plans the other one is promoting the generator programs more that that we're kind of had a you know last couple years a wildfire PSPs spin on it that that really could be applicable to anyone especially in this event you know generators are hot commodity when that happens so yeah def definitely people preparing their own house for for this kind of event is going to be C um depending on the scope of it and like I was mentioned before some of the gifts we got out of that with the transmission damage that we hadn't experienced before that resulted in some of that you heard us hammering on hierarchy of repair while we couldn't get up River because we didn't have any power up there one of the reasons why unprecedented Hayden Bridge was offline on their own emergency generator uh for a while so

3:41:39 yeah you're hitting on on a very important point for the public and then another part of that also is I had been I forwarded this on but i' had been contacted by a local supermarket that lot of questions during the outage they didn't have adequate generators I don't think but then they also didn't get the right information that they needed from their electrician get in touch with eweb and so they're not one of our large customers again like another area of Outreach for businesses that are like mediumish businesses but that also of a Cru function like know think about that but again just all kind

3:42:25 ofed um and then I do think about the water like that water had gone off I feel like probably most people would have been prepared like no one's thinking about water and an ice storm right they're thinking about power so could have been definitely could have been course definitely tout our pledge to to prepare a program um and you know on the waterfront that would have been a situation where we'd have to enact our emergency Wells and we do have generators at those locations so just get getting there in the ice that would be definitely a difficulty but if you had if you did follow the pledge to repair you

3:43:10 would set for that if you didn't within a few days could have had up yeah great things for um you know I saw that the last slide was what ice storm 2024 need something that more catchy than that it was snow again right the big freeze was the mon I mean this was twice as bad as anything else could be ice baby thrown around isotopia or something like that but anyways um one of the things

3:43:59 that Punchy is it is old after n so we can do that um one of the things that I saw in the report you know is like we need to make sure that we have enough crampons and all this type of thing uh one of the things that Frank mentioned at an earlier meeting was deiser and figuring out a way one to have deiser for our vehicles you know like and also I mean do we keep salt for the for the parking lot that type of thing is is is that yeah facilities goes to overdrive getting this this area prep for people going in and out for yeah because I mean I know that that was something we all dealt with you couldn't get into your vehicles employees and work V and stuff so get one those

3:44:47 big trucks like they have at the airport spr spray them all that um other than that though I think it it's great what we can do and learn from it I think everybody did a great job um I guess same for me uh impressed by the response really impressed by the work that you've done to kind of catalog the things that we're going to focus on for next time um and it's really in just format and the commitment to getting IC you know locked in um having worked in I incident command system before it can be really clunky when you're just starting up but when you use a bunch right it gets easier but it also makes it so much easier for us to get recover Federal

3:45:33 reimbursement for all that $8 million plus expense so thank you for doing that um because it's going to make it easier for us to get you know some of that money back I know I think there's a residential declaration coming for this storm so we should see some reimbursement for exactly fingers crossed anyway thanks for the work much appreciate yeah we'll say the work is tailing down in operations but we still have people with temporary repairs but work cranking up for our finance friends so on in the front so well I've got great news uh we're overtime and this but this is the last presentation and uh I'm gonna stand up make it a little bit more interesting to

3:46:18 do my meteorologist impression talk about the weather so I've uh gone through about 200 slides of regional presentations and boiled them down to uh six favorite ones uh to go over what was going on with the Northwest during the big event on the left we have average temperatures from January 14th 20th that's the ation from the norm so relatively balming in the desert Southwest and uh cold pretty much everywhere else uh what you will notice though this a little later is that Eugene was actually kind of average relative to everybody

3:47:04 else so while it was very icy here and it was not warm by any means it was not freakishly cold well go into a little bit more detail on that later on the right we have average energy flows uh Den Southwest really providing the bulk of electricity during the same period about 5,000 megawatts of it exports which flowed through ish California which soaked up about 700 megawatts of the way through um large Imports going across the inter and then up through Idaho as well looking at Pacific Northwest total loads we peaked out at just about 35 and a half gws there on the 14th that

3:47:51 is the highest load the Northwest is experienced since the the West Coast Power crisis 2000 back when there was many many gigawatts of Alcoa Aluminum plants soaking up electricity in the Northwest along with who know how many Lumber and paper BTS as well this was a there was a Confluence of bad things that happened happened in the the wholesale power Market I it kind of stunk for eweb and then a local J got kned out but really the Northwest was in tough shape as well uh the Cali inai normally has a maximum capacity of 7900 megawatts that is three 1600 megawatt alternating current lines and one 3100 megawatt DC line DC line and one of the

3:48:39 ac lines were down for maintenance because who knews that in January um and the fourth one four of the Northwest balancing authorities all IUS invest own utilities declared Merchant alerts that's when they put out theb that they cannot find enough electricity in the wholesale Market excuse me to meet their needs um and at which point they hope that somebody's been holding something back for the market and can help them the big one here just why I got a little uh scared uh the Jackson Prairie gas storage facility in Lewis County Washington it is the largest gas storage facility in the Northwest it suffered an hour long average on the third resulting in widespread retails generators and

3:49:26 Industrial customers uh when I was alerted of this I a uh poked rod and Communications and said this STS out uh Power in the Northwest and then I went out and started up my generator and filled my water bar well we're going to lose power in the Northwest uh the good news is able to get back online and just a few hours um things got going again I will say that during that outage uh generation around the Northwest they of course could not get natural gas those that had on-site liquid fuel were burning it typically the fuel oil and

3:50:12 those that were at uh fac we were really down to like whatever is in the tank uh was what was keeping the Northwest online on the right I've got lows across the California inai last year that would have all been gold Northwest usually exports California to to power to California but that's not what happened instead we were bouncing offly 3200 megawatt limit that the two remaining lines had available so on the left I've got Eugene actual temperatures that occurred and on the right uh deer look at local Regional

3:51:00 temperatures that happened this past January January was pretty average for us like looking down this area maybe a degree warmer than average uh while really you know the P Sound area even the Portland area were aage is uh on the left there I've got 26 year average January temperature in gold and our 2024 uh average in that dashed red line so it was a degree warmer than average got two daily averages on there one is this a reserved daily average that we saw where you saw we got

3:51:45 down to a pretty cold temperature here day I believe our low is 19 degrees for a single hour yeah 19 old but it gets colder and has gotten much colder if you look at the December 2013 for instance we had a daily average in the single digits if you go back to December 13 a low was9 now now we're talking actual cold right um that cold temperature of 19 degrees was roughly one and three annual cold temperature so pretty average uh while that December one would have been more like a one and3 thir percentile old

3:52:33 maybe um all right this is just the best graph but after I submitted it I realized I kind of hated my labels that I put on it so bear with me it's been walk through uh here we've got for the month of January you mind me just lurking behind you Karen um we've got all of our generation assets stacked on top of each to show this is our resource mix that we had I I've drawn across this in the black line elb's loads so where our resources exceed loads we've got dark green market sales on top where our resources are less than those we get Market purchases in dark blue all right so leading up to the cold event we saw this coming and our slice

3:53:20 generation right here that is our share of the bondal system with the vast majority of that storage being in Grant cooling which we all toured a few months ago uh we deliberately ramp down slice production leading into the storm so that way we could save that water for later when we thought we would thought we would need it that worked out really well our share of the grand Coy Reservoir was a couple feet higher than uh his actual elevation so well prepared uh the bad news is uh once we got into the actual storm this blue line which is all of our un owned generating assets uh they dropped off to zero one of that bad labels says loss of service to IP that

3:54:07 should also say and loss of Ip generator and loss of kman and Walterville um so then that blue line dropped to zero and the market purchases wrapped upet was expensive going to a th000 bucks a megawatt hour for several days in a row um over this period uh those outages um added up to four and a half million bucks something like that and lost Revenue lost maret value buying rather than being able to this is a silver lining on very very great Cloud uh the second wave of the ice storm really knocked out service to

3:54:52 the majority of our load so while everybody was out of power at least it was easier on the trade desk because they didn't need to buy so much searching for Sil lining just somewhere oh yeah all the generation got back on uh of course right about the time we uh didn't really need it anymore so then we started selling into Market again and um yeah that's where we landed here U's Merchant operation was well positioned going in the cold we really did a lot of things right but um well the best L plan for my and Traders

3:55:37 often go right we had a Confluence of really negative things that happened to both the Northwest from power supply stamp point and then of course to e directly with all of our getting knocked offline um that is a power picture from my cell phone of the 115 line laying on the trucks out at I I will say I confirmed with my father who worked for warehouser back in the 70s the red trucks are water trucks and not fuel trucks uh second big takeaway uh Regional power supply reliability is a concern um the challenges that we observed in January come with even lower temperatures like uh back in

3:56:22 2013 had the Jackson Prairie gas storage not come back online we likely would have seen oll blackouts other Silver Lining is that if everybody's lights were already out because of local service being out what's a rolling black hour then but um that would have been an unprecedented failure all right so that's what I've got Mr Sunshine should I one quick question the 4.4 million that's not a part of the eight million we right because we can get rid actual costs but they don't count loss of

3:57:08 Revenue that is correct and I don't believe we stopped us from asking looking Deborah's way uh but I have not heard throw it in there I have not heard anything about our smart Charming handsome and benevolent friends at Fe offering to reimburse for that so Market losses are not normally part of it we can't ask but had rolling blackout notify customers that like you get like a text message kind of emergeny what happen that is a great for one of our operations folks I I believe we would use every

3:57:55 effort we could to notify people as well in advance as as possible similar to like our Public Safety shut off shut off you know getting that message out as early as possible and in all the channels that we have and looking at Jen too I'm sure she she she has a conting yeah go ahead there's actually two systems there's an automated system which in the case of the gas outage probably we would kicked in no notifications so each utility has a set of blocks that they'll shed automatically without then there's the voluntary thing Brian and I were talking about this the other day that probably ought to dust off

3:58:40 our as as bonab or our VA would not operator and say hey we need now in two hours um to drop blah blah so we have a list of stations in a way to do that and that would give us a chance to do some education and some there's the mechanics of it which is what Rod's describing we have as part of our Emergency Operations procedures in our control room the ability to shed certain amounts of load through the computer system the communication is the other piece of this which I think Karen's right there's a number of of mechanisms the PSPs we also uh if you recall I think it was last summer asked

3:59:26 for voluntary load reductions from people through a Communications so um there are things that we have practiced um I don't know that it's specific for load shedding events um we were having to apply other techniques um but there are it's not uncommon that utilities are prepared for this um and um we'll have to continue to evolve how we communicate um it's you know there's there's another variable that that was F play not just the gas side um but the fact that transmission was limited um into the Northwest through California was another piece of it the other piece that was lucky was that California was very mild and the desert Southwest was mild there

4:00:13 there was a case that few years ago when California and the Northwest were were both suffering from from cold weather and that put a strain uh now at that point the Northwest was sort of a wash in power and there was a giant sucking sound down California um because they were in this in a similar position that we were so there's there's just a lot of vulnerabilities that I think we need to put into our business continuity uh and risk mitigation laundry list of things to prepared for along with pandemics and earthquakes and do we have a general inventory of um how much our load is just to support like the highest level emergency

4:00:59 hospitals I mean I guess all the hospitals are going to be Springfield so I guess it's not as much else but still there are services or particular buildings this building being one of them to keep you know operations going do we have a general um inventory of those kind of like high level first serve and we can direct power to those first and then you kind of okay well the next one drops off because we don't have enough energy to provide for x y and z i I'll make a comment from a few years ago Tyler can maybe elaborate on this a little bit abroad um we used to keep track uh I know for for example of our fifth 50 most critical loads it was hospitals pump stations um

4:01:44 um waste water water and waste water those types of things and those top 50 were about 25 megawatts roughly of I'll say consumption the challenge though isn't the bulk the challenge is how do you isolate those loads um this is where something like um having smart meters and other devices that could help you isolate and prioritize um your loads in that kind of situation would be helpful um some of those are on dedicated feeders for example the Wastewater system is on its own line direct to the substation that's a little bit different but it was in that you know 25 megawatt range but that's just those 50 when you

4:02:29 start going into the next tier which is things like Grocery Stores um you have senior centers you have all all you know other evacuation site schools that starts to add on to that that's roughly what I remember from a few years ago I don't know if the Tyler Rod want to elaborate on yeah the a thing we've done the last three four years is a series of studies around you might hear it called Black start you might hear it called islanding uh with our local generation and that was a component of that study is look at those top 50 and then we even whittel that farther down because we don't have that level of load availability um but yeah that that's kind of The Next Step this year is when we first did that study we went out and actually measured a lot of those loads with power meters to confirm them worked

4:03:15 with customers to understand their proc those those critical customers understand their process we're due for an up uh redo of that and then we're also moving on to kind of the agreement stage with those local generation stations that that have feasibility yeah that's that's part of the studies we've done flip side of that we have demand response how much do we have that we can turn off and curtail if need in those situations we don't have formal demand response yet oh okay I thought we had some agreements with larger consumers to mostly voluntary all voluntary at this point um and but that's one of the things that we want to be able to talk to uh the board about especially related to what kind of

4:04:03 incentives and pricing structure we would like to have for those people who are willing to participate at that level but we don't have a formal demand response it would be totally voluntary thanks I could elaborate just a hair on that one the customer that has the response right into their contract as IP was um I just thought of something on the last presentation um is Communications with their U rer customers you know that was one of the things that that had struggles with because one they lost power two they lost cell service and three the roads

4:04:48 you couldn't get in and out um so uh I know we talked about you know trying to figure out better ways to get Communications up there when we're not there whether it's you know getting a hold of if we got somebody at Leber that's there and get to the W you know the V store and post something or whatever uh I would just think we've got an up upriver meeting coming up in May maybe that's one of the topics that we have is you know how would you guys how how did you guys get information up there it's it's a tight-nit community you know just say you know how did you find out things and then maybe learn to tap that in I think that that's something that we could put on the agenda is as something that we

4:05:34 can learn from them up there at that meeting next month ready for I what their response is going to be if they didn't get it I mean you know so focus with the Lane County hot wash as well Communications U River we've had a number of people working on that paper yeah there's defin different ways to do things so that that's exactly what they're doing they're reaching out to different groups up River and Jen and her team probably can elaborate More's working on that with the

4:06:24 you else thank you all for the presentation appreciated two more items future board agendas Commissioners I'll be very quick um we are overbooked for May relative to subjects some of those are recurring events I'll work with um president McCrae and vice president barovsky I would uh suggest um moving the um so annual strategic plan discussion likely from May to June it's also when we do our Capital um planning update it'll just align a little bit better with also some work I'm doing with the executive team so that would be one point of relief but we'll have to work on a few other things that and then we'll find a time

4:07:09 to schedule in sort of the Deep dive into some of the things you heard here around um electricity planning how do eweb position itself to to be an electric utility in the future and what kind of things do we take on and what kind of things don't we take great thank you uh anything else board wrapup items from the