August 21, 2000 - Petaluma City Council Discusses Amendment 11 by the Board Watcher Present were Councilmembers McGuire, Hamilton, Cader- Thompson, Torliatt, Keller and Mayor Thompson. Councilmember Torliatt: I would like to make the motion for reconsideration of the council's action taken on July 31, 2000, adopting the Eleventh Amended Agreement for Water Supply and the Resolution approving the Memorandum of Understanding regarding operational procedure during temporary impairment of water supply. I would like to discuss a lengthy statement I've prepared. I think the City of Petaluma could be given 90 days to make the decision on impaired water. The statement is to be given to the Water Agency Board prior to their meeting tomorrow morning. The Water Agency Board is asking Petaluma to approve Amendment 11 as is or they will direct county counsel to draw up a separate agreement to exclude Petaluma. The 90 days will allow time for a forum for all or a few of the water agency contractors and invite all of the water agency contractors and Sonoma County elected officials, local, county, and state to begin a water policy discussion. I also want a copy of this request sent to all the water contractors and all Sonoma County elected officials. The letter should also include the following information for their consideration. [BW Comment: Councilmember Torliatt's complete statement will be sent out immediately following this Council Meeting summary.] Briefly Councilmember Torliatt's statement: 1) Because this project will take 7 years, this is a reasonable request. This is a timely request regarding regional water policy. 2) The City of Sonoma has agreed to be the lead agency in this discussion. 3) The minutes of other water contractors' meetings reflect some of the same questions of ratepayer costs and conservation and have not been answered by the Water Agency. 4) A public discussion between elected officials and contractors has never taken place to discuss the vision of our county and the long term ramifications of Amendment 11. 5) The public should be given the opportunity to hear a discussion and gain an understanding of the issues of water supply and how it affects the Russian River habitat and the impact of the elimination of the Eel River flow. 6) The City of Petaluma believes that the Water Agency contractors must make every effort to work together and not exclude any contractor because of his concern about Amendment 11. 7) It is our duty to allow for an inclusive discussion among all of the contractors' elected bodies who are ultimately responsible to the taxpayers and ratepayers. 8) The Water Agency is basing its water calculation of use on General Plan projections that are out of date and are currently being redrawn by the two largest contractors, the Cities of Petaluma and Santa Rosa. 9) The water use calculations for the existing General Plan projections are for the single family dwelling. There is a desire in Sonoma County to build higher density housing that embraces smart growth and more sustainable principles which would require less water consumption. 10) We have not extinguished all the means of conservation and water efficiency to reduce the amount of water to be taken from the Russian River. 11) The ratepayers should have the information to understand who will be paying for the expansion of the water system and how much it will cost and be aware of who is paying for growth in our community. 12) It's going to cost the ratepayers more money to leave Petaluma out of the contract because it will take more resources and time to draw up new contracts, reallocate the costs of the project, and prepare a new EIR. 13) The cost to each ratepayer is still not defined and the public deserves an answer. 14) The Water Agency needs to quantify the monetary costs not just the effects of the degradation of the natural ecosystems of the Russian and Eel Rivers. 15) Amendment 11 is a Water Board policy that is fundamentally inconsistent with the values of sustainability adopted by the City of Petaluma to guide the revision of its General Plan. 16) The implementation of Amendment 11 will require the Water Agency to apply for state and federal funding to mitigate environmental damages at the cost of the taxpayers. 17) We need to prioritize the uses of any surplus water that is used out of our allocation. 18) Public awareness of the detrimental impacts of gravel mining in the Russian River is threatening the long-term viability of our water quality and may require the public to foot the bill for a $450,000,000 water treatment facility. In addition to that I didn't even address the groundwater issue. I wanted to articulate a little bit better my understanding of what is happening with the gravel mining industry and how it impacts our water supply. The gravel mining issue, I believe, is very important for the public to understand. The long-term impact and cost have not been fully articulated to the public. My understanding of the gravel mining impact is very simple. The way we extract water from the Russian River is from these huge caissons that are driven into the river through gravel beds which work as a natural filtration system that removes quote "the bad bugs out of our water." Chlorine is added to the water and it comes directly to each water contractor. At this point in time the state allows the Water Agency to continue to extract water from the Russian River because this natural filtration system is working. The problem is the gravel mining adds sediment to the gravel beds and interrupts the natural filtration system. Sometime in the future this natural filtration system will not work because of the sediment build up. And the state will require the Water Agency to build a $450,000,000 treatment facility at ratepayers' expense. We need to address this issue now rather than later. Let's help the environment not degrade it further. It is a reality we must deal with now, not in 20 or 30 years. In addition to all these issues, we have received correspondence from many elected officials who have had ___?__ conversations or they have raised questions regarding the Water Agency. I know Councilmembers Marsha Vas Dupre, Noreen Evans, Steve Rabinowitsh, Debora Fudge, Sam Salmon, Larry Robinson, Bill Roventini, Bob Anderson. The Rohnert Park City Council is agendizing this. The City of Sonoma sent a memo with interest. And there were two people on the Cotati City Council that had voted against this amendment. I believe it is time that we have a comprehensive regional discussion on water. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. [BW Comment: Councilmember Torliatt received a loud round of applause.] Councilmember: Are you asking the council to send this letter today? Councilmember Torliatt: I believe they need this information to be able to make a decision tomorrow because their staff is recommending that we make a decision by September 15th, and I'm saying because this process is going to take a minimum of 7 years to construct that we take 90 days to have an open discussion with other elected officials and the public. That it's going to absolutely better this process. Another Councilmember: I just want to be clear about the timing, and you would also add the discussion about sedimentation? And number 17, did you mean Petaluma needs to prioritize surplus water? Did you mean the water contractors need to prioritize their allocation? I think it is important to communicate directly to the board of supervisors, the directors of the Water Agency about exactly why we want to have a discussion about Amendment 11. Councilmember Keller: No less a person than Albert Einstein's brother was hired by the Water Agency in 1970 to review the impact of gravel mining. Basically, what he said was if you keep gravel mining you're going to lose your drinking water. I don't think they promote that information. And Dr. Robert Curry has estimated that gravel mining has caused the river level to drop between 12 and 20 feet. That has caused a loss of between a quarter million and half a million acre feet, 250,000 to 500,000 acre feet of storage have been lost to gravel mining. That's a couple of points I'd like to make. Also in a larger context, a friend sent me an article from the July issue of *Harpers* magazine called "Running Dry: What Happens When the World No Longer Has Enough Fresh Water?" It reiterates the idea that irrigation-based civilizations all failed because of over-salinazation of the land. This is a very good article for people to read to get the gist of the context under which this council is raising its objections. Councilmember Cader-Thompson: I want to talk about the cost of the project. The Water Agency cost projections were from 1998 money. Our flood-control project with the Corps has doubled in cost. If you're talking about $140 or $168 million dollars, you can double that. Councilmember Keller: I met on Friday morning with Randy Poole for two hours. We've taken quite a bit of static from the Water Agency. individually from the Board of Supervisors members, from the Santa Rosa Water Agency, from the *Argus Courier* on what's the matter with us? Why did you wait till NOW, to ask these questions and insist on answers? Why are we dragging our feet? Are we just a bunch of obstructionists? Or are we just stupid? And I recognize that over the past couple of years we've had a series of meetings with Water Agency staff including Randy Poole. A number of these questions have been asked. We have not been given answers. We've been given answers that are incomplete. We've been given answers that in my understanding are misleading: such simple things as knowing Marin Municipal wants to build a pipeline new from Kastania tank down to San Rafael or down to their distribution system. That was never revealed to us by Randy Poole or his staff. Randy Poole and his staff never revealed that Marin Municipal wanted double their out take from the system. Randy Poole has been asked and his staff has been asked over the past few years to comment please on information on the impact of system expansion on the Eel River and on the Russian River habitat and fishery. And we've gotten very incomplete answers. So having in mind getting to some of these questions, I sat down with Randy and some of his staff again and asked them my first question: So what is this going to cost? And he said, Well, the numbers are in the report. They're 1998 numbers. I said, Well, please bring them up to date. He said, I won't do that. You can have your staff. You can have Steve Simmons use the construction cost process. Maybe he'll come up with a few years inflation factor on that, and you'll get a number. I said that's not good enough for me. I want you to validate that number and I want you to validate it in writing. So I said again, What's it going to cost? At that point Randy told me, Go to hell. We're not doing any amendments to Eleven. Quote, Unquote. That was about 10 minutes into the meeting. I asked what the certainty was on any of the numbers? He said, There's no certainty because I don't know what will happen with Endangered Species Act. ...$150 to $160 million capital cost is being outlined in 1998 is as far as he would go. They're asking the ratepayers through the contracting agencies, everyone of us, to sign a blank check for the County Water Agency administered by the Board of Supervisors, acting as the administrators of the Agency to do their project as they see fit without any NOT TO EXCEED figures. Well, I think we've learned our lesson from the Corps project not to sign contracts that do not have NOT TO EXCEED figures. So we talked about timing. How long was this whole thing going to take? He said, South end of the county, Kastania Tank 2, that's 8 years if it was signed today. The parallel pipeline. 8 years. Maybe 12 years. Depends on where it goes, on what kind of acquisition problems they run into on land. How long would it take to finish out the Endangered Species Act questions? Biological assessments? Agreements with the Corps of Engineers? The other commenting agencies? We set it up 10 to 12 years until there is a recovery plan in place accepted by all the agencies and theoretically the contractors and ratepayers. At the cost perhaps of $3 or $4 million dollars. Plus local costs on top of that for recoveries of another $1 or $2 million. How long did it take for FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to finish the application of the transfer of Potter Valley of instream flows that have to be in the Eel River? Another 3 to 4 years. Randy Poole is proposing tomorrow morning to the Board of Supervisors acting as the Water Agency that they skip Amendment 11 as it's already been signed, give us until September 15th, and if that doesn't happen, go individually city by city to come up with a City-Water Agency Agreement on the improvements to the system. Each city individually, each contractor. Contrary to some of the speculation that's been bandied about, this city will not lose in the interim a drop of water that we have already allocated to us contractually by Amendment 10. That's good for another 36 years until the Year 2035. It's acknowledged by staff, it's acknowledged by our attorney. Randy Poole's insistence that we want to get the water from Novato for North Marin Water District for Rohnert Park. That was done by Letter Agreement by the city and those agencies allowing us to use the surplus at our pleasure until we needed that water. Randy said, Fine, you can do that but you're going to end up in court. Ultimately, I asked Randy, what did he hear from Petaluma? That's our concern. And he said, Growth is an issue. It's a hidden agenda. Mandatory conservation. Tiered water rates. Landscape and seriscaping. Toilet rebates. Deferred facilities. Eel River diversion. Upper Reach needs of the Russian River. Needs of the Eel River which is Mendocino and Humboldt Counties. Regional demands. Fisheres recovery on the Eel River, Russian River and Laganitis (sp?) Creek. Working with Marin County and Smart Growth. Well, you've heard the gist of our discussion. What about it? Where's the discussion? He said, Well, that's not my business to bring to the water contractors. I said, All right, it's not your job. He said, My bosses have not told me to take these issues around to the other contractors. I said, What about you, Randy? He said, Well, it is my business to deal with this stuff. I just want each contractor to sign the contract. So Randy has acknowledged that these issues are important, but the Supes refuse to discuss it because it's a political hot potato. They've made it very clear. These are issues they don't want to talk about because they're hard issues. You don't want to talk about where your water is coming from the next 20 or 30 years because we've run out. And then what happens to the economic engine of the North Bay? Are we going to go get water from the Columbia? Are we going to go take it back from Southern California? Because these are tough issues and water without personalities, without politics is a tough issue in the West or anywhere. And if you look at the magazine article this is an issue not just in the West but throughout the rest of the country because there are changing patterns of drought, and it's becoming a major major issue. Politically these are very difficult issues. This council has had the guts to face these issues and not let them get buried under the table by the arm-twisting of Randy Poole and his staff. And I am very glad to see and I wholeheartedly support Pam Torliatt's request to bring this out on top of the table for the rest of the water contractors to discuss. These issues won't go away, and it's only by intelligent open discussion that we're ever going to make our way through them and wherever the answers are, we can't do it behind closed doors and under the table anymore and that's what Randy Poole and his staff and what the Board of Supervisors have left us. It's not acceptable to me. They have twisted our arms to sign contracts. I think they have been deceptive. Whether or not fraud is involved in that, it's worth taking a closer look at that because they have failed to give us accurate information on all contracts to intelligently and openingly sign these contracts. And it's time to do that. Thank you. [BW Comment: A loud round of applause for Councilmember David Keller.] Mayor Thompson: I'm going to open it up to public comments. First Comment: Welcome back from vacation, David. It must have been a hell of a breakfast. I want to commend you for doing what is in the best interest of our children, our community and our county. It is shocking in this era of shrinking resources that the first response is to build another pipeline. Our response should be to modify Sonoma County's water policy. Since Amendment 11 is the long-term management plan, it is the vehicle in which we must create an integrated resource management system. Are we going to wait 16 years to build another water management system? Many people have said we should wait on Amendment 12 to do conservation planning. This is not true. Conservation management must be built into any water management plan. It cannot be tacked on as an afterthought. Public Comment: Amendment 11 is seemingly too complex to get one's arms around in order to render an informed opinion. They are moving huge quantities of natural resources from distant watersheds into a huge deal. As an investor, I want to know what my money is going to do. I don't want the Russian River Valley and Potter Valley to become another Owens Valley of the past. And Telecom Valley to become Silicon Valley. We have the opportunity to capture the best of all of those. Geoff Cartwright, Petaluma: I have another page from the Sonoma County Water Agency"s Water Project EIR: Page 122, Impact 6.3-14: The water project in combination with related projects would result in the use of substantial amounts of fuel and electrical energy. It says it's significant. In the mitigation column it says, none available. [Another example] Increasing releases from Lake Sonoma to satisfy demands of the water project and other water diversions while maintaining minimum stream flows will impact recreational use of Lake Sonoma, and the impact is significant and the mitigation is none available. This EIR is full of this. This is about development. Let's understand that. It's not, Hey, we need water! This is about getting off the paper the infrastructure for the developers so they can go 500 million miles ahead with their development. They don't care about the fact that they're going to run out of water because it's been pointed out that the water's only good for about 30 years for this project. It doesn't take into consideration that we have wet periods and droughts. I'm glad that you're revisiting this and I hope that all the other councils will get on board and take a serious look at this. Thank you very much. Bruce Hagen: What's more important to us than water? We're going to bring all this water in and we don't even know how to take advantage of what we've got. It's the search for power and wealth and the story of 20th Century American life. The bottom line is that Amendment 11 projects the myth of more water than we have. It says nothing about the present and future damage to the Eel and all the people and business suffering from its demise. I'm really glad you guys resisted the inertia of this stealth amendment. I never heard anything about this. The last time I heard anything about water was in Jane Hamilton's supervisorial campaign. I welcome a full and open discussion similar to what was promised around the parks issue. I don't think Smart Growth is smart when it involves stealing somebody else's water. I really support the reconsideration of this. Thank you very much. John Chane: I really appreciate the chance to revisit this. I do know Randy Poole and I don't trust Randy Poole. Do you think he's worried about the little guy? This issue is a development issue like Geoff said. Elaine Belsky, Marin County: Just to let you know that not all of us live in palaces. Most of our valley is 1930 summer homes. I'd like to commend Mr. Keller on keeping his cool at that meeting. Unbelievable what he said to you. Just to update you on the Marin Municipal pipeline: trying to get funding and put it out to bid. There's an interesting Environmental Summit of 22 groups from Marin, Sonoma, and San Francisco Counties that's been meeting to discuss what we want to do about it and gathering research. One of my jobs was to do research on water quality of the Russian River: What goes into it and what's left in in after the treatment process? A number of things came from that. Two emerging issues are wastewater treatment and water treatment and what is missed in the treatment process that gets through into the tap water. Pharmaceuticals get into the waste stream. It isn't clear what this means. Estrogen is getting through the treatment process. It looks like it's damaging the fish. In some instances the male fish are changed to females and it's affecting their sperm count and/or the growth of additional organs. These are early warning indicators of what's possible for humans. The Russian River has something like 26 million gallons of water a day that goes into it. I want to thank you for slowing down this process and giving the rest of us time to catch us to what has been a backroom deal. In Marin, nobody heard of this Amendment 11 getting through the Marin Municipal Water District. It just went right through past us. You're giving us an opportunity to take a hard look at this. Thank you. Brian Moynihan: I'd like to address the issue of reconsideration. A lot of the issues facing our community like housing, population growth, transportation are regional problems. You need to work with regional agencies. It doesn't help to villainize Randy Poole or Mike Kerns. I think they're doing their best to make a good decision. We need to work with all the alphabet organizations. I think this a bellwether decision. With that, I'm a little concerned. I don't think we can always be a fly in the ointment. We need to get along. For some reason we didn't work on the 11th Amendment. We need to begin work on the 12th Amendment starting tomorrow. I don't think we should study things to death. I request you vote no on the motion in front of you and work to get along with our neighbors. Mayor Thompson closed public comment. The motion is to approve Councilmember Torliatt's statement to be sent to the Directors/ Supervisors of the Water Agency and all the water contractors and elected officials of Sonoma County, city and state governments is on the floor. The second is the agendized item. Councilmember Torliatt: I just want to address having relationships with other governmental agencies and bodies. I believe that's exactly what I've put forward in this request to the Board of Supervisors to allow us 90 days in order to be able to talk to all the other elected officials and contractors together for the first time about Amendment 11 instead of having a divide and conquer type of philosophy in approving Amendment 11. The spirit of this is to do that. Mayor Thompson said that he disagreed, that the spirit of this was going on all night. Councilmember Keller: I asked Randy Poole if he had a draft agenda for Amendment 12. He's been positing this as a place where we can have this discussion. He said, No, I don't have a draft of Amendment 12. I said, Can you write us a note? He said No. I said, Where is it? He said, It's all in my head. I said, Well, what do you propose being covered in Amendment 12? He said, Well, the MOU and some additional __?__ of Healdsburg and that's it. So this hasn't registered as an item of priorities for Randy Poole. I think to assume that we can get a discussion of this under some Amendment 12 that is directed by the Board of Supes as they have directed Amendment 11 ain't gonna happen. I talked to two supervisors who said just moving forward is difficult. And they're the bosses of Randy Poole. The first item for a vote: Reconsideration of Amendment 11. The vote is 5 - 1. Mayor Thompson voting NO, Healy absent Councilmember Torliatt: The motion to send the letter is already out there. This motion is to put the item on the agenda. The mayor made the motion. That passed. Mayor: Now the motion to send the letter to the Supervisors acting as the Water Agency, to the water contractors and to the elected officials. That motion passed 5-1. Mayor Thompson NO [The mayor went on to the next item. We who came for the water issue left.] ___________________________