PM and my name is Rick Hansen, and I’ll open the meeting as the chair and serve as the presiding officer. Uh, momentarily. So, uh, I don’t see any members of the public, but, uh, just remind everybody to silence your phones, and, uh, we don’t want, uh, Pat’s phone going off with a text.
Uh, in the middle, of middle of the presentation. So. All right. Again, this is a public meeting for the city of Glendora, and, uh, we welcome your participation. Uh, here this evening. So, uh, roll call. Uh, we have, uh, Commissioner Nadia Hardy, g nada. Perfect. All right.
Uh, Commissioner Lammers and Commissioner Thomas and Commissioner CC and myself, Richard Hansen. So we have a, uh, a full dais this evening. And with that, uh, Nadia, could you, uh, lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands.
One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Does anybody wish to reorder or add anything to the agenda? No. No. Seeing none, we’ll move right on to the public comment period. Uh, this is a time where you invite the public to address the legislative body. Uh, you are limited to three minutes.
Uh, and there are speaker cards, uh, in the back. Uh, if anybody wants to speak, uh, please fill it out and, uh, provide them to the recording secretary. Uh, before the end of the public, uh, public hearing or public comment period. So are there any any individuals from the public, uh, that would like to speak? I’ve received none.
He doesn’t want to speak. No. I’m shy. All right. Well, it was a it was a new face, so I figured it was a public member. So, uh. All right. There’s, uh, no public comment period right now. So, uh, I’ll close the public comment period. Uh, before we get started, uh, member comments. Uh, David. No, not.
Not at the moment. You were right there. None. None. Okay. All right. Uh, Greg. Uh. Welcome, Nadia to the commission. Great. Thank you. Pat. Uh, yes. Welcome, Nadia. And also, again, I just wanted to commend everyone on your presentations last quarter. Excellent. Excellent presentations. So chock full of information. So thank you guys for all that preparation.
Paul, do you have anything? Uh. No time. You’ve got a lot at the end. Okay. Moving on to special items. Uh, item number two is the, uh, administer the oath of office and the reorganization for term 2020 627. And, uh, our city clerk specialist, uh, Lorena Cordova is going to, uh, do a report.
Thank you very much. So at this time, I would like to call up Nadia so we can do our oath. Okay. Go ahead. Raise your hand. State your name. Nadia. Do you saw me first? Yes. Okay. Sorry. Do solemnly swear. Swear or affirm. That I will support and defend. That I will support and defend.
The Constitution of the United States. The Constitution of the United States. And the Constitution. And the Constitution of State. California against all enemies. Against all enemies. Foreign and domestic. faith that I will bear true faith and allegiance. To the Constitution of the United States. To the constitutions of the United States. And the Constitution.
And the Constitution of the State of California. I take this obligation freely. That I take this obligation freely. Without any mental reservation. Without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion. That I will well and faithfully. And that I will well and faithfully discharge. Discharge the duties upon which I’m about to enter.
Thank you. All right. So I’m going to have you sign right there. Awesome. Perfect. Okay. All right. Next time someone. All right. Technical difficulties here real quick. Okay, so at this time, I declare the offices for the chair and vice chair vacant. Nominations are now in order.
Uh, do I have any nominations for chair? Well, unless anyone has any others, I would really, uh, resubmit for, uh, chair Hansen. Do we have any other nominations? Seeing none. Congratulations. I think by default. I’ll turn the meeting back over to you. So that way you can select the the vice chair. Great. Thank you. Thanks.
Thanks, everybody. I know we’ve had a pretty good run for a while, so, uh, got a lot accomplished. And, uh, I just thank you for your support. And, uh, we’ll continue to move forward. Uh, of course, we’ve got a great staff that provides us with with all the information. So, uh, we’re.
Thank you, Paul, and your your staff. All right. Are there, uh, nominations for the vice chair? I’ll nominate Mr. Lammers, if you would like. Okay. Are there any other nominations? None. Okay. Uh, there are no other nominations, so I would declare the great Lammers is elected vice chair by acclamation. Congratulations, Greg. Phil.
Their shoes to fill. No, no. Uh, just want to, uh, housekeeping. Clarification thing. Um. Lorena, do, uh, the terms of office, uh, is Nadia going to have to reappoint. Because this was filling a vacancy? Correct. So it’s considered as unexpired term.
So, yes, if she wants to continue, she’ll have to reapply to be a first full term. So this is unexpired because she’s taking over the last. Person. And in that term expires in. I believe in 27. I’ll have to look it. Up in 29. According to the. Website I believe so, yeah. I like the the website yesterday and the three of us are showing us 29. Dave Nadia on me. Okay.
So 29 so Greg and I would be 27 correct? Yes. Okay. Yeah. Cross-reference. Uh. And that’s a fiscal year. Uh, yeah. Because it goes from July to June. But for every it’s four year term. Okay, okay. So if you come in midterm, you can actually do two more full terms.
You, uh, you can only serve two terms technically. So once you do the second term, you’re basically. Oh I see. You’re done. Unless you want unless you want to do another commission. Justin did come back, but it was after he was off the commission. For. A while. I believe he’d have to wait.
Yeah, before he can come back. I was just wondering, cause I came in mid midterm also. But that’s considered my term. One term. I’d have to look and see. I don’t know offhand, but yes, I don’t know if this is your first term or your second term. Is your is your second.
Because technically if you if you came on it would be unexpired. So it’s not a first full term. This is my first this is my first full term. I was in a partial term before okay. So then you have one more term that you can come back right. And then. If you guys will have me.
All right, uh, we’ll move on to unfinished business. This is the water division. First quarter operating budget overview and management analyst. Uh, Ivy Gonzalez will give us a. Report. Good evening, chair and commissioners. Tonight will be providing an overview of the Water Division’s fiscal year 2020 627 operating budget.
As our first budget presentation of the fiscal year. Tonight’s goal is to establish a foundation for the quarterly budget updates you’ll receive throughout the year, rather than focusing on financial performance. This presentation is intended to familiarize you with how the Water Division is organized.
The five functional areas that make up the Water Division, and the operating resources that support each section’s daily responsibilities. This annual overview also helps establish a common understanding of the operating budget. Before we begin discussing financial activity later in the fiscal year. Tonight’s presentation has three objectives. First, introduced the fiscal year 2627 operating budget. Second, provide an overview of the division’s five functional areas and the resources that support each one.
And finally, establish the framework we’ll use for our quarterly budget. Excuse me. Updates moving forward. As you’ll see throughout the presentation, the focus tonight is understanding how the budget supports daily operations rather than evaluating spending or financial performance.
Before we look at the individual sections, I wanted to briefly explain how our budget reporting will progress throughout the year. Tonight’s presentation is intentionally the broadest. It’s planned to establish the foundation for future budget discussions. Our second quarter report is intended to include the fiscal year 2526 and year financial update, along with current fiscal year 2627. Budget activities.
As with any year end close, the timing depends on completion of the city’s financial fiscal, year end closure. If that process is still underway, staff will provide the most current information available and return with finalized results once the closure has completed. Quarter three Q3 will focus more on budget utilization and financial trends, while quarter four will provide a year end preliminary performance summary.
Each quarterly presentation will build up the framework we’re establishing tonight. The first functional area is water administration. Water administration provides the administrative support necessary for the entire division to operate efficiently. The section is responsible for budget administration, financial oversight, contract administration, procurement, regulatory compliance and supporting both the Water Commission and City Council.
While this section may not directly maintain infrastructure, it provides administrative functions that allow the rest of the division to perform its work efficiently. This slide highlights the major operating resources that support water administration. Rather than focusing on the individual dollar amounts. Tonight, I’d encourage you to look at the categories themselves.
These categories represent the resources necessary to support the administrative responsibilities we just discussed. As we move through the presentation, you’ll notice many of the same expenditure categories appear throughout the division. Although each section has also also has operational needs unique to the work it performs. Customer service serves as the primary point of contact between the water division and our customers.
This section manages customer accounts, responds to service requests, coordinates, meter related services, provides customer notifications and assists with leak verifications. Although much of this work occurs behind the scenes, it plays an important role in maintaining responsive customer service and communication with our community.
Similar to the previous slide, these operating resources support the daily responsibilities of the customer service section. While several expenditure categories are consistent across the division, the specific budget reflects the operational needs of this section and the services it provides for our customers. The conservation section focuses on promoting efficient water use while supporting compliance and state conservation requirements.
This includes public outreach, educational programs, customer assistance, and implementing conservation initiatives throughout the community. The section plays an important role in helping the city meet both local and state conservation objectives. One category you’ll notice here that’s unique to conservation is the division specific programs. These resources support the conservation programs, educational efforts, and customer initiatives administered by this section.
Again, tonight’s goal is to simply introduce you to the types of operating resources that support each functional area. Distribution is responsible for maintaining the city’s water distribution system. Their responsibilities include water maintenance, water main maintenance, and repairs, valve and hydrant maintenance, and ensuring the reliability of the city’s distribution infrastructure.
This section is responsible for maintaining much of the infrastructure that delivers water throughout the community. As you might expect, distribution has operating resources that reflect the needs of the field operations section.
In addition to salaries and employee benefits, you’ll see categories that support contract services, water line parts, materials, equipment, and other resources necessary to maintain and repair the city’s distribution system. These operating resources help ensure staff can respond to both planned maintenance and unexpected repairs throughout the year. The final functional area is production. Production is responsible for producing, treating and delivering safe, reliable drinking water.
This includes operating wells, reservoirs, booster pump stations, treatment facilities and maintaining water quality throughout the city’s water system. This section is essential to assuring reliable water service for our customers. Production includes several operating categories that are unique to producing and delivering drinking water. These include purchase water pumping operations, treatment and well maintenance, and regulatory assessments.
Together, these operating resources support the infrastructure and operational activities necessary to provide safe and reliable drinking water to our community. To summarize, tonight’s presentation, we’ve introduced the Water Division’s five functional areas and discussed the operating resources that support each one. More importantly, we’ve established a common framework for understanding future quarterly budget reports as we move through the fiscal year.
Each quarterly presentation will build upon this foundation by providing additional information regarding budget, activity, utilization, and financial performance. As that information becomes available. That concludes my presentation. Staff recommends that Water Commission receive and file the Water Division operating budget overview, and I’d be happy to answer any questions. Thanks, Ivy. Nice presentation. Uh, let’s open it up for discussion. Questions. David. Um.
No, not I think you set the context and you said this is the kind of review the categories and the framework for the year. Uh, in the future, when we show this data.
One thing that would be helpful to me is if we could show it in a format like a pie chart or a table where everything is on one and one, I spend so that we can look across that and see how much is going to what, if that’s possible to do. I would appreciate. That.
I did actually have a graph, but because there are some lines that are really small, it was really teeny tiny. So it looked funny. So I actually took it out. But I’ll um, reevaluate the attachments. So maybe to provide a little bit more outside of the PowerPoint. Okay. Thank you.
Yeah, I think that that was my same question is to take all five functional areas and combine them just so that there’s an overall view of the entire operation. So yeah, okay. Nadia. Anything? Uh. No question. Good job. Thank you. Okay. Greg. Yeah. So I understand we’re framing it. In future quarters will be addressing it.
So at quarter four, will we be seeing kind of the annual, you know, the capital budget, the forecast, the annual operating. So CIP, we’re planning on doing something specific to that in October because that’s kind of its own budget. Um, it’s separate from the functioning. So, um, that’s something I did discuss with Paul. And that’s something that we are looking into for October.
Um, we probably will start presenting in October once a year on the CIP, because I know that’s something that, um, Commission has been inquiring about. Yeah. Because I think my specific request was wanting to see the revenue outlay with the approved rate increases, which was aligned for the capital and for the infrastructure
improvements where we stand on that. Right. And where we’re looking, you know, you know, even in the future to for the future forecast. And. We may budgets. Are right. We may want to consider bringing in the finance director or assistant. Um, and that’s what we talked last. Right. Meeting. Right.
Um, second question are the employees in each of the categories, are they fully dedicated to water? Do we have shared employees that split roles with other departments? Well, um, no, the the. Employees that are. Dedicated are established in water. Um, are actually the water employees.
So the ones that we spoke about, about the budget, they are they’re not necessarily some of those employees might be working in conservation, but then also helping out in customer service. Um, and likewise, same thing with distribution to production. Um, one thing to note that isn’t reflected in this budget is the the water fund does support other salaries.
Um, specifically fleet um fleet maintenance and some of the other functions, um, some of the administrative functions that the public works directors portion of his salary comes out of the water fund. So there is some layers to that, but it’s specific to the O&M.
Um, excuse me, the O&M budget, the I’ve presenting tonight, that’s for the water division as itself. So, um, that again, going back to kind of your your comment regarding the the CIP or the overlay, that’s why we kind of presented the, the budget or more.
So I think the schedule presentation and the first, first, second or slide that I’ve had this evening to just kind of show that one of the things that we’re going to be looking to do is in the second quarter of this, one of the next presentations, providing a little bit more of where we where we stood as far as the annual closeout.
Um, one thing that makes it challenging in preparing this report on the frequency that we do it is we’re still in the process of doing closeout. So in fact, August, end of August will be the final closeout of any invoices up until that July date. So showing any numbers right now would be a little bit challenging.
Um, and ultimately to the O&M budget and the capital, all they are funded through the water. As you know, the the water rates it it’s a little bit challenging to show those together because the capital projects are actually overlays over multiple years.
So, um, those budgets can sometimes look odd if you’re looking at them year to year, because you’ll see a $5 million reservoir project or a large project that’s only had $300,000 done. Because we’re in the preliminary design phases. So, um, but yeah, our plan is to provide a full report or update to the capital. Um, and, and that was going to include the, uh, the cost to date. So.
You know, what we’d like to see to take advantage of, you know, our, our, our commission is, you know, seeing to your point, that’s what we saw last quarter that a lot of the the budget categories were way under because the costing hadn’t been applied yet.
So in the terms of the capital or CIP projects understand how that is like to understand then what is the outlay for the future? You know, years and even as we say, a budget would like something that give us something to proactively, um, give advice.
I mean, looking through the budgets, I see a few things like we have a $1 million allocation for purchasing water. Well, we know we haven’t purchased water in a little while here, which is an opportunity for us to focus and represent the community of what we continue to beat the budget and, and have our legitimate oversight.
So, you know, in presenting the budget in a format that we can make sense of, you know, analyze and share, share together what opportunities we can focus on and representation for the community. I think I think that’s what we’d like to, to, to, to see. You know. Absolutely. And we can we can definitely present that.
And that’s, that’s one of the I think the challenges for me in the position that I’m in is still, you know, I’m still in my first budget cycle.
So the one thing in referring to the, the, the purchase water, um, and, and replacement water and then even um, um assessment water, these are all pretty complex things. We’ve, we’ve shared and, and Dale and Damian have done a good job of presenting those. But some of those fees, some of those costs, um, are actually kind of I don’t want to say blended, but when you say purchase water, purchase water is actually water that we’re replacing.
So it’s not metropolitan treated water that we’re it might be, um, raw water that we’re purchasing so that that water and those purchases aren’t made. Actually they’re, they’re made in the rears. So when we make that purchase, it’s based on the assessments of the calendar year or the fiscal year. So that assessment doesn’t get levied on us.
Those those purchases actually don’t aren’t made until October. Um, so, so for this fiscal, this, this past fiscal year, we’ll actually have all of our assessments and our replacement and our purchase water. Actually, um, those come in to the tune of 2 to $3 million. Those actually come in at the end.
Um, so we’ll actually be paying those in October. So but we can definitely present that. I think the one thing to, to the, the commission’s, um, point or the highlight is seeing that that pie chart, seeing that overall, um, and being able to digest it a little bit easier, I will say I need to complement Ivey’s
efforts. It was along with our, uh, finance manager, Paul Fisher, they spent a lot of time trying to come up. I think if if she had presented another pie chart or a line chart to me and the way she wanted to format it, so she did take a
lot of effort to wanting to present this because, um, we know that this was something that the commission wanted to see, and we wanted to be, um, helping, you know, get the advisement from, from this body.
So, um, that was why we kind of phased this, this plan and kind of try to make sure that we give you guys the tools to help us in managing the water system. And that’s exactly our point. Give us, give us tools. that we can use our experience to, to help frame opportunities and provide guidance. So.
I think it also bears repeating, you know, the complexity of having a two year budget, uh, when people look at budgets, they think of, you know, just, you know, 12 calendar months. So the fact that you’ve got a, you know, actually a 24 month budget, uh, how does that play into all the numbers that people look at and say, well, that’s askew.
Well, no, it’s really not because we’re in the front end and we’ve got another 20 months left. So yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Thank you. So I was going to bring up the same thing Greg did. So last meeting we talked about after Ivey’s presentation.
Um, just to kind of fill you in, we talked about the CIP projects and the rate increase and how it all tied together up to this point. So in Ivey’s defense, you did say that you likely wouldn’t have that this, this meeting. So and you didn’t. And that’s fine. That’s understandable because we understand the closeout.
But for my recollection, and correct me if I’m wrong, I thought we had also talked about which again, is okay that you don’t have this. Now we get it. I thought we had talked about the rate increase thus far and how much that’s helping to contribute to the CIP projects.
Right? So that being said, is that something that at some point and whether it’s next month or whatever, do you have a way of capturing that? We have the rate increase. How much of that went to the general budget and how much of that was actually allocated for its purpose of the rate increase to go to the CIP budgets, are you able to decipher that?
And and I we might need to get some financial help to I might not get all the terms right. But one thing that as far as the rate increase, the rate increase didn’t wasn’t just specific for the capital overlay. That was the whole entire water operation budget.
Um, obviously a portion, a large portion of that, um, the, the $15 million plan for the five years was to do those cap or. I’m sorry, I misspoke. The $30 million, five year I shortchanged as a I already felt staff getting upset with me. Um. Speaking over here, I don’t remember if. Um. But the the that was part of this.
And so it wasn’t necessarily I think that’s, that’s not necessarily, um, the right way of looking at it is that the, the rate increase was solely for the capital. It was for because I think one thing is over the last two years, we’ve seen increases to not only our pumping costs.
Um, and if you go back to the, the slide and just see the two, the two categories that we have the highest expense of $1 million a piece is, is the repairs. And then also what it costs to actually pump the water.
Um, so I think that that’s something to take into consideration, is that the rate increase was to, to reallocate and make sure that each zone each that was why that that structure was, was redone. Um, but then also it was to keep up with the, the cost. But right now, of course. Yeah. Yeah. No I get that.
I mean we’re going back back a couple of years trying to remember all the, all the conversations we had about that. What was it three years ago? Um, it may be my recollection is off a little bit. I do understand it was to reevaluate the zones, elevation costs, you know, elevation pumping costs and so forth. And it was to re allocate the rates relative to those things above, you know, amongst others.
But my recollection, unless I’m wrong, is that it was also going to help fund the CIP projects at least the first five years. That was my understanding, or at least my my recollection.
So I guess that’s where my thoughts last meeting and possibly Greg’s to was, whatever that rate increase may be doing to to um, um, um, contribute to that 30, $30 million budget for five years. Is it on target? Is it not on target, or is there a way to even evaluate that? I don’t I don’t even know. And that. Might it may be the financing.
And and I think the direction from the commission is we can we can go back work with finance. Um, it might be even an opportunity since we’re now coming into the third, fourth year of I think it’s the third year of the rate increase of maybe trying to see if we can get some help from finance to
represent, um, on what was the goals of the rate where, where we are with the rates. Um, because we’ll, we are in the process of needing to get into that now, coming into that two year budget cycle of reviewing that, seeing where we are. And so we can definitely work with finance on preparing that.
And I honestly, for myself specifically, that would be helpful to to be able to present that to to the commission. So we can definitely work on that for. Next year. It’d be nice.
And I think that just to, to be to be clear is we’ll, we’ll maintain what we’re doing with with Ives report and almost a standalone for the CIP and, and funds or or kind of the rate overview will present on that. Yeah. And I mean, I think that would be fine for everyone else if that was just a separate category.
I mean, what Ivy presented in your plan for the next couple of quarters makes complete sense, right? So if we have to bring finance in as, as a, as a standalone agenda item, that’d be great. And again, I mean, I assume there’s got to be some way to capture what the rate increases are doing relative to that.
If I’m not a finance guy. So I’m a sales guy, not a finance guy, so I’ll leave that up to them. But if they can, again, that goes back to what Greg and I were asking for last month. Um, for whoever can put that together in whatever way that could be. Um, dissected and and and presented. No, absolutely.
It’d be nice to see it. We had the rate increase for various things. It’d be nice to see that part, that portion of it. So other than that, again, great presentation. And I like the idea of, uh, you know, your schedule of what you’re going to present. I think that makes good sense. So thank you.
Which leads to a follow up question as we try to get what the income improvements are with that last rate increase, the capital R increase in operating expenses.
Do we have a feel of when the next rate increase application process may occur, or any feeling for that? Or are we waiting to understand the finances and the income and the CFP before consideration of the next rate increases? Um, well, they turned in the lights on that real spotlight on me now. Um, I don’t have that answer.
I what I, what I can tell you is that operating costs are increasing, like, everywhere. Um, we’re trying to manage that. Um, one of the things that we’re doing is as staff is reevaluating some of the priorities of the capital, I think one one specific area is obviously the water mains. Um, and what where we’re, where we’re currently at with that. So I’ve been working with the team.
I think we’ve been presenting that, um, in some forms and just showing the commission how we’re, uh, I guess the best way to put it is refining the way in which we’re evaluating our leak. Um, investigation. Leak repairs.
Um, we had presented back, I think, last October how we were going to read clearly, define what? What it was an emergency, what was after hours. And one of the things that we’ve been working on at staff level is going back and looking at the categorical leaks to understand what is the true condition. You know, we know that the water mains need to be replaced, but to say that we’re going to replace everything all tomorrow, um, is not feasible.
We’d have a lot of people upset, and I and I don’t think we have $300 million to do it. So I think that’s going to play a factor. I know, um, as we look at the two year budget, um, and, and again, the a large portion of that is the cost of pumping and the cost of pumping
is some of the metropolitan costs, some of the Three valleys upper district we staff has been attending meetings over the last several months, and there are indications that their costs are starting to go up there. Um, they’re buying power, so to speak, of of State Water project.
And Colorado is not is is not not keeping up and and that cost is going to come down to back to us as, as producers. So will those costs will be and, and those costs when they increase by 100, 200 acre feet, you know, and we’re talking in our production levels, those can be hundreds.
If not, you know, millions of dollars. So so I think that’s what we’re going to be doing over the next the next six months is doing that evaluation and preparing that. And Paul, all those challenges are facing. Yeah, facing the community.
But for transparency, that’s where we want to see the budgets, where we are in the operating budgets, where are we on the capital so that if we are forced to examine, um, rate increases, we obviously can represent the community appropriately, you know, with our oversight. And that’s so understanding that we understand the costs are increasing.
Um, we have an aged infrastructure, but we want to make sure we can represent the the cost of the five departments, the cost of the CIP, and then the, the revenue, of course, and what it looks like in the future. So absolutely. Yeah, absolutely.
And I, I, I just if I can that’s one of our goals is we’re, we’re we’re going to try you know the the this was a this was our first attempt at trying to make sure that we’re providing you that information like um, and, and with the goal of the continuing that October CIP with that review of the budgets and being able to provide you that. So we can definitely refine that and enhance. It.
Um, my, my recollection was there was an escalating factor, uh, embedded in the rate increase. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, I believe there was there now is a public agency. There’s legal limitations on what you can do.
But, uh, as I recall, we had discussions about some escalating factors that we had no control over that were impacted upon us, you know, by Edison or by three Valleys or by Metropolitan. Uh, we could pass those through. So that’s something to clarify, though, for us. Absolutely.
On top of that, though, I thought I read because where I was coming from with that is that I thought I read in the presentation somewhere that annual rate increases were tied to the consumer price index, or did I misunderstand? I thought I saw something about that in there. My understanding and I’m again, I’m now kind of stepping out of the realm of my expertise.
And I unfortunately wasn’t a part of our rate increase. So I, I if if we do have future ones, obviously I think. I. Can speak. I thought that’s what I read. So um. Something built in there. but uh, taking a look at, you know, what the future holds, uh, is prudent on our part. Yeah.
As commissioners, looking at the budget and the operations, we need to we need to be doing that. No. And we can definitely bring back a full, comprehensive review of that.
And I think, um, and maybe this is me being selfish for myself is being able to present, um, a re revisiting the presentations that we did at the at the rate study period and, and revising that to kind of reflect where we’re, where we’re currently at. So we can definitely present that at the next meeting. And just one last comment and I’ll be quiet after.
This is so where my thought is going with that is everything’s going up, right? So if rates are tied to the consumer price index or if it’s not, if rates are going up for whatever manner and everything is going up, um, the rate increase was for a multitude of reasons, right.
Um, some folks, some folks in higher elevations are getting it more than others. Um, and then if rates do increase, whether it’s by the consumer price index or something else, I think it would be good to put that again in future presentations, put it on record so that other residents of Glendora know why we had the rate increase, why a future
increases are happening and what that’s going towards. Right. So I think that’d be good to. And again, if that’s the finance folks, that’s that’s totally good that it’s them. Maybe that’s even better that it’s them. I’m sure it’s going to elicit more questions from us.
And and one thing to note, the we even if those costs go up right now, we can’t raise the rates just arbitrarily like they’re set for the five years.
And and if we did decide and we presented that, obviously we’re going to present that to the commission will present that to council. Um, and then take that to, to the public through hearings. And the 218 process. So there’s there’s a whole multitude. So there wouldn’t be this, you know, hey, we need more money. And of course, raising the rates. But but so I think that. You know.
And again I’m sorry, I know I said I was going to be one last comment, but I actually thought there were going to be scheduled rate increases, not just one rate increase that’s going to last five years, which is what what you just said made me think.
Is that what you’re talking about? No, no. So the schedule has been established, right. So every I I’m and I don’t I’m sorry I think it’s every January um, and I’m going to be calling Kyle right after this. So um, but every, every budget’s like, oh it was established. Okay. And every year it increases. And we can’t change that as what you’ve just.
Met and that’s. And what I’m counting is that. When you said that, I thought you meant it was locked in for five years. The beginning. Of the rate structure is locked in so that that increase is based off of that rate structure. Okay. Okay.
So that’s my so there’s nothing that like I was saying is that if, if in the next year or two within this, this rate schedule, if there’s anything that comes in the water, the budget has to just absorb. That I got you. Okay. So okay. I okay. It’s no, that makes sense. No, no, I’m totally clear on it.
That’s why the presentation was you know, like I said, I’ve spent, um, quite a bit of time on this presentation presenting the, you know, it’s not an easy and it’s and it’s not our specialty. I mean, we know how to we know how to. Make. , you know, budget, you know, set the budget, spend the money, pay the bills.
But when it comes to all of the nuance, you know, I’m going to say I’m not the expert. No, absolutely. We understand that. So thank you, Abby. Thank you. So out of the corner of my I saw Nadia taking, uh, feverish notes. Do you have any more questions? No, no no, no, David. All right. Uh, okay. So we could have a. Motion.
I move to accept the report. Second. Second. It’s been moved by David, seconded by Pat to receive and file the update on the water division financial update. Uh, we all vote yes. Hold on. So David was first. Second was who? Uh, the first was David. and second. Second was Pat. Thank you. Uh, passes five zero. Great.
Thanks, Ivy. Nice report. Thank you. All right. We’ll move on to item number four. Is the water Conservation Program update. And Armando DeJesus will give us a presentation. Armando. All. Good evening. Chair, commissioners.
Uh, tonight I’ll be providing the brief overview showcasing the water conservation program for the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2526. Uh, this slide covers our co-funded rebates with Metropolitan Water District for fiscal year 2526. On the device side, residents installed uh 15 irrigation controllers, two toilets, one hose of irrigation controller, 15 closed washers, 40 irrigation nozzles and two leak flow monitors. Uh, between MWD and the city, we paid out a combined amount of $28,889.
Uh, rebated back to our residents, uh, at the on the turf side, we replace over 8300ft of grass with MWD and the city each contributing, um over $16,232 in rebates per agency. On this, uh, this slide, the city run rebate program. So these are rebates that are not offered through MWD and are exclusive to Glendora water customers.
Uh, this part this past fiscal year, we issued 18 pool cover rebates, three landscape design rebates and three landscape installation rebates. Uh, we also help remove over 4900ft of nonfunctional turf for commercial properties, paying out over $5,200 in rebates and $19,000 and 700 total rebate costs for the NFT rebate program.
Uh, due to low participation, this program was actually started back in March of 2026. Uh, we did run that program for two years, and I believe we only received four participants for that program, unfortunately. But we are exploring potential co-funding through commercial turf replacement programs, so we’re not completely getting rid of incentives for that.
Uh, moving on to our outreach, we keep up our we kept up our steady presence on social media to share the promotion of the workshop that we hosted on Earth Day. And we also showcased our poster contest winners. Uh, the spring we held our 13th annual Water Awareness Poster contest.
The winners were recognized at the May 14th City Council meeting alongside their parents and their teachers. In April, we celebrated Earth Day with the community event Focus on Sustainability. Uh resident residents enjoyed interactive booths and workshops throughout the day.
Staff also used the event to promote drinking, tap water, encouraging residents to choose tap water over bottled water. Uh, we also partnered with a social media influencer, Jake the Plant Guy, on a workshop called The Secret to Thriving Plants. Less water, More Growth, teaching residents how to water efficiently and keep their plants healthy.
On May 6th, we teamed up with MWD and Green Media Creations for free hands on succulent workshop at the Nature Center. Uh participants learn proper planting and care and took a succulent home with them that day.
Uh, throughout the summer, our team also joined the library Summer Discovery Challenge every Thursday, sharing water efficiency tips with kids and adults, including a rock painting activity that will be displayed at the water yard. Uh, Rock garden starting next week. So today was the official last day of that program. So not included on this slide because we literally just had these this activity last week.
Uh, staff also hosted a hands on succulent workshop for kids at the same event where we had over 60 participants. So it was really well attended. So we did, took a lot of pictures. And we’ll make sure to highlight those at the next, uh, Water Commission meeting. Uh, this slide highlights our two active conservation programs with Waterways Consulting.
Uh, one is the free water use efficiency surveys and our irrigation retrofit and repair program. The city recently renewed our contract with Water Wise Consulting for an additional year. This means we will continue to offer water use efficiency surveys to residents who also qualify to participate in our irrigation repair and retrofit program, at no charge to them.
Uh, this quarter, we completed over 21 surveys and performed ten irrigation retrofits and repairs. As staff continues to participate in co-funding and promoting rebate programs with MWD and contributes $2 per square foot, and the city matches that with another $2 on top of that, for a total of $4 per square foot.
And we also participate in the co-funding with, uh, device rates, where we match MWD dollar per dollar. On the commercial side, and the commercial trip replacement program offers to $2 per square foot for commercial, industrial and institutional properties and $3 per square foot for for public agencies.
Our current census Analytics customer water portal, which allows customers to monitor their water usage, is being phased out by the vendor. Unfortunately, um, following a competitive request for proposals process, the uh to replace existing platform sub selected Aqua Trax at the uh for the replacement of that at the platform.
The current portal still works, but unfortunately, um, any issues that do arise with technical issues? They’re no longer a providing any technical support for us anymore. So that’s why we’re looking for a new vendor. So we are expected to go to council for approval either late August or early September.
So we have that contract out and it’s roughly it takes about six months from implementation to start the actual program and get a live and active. Uh, this slide paints the bigger picture behind everything I’ve covered tonight. Uh, the state has set a long term reduction target of 15.15.5 percent reduction of water by 2044. Glendora.
And everything from our rebates to our outreach events is really working towards making that goal. In short, it comes down to a mix of things working together, uh, helping residents use less water indoors and outdoors, cutting down on system losses, giving people better tools and information through smart metering and keeping our programs and outreach going year to year.
This chart compares monthly water use between our fiscal year 2425. In fiscal year 2526, so it does not compare one year to the other. It’s fiscal year, fiscal year. Uh, overall, we saw a slight decrease of 0.78% and water usage compared to the previous fiscal year.
While annual water use varies from year to year, that continues to, uh, implementing conservation programs that support long term compliance with the state’s urban water use objective. Uh, earlier I mentioned that Glendora is current estimated reduction is 15.5% by 2040. That estimate is based on the information available today, and it represents the overall reduction needed overall long term.
As the state updates the data and calculations used to determine the urban water use. Objectives are. Estimated. Reduction may change over time, so this is not the final number. It’s just not set in stone yet. So our next urban water Use objective report is due to December 31st of this year.
So sometime in January we should get our actual final numbers to see what if that number fluctuated, either went down or went up? Uh, to help us meet the state’s urban water use objectives, staff is implementing several new tools, including the California Data Collaboratives wavelet program, Eagle Aerial Imagery, and the Water Use Efficiency Dashboard Project with Three Valleys Municipal Water District.
We will help us identify high water use properties so we can practically reach out and offer assistance to help customers reduce their water use and meet their conservation goals.
The program will also help identify commercial properties with potential nonfunctional turf, allowing staff to begin educating the affected customers about upcoming regulations that are going to affect them directly, and that the nonfunctional turf regulation only affects commercial, industrial, institutional properties. The first goal is actually coming up pretty soon for public properties, meaning the city of Glendora and all the schools in Glendora. So that’s coming up starting January 1st of 2027.
So it’s around the corner. Uh, through NDS member agency administer program, also known as Map grant funding. Uh staff submitted grant proposals requesting a combine of $110,000 this year. The.
These proposed projects would fund a water customer portal, conservation workshops, uh, leak detection devices that will help us find leaks in our mainlines a lot faster before they actually start popping up, and electronic message boards and slow release water and Baxter City trees. Uh, we expect funding decisions for an MWD in the coming weeks.
So at the, uh, hopefully by the next, uh, Water Commission, we will have those, uh, decisions available for us to present up to you guys. Uh, looking ahead, uh, mark your calendars for August 15th, uh, for flashback, classic car show. So our conservation team is there every single year. Uh, this year they’ve changed up the schedule on us, and they’re actually even better for us.
So it’s not between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. as the opposed of the traditional time from 6 a.m. 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. that made for a very long night. So staff is really happy about that. So that concludes my presentation. Uh, and then, uh, staff asked that water commission received the file. The water conservation program update.
I’ll be happy to answer any questions you may have. Okay. Thank thanks. Raimondo. Uh, Greg, any questions? Nope. Pat. I thank you for that. Armando. I do have one question. So water wise, we’ve had that program for a couple of years now. Yes. What are the reasons? Not the.
What are the results? Are you finding that that program has been utilized well enough that it’s worth continuing or. I don’t know if I’m saying that. Right, but I mean, is it is it being used quite a bit? It is.
So we’ve had this is our third year that we have this contract. Uh, this year actually between last year we were actually using MWD. Um, water wise also has a contract with an MWD. So, um, we’re kind of using both at the same time.
So if a resident would request a survey and they would actually pay for them, um, as a march, early or February of this year, MWD actually ran out of funding specifically for residential surveys. That’s when we stepped in. So we kind of continue the process. So we do have some residents that occasionally ask us to come back because it’s been a couple, six months.
So with the previous contract with MWD, we would step in and essentially kind of pay for that. So it has paid out and especially our retrofit, uh, irrigation repair program, we do have a lot of residents, unfortunately, that cannot financially afford or don’t have anyone that could do that for them.
So this program has helped them in making their personal goals and reducing their water usage. Okay, that was going to be my second question is of the surveys they did, are they finding in many of those cases or most of those cases that renovations of, of whatever sort have been necessary? Uh, yeah, I can tell you that the complete number is, but I
guess I, I read a report, uh, actually last week, one survey they found over, like 25 broken sprinklers. So. And a lot of the time as residents not knowing how to activate their sprinklers and actually run them. So that’s why we have these type of programs that we actually do that for them.
And then once we locate and find those sprinklers, if it’s something simple, of course they’ll go ahead and replace it for them completely free of charge. Interesting. Okay. Very good. Thank you. You’re not. Any questions? Okay. No question. Thanks, David. Yeah, I would actually have a.
Some feedback to share on water wise because we had them come to our house and they did a nice job on the survey. They did find some broken sprinkler heads. They suggested some improvements. Um, they and they’re very friendly and they’re very helpful. Uh, one of the problems we’ve had is the new, uh, sprinkler heads that they have.
Are they put out a much a more dainty stream. The idea is that it needs to sink. You know, that helps it penetrate the ground better. But we’re having really a hard time getting it set right so that the grass stays healthy.
And, um, the adjustments on them, we had to have them come out once or twice to actually help finally finish the the adjustment properly. They did that. Uh, he that did the tech who came out and did the work also told us that they’ve had complaints about the the controller, the auto controller thing on it’s water conservation mode is not really working too well at
keeping the yards. Uh, satisfactorily green. So it’s a little tricky, uh, to get the system in there and have it actually work while also conserving water. I wonder if I’ve actually used more water in the course of the trial and error process than I would have before.
So this is just a piece of, uh, feedback. I think it’s a useful thing to do. The other thing they did is point it out, a defect in our overall. And this is a retrofit program.
But they pointed out a defect in the baseline design of our water, uh, yard watering system that the drip part of it is such a long line going to the back of the house that you can’t sustain pressure all the way to the end, and it really isn’t working right. And there’s no good workaround for that. Um. So it’s an interesting process to go through.
I and I’m, I’m glad that I did it. I’m, I’m a big believer in trying to conserve the water, but we might not be saving as much as we think at first until we get, uh, get our arms around.
This and we could go back and actually, out of all the surveys that they’ve done, we kind of go back and look at consumption uses before and after and compare. And we could, um, we could do like a, an analysis of it and presented that.
Presentation as well to see what if it’s actually is working, but just based on most comments from residents that have completed it, they seem like their bills have dropped. I’m not sure how significant, but they seem happy with the service. Mhm. As well. Okay. But appreciate the feedback. I know there’s a hardening effect over the years of all the conservation efforts with low flush toilets and showerheads and what have you.
Realistically how much more can you do to reduce water consumption. Um, a lot of the efforts right now that we’re, we’re telling people to reduce in indoors and outdoors, but the reality is that outdoors, really our biggest water users, between 60 to 70% of our water in Glendora, everything is going
outside. So the focus is really outdoors. The indoor is, you know, every little drop counts. It does really help. But the reality is that if residents are unwilling to reduce their sprinkling habits, that’s really where the, the, the difficult part of our jobs are. Well, it does seem like a long ways to go. Do you reach 15.
5% reduction? But. Uh. Almost 1%. This last year, uh, if you did 1% a year until 2040, you’d pretty much be there at the 15%. So if you if your goal was 1% reduction a year, I think, uh, that would be a pretty good, good accomplishment. So we’re getting there little by little. We’ll get there. Yeah. Okay. Great.
One last question. Uh, sorry, one last question. So a long time ago, we had talked, uh, during, uh, this water conservation, uh, presentation about folks who sprinklers are just flowing into the, into the curb. Right. And I had called one time about a neighbor who’s.
I mean, it was it was like it was raining down, down the gutter, right? It was that that much water? It was a neighbor you didn’t like? No, I liked it. It was a nice guy. It’s just his. His front yard is sloped.
And so much of that was just coming right back down into the gutter. And it was it was insane, like how much water it was. So I called the city office and I was told, and he would water it like seven in the morning or something like that.
So I would see it when I was walking my dog and they would say, oh, well, it’s got to be during business hours so we could drive by and see it ourselves. Okay, I know we talked about it. I don’t remember what that was. So I’ve there’s a new neighbor that moved in recently and same thing.
Just I mean, just the sidewalks are being watered and the curbs, you know, everything. So what is the process for reporting that and can it be any easier than, you know, I mean, what’s the process for reporting where you’re seeing water waste? I guess that’s my question. Currently we are doing two things.
We are we are actually doing, uh, patrolling during the daytime. And if obviously if a city employee sees it, that’s when we actually are contacting the residents directly where we are leaving door tags and following up with an actual letter to them as well.
Uh, we do get a lot of phone calls, which is like the example you mentioned of neighbors kind of telling, okay, I’m seeing this. The difficult part of our job is that we are in one side of the city, and then we have to get to the south side of them, but by the time we get there, it’s
kind of done. So we do it to kind of follow up on times and kind of continue to be going out there. The, the we, the way we do our patrolling or, or citation.
I guess I just say it’s, uh, in order for us to think of it like going to court, we have to have actual evidence. Sure. And city employees are the ones that are going out there and taking pictures and documenting instead of just going out there saying, well, your neighbor said this because we’ve had a lot of those in the past, so we’ve had the procedures that
city employees would have to go out there, but the city actually recently created a new app that you could actually go out there. There is a conservation aspect on there, and it does allow you to submit a request like this to and and take pictures.
So that actually really helps us a lot, especially things that are happening off hours. We get residents telling us that their neighbors watering at 3:00 in the morning, and obviously, fortunately, we’re not available in those times. So things like that does help us. And that was one of the things that came up when I called us.
I said, what if I send you photos? Can I send somebody photos? No, we have to come see it. And I mean, that was a couple years ago. So yeah, I mean, you know, obviously you’re not going to say the neighbor said this or that, but if there’s photos, right? And just in my little pocket off of
Gladstone, my little neighborhood, there’s multiple, multiple folks who are just wasting water. So, um, so, so, so aside from that app, if somebody just provided you photos, would that be enough to at least maybe not send a citation, but at least send a letter saying we know about
this or or does it have to be a city employee going there? We do take that into consideration. So instead of sending an actual violation letter, we do actually contact them directly and let them know we did not witness it ourselves.
But it has been reported that you have a broken sprinkler shooting up ten feet in the air. It is located in this area. Just letting you know. We remind them about the city regulations and and please go ahead and comply within 48 hours and fix it. And we do follow follow up with them as well.
Okay. So let’s say that one of my neighbors, not me wink wink sees this. What would be what do you recommend the process to be? Just call you guys and just start the conversation or what do you think? Yeah, they could call us or they could use the city app
again because, uh, commission if a resident on the south and the town we have, the office is going to take us at least 10 to 15 minutes for us to get there.
So if they happen to see it more than welcome to take a picture and actually upload it up that on the app, and then we’ll get that notification right away that we can start communicating with that, because we don’t want that to continue happening for another week or two. And then we’re trying to help them. Uh, so we we approach it more in an educational way. We’re not going to give them a citation. Oh, of course.
It’s more of a hey, just, you know, you have a broken sprinkler. You might want to fix it as soon as possible.
I just wonder if some of some of them, I mean, you go out there, you got to see the water all over the place, right? You would think. And some of them just may not think twice about it. That’s just the way you know it is what it is, right? That’s the way the sprinkler is. So okay. And that’s our main objective just to to educate and let them know okay. All right. Thank you.
I think we know that the the biggest conservation is the outdoor irrigation aspect of it. So with a lot of people irrigating At 4 or 5:00 in the morning, we might want to rethink our operating patrol procedure. Uh, yeah.
You’re going to work an eight hour day or a ten hour day, whatever it is. But maybe you start at 3:00 in the morning, correct? Uh, because that’s I mean, if we’re going to reach that 15.5%, we need to get that through, uh, the irrigation, uh, savings. So.
And with this new, um, customer service portal app that we’re currently pursuing, we’re, we’re hoping that it does have the capacity of, us of actually providing a report for those residents that are overwatering or watering consistently every single day that we can start kind of, um, targeting, I guess those kind of residents having those communications.
Through the, through the Amr, aren’t you able to monitor, uh, say some high users, uh, that are potentially wasting water? We can, but currently with the current software that we have right now, because the the it’s outdated, it no longer tells us without us having to physically look at every single account manually. So there’s over 13,000 accounts.
So we’re we’re having to kind of randomly look at addresses or when residents call us and let us know. But we’re hoping this new software can of help that and expedite that. All right. Uh, Armando, is is there any clarifications or specifications in our city codes that clarify what water waste is? Uh, yes. Any basically any water that goes down into the, um, into the street.
So that’s in our city code. So it could also use code enforcement to enforce us not only beyond just the water department. Right. Correct. So most, most residents will call us directly if, if it happens to be during the week, then code enforcement actually does go out there. But we do have a relationship.
So we do call us. We do communicate with each other. So if it’s something that it’s out of their bounds or they want us to kind of step in, they do take pictures for us to that. We could jump in and talk to that resident..
And one one thing if I can add those prohibitions, um, are outlined in the conservation ordinance, in those phases that we’re in. So that kind of dictates that as well as far as when we’re when we’re the goals that we’re trying to reach with the, the water, the water savings.
So, um, and ultimately, I think the biggest thing we’re not trying the water department, the city doesn’t want to be weaponized as kind of a, a neighborhood feud. So that’s sometimes why we don’t want to, you know, go off of neighbor’s words.
I’ve personally been, you know, told you need to shut their water off because, you know, I don’t like them kind of things, like, so, um, it’s one of those challenges. And, and the app is a good tool. Um, the patrols were definitely upped, but the education piece, I think that’s what we’re trying to get the awareness and, um, the, the software, it’s unfortunate that they’re no longer supported, but but staff did their due
diligence. Actually, the software is still we’re still have access to it. But we were notified about that sunset date. And instead of waiting for that to to completely expire, we got ahead of that. So, um, those are going to be some really good tools.
And and we’ll continue to look at um, and as also to as the state starts to levy some of the new restrictions, it may require us to take further action and implement, um, further restrictions that that kind of bolsters us. We do have as much as some of the the visual things and the prohibitions.
Um, there is some limitations to what we can and can’t do. So, um, but unfortunately, if we don’t start hitting these goals, um, that’s going to be levied on us.
So, um, but the efforts that Mondo and the team are doing, um, in a lot of the conservation efforts, um, you can always do more, but we’re doing we’re doing great work. So I want to commend staff and that. All right. Could we have a motion to receive and file the water conservation program, update. A motion. It’s moved by Greg, seconded by. A second. David. Uh. Let’s vote. Uh, recommendation to receive and file water conservation program update. It passes five zero. Okay.
Moving on to item number five is the quarterly water production update. Water Division Manager Damien Martinez is going to give us a report. Damien. Good evening. Chair, vice chair and commissioners. Today or tonight I’m going to walk you through the quarterly water production update.
Uh, we’re going to cover a couple of different areas that haven’t been covered in the past. Um, they’ve been covered maybe over just pieces here and there. I want to start by going over the system overview. So get a picture of what the system that we maintain and operate kind of looks like. Um, let’s see if I get this right. Wrong way. Huh.
There it is. So this is kind of an outline of what we’re going to be talking about tonight. Uh, system overview. The system operation and maintenance data system, water quality instrumentation and reservoir inspections that are upcoming. And then thirdly, we’re going to some of the water supply. Hydraulic.
Uh, hydro, hydrologic and imported water conditions. And the city’s water production. So let’s start with the big picture. On average, we’re producing about 3745 million gallons a day. Our system includes ten wells and serves and and several key connections three from MWD and one from Covina Valley Water Company.
Those connections are important water surface water connections that, uh, are used to to support and supplement the city’s water demand. We store, uh, in 29 reservoirs, uh, with a total we have storage in 29 reservoirs with a total capacity of about 35 million gallons. On the distribution side, we maintain 247 miles of pipeline, 16 pump stations, 17 pressure zones, and 64 water quality sample stations.
It’s a pretty large and complex system. A lot of moving parts and things break needs to be maintained. Uh. So moving on to the SCADA system is a I’m not familiar with the system is it’s the, uh, supervisory control and and data acquisition system.
It helps us maintain, um, real time monitoring of the wells and reservoirs and our production system. Uh, without that tool, we would have to man each station manually and turn on and off. Uh, as the man needs the calls for it. This quarter, there are several improvements.
We cleaned up the asset naming, improving functionalities, adequate, accurate live tank volume calculations, and refined chlorine level alarms. We’re also making ongoing security updates and performing required windows and software updates on both the SCADA. Both the service that the city operates. We have a redundant, um, server. On the water quality side, we’re continuing to use, uh, honk analyzers.
Uh, we have the Hawk SL 1000 handheld analyzers. Those are, uh, tools that are used to monitor, uh, water quality out in the field. These give us, uh, advanced analytics out in the system. Helps us stay on top of real time conditions. Of what the water quality is daily. We also have two inline Hawk CL 17 chlorine analyzers.
So the chlorine analyzers are located at the San Gabriel plant. And the second one is at the at well 13 chlorine room. They provide continuous chlorine monitoring and and are connected to this data system. So we can see what the what the chlorine level is that’s being injected into the system. Um, in real time.
We’re moving forward with the next cycle of reservoir inspections, uh, which happen every 3 to 5 years. We cycle through different, uh, groups of reservoirs per year. It it ties in with our regulatory compliance.
Uh, we used to use for many years a company by the name of Dive Corps dive course no longer business gentleman retired. So now we are sourcing out a new company through an RFP. So through the RFP process, uh, there is newer technology now out there, such as drone like ROV Rove.
They’re remotely controlled submarines that have advanced, uh, tools and, um, measuring devices such as lidar or, um, uh. Thickness of the material, like metal thickness, uh, scanning tools. And of course, you get high definition video. And they can also do some cleaning. Um, minimally. Um, these inspections also include, you know, cathodic protection.
So we’re looking at the how the degradation of the, of the tanks, uh, is occurring and which allows us to consider, uh, realigning or doing component replacement as needed. Looking at rainfall.
So for the state as a whole, uh, due to the previous rain year or actually we’re currently in the, uh, the rain year, uh, we had a very strong rainfall event, as you all were aware, uh, which has led the state with a higher than average, uh, overall water storage, which is a very good news for the entire state. This, uh, as you can see in the graph, there’s a used if you see prior years, they’re pretty bleak.
So it’s we continue to go through these cycles of rain and then drought events. So the state does continue to as a whole, continues to try to maintain reservoir levels as high as possible and continue to promote conservation efforts, because we are in a, you know, drought cycle, wet seasons and the right cycles.
So this is another view of a kind of zooming into our region. So for the south Coast, uh, we actually are above average. We’re at 105% of historic rainfall. Uh, statewide precipitation has been variable, like I mentioned. So there’s there are big swings. So it looks good right now.
It’s supposed to be, uh, it sounds like there’s going to be a super El Nino, uh, winter coming up. So there’ll be even more water. And then, you know, who knows what the future holds. But usually they cycle pretty drastically down to, you know, having going into pretty severe droughts, as you know, all of us are aware.
This is another image of what that water supply outlook outlook looks like. Um, as you can see, 2024, there was a substantially less water. So 2026, 25, 26 there is more. It’s we’re above average. Like I mentioned. Um, moving in to import water. There has been an interruption in the import water deliveries.
Deliveries resumed briefly in March, but were halted again in May due to, uh, the uh quagga and golden mussel concerns. At this time, we are not receiving any water through USG three. Um. Three valleys is also also did not make any deliveries through USG three to the or to the San Gabriel Basin this last quarter.
No spreading operations, uh, occurred through PM 26 Dalton, wash. San Dimas siphon or little Dalton. Moving on to the Cogswell Reservoir. Uh, and there’s a series of images like I have previous quarters on these reservoir levels. Uh, as you can see, Cogswell is above historic averages.
It’s at 184% of historic average for, um, for this date. So doing very well, which is allowing the region to have water. So even though we’re not importing water to USG three to the city is able to capture, um, you know, through these reservoirs, water into our system. So it’s it’s been good.
The San Gabriel Reservoir currently is, um, as you can see, has no water. That is intentional. The L.A. County flood Control is doing, um, cleaning of that, uh, behind the dam. If you go up there, it’s pretty dry. There’s a lot of movement out there.
They’re trying to clean up, and, uh, drench or as much of trying to remove as much of the material that’s it has settled. So if you recall, last time I presented some of these images, there was a prior prior, last time, there was a lot of when we had the rain event, there was a lot of debris.
Um, they looked like twigs, but there were big trees that had there’s just massive amounts of, uh, debris in trees that settled. All those have been pulled to continue to pull them out. Uh, it’s a multi-million dollar venture that they’re conducting there. Um, and so there’s also sediment that came down. A lot of that had to do with the previous fires that had occurred.
So all of that needs to be removed to create more capacity for the next rain event. So that’s why you see San Gabriel Reservoir at basically, uh, very little water going through. There are some minimum requirements that have to flow through, um, to keep for wildlife. Um, reasons to keep fish or birds, etc.. Um, with water.
And so next you’ll see Morris Dam, the same situation. I don’t have a little graph there for this one, but it’s the same virtually same situation. They there’s no water coming down San Gabriel, so there’s no water in Morristown. And Morris Dam is down to like three feet of water. Moving into, uh, the core project in snowpack information statewide snowpack, uh, peaked.
It’s very low this year. It got pretty warm pretty quick. So there was snow early in the year? Uh. Not anymore. Uh, there’s only about 4% of normal as, um, since if you look back to June, I think this is a that’s one took this data from, um, Lake Powell and Lake Mead continue to sit at a
historical, uh, low levels, 24 and 29%, respectively. So, you know, in kind of circling back to the good news is that California does have substantial amount of storage there. At 90 as a whole, we’re at 90% of capacity statewide, uh, which has translates to the state water project allocation.
Uh, slightly increasing for this year. So we’re at, uh, 45%. That was set in May 15th. On May 15th, 2026. And there’s another rendering of Lake Mead and, um, water levels and how they, you know, there they it’s hurting. There’s not enough water.
So groundwater levels at the Baldwin Park Key. Well drop have dropped a bit. Um, so it’s dropped to 267ft in March to 258ft. Now in July. So this is a that is within its normal operating range. So the normal operating range for the Boeing Park key well is 220ft to 260ft.
So we’re actually sitting above what normally our normal operating averages are. So again contributing factor is the heavy rain events and the high storage levels that we have in our reservoirs. For the city water production, um, this past quarter, the city did take in 51 acre feet of treated water from Covina Valley Water Company. Uh, that is it was strategic. It was due to we.
The city has 40 acre feet that are allocated per year, per fiscal year, and it has a three year rolling average at year three, that those 40 acre feet will go away. So we were at that threshold of losing 40 acre feet allocations. Um, so we needed the water. Um, we could always take the water.
And so we were able to, to take 51 acre feet. We still have a bank allocation that we can still draw from for this next year. Um, some key notes here to point out. Uh, in comparing year over year, June saw a large increase jumping from about 963 acre feet last year to over 1200 acre feet.
Uh, just for this year. And that’s in production. So that contributed to, you know, consumption. So as you saw in the previous presentation, there was a higher consumption. So, you know, we have to produce more water to meet demands. Uh, and with that, uh, recommendation to receive and file this quarterly water production update.
And I available for any questions. All right. Uh, thanks for the update, Damien. Uh, Nadia, any questions? Sure. Um, just out of curiosity, what, um, what is the city doing with the quagga mussels? Are you working closely with the agencies? So regionally? Uh, at the at USG three connection? Uh, and
outflow. There was a quagga mussel found so that, uh, by the L.A. County, uh, flood control. So that caused, uh, that connection to be shut down. Uh, until further notice.
So that’s what the issue is because of the concern that it can contaminate, jump into other, um, reservoirs or other bodies of water. They basically aren’t allowing any water to continue to flow in there at the moment, regionally, with the help of Water Master and other, uh, local purveyors, we are working to try to come to a resolution of some mitigation.
Um, there’s a there is a plan to mitigate, um, it is a regional effort. So it doesn’t just affect city calendar. So we do participate in those discussions. And we’re we’re actively trying to, you know, come to some measure of mitigating that quagga muscle. Yeah. Yeah. Um, and you mentioned there are 29 reservoirs in the city.
Just out of curiosity, um, how old are these reservoirs? Thank you for that question, Commissioner. Um. We have varying ages in our reservoirs. Do you know how our. The oldest reservoir is? Um. I believe that the oldest reservoir we currently have. Uh, one. And I don’t have this off the top of my head, but is in the 50s. Um, they average from the 1950s to 1960s.
Some of our newer reservoirs that were just installed, um, I believe 2018 was the most recent, um, reservoir. And and we’re in the process of designing the replacement of the North Glendora reservoir. So, um, yeah, they, they, they range in age and size.
So, um, we have 7 million gallon reservoirs all the way to, um, 20,000 gallon reservoirs and some hydrostatic, um, pump stations. So, uh, the, the, the portfolio of, of the distribution systems quite fast. Um, but just one thing, Damian did a great update on the the quagga and the golden.
One thing to note is, um, with the canyon basin being our, our primary source, one issue that the county has brought to our attention, this was actually just in the last week or so. They made us aware that they have found quagga mussels in the basin. Um, and in some of their infrastructure.
And that previously was the focus was, as we had been reporting on the golden mussel. So they’re looking into, um, they’ve been actually working with, uh, Water Master and actually having some metropolitan laboratory sampling done. So, um, there’s a, there’s a multitude of, of, of agencies that are working on that.
And one of the things that we’re working on or Water master three Valleys and Upper District are working on the behalf of the producers is a mitigation plan with the county to to reactivate the county facilities so that mitigation plan was focusing primarily on the county or, I’m sorry, the the the canyon basin as a primary um San Gabriel municipal Water who has a conveyance line that feeds into that.
They’re actually starting to do some treatment. They’re working with um, uh, a Department of Water resource on, on permitting, um, of a it’s an algae side. Um, but that’s proving to be effective. So they’re doing pretreatment on their whole entire conveyance line.
Um, and so those that testing is underway, I believe they’ve been doing that for the last month or so. So, um, that there’s a lot of agencies, there’s a lot of investment into the canyon or into the the San Gabriel, um, spreading. So it’s a it’s going to be something we’ll continue to update the commission on. Yeah. Thank you for the presentation.
Uh, two questions. The dive reservoir inspection. Can you explain? I, I have an idea what that is, but can you just explain what that actually entails? Of course. Thank you for the question, Commissioner.
So that entails historically, it entails a certified qualified diver that, uh, goes into the reservoir tank, um, and with cameras and some other equipment to inspect the inside of the tank. Interesting. How often do they do that? So we city does that every year. Every year. So because we have 29 reservoirs, we stagger, which reservoirs get reviewed again 3 to 5 year turnaround. And that’s what we’re trying to keep within that window to meet regulatory compliance.
So they’ll they’ll all be inspected within the 3 to 5 years and then just repeat again. Gotcha. Okay. And then one last question. So the cleaning of the San Gabriel Reservoir, uh, I know it was from a lot of the debris from the fires and all that, but is that also something that needs
to be done on a regular basis, or is that just situational as it’s needed.? That is a long term planning effort that the from what I understand, and Paul can probably give you more details on that.
Um, but that from what I understand, that is the it it’s going to be continuous. It planned for it over a long period of time. There’s, it’s multi-million dollar, um, and again it’s to create to clear out that debris and create capacity for the next rain event.
When the next event occurs, then they’ll again assess and consider re dredging that, uh, behind that dam again if necessary. But it is multi it is a multi year effort. So it’s from now I think it was was all five years that they’re going to be doing. Yeah. No it was it it was it was in result of the the bobcat and station fire.
They the county um allocated a maintenance project beyond what their normal um and they had originally scheduled for three years. They’re actually extending that for a they just announced that they will be extending that project because of the continued, um, runoff. And like Damien was saying, it’s not just the tree debris, but it’s also the silt.
It eliminates the capacity in the actual reservoir. So, um, typically the county will do summertime or non non non flood season maintenance. But this is a multi year project where they’re actually going in there. Um and they extended their contract to do that work. So they’ve been um it’s quite it’s quite the operation they have up their, their, their series of trucks.
I would encourage everybody to take a drive up there and take a look. It’s it’s amazing. They look like little tiny cars but they’re massive. I’m gonna have to check with Dale to see if he’s going to do one of his guided tours again. One of these days.
We talked about that last. we did with Nadia being new, a field trip to see the pumping stations and the and the reservoirs would be very nice. I mean, have you done one of those. With them? It’s been a couple of years. At least. Like four, four years ago, I think when I did it.
Yeah. And not for Nadia. It was a very memorable thing to get familiar. Oh, you did you you did to her all that too. No, no. I’m not. Oh you have not. Okay. Yeah. Well, yeah, we’ll be okay. Well, I’d love to join when you guys do. Um, yeah.
If you can include some photos next on the next one. Just, just love to see how it’s progressing. Is it going to be still empty by the next quarterly meeting? It’s probably. Aside from rain here. We missed Dale’s, uh, Dale’s pictures of the. Yeah, I apologize. Yeah, I’d love to see those again next quarter, if you guys can. All right. Thank you. Greg.
You know the diver retired after 30 years, so it’s open if you want to switch it. Switch? Uh. No. You want to dive tanks in a reservoir? Yeah. Do I look very buoyant over here? No. No sharks. Not me. No sharks. No. No other questions. Thank you. You have. No questions, Commissioner David? No.
Of course, I always have a few. Uh, your, uh, peak summer demand. You said your average is like, 3700 gallons or or a million gallons a day. But what is your peak summer demand? It must be something higher. Maybe. Maybe on the order of 10,000. Thank you for the question, chair.
I don’t have those numbers in front of me, but it is higher. We actually just went through that exercise mountain. The the average demand or the peak demand as of right now, um, is about 13 to 14 million. Okay. And that’s why you’ve got the reservoir storage.
Uh, are you keeping it full or is it half full? And the reservoirs, all you. Well. We we typically have different operations in the wintertime to the summertime. We we especially in some of the the high fire danger areas, we try to keep those at 75%, but we do cycle those down and then demand has as a play in that.
Um, but the fortunate part about our system is we do have the pumping, the redundancy and pumping. So if there was a need to increase that. But typically we, we fill them up, let them float or, you know, kind of lower themselves down. And then we refill them at a certain so on and off point. So what the goals are for the summer are usually increased.
Um, but it just depends on the reservoirs that, that we have 17 pressure zones. So it just really depends on, um, which zone it is. So you don’t have a nitrification problem in your reservoirs? Not as of right now. Um, we, we are free chlorine.
And so that’s part of why we do draw the tanks up and down to cycle those over. Um, but as we had mentioned, I think the last, um, we’re in, in the, um, design phases of doing some nitrification or, um, nitrate analyzers for the, for some of the wells or the reservoirs and wells and then also the mixers.
So the tank mixers that we’re looking to put into, um, I believe it’s about eight of the reservoirs will help with that circulation. Um, and doing that, that’ll actually allow us to not have to cycle the reservoirs, um, as deep so or as kind of up and down. Okay, great.
Uh, and you always talk about the, the main basin and the water level in the main basin, but what about the canyon basin, which supplies the San Gabriel plant is the, uh, the canyon basin in pretty good shape as well. Canyon basin right now is doing really well.
Um, as Damian reported, um, with the local releases, even though we haven’t had any imported, um, untreated water, we have had quite a, I think currently the inflow in the canyon was 35. No, 60. Uh. 64. 64 cfs. So the the canyon bases are, um, almost full, I would say probably about 80% full right now.
And I hate to say they’ve never found any, uh, muscles, uh, in the local runoff coming out of the canyons, have they? Well, no, that’s what they the the the the public works facility are a team just reported to us that they have found quagga in the canyon basin.
So if you recall, um, about seven years ago, eight years ago, there was an issue that came up with Metropolitan, where, um, quagga Water got into the, into the canyon or into USG three. Um, and there was a release of a period of time, um, and it caused everyone to do some testing. Water master led that. We actually did testing. There was no signs of those.
So, um, that’s part of what they’re looking at right now is where where that might have come from. And ultimately, and I think one thing I do want to make sure is the muscles are not a water quality issue. They’re a maintenance issue. Um, just like you see at the ocean, they start to build up on some of the infrastructure.
So the concern is not necessarily if they’re going to have an impact to our groundwater or any water source for that matter. But it’s the county’s maintenance, um, of this as a reoccurring. So Metropolitan’s experiences with Lake Mead, um, on some of the intakes.
I’ve seen some of those pictures and, um, it’s it’s pretty impressive how fast they can actually accumulate. All right. Uh, very good. So could I have a motion to approve and or receive and file the water production updates? Motion been moved by pad, seconded. By. Greg. Let’s vote. It passes five zero to receive and. File. Okay. Moving on to item number six is the fiscal year 2526. Water distribution update.
Fourth quarter. And Water Division manager Del Wirtz going to give us a report. Hi, commissioners. Thank you for having us. I’m here. To report on the fiscal year 2526 water distribution update for the fourth quarter.
This is a mainly comparison, um, for the, uh, 2526 fourth quarter, uh, the dark green is uh, represents 2025, and the orange color represents 2026. For April, we’re, uh, slightly higher than we were last year. And the remaining two months of the quarter were definitely lower overall.
Uh, between this year and last year, uh, in those fiscal years, um, we were lower 68 total for 2025 and 54, uh, for 2026. These are the mainly history comparisons between three, uh, fiscal years. But we’ve pulled them out and given you descriptions of what those leaks are. So on the left we start with 2526. And we work our way to the right.
And then in 23, 24, uh, main leaks for fiscal year 2526 totaled 46, uh, for 24, 25, 44 and for 23, 24, 49. So we’re pretty much on an average, they’re the main one to look at will be the service lines.
We’ve had eight service lines, uh, leaks and repairs within this quarter for 25, 26, but uh respectively for 24, 2520 and 23, 24, 22. Um, fire hydrants also had no leak repairs done on fire hydrants for this quarter for 25, 26, uh, 2425 we had four and 2324 we had two for the service lines.
I attribute that to a few of the capital projects that were completed in which we were having some, uh, more frequent service leaks. And so that’s really helped. So as a capital project continue to be done, we anticipate, um, some change in the number of main leaks and or the number of service leaks as well. This is a three year comparison. I have to apologize. There is an error in May.
Uh, the the green bar represents 2024. It’s actually too short. Um, that one should read 22. Uh, for May. Um, 16 and this quarter for May also in June. That bar is 26 for 2025 and 14 for June. This is just a reflection of the previous numbers in a graph. Um, I’ll try to do better graph.
I saw another one in Montrose. I’m going to steal. All right. This was our country club main break. Uh, for those of you who, of course you all live in town. Probably noticed this one. This occurred on Maple. Uh, sorry. April 27th, uh, approximately between 230 and 330 in the afternoon. Crews worked diligently and quickly.
We had the water off and isolated within 30 to 40 minutes. Seems like a long time, but it’s actually a pretty short period of time. This was a 12 inch cast iron water main from 1967.
Um, it took us approximately, uh, 13 hours from the beginning of the start of the repair to the time of charge. Uh, that time of charging. Once we. That means we were putting water back into the pipe. Uh, the news has been led up as of late.
Uh, similar type of style working through the night, um, with crews and, uh, people on board, um, just to get everything done from the repairs to all the, um, required sampling, uh, and flushing that needed to be done. Um, we started at 330 by approximately 9 a.m.
the next morning, we were beginning to restore water service, um, approximately 80 homes were affected there. Um, total about 20, uh, 28 hours, including the street mediation, which we’ll take a look at in a moment. On the left is the repair.
Um, that’s a 12 inch ductile iron main, uh, attached with the with the considered flex couplings or max couplings, which allow a degree of deflection. Um, based on where the pipe location was, that wrapping is a new way of installation. It’s a ten millimeter, uh, plastic wrap. That’s, uh, for corrosion protection. On the right, you can see the crews assembling the last, uh, other section or side of that main, um.
Yeah, it’s a little over 11ft of new, uh, main. Um, and that new is, uh, requirement for the wrap came about in the 2000. So some of the main breaks you’ll see in the prior reports and previous reports with the older mains don’t have this type of protection. That is the main that was removed on the left.
You can notice, uh, the large piece missing, but you pay close attention. There is a semi comfortable lateral crack that runs across that main, um, on the right side is the portion that blew out, um, couldn’t find anything as far as, uh, manufactured defect.
In fact, the pipe is so the outside, uh, corroded. Uh, it wasn’t no specific factor, uh, except for, uh, possibly a break at one of the bell ends on this pipe, uh, caused the blowout, which was on the left hand side of that water main. That piece on the right hand side is approximately five feet long.
Country Club Drive also included the restoration of that intersection. It is a highly traveled intersection. I didn’t realize it until working it. Um, you have a thoroughfare from route 66 down to Foothill Boulevard. You have the country club golf course.
You also have the route to two schools, the high school and the middle school, which traffic is pretty high there? Um, there was a need to over excavate this entire section and re compact and refill in order to stabilize, uh, the current condition. If you look on the right hand side, it was a specifically large area of repaving. Um, that paving was completed and done by 530. So within less than 28 hours.
Sorry. Yeah, less than 24 hours or less. 28 hours. We were done with the complete project. This patchwork is temporary. Uh, we’re going to allow it to settle for 3 to 6 months. Due to the high volume of water.
Um, one of the things that you may have seen on some of the on TV from Metropolitan was the same as us. We had enough water pressure that the water made its way between the asphalt and the subsurface. Uh, and was uh, it had lifted it quite a lot.
Um, we will revisit this again, probably again, another 3 to 3, three months, 3 or 4 months and then have a grinding cap put back on there. This is Dalton Avenue. Um, it’s also another main break that occurred. This main leak started, uh, when a patch repair was being done. Permanent patch repair was being done by a contractor.
Um, we got called out on it. Uh, we began to dig and excavate the soil. And this is a 1961 six inch main on the left hand side, you’ll see kind of a little stub out of a tee. Uh, had a cap, welded on there. Um, that cap failed.
This, uh, was a little, um, odd in the sense that, um, it has a less than six inches of ground cover and asphalt over the top of it. Um, this water main actually crosses, uh, a storm drain just south of Finkbeiner Park on Finkbeiner and Wabash.
Um, the photo on the right, how they repaired it is they cut that stub off. Uh, they put the clamp on, uh, upon recharging it, they had a few more leaks come in, so they had to add a few more clamps. We have a stormwater project at Finkbeiner Park, which includes, uh, addition of some new water main across the park.
And we’re working to work with, uh, that particular project to see if we can get some of this water main. Also relocated and replaced, um, to prevent any further leaks. There. Shortest one of the evening. I recommend you file, uh, this report. Um, and I take any questions. So you referenced the West Hollywood. I think you did.
What? What happened? And how can that happen here? And what happened. In this. Particular case? Um, a lot was reviewed. He mentioned skaters. What? We can go back and look at how things were operating in the system. We didn’t see it in anomalies like pressure fluctuation or, uh, some sort of impact of the system that may cause water hammer. Sometimes it happens over time.
The Earth is the Earth. In this particular case, if you’re familiar with the intersection, it is sloped. So it’s possible that over time that it just develops some stress. And that main from moving and eventually gave way.
Um, it’s not as old as the one that was in West Hollywood, but it does have some age to it. Um, the interior of that pipe. was really good. The mortar lining that was inside. We, uh, took some pictures and camera up both sides before we put it back together. Make sure it was clean and ready for service.
Uh, so I was impressed with the interior, but that’s probably more likely to have some sort of outer stress applied to it over time. Um, that pressure there is not really high, probably mid-range, somewhere between 50 and £80. So it does take some pressure.
Would we have any place in Glendora that could have the same situation that we just so happened last week? Uh, main breaks and main breaks. We do have large lines here, so I don’t technically is where the means are at in West Hollywood super tight, super congested as far as properties, um, substructures, like the parking garages and the bus depot that got flooded, I don’t think we really have that here.
Um, in this case, most of it ran down, uh, one down. Uh, sorry. Uh, ran down the side streets and, uh, further down, uh, yeah. I can’t remember the name. It’s not Lorraine getting confused. Uh, but. Amelia, I ran down Amelia, which is a downhill run into the storm drains. There.
And my final point, as we look at our CIP. Is there any analysis on the catastrophic situations like we saw in West Hollywood to prioritize our improvements? I was here for the first round. When they did the assessment. They used some leak prediction equipment.
Uh, and software in order to to look at those I’m working with. We’re working with Paul to reevaluate that. And also Damien and to install some more, uh, uh, monitoring equipment, both for pressure and for leak detection. And that should help make it more robust.
Sometimes it’s just it is what it is. There could have been a minor flaw in that pipe that was never caught in an overtime. It came out. But, um, again, age location. Right. Material. And then how many how many leaks it has. How many repairs of those are all considerations that we take into when we look at the CIPs.
If, if that ever happened in Glendora, is Glendora covered by a separate insurance to cover the damages, or is that coming out of the Glendora general fund? Do we know. We we do have a, um, we actually just joined a new I believe it’s called prism. Um, insurance pool.
So that would anything like that would, would come out of that if depending on depending on the value, I think there’s a, uh, a premium or a deductible, but um, just going back to the leak, um, I think one thing that can be noted is we don’t have any riveted steel line.
I mean, the construction of that line, um, it was you know, we do have older lines. We have lines from the 1930s. Um, I think we even have some lines from the 1920s. But, um, one thing to note is riveted steel line. That’s the only thing that’s kind of older than that.
In construction is, is redwood mains. Um, that’s not to say that I think one thing Dale had mentioned in his report is the the age of the 12 inch line that failed in country club. That’s 1961. And yeah, that’s that’s 50, 60 years old.
But that’s in in the scheme of things when it comes to infrastructure in California, it’s not old. Um, and it’s cast iron pipe is brittle, but is is very durable. Um, and and when we did the assessment, one of the things that was taken into place of Dale touched on was the water master plan, did an evaluation and a risk, uh, a risk of failure that took into
account type velocity, a lot of different factors and also leak history. Um, we went back immediately because we wanted to kind of really assess that, that that segment of pipe was not identified as high risk.
Um, and so that that kind of just says, um, a, you know, as we continue to reevaluate this, we can’t look at the water master plan as the static document that now just kind of collects dust. And we kind of refer to it every once in a while when we want to go, go and find something to do.
But we’ve got to continue to look at that. And that kind of goes back to the enhancements and the categorization, um, the tools that we’re starting to really enhance is the GIS, the capturing of the data.
Um, we’re even looking at trying to enhance or refine some of the categorical, um, information that the field, when we’re collecting, we’re going and doing that repair, that’s the greatest opportunity for us to evaluate the, the, the water main. So doing that assessment, getting that repair, addressing whether it’s just a service line repair or a fire hydrant leak, if we’re exposing the pipe, it’s an opportunity for us to do an evaluation.
And that information as we’re we’re kind of enhancing our processes and some of the systems we’re using will now be able to start utilizing that. Um, but just kind of going back to your question on if this could happen to us, uh, we could have an issue.
I would not say that we would have an issue of this magnitude. The largest line that we have, um, is our transmission main from the plant to to the the water yard at Goddard. That line was just recently replaced. It’s not to say that lines can’t fail that are. New. Yeah.
Um, going all the way from Azusa Avenue over to to the Goddard Middle School. Um, that 30 inch line is probably the biggest line that we have. Besides the line that runs from Sierra madre down basically Glendora Avenue. Um, that we consider to be the crosstown feeder.
Um, that line is actually part of the next round of CIPs with the Glendora Avenue, um, street and water improvement. So that that line, we’ve had some leaks on its 18 inch line. Um, um, but we’re, you know, it is a mortar lined, um, steel main that was installed, I believe, in the mid 60s. So it’s not an older line.
Um, again, that’s that’s a factor, you know, um, and I think that one of the issues that I, I’ll kind of go to DWP defense a little bit is that sometimes you have challenges. You know, I heard on the news that they said, well, we were trying to find a good time. You know, the newscaster was saying they should have found a good time to shut it down.
I don’t know when Sunset Boulevard would be a good time to shut it down, but that that is one of those challenges. And you kind of saw I saw the video of that and how that escalated. It wasn’t like it had been leaking, you know, trickle down the it, it, it broke, it sheared.
And so sometimes that, that just kind. Of. Act of God kind of happens. And now they have more leaks on the line too. They. They found and, and that’s, that was, that was one of the issues that we, we saw was because of the sheer volume that we did have, we didn’t have anything nearly, but we
did have some service leaks nearby that appeared within the next week to two weeks. I think there was a total of 2 or 3 that came up that were very suspect. If if, you know, in the proximity.
So the assumption is that when you have that kind of that kind of a break and that kind of velocity through the pipe, no matter what pipe you design, it’s not meant to have that that flow. Um. Two things. Um, oh, Lord, I just lost my train. I knew I should have wrote down what my second thing was going to be. Uh, the first thing was going to be, um. Don’t worry.
We’ll come back to you. All right. Um, well, the one I did write down smartly enough. Um, I know we talked about it before, and I guess this might be more more of your thing. So we used to get the city engineer in here. That would give us the list of CIP projects and their status.
But it’s been a long time, it seems like, since we’ve gotten one of those. Or is that something that could be incorporated again? I don’t even know if you know what I’m referring to.
Yeah, no, I well, I believe we back last October because I remember I that was one of my first reports and kind of settling in was the CIP. Melissa, our city engineer, used to do the CIP. Um, the plan is you’re stuck with me. So, uh, we’re going to be giving those in October, um, where all of the comprehensive CIP projects and in, in, in enhancing that for the commission will include as part of that the the financials.
Okay. Yeah. And she didn’t go into great detail. I remember there was a chart, but it would just list the projects in the, in the various status. And it was just nice to see all the different things that are going on. Um, I’d love to see that again. Yeah. Um, no.
And, um, okay. I thought my other one. So the, the big league, the country club drive, I think it was um, was that city employees that did that, or was that your vendors that took care of it? No. Um, to get the speed, we hired a vendor, a contractor to come out and do it.
Why is that? Sometimes it’s people, sometimes it’s equipment. This one was a little bit of both. And we were holding our guys and reserves to do the actual water quality portion of it, get the lines back up, get the flushing, sampling and all that done again, that sampling and all that started about somewhere between 3:00 and 4:00
in the morning. They ran five hours in about 9:00 in the afternoon To. get that. Done to restore water service. That would have taken every asset I had to get that job done. And the energy and the effort that would have been put forth.
I mean, it would have just been a little bit of a drag. for us to go do the whole thing. So we had round tabled and maybe an hour, hour and a half into it, took the guys back to the yard, came up with a game plan and had the contractor come out and start working on it, send everybody
home and ready to come back at any moment to get that line back up. So our are sometimes we have to weigh the difference between us doing it and somebody else kind of coming out and doing it.
So then going on what Greg was asking about, if we ever had something major, you would. Is it safe to say you’d probably follow that same type of strategy sometimes for something even bigger? Yeah, sometimes it depends. We’re the first responders. We’re going to try to help prevent any type of damage to life or property first. That’s our main concern.
Once we get that under control and we can start to assess it at that point within an hour, I think we already made the decision to get the contractor rolling because we don’t. Once we open it up, we don’t know what’s there either.
And even if we rotate it us five six hours, eight hours of contractor, eight hours to keep this working. Because sometimes, just like in that, I’ll give you a quick example to keep everything short. That small crack in that pipe could have ran laterally 2040ft, depending upon what happened in there.
So if you’re consistently working, you’re going to have to have that. So a lot of kind of quick thought goes into process. And having some key conversations with Paul and, um, Damien and a few of the supervisors to kind of lay that out.
Um, but again, for us, if we can find that way to be more efficient, we’ll go ahead and take that step. Also, for the water quality side, internal employees is the best. More familiar with area water quality in general, where all the sampling is going to occur. Um, where to take get the samples to um, that type of stuff in-house.
So that’s how we made that kind of decision to go that route on this one. So better off let the vendors do the heavy lifting and you guys do the quality part. Yeah. Um. We had a leak on Glendora for another example. It wasn’t very big. It was a consistent leak on our crosstown feeder.
You’ve got to divide four lanes of traffic for more than a mile and a half, and keep that up 24 hours a day. Go in and do your prep. Do your recess, plating consistent. Just stuff like that for us. We could probably do it, but it’s a stretch because it would. Take everybody.
Yeah, I think to just add to that to when we get into the severe, the severe stuff, um, it’s not that our, our staff’s not capable of it, but we do still need to maintain service.
So if we had deployed all staff throughout the night, we wouldn’t have been able to maintain the and we and we did at one point, um, have I think about 6:00 once we started to to platoon, the staff, we had everybody like from customer service production, you know, I think even some of the conservation staff had come out to notify because we went out and, you know, canvass the neighborhood notifying
residents, you know, because we we were able to work with the information officer, they were actually out there. Adam and Moises had come out. I mean, we had pretty much police department actually, you know, came out. They helped. They worked, you know, which was a great help to us.
They worked with their, um, their auxiliary officers throughout the night to maintain the road closure because we actually maintain the road close from Foothill, um, all the way to, like Dale said, route 66.
So sometimes this this was definitely one of the, um, the magnitude of like a Sunset Boulevard kind of leak for us. Um, but those are the, those things that we scale. And then once we get into some of the larger things, things that need, uh, welding or any kind of specialty work or, you know, lane closures may mean that that was that’s why we established those on call contracts with some of the the
pipeline contractors, the resources they have, um, fa outreach, some of our resources. So, um, and then like, like I said, it allows us to maintain normal service. Okay. Yeah, that’s a good point.
Would you think would you say this is probably one of the biggest ones you’ve seen in a while or in years, or that one in particular for the city of Glendora, ours? Yeah. Yeah, the city of Glendora. Bigger ones that we’ve had here before, uh, just in size and volume, based on the pipe size. Yeah. Um, we’ve had a we’ve had a few others, but that’s, um, more in my early career here.
So. So if nothing else, it was a good test case for any future. Big ones. Yeah, yeah. No, I think it and it also was, I think the way that Dale and the team handled it, um, and it came down, it was all kind of all hands on deck because Damien and his production staff
performed all of the water quality sampling. This was one that we we worked with multiple departments. So I think it was a testament to our ability to mobilize. I mean, this one did come in.
I was actually in the office at two 205 the the phones just started lighting up because it was one call after another. And then that really kind of amped up our response. And we were able to get out there. And like Dale said, getting the water shut off.
Um, in a 30, 40 minute period of time, um, is does seem like a long time, but that’s that’s pretty impressive, especially when you’re dealing with a line 12in larger when it comes. And typically it’s 6 to 8 inch with our with our distribution system. So handling that, it just really spoke to um, staff’s ability to, to manage that, that situation. Very good. Good job.
Did you have some people stranded up the hill they couldn’t get through, couldn’t get out? Luckily, the way it was, we were able to maintain traffic. Um, so everyone that was coming from country club was able to go around and everybody on Foothill was able.
There obviously were some people that were a little frustrated in having to go, because you had to go all the way around to Lone Hill. So it was kind of inconvenient. But I think once they saw the giant hole and saw us working out there, um, some of the residents were very gracious and they came out and gave give staff, uh, food and pizza.
And so that was really, really neat. So I think that was kind of also a testament to the community. Yeah. Great. David, you got anything? Nadia. Um, how were you able to call the contractor that quick? Do you have, like, a on call service agreement? They’re typically they’re technically on call.
And like, with any contractor, um, they will respond with whatever they have. So we do have a list that we call, uh, they go out for request for proposals, and then we set up that list based on the cost. So we just call the first one on the list first.
And if they respond, they will, um, this particular contractor happened to be close by in San Dimas. From what I remember. Leads the crew. So they’re able to dispatch it pretty quick though I like I said we had the water off before they got there. Um, we were going to attempt to start moving, but we recycled that because the end game is what we’re looking for.
Getting the service restored efficiently and quickly. And, um, that was going to be a little bit of a chore as far as the number of employees. And and our staff did start the excavation.
So it was kind of a joint effort as far as the excavating day, we began breaking ground, pumping the water down. And then once the contractor was on site, we’re reevaluated the the deployment. Did you guys bring the truck out for that? The new truck. They did have the factor, but because of the way the hole was, we weren’t allowed to. You couldn’t get the snow.
Yeah. The the challenge was because of the because of the sheer size of we were not sure how undermined the road was. Luckily, it was just the substructure. So it kind of go back to that picture.
You see how we basically over excavated the whole entire, um, intersection? Was there any damage to public housing or any homes or residents cars? Um, fortunately, the only thing that was was suffered was, um, landscaping. Um, it did find the, um, it did find its way to the, the down the street.
There was some impact to some of the, the county’s, um, uh, storm drain sewer facilities that they had to come out and and repair or clean out because of some of the debris. But, um, they were able to they actually responded and worked with us quickly to. All right. Uh, can I have a motion to receive and file the, uh, what are we receiving in. File? We’ve been over two hours now.
The longest meeting we’ve had. Is this a record? Right, right at the. Top. The receiving file, the, uh, 2526 water distribution update. I moved to. Uh. Move by David. and move, seconded by Nadia. Thank you. Vote. And it passes five zero. All right. Moving right along. Uh, to new business.
We have the 2025 Urban Water Management Plan and management analyst Armando DeJesus is going to give us a report. I’m not going to read every page. Is he? Maybe not. All 600 pages. I will make it short, I promise. Um, so tonight I am providing a brief overview of the 2025 regional, uh, Urban Water Management Plan.
The item has already been adopted by City Council. Uh, so no action has actually been requested for commission this evening. I just wanted to take a few minutes to provide an overview of the plans and highlight what they mean for the city of Glendora.
So, uh, Cal California law requires urban water suppliers to update the urban water management plan every five years. The plan is designed to show that we have enough water supplies to meet our community’s needs today and into the future, while we also are planning for things things like drought, emergency, population growth and changing state regulations. This update looks ahead to the year 2050.
Instead of preparing our own plan, Glendora partnered with the 30 Valleys Water, Municipal Water District, uh neighboring member agencies to develop one regional plan as a whole, working together allows us to share resources. We reduce costs and make everyone, uh, in using a consistent approach regionally, instead of just creating our own. Uh.
So Three Valleys coordinated the effort, and Glendora staff submitted the final plan to the Department of Water Resources ahead of schedule. Uh, the regional urban water management plan is organized into four parts. Uh, part one provides the regional overview, including the water supplies, regional demand projections, and long term water reliability.
Uh, part two focuses on, uh, specifically on the city of Glendora and the what the information includes about our service area. Water demands, conservation programs, system losses, and future planning efforts. Uh, part three contains supportive regional documents, and part four, uh, includes Glendora updated water shortage contingency plan along with the supporting documentation required by the Department of Water Resources.
So all together, four parts is a 850 behemoth of A of a report. So, um, currently I have not memorized the entire thing, so. Uh, before, uh, this plan could be written, the region first had to build a solid factual foundation.
So the team gathered historical production, consumption, production, consumption, and water loss data from 2021 through 2025 to establish the baseline for our regional water use. Uh, three valleys and the. The consultant team also met individually with each participant agency to review and verify the demand projections and available water supplies and future development plans.
They combine the information with data with other agencies within 30 Valley Service area to develop a complete picture of regional water needs and available supplies. That regional analysis served as the foundation of the supply and demand projections, and I’ll discuss next.
With the data in hand, the consultant team GI and W and WSC, they develop up to five different demand projection mythologies, ranging from status quo approach to a more aggressive approach tied to the state’s new conservation standards. Uh, each participating agency, including Glendora, worked directly with the consultants to review the different demand forecast scenarios and determine which approach best reflected the community and service area. So those individual decisions were then combined to create the final regional demand forecast.
So it reflects each agency’s unique needs in operating and operating conditions. A set of using one assumption for everyone. So as part of the urban water management plan, the state also requires drought risk assessment. Uh, which is basically a way to test how reliable or water supply would under would under different conditions.
It looks like it looks at three different scenarios a normal year with typical weather and water supplies, a single dry year which supplies are more limited in demand and higher demand is higher, and five year drought that that represents a long period of dry conditions. So the purpose of the assessment is to make sure we’re prepared before a drought happens.
It helps confirm that our water shortage contingency plan will work as intended. It identifies potential supply challenges ahead of time and lets us know if we need to reduce the amount or bring additional water supplies into, uh, into the short term.
One of the biggest takeaways from the regional urban water management Plan is that the region has enough reliable water supplies to meet projected demands through 2050, even during extended droughts. While the population is expected to grow slowly or slightly, overall water usage is actually projected to to decrease because of continued conservation efforts. Water use efficiency standards and ongoing investments in our water systems as well.
So the plan also highlights the importance of maintaining a diverse water supply, continuing to work together as a region, and investing in groundwater quality improvements. Those efforts will help us stay prepared for future challenges, including the impacts of climate change.
So the Water shortage contingency plan is an important component because it establishes how the city will respond if water shortages occur, such as droughts. So the plan follows the state’s required six stage framework, ranging from minor shortages to shortages exceeding 50% reduction for each shortage level. The plan identifies specific response actions, customer reduction targets and conservation measures designed to reduce the demand while maintaining reliable water service.
Uh, here’s a quick look at how the plan became official. The Regional Urban Water Management Plan was released for the public review on April 27th of 2026. City Council held a public hearing on May 26th of 2026 and was finally officially adopted along with the city.
Updated water shortage plan in June 9th of this year. The updated plan also incorporated lessons we learned from the recent drought. One of the most noticeable changes is the stage four and stage five. Uh. Now both keep the 20% water use reduction targets that City Council adopted back in 20 2022 drought.
The plan also clarifies how we communicate with customers when a water shortage is declared. So basically, stage a three to 3 to 5 were originally set at 15%, and now they’re all set 20% across the board. Overall, these plans served as the city’s long term range, uh, like roadmap for our reliability of water.
The demonstrate that the to the state of Glendora and the region are prepared to meet future water demands, response to the drought conditions and continue providing safe and reliable water while complying with the state planning requirements. That. That concludes my presentation and hopefully it was short enough. No, I’m not reading the entire document.
Did you say that because the City Council’s already adopted it? We really don’t need to receive and file or do we? Is that. I can see that right now? Uh, staff asked that water commission receive and file the 2025 Urban Water Management plan. Okay. All right. I have a motion to receive and file the 2025 Urban Water. Management Plan. Before we get to that, just one question.
I’m so. Just as I promised, we just. One question. You got to ask. A question. Just one question. Yeah. 52 I did actually read some of it. Um, you said that the analysis shows that they can still supply water to the region for over the next five years. Correct.
Under what drought conditions? I mean, under what conditions? They they basically tested all types. So it’s they’re allocated enough water. So we’re not going to even during a drought, we’re not going to have we’re not going to be left behind with having no water. So uh, the last route that we had was roughly around 3 or 3 years.
So we had the available sources to actually do purchase water. So even under extreme conditions, the analysis is that we would have enough water allocation based on typical demand. Correct. And then using the water shortage contingency plan also also allows us to either reduce or increase their stages.
So if if it does get to a certain point that it’s really, really bad, it allows the city to make more drastic cuts and ask the residents. And it’s more of an action, not a mandate. But at that point, we’re telling people, you have to reduce water consumption. Okay. Very good. Thank you so much. Okay. Let me slow down a little bit then. Greg. Any questions? No. Nadia.
No. David. It was one question. Well. Yeah. But we’ll come back to you. All right. Uh, can I have a motion to receive and file the 2025 Urban Water Management. Plan motion? It was moved by David, seconded by Nadia. No, that was the last. One. What? My path. I will second it. Okay.
Move by Nadia, seconded by David. Oh. We gotta go. You’re. You’re an old timer. You you you had your chance. I did. Let’s vote. It’s not a motion. She’s going to hear me. We normally do not go this long. And the recommendation passes five zero. Okay. Moving right along. I don’t think we’ve. Ever. Number eight. Sorry.
2025. Consumer confidence report and assistant public works director. Paul’s. And below is going to give us a lengthy. Report. My unfortunately my my report isn’t as long as Mondo. So, um, I will keep it brief, but, um, I just wanted to present to the commission, uh, the 2025 water. Uh, the consumer confidence report.
This is as the commission is aware, um, and fully seen before. This is a annual report that we, um, prepare and submit to our present to all residents, um, for the water quality of the city for the previous year.
Um, one thing, just to kind of give some context is this is in past years, we’ve, um, we’ve done this report, um, some of the things that we kind of the feedback we get is that this is the 2025 report. Why is it why are we seeing it in July? And that’s just because of a couple of factors.
Um, one of which is that as a wholesale supplier, you are um, you have up until April to provide that to retail. So three valleys, Metropolitan, some of the other supply wholesalers actually have to compile their data to then give to us.
And so the timing of that kind of makes it to where, um, July is, is typically when the due date, the state requires that all agencies prepare this. So April would be the earliest that we could do it. Um, and it does take some time.
So that’s what’s always been a challenge in presenting this, because up until June, um, the only available data that we or report we had on our website, um, was a 2024, it appears that we didn’t have water quality data for the last two years. And so, um, there are some changes to that in the state level.
So we might end up having to to kind of modify this plan, but just to kind of give that context, um, because that’s always seems to be a thing that comes up. One of the great things about this report, and I think this is some of the effort that the the staff have done is some of the updates we wanted to take the opportunity to not only present what, um,
the water quality data for the city, but also talk about some of the the initiatives that we’re doing, some of the other information just it’s a great opportunity to be in front of our customers and give some info.
So, um, one thing I will start and I think I skipped over that, um, is with some of this, we we expanded it from a four page, um, document, I think, up to a 12 page. So, um, I was trying to compete with Mondo and his 900 page document, but but we’ll we’ll just start with this.
So, like, like I said, a couple of the big things is just helping, you know, and dealing with a lot of customers. Some of the questions that they had, we thought it would be a good opportunity to just kind of explain to the residents on what their responsibility is, what the city’s responsibility and how if they do have a leak
or or suspect the leak, how they can reach out to us. So we wanted to make sure to give that. Um, another thing was just talking about some of the, um, well, so you wanted to cap a sip update here.
Um, I’m giving you a SIP update, but just kind of giving residents, um, an update on some of the the upcoming projects. The North Glendora Reservoir, Glendora Avenue pipeline, Cypress and Colorado Pipeline projects. So just really giving some info and then ultimately why these projects mattered, kind of given some of our annual statistics, um, some of the things that we’ve been reporting to the Commission.
And so in past years, we’ve actually had to print out 13,000 copies of these and mail these out. Um, and the state has given us the opportunity, probably for the last 6 or 7 years of notifying through through a different publication.
And again, we wanted to try to find an opportunity instead of just send an envelope in a, you know, with a letter in an envelope doing a postcard. So staff worked on this design and that QR code actually gave you access to to the, um, the, um, CCR.
So, um, one thing that I do want to, to, to make mention and probably the most important is that we did meet and exceed or exceed all all the state and federal regulations for water quality. So didn’t have any issues. So that’s that’s probably the great news. Um, one thing that that staff did work on with this is we actually made it into what they call a flipbook.
So instead of it just being a PDF, you can actually see it, um, we in full credit, we stole this from recreation because they use that for their activity book. But it’s a great feature. It kind of gives a little bit of interaction to it.
Um, so on the website, it takes you right to the, the and, and all the other reports are um, also available on the website. So, um, with that, I wasn’t probably as short as I could have been, but I’d be happy to answer any questions. But I ask that you, uh, just receive and filed. I, uh, update. Any questions from the commissioners.
It was, uh, I loved getting it in a card and very nicely done compared to some of the other annual water parks. You know, water parks. Black and white. Can’t even read them. This was a wonderful annual report. Thank you, thank you. That’s all the format and all the info, the way it’s presented. It’s a good job.
Other than the Vosburgh and the Irwindale Wells or any of our wells in danger of, uh, contamination, but I think that’s going to require wellhead treatment. Um, nothing as of right now. I think the, the, the biggest thing that’s kind of emerging for a lot of agencies is PFAS.
Um, we’re we’re below the notification level, but we, do we we are seeing levels that much like every other agency. And and I think as EPA and the State Water Resource Board really starts to establish what that requirement is, that could be something we look at in the next, um, 5 to 10 years, I
think. I think almost everybody PFAS is everywhere. So it’s it’s it’s going to be something um, and yeah, the nitrate is, is one that we’re always monitoring. Um, and staying on top of. But the levels as of right now, um, are low.
There always seems to be a new carcinogen, uh, of the month coming up every year where, you know, it’s just causing, um, panic. So. Yeah. So. Okay. Great. Could I have a motion to receive and file the 2025, uh, consumer confidence report? I moved to do that. Moved by David. Second Mike to second it. Yes, sir. We’ll make sure you hear me this time.
Can we vote before we pass. Out. And it passes five zero. All right. Great. Thanks. Report, guys. Yeah. All right. Uh, members and staff closing comments. Uh, any commissioners have anything to say? Nadia.
I do, um, first, I just want to thank the city council for giving me the opportunity to be here to serve in the Water Commission. It’s truly a privilege and honor to be able to serve. You know, the city where I live. Um, you know, I was born and raised in Indonesia, so I truly understand the importance of having a safe and reliable water. So I, you know, it’s very nice to meet everyone.
And I look forward to learning from you all and working together. Thank you. Great. Thanks. Anything. David. So I wanted to say how, um, thankful I am for the caliber of work that you guys do with our water and how thorough the reports are, and, um, how much I’m learning about our water
system from you. So I continue to enjoy interacting with. You. Great. Uh, Greg. No, Pat. Just to. Yeah. Thank you, you guys, for your efforts.
And I mean, not not just the slideshow, but the actual reports themselves are very thorough, and I know it takes a lot of work. I’m sure it takes a lot of work for you guys to do that. So you guys all did great work, like you guys always do. So thank you for that again. Yeah. Thank you Paul staff. Uh, everyone, for all the great work you do.
I think it is uh, time though for another field trip, uh, with Nadia coming on board, I think at least 2 or 3 of us went on it, but it was like 100 years ago. So, uh. I think it’s time. Yeah. I did see some redwood pipe down at Irwindale. I think. So, uh, great. Uh, with that, uh, I’ll adjourn the meeting at