Thank you.

Thank you, Chair.

We're ready to start when you are.

Good evening and welcome to the Wednesday, February 18th, 2026 meeting of the Preservation Commission.

The meeting is now called to order.

Will the clerk please call the role to establish a quorum?

Thank you, Chair.

Commissioners, please unmute your microphones.

Vice Chair Merker.

Here.

Commissioner Ambosher?

Here.

Commissioner Ricka?

Here.

Commissioner Cross?

Here.

Commissioner McSlavkin?

Here.

Chair Nyer.

I'm so sorry.

I beg your pardon.

We have a quorum.

Thank you.

I would like to remind members of the public and chambers that if you would like to speak on an agenda item to please turn in a speaker slip before the item begins.

After the item is called, we will no longer accept speaker slips.

And you will have two minutes to speak once you are called.

We're now going to proceed with the agenda.

And we're going to start with the land acknowledgement.

So if you're able, if you could please rise.

To the original people of this land, the Nisane people of the Southern Maidu Valley and Plains Miwok, Patwin Winton peoples, and the people of the Wilton Rancheria, Sacramento's only federally recognized tribe.

May we acknowledge and honor the Native people who came before us and still walk beside us today on these ancestral lands by choosing to gather together today in the active practice of acknowledgement and appreciation for Sacramento's indigenous people's history, contributions, and lives.

Thank you.

Would you please stay standing for the pledge?

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.

So next is the approval of the consent calendar.

Clerk, are there any members of the public who wish to speak on the consent calendar?

Thank you, Chair.

I have no speaker slips for this item.

Okay.

Um, thank you.

Are there any commissioners who wish to speak on this item?

Is there a motion and a second?

Yes.

Sorry.

Yes, I would like to uh make a motion that we approve and adopt the commission meeting for minutes.

I'll second.

Thank you.

That was a motion by Commissioner Cross, second by Commissioner McSlavkin.

Umers, please unmute your microphones.

Um Vice Chair Merker.

Yes.

Commissioner Ricca.

Yes.

Yes.

Commissioner McSlavkin.

Yes.

Chair Ambacher.

Yes.

Motion passes.

Thank you.

Thank you.

So now proceed to the discussion calendar.

Um, item two is the water treatment plans resiliency and improvements project.

Um, is there a staff presentation?

There we go.

Hi.

Um, my name is Megan Thomas.

I'm the project manager for the water uh program for the treatments resilience.

Um for those who are not familiar with me and recognize a few faces.

Um we were here last year to kind of introduce you to our project.

You're gonna see a lot of familiar information we gave last time just to kind of refresh everyone's mind of why we're here, and uh please by all means um let us know if you have any questions.

So today we're going to revisit um basically our project in the background, um, the SAC plant historical significance.

Sagamar River Water Treatment Plant, apologize.

Uh space limitations we do have at this treatment plant, and then our projected uh impacted resources.

Finally, unlike last time, we are gonna be asking requesting a recommendation from you today.

Uh hopefully everyone's had a chance to review the packet we have provided with the final EIR and all the supporting documentation for that to understand our situation and the project we are proposing to have.

So, first of all, the background.

Uh, we all know drinking water is a very, very valuable resource to everybody, and we try to think ahead.

Uh we look for a long-term reliable and safe drinking water supply and the supporting infrastructure to support it.

Uh, for if you haven't watched the news, obviously, there's a lot of new things always happening.

There's always a fear of drought, uh, the climate change impacts to the reservoirs and the uh snowfall, uh, the economic future and development in the city of Sacramento, which we do have to support, aging infrastructure, wildfires that affect the river water quality that we have to pull into our treatment plants.

All the regulations, environmental as well as drinking water regulations, are changing on a day-to-day basis.

We do have algantoxin risks in the rivers, which I'm sure you've heard about every so often when in warm summer, along with the taste and odors that can come with that.

We also have to worry about in Sacramento flood, and we have to be resilient against that as well as water efficiency to make sure we're using our water properly.

To look at all that, we are taking our project as a programming approach, looking at our entire system and not just at one minor issue, because it doesn't all work together, it doesn't work.

So we are going to be addressing our system improvements holistically, thoughtfully phasing the improvements in their implementation.

As part of the water plus phase one efforts, we are looking at the implementation of a new river intake, improvements for resiliency and expansion of our Sacramento River Water Treatment Plant, our ferro and water treatment plant resiliency needs, implementing ozone, which allows us to treat for things we currently can't treat for, as well as adds it at another level of disinfection opportunity for us to be resilient when we have chlorine issues and delivery issues.

Chlorine conversion, which basically we're translating from chlorine gas into sodium hypochlorite, which is basically liquid bleach to allow us for more efficiency and more resiliency of our chemical supply.

And then finally, our distribution system improvements to get water from our treatment plants, especially if we're talking about additional demand, to wherever we need to put that demand.

So today we're gonna be focusing on the Sacramento River water treatment plant, specifically the historic significance of that facility.

So back in 2011, the facility was identified as historic landmark and listed in the Sacramento Register of Historic and Cultural Resources.

You can see in the pink boundary, this is our second treatment plant facility.

Within there, we have five listed significant features of which are all registered as historic.

The first one is the pumping station, which used to be our old system high pressure pump station that allowed water to go to distribution.

Next to it is the head building, also we call the head house.

It was the old administration building.

It's also supplied for water testing as well as a backwash feature associated with the neighboring filters, which is the concrete filter building, and that is a filtration system required for a treatment process for us to do provide drinking water.

Next, we have the coagulant building still in use today for providing us dosing supply for our treatment process.

And finally, the water taking structure, which is off-site.

It is no longer in use.

It was taken out of service when we got the new intake installed back in 2004.

So space limitations.

This is one of the biggest reasons why we have to worry about making everything fit.

The current facility you see highlighted today is in green is what it takes to treat 160 million gallons of water per day.

That's what this facility can do.

We need to get to 310.

So that's almost double of what we currently can do.

As you can see, space is pretty tight based on our limitations.

And just to kind of highlight again where our historic features are located, they're highlighted here.

So when you throw that in with the treatment plant, there's not a whole lot of space to work with to double things up.

So now the proposed improvements.

See things shift from green to blue.

These are things that we have to update to it in order to treat the 310 million gallons production per day.

You will see a few different things added here, including an ozone system, which we are talking about for additional disinfection opportunities and treatment opportunities for the plant.

You will see a couple of the reservoirs had to be replaced because they're undersized for us to treat that kind of volume of water, and some additional assets to basically handle the volume of water and sediment we have to treat out from the water with new dewatering systems.

So the impacted resources.

This is always the hardest part to talk about because trying to highlight where we are in the facility is important.

The filters are the impacted resource that we are concerned about.

They are basically in the middle of the entire treatment plant process.

And as you can see here, I've highlighted here so you can see what the future, basically, existing to future.

We don't really have another place to put new filters that meet regulatory requirements.

The existing filters can't be used today, they do not meet regulations, and we need to upgrade them to match the ability to work with the existing process as it is today.

To kind of highlight a little closer, what you can't see on the picture is the new filters would look more like the filters to the left.

As you can see, there's kind of channels, there's a lot less plumbing, and it's a very neat feature that is something we can manage water production and turbidity and monitoring of the water quality leaving the filters.

The old filters you can see is really worn down.

It uses old plumbing and concepts that we can't use today for regulatory requirements.

And for what you can't really can't see is below ground.

These filters go quite a bit below grade just to function.

So the left side is the new facility, the stuff we have today that we actually operate.

It goes 16 feet below grade, and that includes the plumbing and the piping and all the systems that operate it.

The existing filter complex that we need to demolish is 20 feet below grade, which conflicts with everything we need to put in new to meet regulation.

So there's really no way to save any aspect of it.

The whole thing does have to be replaced in order just to function as a filtration facility.

To help out to kind of understand how water moves to understand why I don't have another way to move water through this facility, a little motion action here on the slide.

So first and foremost, water comes from the intake and into what we call the grit basin.

This is where all the heavy solids come out.

This is all the sand and the grit that the rest of the process really doesn't want to see because chlorine can only do so much with big items.

In the grip base, or right past the grip basin, we have what's called the flash mix, and that's where we dose a lot of chemicals in order to have the flocculation process work out.

That flocculation process allows it to take out the smaller finds and settle out in what we call a sedimentation basin.

This gets the water to look really clear.

It's not quite clear enough to meet regulation, but it gets out most of the stuff so the chlorine can do its job.

Then it goes to the filters.

The filters is a polisher, as the polisher, it meets the regulatory requirements for turbidity view.

So basically, when you look at a bottle of water and you can actually see it not looking clear, that's turbidity of five NTUs units, as turbidity units.

We have to get it below 0.1.

So you will never see anything in that water by the time it leaves our facility.

And that's what the filters can do for us.

From there, it goes to what we call the contact basin, and that's a minimum requirement.

We have to store water there before, so it has enough time with the chlorine before it goes out to the public.

And then we store the residual water and move it to the system through our high lift pump station as demands required.

So very simple process.

But when we expand it, it pretty much has to do the same thing.

Water can't divert in a different direction without conflicting and requiring a lot more land than I've got available to me.

So with the new intake, same concept.

It goes to the grip basins.

In this case, we have to add a blending system because we have two different intakes, two different water qualities we now have to address.

So we now have a blending unit plus grip basins.

And from there it goes to flocculation.

Just to make this fit with the ozone, we have to shrink the existing sedimentation basins and chain them, change them into what we call plate settlers.

It's much more compact version of a sedimentation, but definitely more modern technology, but it will allow us to do the same amount of work in a lot less space, which allows us room for ozone on the site.

Now the ozone is going between the sedimentation and the filters, which allows us to really get that last bit of disinfection in there before we do the final polishing of it.

But as you can see, the ozones for the new additional sedimentation basins and ozone systems are right next to the filters.

I really can't move around that.

I have to go through it.

From the filters, it goes to our secondary contact basin along with the first one.

With that volume of water, I need two of them to get enough storage for the chlorine contact time, and then additional storage to handle the demand requirements.

And then we have a secondary pump station to get water out to get to the distribution system.

So hopefully this helps kind of dictate how we have to put a lot of things in a really small space and really don't have a whole lot of options.

Now one of the things we want to make sure is we are only needing to affect the filter building.

There is an adjacent common wall associated with the head house that we do need to take down.

Our plan is to return it to looking like the head house walls and matching what exists there today, and making sure the repairs are consistent with the US Secretary of Interior standards for the treatment of historic properties.

The new filter building to give you an idea of how much space we really have is we have about five feet for the new filter building.

So we don't have a whole lot of space.

So we took a very big um perspective in our EIR to make sure we're protecting all historic resources and making sure we get everything back up to where it is today with the historic aspects on site.

There is one feature that we're going to bring up, and it's only because it was brought to our attention in a Caltrans project.

David and Caltrans project decided to list something on our behalf as a potential feature, even though it isn't one.

Obviously, it's more close to the freeway than anything else, so they decided to throw it in for us.

So we're just bringing it to you to make sure we're not hiding anything.

It's like, no, we we trust it's an old reservoir, but we need to improve it.

The existing reservoir really can't handle what we need it to do today.

There's a lot of groundwater out there, I'm sure you can imagine with the high river levels.

Groundwater is pretty shallow.

If we have anyone's ever visited the site, it really basically surfaces at some of the areas in our facility.

So we can't handle that uplift with the existing tank.

It was never designed for it.

So we need an upgraded version for the tank.

And as you can see here, there's nothing really to see.

It's all underground, 30 feet underground.

Uh, and I'll carved rock to kind of protect the feature, but there is not a feature there to really list.

So we made note of it in our EIR, make sure it wasn't hidden, but noting that there is no historical registry for it, and there is no historical feature associated with it.

So with that, um, we are here today asking and requesting a recommendation for city council to certify our final environmental impact report for the water treatment plants resiliency improvement project, adopt the findings and statement of overriding considerations for significant and unavoidable impacts to historical historical resources, and then finally to approve the water treatment plants resiliency and improvements project.

Again, hopefully everyone had a chance to look at the final EIR and all the comments associated with that.

We only had five for project this big, that's actually really good for us, and all of them pretty status quo for basically any project working uh in an area.

So with that, I'm willing to take any questions you might have.

We do have representation from our ESA who's been who are environmental specialists on this project.

So if you have any specific problems and questions, I can always bring them up, other than that.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Um, Clerk, do we have any members of the public who wish to speak on this item?

Um thank you, Chair.

I do not have any speaker slips for this item.

Thank you.

Are there any commissioners who would like to speak?

I have a question about the pump house or pump station, depending on what we're going on.

Um will there be any changes?

I I understand from figure three, seven point-one that it's gonna be very, very close to a proposed new building, but I didn't see that on the um the presentation.

Yes.

Well, as I was mentioning before on the sorry, this is not looking at it.

I apologize.

Um, as I was mentioning uh before on the um when we're talking about the space availability, our interest is not to harm any existing buildings.

We're gonna basically all our mitigation is protecting all historical assets.

The only one we have to harm in this case is the filter building.

So the pump house is not being affected by our project.

We are hoping to do some improvements to basically kind of fresh refreshen it on the interior, make it more useful than it is today, which it's not really being used today.

That's with the rest of the department a few years ago, and that that was a really interesting space.

Um what will you be using it for in the future?

What we're hoping any harm to basically take advantage of some opportunities to provide better tours.

Um right now there's no ADA access for some of these facilities.

Basically, in short, we have no ramps, it's historic, right?

We don't have a whole lot to work with.

So we are we are looking at as part of some project elements to basically refresh that and make that a useful space in some cases for trainings in some cases for tours, so that's more useful to us and not just sitting there taking up space that as you can see is really needed for all of our facilities.

What will be be the building immediately to the north of it that we can see on 37-1?

So I'm going to have to pick up picture and hopefully you can kind of point me out what's picture that is.

So the dotted green rectangle is an existing building you really can't see in the trees.

Oh, so in the trees, there is what we call an engineering engineering admin building.

It currently houses about five uh office spaces.

We are planning to replace that with a new maintenance shop.

So that building is not historic.

I believe it was built in the late 70s.

Yeah, it doesn't look like a trailer.

Um so our plan is to actually take that out and put the use of that into our new maintenance building, which will not be next to the high lift pump station.

Okay, thank you.

That that's for helping.

I'm trying to figure out what's going on.

That answers my question.

It's not um it's not noted on that particular figure because that figure is just pointing out historic resources.

Have any other comments?

Um is there a motion and a second for this item?

I will move to make a recommendation to city council to uh move forward with uh approval of the EIR and um the findings of the uh uh impacts and the water treatment plant improvement project.

I second that.

Okay, that was a motion by Commissioner Merker, Vice Chair Merker rather, and Commissioner Cross, second rather.

Thank you.

Commissioners, please unmute your microphones.

Vice Chair Merker?

Yes.

Commissioner Rika?

Yes.

Commissioner Cross, yes, Commissioner McSlavkin.

Yes, and Chair Ombacher, yes.

Thank you.

The motion passes.

So the next item on the agenda is the director's report.

Um, do we have a director's report?

Thank you, Chair.

I have no director's report this evening.

Okay.

Um the last item, or excuse me, do we have um any commissioner comments that are not on the agenda you'd like to discuss?

You guys are making it easy.

Okay, then the last item is public comments.

Um, not a matter is not on the agenda.

Um Clerk, do we have I do not have any speaker slips on this item either?

Thank you.

And I think that concludes the agenda.

Thank you, everyone, and the meeting is adjourned.

Um,