Utility Advisory Committee

City Hall Meeting Minutes 601 4th Avenue E Olympia, WA 98501 Utility Advisory Committee Contact: Andy Haub 360.570.3795 Thursday, February 5, 2015 5:40 PM City Hall, Room 207 1. CALL TO ORDER Chair Curtz called the meeting to order at 5:41 p.m. 1.A ROLL CALL Present: 11 - Chair Thad Curtz, Vice Chair Margaret Drennan, Committee Member Michelle Barnett, Committee Member David Dunn, Committee Member Steve Fossum, Committee Member Dever Kuni, Committee Member Carol Law, Committee Member Carole Richmond, Committee Member Jennifer Sievert, Committee Member Loralei Walker, and Committee Member Chris Ward 2. APPROVAL OF AGENDA The agenda was approved. 3. APPROVAL OF MINUTES 4A. 15-0127 Approval of January 7, 2015 UAC Meeting Minutes The minutes were approved as amended. 4. PUBLIC COMMENT - None 6. ANNOUNCEMENTS FROM UTILITIES ADVISORY COMMITTEE (UAC) AND STAFF Water Resources Director Andy Haub noted the change in the schedule for the Low Impact Development (LID) item on the UAC's draft workplan. Staff decided to adjust the LID code revision project schedule to occur six months later than planned. The LID item will come before the UAC during the months of May, September, October, November and December 2015. He distributed the revised draft 2015-2016 UAC workplan to the UAC members. Mr. Haub announced the annual meeting of the advisory committee chairs and the General Government committee. The meeting will take place Wednesday, March 18 from 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. at City Hall. Either Chair Curtz or Vice Chair Drennan will attend. City of Olympia Page 1 Utility Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes February 5, 2015 Mr. Haub noted the General Government Committee is working on the advisory committee vacancies and re-appointments. Mr. Haub announced an Arbor Day volunteer tree planting event planned for March 28. The event is a collaboration between the City departments of Public Works, Parks and Urban Forestry (Community Planning & Development). He will send the UAC more information soon. Mr. Haub announced students from the University of Washington Engineering Department are holding a design competition and Olympia and sea level rise is the focus of the competition. He said he would keep the UAC apprised of results. He recently gave the students a tour of Olympia's waterfront/shoreline and spoke about climate change and sea level rise in Olympia. Vice Chair Drennan shared an idea. She suggested staff create a document that gives a summary and outcome of the various agenda items that come before the UAC. She felt this would be helpful to new members. Mr. Haub said he would give the idea some thought and would bring back a draft format for the UAC to review. Chair Curtz said he would forward the UAC an article about a city in Denmark that lets their streets flood and turn into canals during heavy rains. UAC member Dunn said he would forward to the UAC an article from the City of Cleveland. The article stated low impact development technology is cheaper to build, but takes time and money to maintain. 6A. PLANNING COMMISSION UPDATE Planning Commissioner Carole Richmond gave an update on the Olympia Planning Commision (OPC) meetings. The Commissioners recently attended a Thurston Regional Planning Commission (TRPC) urban corridors meeting. The meeting was a joint meeting of planning commissions from the three cities. The OPC is developing their work plan for 2015-2016. Ms. Richmond will send a summary table of the work plan to UAC members. Some of the items on the upcoming OPC workplan are: 1) Updates to the Olympia Municipal Code per the Comprehensive Plan update, 2) Work on the Action Plan which implements the Comprehensive Plan, 3) Subarea plans (the Downtown Strategy plan is considered a subarea plan) and Downtown Strategy briefings. Ms. Richmond will send information to the UAC regarding a briefing done by Community Planning and Development (CP&D) Senior Planner Amy Buckler on the Downtown Strategy. The OPC will hold a public hearing regarding re-zones and whether to consider hearing re-zone requests twice a year instead of once a year. Ms. Richmond noted the City Council adopted a resolution for the community renewal City of Olympia Page 2 Utility Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes February 5, 2015 area on February 3. The resolution provides the City with more authority for public/private partnerships. The next step in this process is to solicit proposals from developers. 7. BUSINESS OF THE EVENING 7A. 15-0128 Reclaimed Water - Resource Cost Considerations Drinking Water Planning Senior Program Specialist Donna Buxton presented information to the UAC as a follow up to the Water System Plan discussion in fall 2014. Based on UAC feedback from fall 2014, two questions were posed to the City's consultant, HDR: 1) Is reclaimed water use for non-potable purposes an economical means of reducing potable water use? Answer/results: No. Based on the analysis done by the consultant, the unit cost of delivering reclaimed water is $0.0141 per gallon compared to the unit cost of delivering potable water is $0.0055 per gallon. 2) How does the cost of using reclaimed water for non-potable purposes compare to the cost of using it for groundwater? Answer/results: Based on the cursory analysis, it appears more cost effective to use reclaimed water for groundwater recharge as opposed to using it for non-potable purposes. A UAC member asked why the CIty didn't do these calculations before they invested in reclaimed water infrastructure. Ms. Buxton explained that ten years ago, the City didn't have a 50-year water supply secured for Olympia. Also, the State received grants that paid for some of the infrastructure. And the notion of using reclaimed water for groundwater recharge was not common practice. The UAC thanked Ms. Buxton for providing the update on the reclaimed water financial analysis. The information was provided. 7B. 15-0129 Utility Green Power Update Public Works Program Specialist Danelle MacEwen briefed the UAC on the Water Resources utilities voluntarily (since 2006) purchasing 100 percent of its power from Puget Sound Energy’s (PSE) Green Power Program. The Utility Advisory Committee asked staff to research additional green power options. Ms. MacEwen explained the cost comparisons of purchasing renewable energy certificates (RECs) through PSE's Green Power program, directly from PSE through their new direct purchasing program, or from some other source such as the Bonneville Environmental Foundation. Following discussion, Chair Curtz agreed to write a letter to the City Council on behalf City of Olympia Page 3 Utility Advisory Committee Meeting Minutes February 5, 2015 of the UAC. The UAC is supportive of purchasing RECs directly from PSE or Bonneville Power Administration. They will also recommend to the Council an ongoing policy that any savings the utility realizes from this shift should continue to be applied to reducing the City's carbon emissions. The UAC will recommend some quantitative analysis of whether or not it would be more cost effective for the City to advance our goals in this area by buying renewable energy certificates more cheaply or by investing the money in further City efficiency measures. At this point, it seems as if we don’t yet have an informed basis for making those decisions. The information was provided. 9. ADJOURNMENT The meeting adjourned at 7:12 p.m. City of Olympia Page 4