Of the water committee for the city of Sacramento.

Will the clerk please call role and establish form?

Councilmember Gara.

Here.

And Chair Harris.

Here.

And for the record, Councilmember Ashby will be absent.

Okay, thank you very much.

I think we'll dispense with the Pledge of Allegiance since it's just the two of us.

And we can move right into our discussion calendar.

And we can start with number one if you care to read it, Mindy.

Thank you.

Item number one is Department of Utilities Sustainability Policy Oral Report.

And for the record, there are no callers on this item.

Thank you.

And Roshni is uh presenting.

Hello, Rashni.

How are you?

I'm good, Councilmember Jeff Harris and Councilmember Gera, it's good to see you both.

Yeah, it's been a while.

It's great to speak here.

Likewise.

Let me start the presentation.

If I can figure this one out.

Okay.

So good afternoon, uh, both of you.

It's good to see you both, like I said.

Um, so just as an introduction, my name is Roshni Das, and I'm the sustainability program manager with the Department of Utilities.

Um, so today we are going to present, I'm going to present to you the um uh the department sustainability policy that is currently under development.

We are we are, I would say 95% done with it, but we wanted to bring it to the committee and give you an update on what we are planning to uh capture in the policy.

So just to start with, uh you know, our mission is to provide our services in a fiscally and environmentally sustainable manner.

One of our strategic goals is sustainability.

Um, and so and we have laid out some very decisive action items to address climate change in the coming years.

So from the city side, we have seen a lot of leadership to address climate change and greenhouse gas emissions, the mayor's uh goal of carbon zero and the climate emergency.

Um, what we are trying to do to do trying to do with this policy is that we are trying to interpret these goals and objectives in a manner that is applicable to the water sector.

When I say water, water, wastewater, and stormwater, and demonstrate leadership.

This will also help us meet the city and communities' expectations to address climate change.

So the policy at a high level, this is how we have laid it out.

Um, it has background purpose, some explanations of the key terms and the actual policy and the sources we are referring to.

So on the background, um, we start by providing the context to the policy with with current climate change impacts and some forecast that we are going to face in the near future.

The national and regional climate change assessment warned that extreme weather and climate-related events will cause substantial damage to the US economy and human health.

And interestingly enough, 93% of those impacts could be seen in the water sector through supply reliability and quality issues.

Um next slide, I will try to highlight some of these higher climate change challenges that um we as water planners could face.

Um so the overall temperature increase is associated with extreme heat days, warm nights, heat waves, and heat-related damage to infrastructure.

So Sacramento is not a stranger to heat waves, but while we face, let's say four extreme heat days per year.

Uh it is projected that by mid-century the city could face um as many as 19 to 22 extreme heat days per year.

In addition to the demand on water during these days, these heat waves will also warm up our water in the rivers.

That leads to ecosystem impacts like algal blooms, reduced dissolved oxygen levels, which can cause fish kills, all of which impacts the water quality of our rivers.

So the precipitation side, what happens is this rising temperature will increase the atmospheric capacity to hold more water, which will lead to what we call extreme precipitation events.

And these will form in the form of rain as opposed to snow.

So studies have shown that um uh the Sierra snowpack and its spring and summer snowmelt, uh, which has been a key part of the water planning process will be impacted from these climate change um uh impacts.

So, what's going to happen is these uh seasonal distribution of precipitation will result um in rainfall becoming more concentrated in the winter months, which can cause flooding and then less rainfall in summer months, which will lead to drought like conditions, which is what we are seeing right now, even in November.

It is anticipated that these changes in the timing and amounts of snow melt runoff will also impact our groundwater recharge.

Furthermore, when these patterns change, wildlife, wildfire severity will also increase.

So large rainfall events will encourage vegetation growth, and these increased temperatures will evaporate all the moisture from the vegetation, making it more prone to catching fire.

So while we may not see wildfire breakout in city limits, but we'll be susceptible to the smoke and ash debris as we have seen in the recent months, last few years, which will contain high levels of heavy metals that can impact our soil and water quality.

But I wanted to just highlight why we are setting the context and why we have defined the policy, you know, the various areas in the policy the way we have.

So under purpose of the policy, what we try to do is we explain the integrated set of commitments and goals that collectively position the department to foster sustainable change and deliver equitable water services.

So this document will align the department with global commitments like Paris Climate Agreement and your United Nations sustainable development goals.

So for example, there are 17 sustainable development goals adopted by United Nations in 2015.