Utility master plans remaining slides

2:35:30Well do we want to finish the R. I was gonna ask if

2:35:33the board wanted to finish the R item from this morning with utilities. I think we had two slides remaining plus some conversation. Thank you.

2:35:47Thank you, Commissioner. So I'll be brief. Uh Adolfo Gonzalez, Utilities Engineering and Contract Management Director. Uh I'm gonna go to just the last couple of slides in our presentation.

2:36:01Cool.

2:36:08Okay.

2:36:18Okay, what you heard today was that we look these master plans to plan out for the short term as well as the long term, twenty plus years, as to what our uh water, sewer, and reclaimed water infrastructure needs to look like and how we can fund it. We've taken that and essentially concluded that based on the continued rate of growth, we're still gonna need more uh capacity in terms of water supply, capacity in terms of transmitting water and sewer to uh facilities and capacity our wastewater treatment plans to handle all the growth plus our existing customers. We

2:36:49plan to do that by implementing a series of capital projects over the next five years to handle the growth related uh part of the business in addition to the improvements we need to continue making to our uh existing infrastructure for renewal and replacement of existing facilities. Just the growth related aspects of it uh equals about $1.8 billion over the next ten years. uh in the short term of the next five years it's about a one billion dollar capital plan. Uh for comparison, our total five year capital improvement program that we're presenting to you this summer

2:37:20for the fiscal year 27 through 31 period, I believe is $1.4 billion. So 900 million of that or almost a billion of that is related to growth. The other 400 million is related to renewal replacement of existing infrastructure. And We'll most likely need some type of going out to the bond market in the next couple of years to fund some of this work. Where before we were able to do uh pay as you go in terms of the revenue received from connection fees and our ratepayers as well. But we definitely think that it will be uh we'll need to go out to get additional bonds to

2:37:50uh secure this financing for all of the entire capital improvement.

2:37:53Well, I'm not even sure if we'll do bonds if we have a Yeah they I think that's the right-of-way have their own revenue source so they it's not property taxes.

2:38:05Let's talk.

2:38:07On on your on your previous slide that you're missing an L on the word reclaimed.

2:38:11Excuse me?

2:38:11On the previous slide you're missing an L on the reclaimed

2:38:15On the reclaim water, we're looking at two things.

2:38:18The letter L. Spell wrong.

2:38:21Oh, I apologize. We'll correct that in the official record.

2:38:25And you have recamed instead of reclaimed.

2:38:28We'll correct it. Thank you. Um last thing is what wanna tell you what we're working on. The first thing is this year we're starting uh an update to the connection fee study to determine what the connection fee should be so that growth pays for growth. The other couple of things we're doing is we're just starting this summer an alternative ruthing water supply study. We're looking at alternative water supply sources. Surface water, uh stormwater harvesting, groundwater, anything we can. Can add to the reclaimed water supply network to provide that future supply for our customers.

2:38:58And the third thing is we're going to try to balance the need to expand possibly three wastewater treatment plants over the next five to seven years by moving flows from one wastewater plant to the other with the existing infrastructure and possibly some new transmission pipelines in the area. That should what the intent there is to try to um maximize the permitted capacity we have across all five plants so that we're not stuck in one particular plant with a uh a constraint that could requ uh uh limit growth in that area as well. With that, uh your team is here

2:39:28if you have any other questions for us.

2:39:34No, I I just hope that we uh take all the input you had from us to kind of like go into it. I know you had that study from Newport Ritchie and you were right as far as it it dealt with the heavy flows or the heavy storms coming in, but if there's some provisions to actually help that situation good. And if it is somehow beneficial to look at the small plants as bigger plants as we go down the road to keep them in place. So we keep the asset if we have it, if we don't need to get rid of it, but at the same time, uh just keep studying everything.

2:40:01Yes, sir. We'll take that into consideration and report back to you sometime later this year.

2:40:05Okay. That's all? All right, sorry we should give me two extra minutes. Thank you. Thank you.

2:40:12You got to sit through the whole afternoon for that.