Sorry boys.

I'd like to call to order our Sacramento area

swim meeting for January 14, 2026.

Happy New Year.

Please call the roll.

Establish quorum.

Madam Chair.

Directors Desmond, Dickinson, Hume.

Here.

Jennings, Kaplan.

Here.

Kennedy.

Orozco, Pluckybaum, Rachel, Robles, Rodriguez, Sander, Cerner, Soon, Villegas, and Chair Karpinski-Costa.

You have a quorum with the members present.

I'd like to ask Director Soon to lead us in 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.

Can you read the statement for public comment?

Yes, Madam Chair. This meeting of the Sacramento Area Sewer District is live and recorded with closed captioning.

It is cable cast on Metro Cable 14 Channel 14, the local government affairs channel on the Comcast and DirecTV U-verse cable systems.

It is also live streamed at Metro14live.saccounty.gov.

Today's meeting replays Sunday, January 18th at 9 a.m. on Metro Cable Channel 14.

Once posted, the recording of this meeting can be viewed on demand at youtube.com forward slash MetroCable14.

SAC Sewer board members are compensated $100 for their participation in board meetings.

Compensation for Sacramento County Supervisors and City of Sacramento and Citrus Heights council members

is paid to the county and cities respectively to partially offset the cost of those governments.

Compensation for the other agencies is paid directly to the individual board members.

Compensation for these legislative body meetings is verbally disclosed at each board meeting

in accordance with California Government Code Section 54952.3.

To make an in-person public comment, please complete a speaker request form and hand it to the clerk.

The chairperson will call your name when it's your turn to make a comment.

You may send written comments by email to boardclerk at saccounty.gov.

Your comment will be routed to the board and filed in the record.

This concludes your announcement.

Thank you. Could you read the first item, please?

The first item is the election of chair and vice chair for the Sacramento Area Seward District Board.

Presenter Christophe Dobson.

Good morning, chair and board members.

This is an annual process.

Your board has established the procedures for this, and they're laid out in the board package.

But basically the way it works is we alternate between city members and county members as chair.

It's a two-year term, so you do vice chair the first year and chair the second year.

And our slate for today, for 2026, is director or vice chair.

Phil Cerna would move into the chair role, and then our vice chair would be council member Orozco from West Sacramento.

And that's really the whole process.

Turn it back over to the chair.

Actually, one more thing.

I want to thank our chair,

Dana Karpinski-Costa, for her

tireless

duty and service over the past

year. I appreciated working

with you. It's wonderful to work

with you because we always have our conversations

about the agendas ahead of the meeting, and

you've always answered all my questions, and

I always feel like I know more.

Excellent. So I'll still bother you.

I will move to

approve for

Supervisor Serna to be the chair

and for Council Member Orozco to be vice chair.

She doesn't want it.

She doesn't want it.

Yeah.

Has staff heard that?

Okay.

That's new information because I've had several conversations with her,

including a text yesterday.

I'd say we move with what staff is.

Okay.

And if she doesn't want it, we can change it in a future meeting.

We can bring an item forward in the future for sure.

So I will move to approve Serna as chair and Council Member Orozco as vice chair.

Second.

Moved and seconded.

Are we going to vote online?

Please vote.

Sergio's not.

But I'm a yes vote, just in case anyone wants to know.

While we're waiting for that, I just want to thank our chair for her year of service.

It's been a privilege to sit to her left and help manage things on occasion, but she's

done a wonderful job leading us and being here to make sure that we do the people's business

as it relates to their sewer district. So I want to thank our council member.

I want to thank you for all your help because I have visual issues and sometimes I can't

see when someone raises their hand and Director Kaplan has been my other helper.

So thank you. Thank you.

Madam Chair, if you don't mind, I can take a roll call vote since it can't show up.

Okay. Directors Hume? Aye. Kaplan? Aye. I'm sorry, Rachel? Aye. Robles? Aye. Rodriguez? Aye. Sander? Aye. Serna? Aye. Soon? Aye. Villegas? Aye. And Chair Kropinski-Costa? Yes. Your motion passes unanimously.

Okay, so now we're going to take a couple minutes to break to switch around the seats.

Yes.

And recess.

Recess.

Measure Cable, could we get your assistance, please?

I'd like to call back to order this meeting of the Sacramento area sewer district.

Madam Clerk, will you please call the roll and reestablish a quorum.

Your mic needs to be on.

Directors Jesmyn, Dickinson, Hume, Jennings, Kaplan, Kennedy, Orozco, Plekibom, Rathel, Robles, Rodriguez, Sander, Cerner, Soon, Villegas, and Karpinski-Casta.

Present.

You have a quorum with the members present.

Thank you madam clerk. Next item please. Next item is miscellaneous district engineer matters all districts presenter Christophe Dobson district engineer. All right this one's really quick today. Just one item our second meeting in January is cancelled and we will have a meeting in February of February 11th will be our next one and this is keeping with the directive from Chair Serna to limit the number of meetings we have we're able to cancel this next one so we're on the right path.

And it's I just want to be clear. It's not the fact that I don't love you people

And I don't want to see you on a regular basis. It's just the fact that I think we can

Do our best to consolidate since we do all serve on multiple boards and commissions and some of us come from

Much further than from upstairs to get here. So I just want to be respectful of everyone's time and other commitments

So thank you for that Christophe

Next item, please. Mr. Chair item 3 is approval to establish a harvest water advisory committee all districts

presenter Christophe Dobson district

engineer.

Sorry.

Going back to item two, I assume we didn't have any

public speakers. We do not have any public speakers.

Thank you.

Okay.

Does staff have some comments?

Yes. I will go ahead.

It's me again.

Before we jump into

the details of the committee,

we can run through that pretty quick.

I did want to provide an update

since our last meeting

because there was a lot of discussion around what's our progress on these agreements that we're trying to get with the farmers,

and I thought it would be helpful to dive into that a little bit.

So I'm going to kind of walk through where we stand and kind of what the risks are from a financial perspective on our grant money

and getting these agreements in place.

So first of all, there is no deadline for construction or delivery of water.

Okay, so we're moving towards that, but we don't have a specific deadline that would have an impact on our grant money.

And there aren't any penalties, but then once we start with water delivery, that starts some clocks ticking.

There's also some milestones around getting agreements in place for recycled water delivery,

and so I'll kind of run through those really quick.

We needed to hit 20% of our recycled water delivery goal by January of last year, so we've met that one.

We have a second milestone of hitting 60% of the recycled water delivery by next January.

We've also hit that, so we're ahead of that particular milestone.

The final one is 100% of our recycled water delivery goal, and that we are at around our range is 61 to 82%.

So that's a range because we don't know exactly what crops and how much water they're actually going to use.

So we're roughly in that maybe 70% or so.

So we have to have that 100% by January of 2029.

So that's the next big milestone that we have to hit.

I keep saying have to hit.

When, if we don't, the risk is not that we will have to pay some of our money back that we've already received from the grants,

but it starts an adaptive management process with the state.

So basically we have to say we haven't, if we were to not meet one of these milestones,

WE WOULD HAVE TO SAY WE'RE NOT

MEETING THIS MILESTONE AND WE

WOULD HAVE TO AGREE ON WHAT THE

NEXT STEPS ARE.

SO THE RISK FOR US IS THAT WE

WOULD HAVE TO EXPEND ADDITIONAL

MONEY TO DO SOMETHING THAT WE

WEREN'T ANTICIPATING DOING IN

ORDER TO GET THOSE ADDITIONAL

AGREEMENTS IN PLACE.

CAN I INTERRUPT FOR A SECOND

CHRISTOPH?

YEAH.

I WANT TO MAKE SURE I

UNDERSTAND YOU CLEARLY THUS

FAR IN YOUR REPORT HERE.

SO I GET IT.

WE DON'T HAVE THE CLOCK STARTING

UNTIL WE ARE IN A POSITION TO

DELIVER THE FIRST DROP, RIGHT?

WELL, WE DO HAVE SOME MILESTONES

AROUND GETTING AGREEMENTS IN

PLACE, BUT THEN THERE'S A SECOND

SET RELATED TO THE FIRST DROP.

SO I GUESS MY OVERARCHING

CONCERN HERE IS IT SOUNDS TO ME

LIKE THE MILESTONES, THE METRIC

FOR THAT IS MEASURED IN

AGREEMENTS IN PLACE, RIGHT?

SO THAT CAN BE LARGELY, I MEAN,

WE CAN OFFER WHAT WE'RE OFFERING,

YOU KNOW, WHAT WE CAN PROVIDE,

THE AGREEMENTS REQUIRE TWO

PARTIES.

SO A LOT OF THAT SEEMS TO BE

OUT OF OUR CONTROL.

SO HOW MUCH RISK DO WE RUN OF

PROSPECTIVE AG INTERESTS THAT

MAY OR MAY NOT WANT TO TAKE OUR

WATER?

HOW MUCH RISK DO WE RUN IN

FALLING BEHIND THE 8 BALL WHERE

WE FIND OURSELVES UP AGAINST

ONE OF THESE THRESHOLD DEADLINES

AND WE'VE DONE EVERYTHING WE

CAN TO MARKET WATER DELIVERY

but no takers that that puts us into the adaptive management where we meet with the state and we

determine what the next steps are to get there again it doesn't have a specific like a clawback

or anything it's just that we have to figure out what to do next i'm sorry supervisor i'm sorry

uh director hume uh you have the floor thank you chair i just wanted to kind of point out that

What you're asking about is exactly the crux of the issue.

And I would just say two things.

One, the phrase picking the low-hanging fruit exists for a reason,

as does the phrase you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

And so while the clock may not have officially started,

to the extent that we burned through our goodwill and our political capital

with this community at this point,

then at some point, if we have to go through this adaptive management,

which Christophe and I had a meeting yesterday to kind of talk through these things,

could include putting more pipe in the ground in order to reach new properties

to hope that those folks might take the water.

And what I'm trying to impart to folks, and I'm not laying blame at anyone's feet,

but what I'm trying to impart here is we cannot lay pipe that will reach farther than the telephone wire.

Right?

And so to the extent that we don't have good communication, goodwill, and good partnership, now that's not going to get better in five years.

And so I think the line of questioning that you stopped for was a good one.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Director Villegas.

Thank you, Mr. Chair.

That was super helpful in terms of sort of the adaptive management and working with the state.

Because the truth is, I think this is the first year that we are entering, presumably the state is entering in a non-drought year, right?

So there's this sort of relief a little bit.

But the reality is, when we started this project and throughout the course of the last 20 years, there's been huge demands for water.

The ag industry has struggled to try to figure out how and where their allocations were going to come from, what they were going to be able to do.

And the truth is, even then, there was a lot of crop conversion and different ways in which the water was being used in our ag industries.

And so I suspect adaptive management with the state is going to be critical forever,

given just the challenges with water and how it gets delivered and who uses it and how much it costs.

So I think that's super helpful to know that we have an adaptive management component built into it,

because the reality is it's not going to stay steady.

We're struggling with similar challenges in Yolo County, western Yolo County, with deliveries that are inconsistent.

Every year it's different.

And so every year the demand changes based on what the deliveries are going to be.

The farmers will determine precisely what they can do with 10% of allocations or 30% of allocations or some years even, heaven forbid, 50% of allocations.

So that's helpful to understand that it's not an exact science.

So I'm with you.

I mean, I think in terms of creating that goodwill up front is critical.

But the reality is we are going to continue to live in an adaptive management system with the state as a true partner if we want this to be successful.

Thank you.

Director Sewell.

Thank you, Chair.

Yeah, echoing all the sentiments that the commissar just said, but just point of emphasis, the adaptive management plan or outcome, I mean, that's a secondary thing.

I think our focus right now is building and maintaining good relationships with these partners.

And as Director Hugh mentioned, let's get everybody on board, the extent of goodwill, transparency, and appropriate conversations.

And if adaptive management will need to go that direction, that's obviously a choice.

but definitely we're going to focus today on the relationships of the people that are out there now.

Thank you.

All right, so I talked about the agreements.

The next step in this is the delivery.

So once we start delivery, which we expect to be in 2027, that'll start a clock,

but that's actually not the, that's the first year that we deliver water,

but it's actually the first full year of water delivery, which is 2028 likely.

that will start a clock.

And from that point, we have to have 50% of demand

during the third year of operations.

So that's looking like 2030.

So we need to be actually delivering 50%

of our established demand number in 2030.

And then 2032, we would have to be at 100%.

So that kind of lays out what we have to do.

We have to be working on the agreements

and getting those in place.

And then once we start delivering water,

we have to start meeting the demand requirements.

I do want to point out,

one of the points was about whether the growers need us.

And I think we obviously need the growers

to make this project work.

I do think the growers also need us.

And I think the fact that we've got 75

on-farm connection assembly agreements in place,

that means 75 signatures on the dotted line,

there's definitely a recognition in that community that there's a benefit to this project to them and

so I think we're trying to build on that we are definitely not losing sight and to your point

you know some of the some of the low-hanging fruit we already have I think is what you were trying to

get at true but we are continuing down this path and so far we are ahead of the schedule that's been

laid out for us. I also want to point out that the state is very supportive of our project for

a couple of reasons. One, just because of the multi-benefits of the project, but also because

we are the furthest along in construction. We're the most, the biggest sure bet in terms of the

state being able to get that money out the door, and they're really interested in doing that.

There's one other project in construction that is sort of a pilot phase. Their full construction

has not started yet. So, and we're well into construction and we'll be basically done with

construction by the end of this year. So, I want to talk a little bit about the claims. Those are

the claims that have happened during the construction process. There's a total of 13 of

them out there and we have done a, typically our third party adjuster handles claims regularly and

they go through their process, we're doing a lot more scrutiny on these, and we're going

back through each one of those 13 claims.

I will point out that in discussions with county, our risk manager, and our third-party

adjuster, George Hills, they all say that that is a pretty low number, 13 claims, for

the magnitude of the construction project that we have.

So that's the good news.

Obviously, we still have to, you know, create that partnership with our community and make

sure that we're responsive to the claims. And finally, I just want to note that I know there

was a comment that you made about staff maybe not supporting this project. I can't speak to,

I believe that was perhaps someone that maybe lives in the area and maybe is impacted by the

construction. That was, as far as we know, an anonymous complaint, I guess. But the truth is

that I've talked to many of our staff,

and this is probably one of the most,

I would say, beloved projects that we've ever done

because it's not only, you know,

the engineering challenge part of it

and building this great big project,

but it has all these really exciting benefits

from the environmental perspective.

So we have a lot of people that are very supportive

of this project,

and we fully understand the importance of it.

And with that, unless there are any other questions,

I'll jump into kind of the logistics of the committee.

Before we get to Director Dickinson, I'll just say on that last point, Christophe, that I think that is largely due to the exceptional skill set of your marketing and outreach team in terms of communicating to our constituents what those benefits are.

That's not an easy thing to do when you're talking about a somewhat complicated system for those that aren't naturally in the know about what a sewer district primarily does versus what I would say a progressive thinking, forward thinking sewer district does in terms of its key mission, but also with an eye towards environmental sustainability.

So I appreciate that.

Director Dickinson.

Thanks, Chair.

and I apologize for running a little late this morning,

but I did want to ask in this context of the discussion

that seems to be occurring.

I'm assuming that this part of the county

has a groundwater sustainability plan.

Yes.

And I'm assuming that in that plan,

there is some degree of reliance on this project

to deliver groundwater to users

in order to get to sustainability.

Is that a fair assumption?

Yes, that's correct.

And so is it also fair to say that if for any reason this project is not completed

or doesn't get to its goal of what it forecasts for delivery,

then the GSP is going to be at risk of not being accomplished.

Is that also fair?

The Harvest Water Project is a key component, not the only component, but it's a key component.

And yes, if it were to fail, it would certainly have an impact on that.

So is that part of the conversation with those who might be unhappy or unsettled for any reason whatsoever

that absent this and absent their participation in this, they're at greater risk?

if they don't achieve sustainability in the basin,

then whatever their complaints might be

about particulars with the project itself?

Absolutely, that is part of the conversation

that we're having.

Okay, I think that that's something,

I'm not sure that everyone on this board

recognizes the connection between the GSP

and getting to sustainability by 2040,

which is required under state law,

and the availability and supply of recycled water through this project to meet that requirement.

So that's what I just wanted to confirm.

Thanks.

Good point.

Director Hume?

Thank you, Chair.

I just wanted to say I appreciate that line of questioning,

and it is very spot-on and appropriate from an academic standpoint,

But in effect, on the street, it's kind of gasoline to the fire of the mistrust that these folks are expressing.

Because what their fear is, is that should they accept this benefit of this recycled water, that then hastens the state, quote-unquote, coming for their wells.

And so your point is very well made and very well taken.

But I don't know that it adds necessarily to moving the needle with respect to getting people to want to be willing participants.

It is a threat for sure.

I appreciate that comment.

I absolutely appreciate that comment.

I think the challenge is to help people to understand that absent this project, that means the state will be coming in a much more definitive way.

And we've seen that in other basins, particularly in the San Joaquin Valley, where the local jurisdictions have not adopted GSPs that will get to sustainability.

So I don't know how we turn that around, but that ought to be part of the objective for sure.

Thank you both.

All right.

So with that, this would be an ad hoc committee, which would mean less than a year, less formal, not a Brown Act committee.

We had three volunteers from last time.

If those three are still willing to volunteer, we'll get them on the committee.

and if anyone else wants to volunteer, we'll add them as well.

Christophe, or maybe the clerk knows this,

three is the minimum, what's the maximum?

Less than a quorum, right?

So what would that be? Seven?

Nine is a quorum.

Nine is a quorum, so it would be eight.

Okay.

So the reason I point that out is that if there's others besides the three

that have already expressed interest, there's room.

So the three are whom again?

We have Desmond, Soon, and Hume.

Okay.

Mr. Hume, are you interested in continuing or serving?

I would like to volunteer as well, being that it goes through my district.

Okay, very good.

We have an, do I want to call him an existing member, I guess?

And a new member.

The others, Mr. Desmond, not here.

so we won't know.

But any other interest

expressed here today?

Do we, is that enough

feedback to get us started?

Yep.

Okay, very good.

Absolutely.

All right, Madam Clerk,

do we have any sign up

to speak on this matter?

We do not have any speaker slips.

All right, with that,

we'll move on to the next item.

The next item is

Miscellaneous Director Matters,

a Director's Discussion of Issues

for future consideration.

Points of note on communications received in file.

Christophe Dobson.

No, that's not me.

Oh, I'm sorry.

The directors.

Mr. Hume.

Thank you, Chair.

I thought maybe he was going to speak on the last item.

I'd just like to point out we have a minor celebrity in the audience.

You might recognize him from the cover of the current Comstocks magazine,

Ken Onetto of KLM Ranches.

Welcome.

All right.

Very good.

Seeing no other director comments. I assume we have no one signed up to speak on this matter. No one signed up to speak.

We'll go on to item 5. Item 5 is comments from the public on issues not on the post of the agenda and we do not have any public speakers.

All right, very good. Next item then. Next item is consent matters.

Item 6 through 14 for approval.

Okay, any director wish to pull an item for separate consideration comment statement?

Question? Seeing none. I will go ahead and move the approval of consent.

Okay, we have a motion. Is there a second? Second.

We have a motion and a second.

Madam Clerk, do we have any

incident to speak on this matter?

We do not have any public speakers.

All right.

Are we prepared?

Yeah.

For an electronic vote, please vote.

Your vote is unanimous

with the members present.

Very good.

Next item, please.

The next item is

the estimate of the time meeting.

That's it.

All right. All right. So brief meeting today. Any closing comments from our executive director?

No. We got our marching orders on the committee so we'll get that set up.

All right. Very good. Any closing comments from directors? Seeing none. All right. Without further

ado then if there's no further business before this board we are adjourned.