City of Madison
Legislative File ID   09695
Type:   Miscellaneous    Status:   Filed
Enactment Date:      Enactment No.:  
Title:  
Draft Groundwater Sustainability Plan
Controlling Body:   WATER UTILITY BOARD
Introduced:   3/21/2008    Version:   1
Final Action:      Contact:   wfitch@cityofmadison.com
Name:  
Draft Groundwater Sustainability Plan
Extra Date 1:  
Requester:  
Sponsors:  
Legislative History
DateActing BodyAction TakenMotion
3/25/2008WATER UTILITY BOARDGenesis Bichanich of City Engineering is going to do a presentation from the design team that has been working on the controversial sustainability issue. Genesis said the next step is input from the board. The two major goals were to maintain the current annual rate of groundwater pumping, and to reduce the residential per capita water use by 20% by the end of 2020. The current residential water use is about 73 gallons per day (5-year average from 2002-2006). To meet the 20% goal, each person would need to decrease their daily water use by about 15 gallons, which corresponds to a residential goal of 58 gallons per day. Goals for different water users is divided up among residential, commercial, industrial, and municipal/other government, and the University in order to provide alternatives that may be taken by each to improve water conservation across the city. Genesis said they wanted to see how each of these entities could reduce water usage so they broke up into teams and each team looked at one of those sections. Residential for example, changing to high efficiency appliances, changing showerheads, etc. The document presented gives examples of this. Other cities were looked at to see what they did with their rate steps. We looked at commercial use with a goal of promoting water conservation through rebate promotions and education. They would have to submit landscape plans and major redevelopment plans. For industrial, we looked at a one on one approach since we don’t have that many industrial customers in Madison. There are 23 industrial customers and they account for 10% of the total water use so the opportunity for water savings is significant. Conservation generally falls into three categories: reducing water usage, reducing water loss, and reusing water that is currently being discarded. Audits of government buildings will be performed. Water conservation measures would be replacing old toilets, installing sink aerators, installing rain gardens and rain barrels. Moving to a system of rates that promotes conservation needs to be done carefully to minimize impacts on low-income residents while maintaining an adequate revenue stream. Larry said they evaluated other communities that use inclining rate structure; we have declining rate structure for all classes of customers. Only the biggest water users benefit from the declining rate structure. The average residential customer uses 45 ccf every six months or 184 gallons per day. The Water Utility should consider conservation rate structure in its 2009 rate case. Larry said we looked at Ann Arbor MI, Boulder CO, Tucson AZ and Waukesha WI where they have issues with respect to quality of their unit wells. All of these communities with the exception of Tucson and Madison are billed on a quarterly basis. The PSC is very concerned about inclining rate structures for communities that have a semi-annual bill. The rational is that with the inclining rate structure, the people don’t get their bill often enough to change their habits to avoid a large bill. Larry pointed out that 40% of the bill is sewer and 10% is storm sewer. Our current median usage is 45; 80% use 60 ccf or less. Larry said we wanted to find out if we could have an inclining rate structure with a semi-annual bill, and next month we plan to come back to the Board with an automated meter reading system and the cost of that, which would mean with the same staff we could read the meters more often. Larry went over the examples of conservation rate structures. Larry said there is not much difference in the initial declining rate structure. He said if we replace 4,000 meters per year and we have another 1,500 new customers, we can get through this in 10 to 12 years. After you get into it for 5 to 6 years, you’ve got a tipping point where you can actually read the remaining meters. Jon asked Larry if he has knowledge that the PSC is not interested in a rate structure that would really make people think twice before they turn the tap on. Jon asked if there is any way to get a feel from the PSC that we could actually put numbers in there where the size of the bill would affect people’s behavior. Larry said that is something that might be discussed with them. Ken said they are trying to learn that information from Waukesha, but it will take them some time to see if it has had any effect at all on their residential customer rates since they were the first to do it. George said the customer won’t cut back because they won’t know what happened in a course of six months. Michael said he would be concerned in using rates to change behavior. He asked what the Board’s role is in determining what rate structure request we put in. Robin said the rates are based on the cost of service study the PSC completes. It’s broken down into what it costs to serve residential customers. They set up a rate structure and present it to us. Robin said we’ve presented the proposal. Larry said this was done for demonstration purposes. He said we are suggesting this be put on the April agenda. The Water Utility puts in information on finance and needs and PSC develops the cost. They set up a rate structure and if the Board wants to weigh in on it, they can next month. The draft report will be referred to the April meeting. Michael asked for clarification of what the Board’s role would be. Lauren said she thinks citizens need information as to why. Jon said for 2008, you do an 8% increase that takes us to $1.20—that’s already in the works. Robin said to $1.20. Larry said this will go on the April agenda. Jon asked if it is correct that this will not include any conservation measures that will go to 2009. Michael asked if we are monitoring the amount of water used for flushing operations. Lauren said it’s important for citizens to have the companion education piece along with the money—you just get a bigger bill in the mail, it’s meaningless. Comments on this report are due to Genesis on April 15 or earlier. Robin said the committee would like to review this before it goes back to the Board. George said staff involvement is very important and has been good. He said on page 12 where it talks about sustainability, what are we sustaining? The sustainable goal is the sustaining of the current pumping levels, and if we could do it, many people will look at sustainability in terms of the aquifer. Is there any way we can translate that into sustainability? Jon thinks it’s more about putting as much water in through recharge as you’re taking out. The plan talks about how we would reduce how much we take out, but doesn’t have anything about pavement, rain gardens or a few small items. It doesn’t really talk about sustaining the aquifer by recharge, which to him is a big part of the picture. Lauren said we’re not the only users in Dane County and asked if he has the sensibility that our neighboring water utilities might be interested in instituting a similar plan or some of the efforts, or is it just us? Other communities should start talking about this. The sewerage district did talk about plans for recharge so it might be important to contact them too and let them know what we are doing and ask them what they are doing. Larry asked what the Board thinks of a rebate for low flow toilets. All Board members were in favor of it. George said one of the cost savings is the energy to move the water. On the other end too, the water goes to MMSD . He said 15 to 20% of water from source to discharge is for energy use. He asked if we can quantify that. Jon said at the Commission on the Environment meeting last month, they had Madison Metropolitan Sewerage District do a presentation on water reuse and recharge. They really didn’t know we were doing this conservation plan that hasn’t been released yet. They said they definitely need to know, that if we’re going to have 20% reduction, that means a 20% reduction in revenues to them, so they need to be in the loop on this. Jon commended the team for doing a nice, comprehensive report on this. Ken Key said we didn’t put an item in here on green plumbers but we will do so for your review. That is something he and Robin learned about at a seminar in Reno. It’s an education program sponsored nationally that started in Australia as a way to educate plumbing contractors about what the latest things are, because you’d be surprised at the things they don’t know about energy savings. Ken said we are going to be sponsoring that in Madison and perhaps Dane County. We can also educate the customers about it. In Madison, 1.2-gallon flush toilets are not readily available. All the plumbers now are using the 1.6 standard, which has been mandated but they are not carrying the 1.2 so we want to teach them more about this. Jon said one Commission on the Environment member said he has a 1.1 toilet and it hasn’t failed yet. Michael Schumacher made a motion to refer this item to the next meeting. Lauren Cnare seconded; unanimously passed.
Notes:
4/29/2008WATER UTILITY BOARDGeorge Meyer made a motion for approval. Lauren Cnare said she would second it for purposes of discussion. Larry understood Jon wanted to introduce some changes. Jon said he and a Water Utility employee attended the one-day water conservation Wisconsin Water Association meeting in Oconomowoc. Jon said it was wonderful, and there were a number of things brought up there that are new and not in this plan. EPA has this thing like Energy Star but it’s for water appliances and is called Water Sense. The Madison Water Utility can join Water Sense and encourage plumbers and retailers in the area to sell Water Sense labeled products. AWE in Chicago has the goal of educating the world on water conservation, and they’d be willing to send that person up here. They would want us to join their organization, which is $200, and they have an amazing amount of resources that we haven’t tapped into as far as he can tell. Jon thinks these things could beef the plan up and he’s willing to summarize all of the information and the contacts and even do some of the writing work if that would help. He thinks the document could go a little further than it has. He would like a motion for referral until he gets a chance to work on it. The other side would be, if we don’t want to do that, we could pass it as it is and have it be a working document, have Version 2 done in the near future that would include these things. He sees this being attached to rate increases and our PIO will use it to communicate in a better fashion than he can communicate this. That is what is motivating the possibility for referral. George asked if this will be going to the Council. Larry said it would be his goal, when the Water Board approves this plan, to do a resolution and send that to the Council with the support of the Water Utility Board. George said if the Water Board approves, it could be a working document and modifications could be done to it. As for going to the Council, maybe we should firm it up first. Michael said when it goes to the Council, it’s not a strict mandate. Larry said one of the suggestions is to offer a rebate for low flow toilets, and we put that into the suggested rate structure. He hopes that the Council will approve the plan, and then when we will actually have a rebate program, we’ll probably eventually take that back as well, just like the lead service replacement rebate. George asked if the referral will go back to the Design Team. Larry said he was hoping it was referred to the Board next month and we could get these components into it. George and Lauren withdrew their motions. Robin said if we’re going to refer it, he wants to make sure we deal with it at the next board meeting. He would like it to go back to the design team to review any major changes. He would like to forward this approved plan to the PSC during our rate increase application process. He wouldn’t want to extend it beyond the next board meeting as the PSC is telling us that within about 30 days, they’ll have a revenue requirement for us. We’ll talk more about this when we update the rate application. We’re going to talk with staff and have an approved version. Robin would like to put a quick time frame on additional comments. Larry distributed a letter to the PSC that he wanted input on before mailing it. He thinks we talk about this issue in the last paragraph and if we refer this item to those folks, it could be helpful in a rate increase. Lauren said, to be clear, you need an approved plan. Is it sufficient to have a plan in place that is only approved by the Water Board? Robin said yes, that is our governing board in the PSC’s eyes. If you approve it, that is sufficient for our Rate Case application. Robin said he talked to Jeff Ripp on Monday, and he said he didn’t notice that we had any highlights about water conservation included on the rate case application. He asked that I prepare something about beginning a water conservation report. Michael Schumacher made a motion to refer this to the May meeting. George Meyer seconded; unanimously passed. Michael said the last paragraph of the letter, does toilet rebate require Common Council approval? Larry said ultimately we’ll get Council approval. Jon said his understanding of it is if we send this to the PSC and they approve it, we can spend the money. We’re an enterprise fund so the Council doesn’t have to approve it. The Lead Service rebate program is different and the PSC didn’t approve that, so it had to be accepted by the City Council. Lauren said Parking Division is an enterprise fund, and parking rate increases go through the council. Lauren said so PSC approval supersedes and perhaps nullifies the Common County.. Robin said we won’t have money for this until 2009 anyway. Lauren asked about the toilet rebate; Larry said it wouldn’t apply to new construction. We’re hoping if you get a rebate for one and have a plumber come out to do it, you’ll do all of your toilets. Robin said we’re stating greater than 1.6 gallons per flush and the plumbing standard is 1.6 is maximum. The toilets with Water Sense approval have been tested and do work. Ken said he knows that Home Depot carries Water Sense approval toilets. George made a motion that we authorize and support sending a letter to the Public Service Commission. Michael Schumacher seconded; unanimously passed. Robin said we’ll meet as a design team, review it and have it ready to go out by May 10.
Notes:
5/27/2008WATER UTILITY BOARDReferred to June 24, 2008 meeting. Priority 1: Reduce Residential Per Capita Water Use by 20%by the Year 2020. Jeff Ripp from the Public Service Commission attended the meeting to discuss this item. Larry said for some time we’ve had a committee preparing a water conservation/groundwater sustainability plan. Larry thinks they have reached the point where they need some direction from the Board so they can move this to a conclusion. Larry said they started using the City of Waukesha’s plan as we knew that has been publicly provided to the PSC, although he understands the commission has not approved that. We wanted to get a list of priorities to the Board, so you could give approvals, disapprovals and get this completed. Larry suggested taking them one at a time. Jon said you are looking for guidance from the Board for specifics of the plan and this is the framework to start that discussion. Larry said that is correct. Larry said he recommends that we get feedback from the Board with regard to these priorities and then we’ll ask the committee to reconvene and do that. Larry said Genesis from City Engineering has been working as editor on this and it would be helpful for the Engineering Division if Gail Gawenda would move into that role rather than Genesis. Jon thinks it’s a good idea to bring it in-house, and asked Gail if she’s willing to take this assignment on. Gail said she is. Priority 1: Reduce residential per capita water use by 20% by the Year 2020. Michael Schumacher said he’d like to see another column added for what we are trading off. One of them would be with less water use we’d have less sales, which will impact the rate structure. He thinks it would be helpful to list some consensus on a goal e side effects that we have to keep an eye on. He said maybe add a column for notes. George Meyer said we need to get this to the PSC as part of the current rate case. Jon said these are goals, not commitments. Lauren said this is about reaching consensus on goals. Larry said if we’re going to get feedback to the report, this is number one. Either we’re going to have a goal for water conservation or we’re not. If we’re not going to have a goal for water conservation, we don’t need this report. If we can’t get some kind of consensus on a goal, it doesn’t have to be 20/20 but there about. Jon said to him it means if we say yes to priority one, we are committed to doing what it takes to get that done; which is raising rates or inclined rate structure—all of the things that go along with this concept of reducing by 20%. We’re going to work hard, and he likes it the way it is. Michael asked why 20%. Greg Harrington asked if somebody just demonstrated that 20% is feasible—you’re talking about 58 gallons per capita per day. Are municipalities demonstrating they can get that? Larry said in the draft report there is an analysis of what EPA can do if we take some action. Jon asked Jeff Ripp where the 20% number came from. Jeff said he can provide a little more framework from the State perspective; what we’re seeing is voluntary conservation. It’s not that 20% is the right goal for water utilities, but the PSC is interested in looking at utilities that are developing programs that will demonstrate using water more efficiently. There is a general interest in improving conservation and the PSC is looking at ways they can assist water utilities. Waukesha looked at it and came up with 20% looking at where demand was going to be in 20 years. Trying to answer that question for Madison Water Utility, looking at it from the standpoint of where do you think demand is going to be in 20 years, if the goal is to maintain where Madison is at today. Jeff said the Commission won’t say it’s the wrong goal. They will look at that goal but they won’t dictate the rate case. Dr. Schlenker said it appears to him that if production is held at its current level and population continues to grow at the same pace it has been, that we will automatically achieve this by 2020 or is he just guessing. Jon said growth is going to be something like 20% in the next 12 years. Dan Melton said he thinks Priority 1 is excellent, that it is somewhat arbitrary; he understands all t he questions but other municipalities have chosen this figure and 20% is an easy figure for the public to remember, 20% by 2020. Jon said we could pick a benchmark, which could be our highest year ever. That could be one way to look at it. Robin thinks it was before 2004 and Al said 2001. Jon said for Priority 1, we’re going to keep it the way it is. For the next version of this, we’re going to have advantages and disadvantages when we start working our plan. Michael said we must have a clear reason for this reduction, some rationale. Jon said we’re the biggest power user in the City. Al said he has the population in the year 2020 as 245,000. Now it is around 219,000. Jon said so we’d actually be using less water, that our 20/20 is a little more ambitious than that. We’d actually be using less water. Jon noted that we are the largest power user in the city. Al said 245,00 in 2020 is 10 or 11% growth. George said this should be tied to the energy use reduction. Greg said he’d like to see numbers from other municipalities including Waukesha. Larry said there was one suggested by the committee in the draft plan. and they actually included funds in our rate case with the PSC for it. Priority 2: Establish a Toilet Rebate Program: Larry said a rebate of $100 per dwelling unit was discussed. This is a very ambitious program. Using our data from the Assessor’s file, we have approximately 79,000 dwelling units, and we’ve got a count of toilet fixtures that were put in prior to 1995. Larry said you’re talking about a pretty expensive program to replace all of those, but a toilet fixture represents the biggest savings that we can get on available data. By going from 4.5 to 6 gallons per flush, to 1.6 gallons per flush—it’s estimated it will save a little over 10 gallons per capita; looking at a population, that would be around 2 million gallons per day. We’re talking about one unit per dwelling and that could be an apartment, a service station, whatever. It’s just one of the ideas for conservation. Using a licensed plumber to replace a toilet would cost around $350, and we hope they’d change our more toilets in the residence. Larry said the sum of $250,000 representing 2,500 toilet replacements per year per dwelling unit has been requested as part of the annual rate structure. This rebate program could be administered in much the same way as the Utility’s successful lead service replacement program. Larry said it’s pretty sketchy and it’s an ambitious program. Lauren asked how does the number of toilets in residences compare to the non-residences such as schools, hospitals. Larry said we don’t have very good data on that, but you’re still talking one per customer on that. Lauren asked if it would make sense at some point to have a companion program that includes institutions to move that direction, or do you think they already are doing that. Larry said there is not a lot of data on that. He noted that hospitals are on of our largest water users. Lauren said she’s in favor of this, that it makes sense, but she wants to make sure we’re not missing 75% of the toilets in our community by just focusing on residential. Jon said he thinks there is an element of education. He said there is a belief out there that the low-flow toilets don’t work, you push the button and nothing happens. That is not the truth. The new generation of toilets work. That would be Gail’s job to get that message out about which ones work. There is an education component to this. George said he’s hearing we need an educational program beyond this. Larry said this will be a major program with regard to public education, and what he is really concerned about is our ability to afford to handle all of the requests. At 2500 a year, it’s going to take a number of years to get through it. Michael asked if they have looked for any partners out there that would match dollars, that type of thing. Dan said other cities have established programs with Menards, etc. Jon said he noticed that WaterSense toilets have come down 10%, $20 to $30. George said we should focus on energy too. Greg said under the lead service replacement program, we initially tried to get that paid for out of the Water Utility’s rates, and the PSC denied that, so it ended up coming out of the Storm Sewer monies. He asked what the thinking is here. Larry said we’ve requested PSC include this in our rates. Jeff Ripp said this is really new and he commends the Utility for moving forth on this. He said in Wisconsin, we do have a public benefit fund on the electricity side that the PSC has approved. Indications from commissioners are that they are in favor of this. and they will make the final decision on this. Jeff said by making a clear justified case of why you need this, saying this is what we want to achieve, with timelines, and it will make a strong case for it. Michael asked where we get $250,000 up front. Larry said we will not propose the program to the board unless we have PSC support for this. Priority 3: Providing Customers with the Current Consumption Data. Larry said one of the challenges the Water Utility has is that it renders bills on a six-month basis, and we understand that the PSC is concerned about giving people an opportunity to rectify their use and six months doesn’t do that. A quarterly doesn’t particularly help but it is better than a six-month. What we would like to do is propose that we help instruct our customers on how to track their water use on a monthly basis or more frequently if they would like. The Water Utility spend $3 million a year maintaining its meter system, reading those meters, issuing bills and that is a big chunk of our operation. We would like to send individual water customers a card stock card that they can use to actually track their water usage on a monthly basis and back that up with some public instruction. Larry said that was his idea and the committee immediately said oh, that’s so old-fashioned; we need to put on our webpage system where a person could go outside, write down their meter numbers, plug in that number and it will calculate their bill for them. Larry said he thinks that is probably the way to go. He hasn’t discussed this with the PSC. We get more than a handful of folks who are interested in that sort of thing. In order to address water conservation, the property owners have to know how much they are using right now. The six-month bill is where we’re at and we’d have to explain to people that there is a little box on the outside of their house—sometimes it’s pretty handy- and they can write down those numbers to calculate usage. If you are watering your garden and you know how big your garden is, you can use that water meter to determine how much you’re using a week, too. Michael asked if we’re eventually going to do something like Vilas, and what would it look like if we continue billing every six-months, minimizing the cost to the Utility but having the customer able to calculate usage. Jon said the hardware is $7 million. He said Larry has come up with a creative way to get away from the monthly billing issue, and does it have any merit. Jeff Ripp said when they were looking at Waukesha last summer, one of the concerns was with quarterly billing. He thinks the days of six-month billing cycles are numbered. Greg asked if customers know their daily usage, and Larry said every day people call and ask that question and the billing clerks do answer that. Lauren said it shows us right now the average six-month bill is $207.75, but that is everything, not just water. Jeff said there was a preliminary study done using Wisconsin data, looking at various things such as frequency of billing and the monthly billing cycle did have an effect. Michael said implementing more frequent billing and achieving conservation, we’ll see higher than 18% increases and we’re going to have to have public education as to why this is happening. Jon asked if we put in here the cost of putting in remote meter reading so we can do monthly billing and ask for a rate increase to pay for that over a period of time, the PSC would be supportive of that? Jeff said it’s like any other capital project you are doing, it would be looked at in terms of the overall utility operations, in terms of what is reasonable, etc. Larry said if we could encourage some of our users and we won’t get all, but some who are really interested in this and their overall environmental footprint, and actually have the knowledge to do this, I’d be very happy if we got like the Prius effect, where people are trying to maximize the mileage with a Prius car, turning the air conditioner off and everything else, trying to get 70 miles to the gallon. If we get some of our customers who have that interest and that information, he’d be happy. Jon said he thinks we’re saying that we should leave this concept in of people doing this self-monitoring to see how they are doing. We should leave in here the fact that we realize that quarterly or monthly billing is coming and it is expensive, but we’re going to save somebody looking at it in 2010. He thinks he’s hearing that three and five are okay as they are. Lauren said you’re all aware of M Power of Madison, which she thinks MG&E does along with other people, they do have a section on conserving water and she thinks that is your market--people who are already interested in this and hooked up to it, doing all these things. She said it doesn’t mention low-flow toilets and she thinks we should coordinate with other environmental outlets regarding this. Jon said ENACT is out there too, doing these home things. Priority 4: Enact an Inclining Rate Structure for Residential Customers. Jon said this is a modest rate structure and maybe we should get something more aggressive. Jon asked Jeff Ripp if it’s worthwhile to put out a modest inclining rate structure now to sort of provide the groundwork for doing a more aggressive one later. Jeff said if you’re trying to achieve drastic water use reduction in a short period of time, then maybe you need to ...? The procedure the PSC uses is based on actual cost so there is a limit to where you can set your actual pricing. There are issues regarding the structure of rate setting, and more than one policy consideration. He said the best advise he can give to the Utility and the Board is, if it’s one of your priorities to pursue inclining water rate structure, and it comes across that this is the direction you want to go, at that point we can look at working within the current rate case or some future rate case, at what structure makes sense. Jeff said talking about actual pricing points at this time is premature. Michael said in this case, he would not favor an aggressive program. He would like it to be modest, as it is. He thinks need to get used to incremental increases. Jon said so you are saying keep it as it is for now, and we’ll address this in the future. Jeff said there are a lot of ways to get at that ?? requirement, and in some cases maybe inclining rate structure does work. If you want to propose that, it’s something that could be done. Greg asked if we’re talking usage at 61 gallons per day and if our goal is 58 gallons per day per capita, 61 gallons per day sounds really small. Larry said that is our 2007 residential customer base usage, the lowest 20% usage was 61 gallons per day. The median is 184. Jon said these numbers are in this document but weren’t in the original. Michael said it should be simple to give an explanation as to what the annual numbers would be. Jon said you could do an estimate of usage based on Madison’s population and the number of dwellings for an average use. Just a couple of sentences to explain where these numbers came from. This would be a friendly change to this item. Priority 5: Investigate the Conversion of Water Meters to Provide for Quarterly Billing and the Potential of Monthly Billing. Jon said quarterly billing is costly but we could build it into our rates, and what this really says is that we are really going to look at this. Jon said the Meter Shop is a big part of costs being 15% of our budget. A big part of it is replacing those meters. Larry said automated meter reading would reduce the costs over that of conventional meter reading. Now, in addition to the operating costs, you have to capitalize the heads you put on the meters. We replace meters every 12 years, so the idea is, when we replace the meters, we put the $110 head on the meter; or we can hire competitively a contractor to do this. Then instead of the reading being taken off the meter, running up a wire to the outside of the house, you would have a vehicle like MG&E has that just drives down the street and sends a signal. Or you can go to the next step and put receivers on your water towers. The Utility’s cost to levy its bills, including meter reading and maintenance of meter, is $3,001,210 per year or around $23.07 for each six-month bill. We realize that the PSC is interested in having us look at more frequent billing, and we’re only putting it off a year until we get some serious discussion on this issue. It would cost the Utility another $724,000 per year to levy bills quarterly with conventional meter reading, or $436,000 per year using AMR (Automatic Meter Reading). The cost to convert to AMR is estimated at $639,000 per year, assuming the debt would be retired in 20 years. The use of AMR would allow the Utility to bill monthly. Michael asked if monthly billing is off the table. Larry said yes, at this time but the board may want to look at it in the future. Michael said we’re paying $3 million now, and asked what it would drop if kept at six months. Michael had a friendly addition to this priority, saying to drop off the last line of priority 5, which reads, “The Water Utility should consider conversion of water meters to AMR in 2010. Priority 6: Enact Outdoors Water Usage Restrictions to Maintain Pumpage Below a Preset Daily Amount. Madison General Ordinances provides for voluntary and mandatory restrictions for outdoor water usage. In 2007 there were 29 days where pumpage exceeded 40 MGD, 11 days where it exceeded 45 MGD, and 3 days where it exceeded 50 MGD. This goal would provide that voluntary restrictions be imposed whenever pumpage exceeded 45 MGD for 3 continuous days and mandatory restrictions whenever pumpage exceeds 50 MGD for two continuous days. While not directly tied to water conservation, the enactment of water usage restrictions would save on electricity during high use days and inform customers about the limitations of the system. Larry said the City of Madison hasn’t had to implement mandatory restrictions on outdoor use. We would like the board to reach a consensus with regards to trigger points and work on them with the public. George said the current conservation ordinance isn’t based on usage but on Water Utility capability. Greg asked the capacity of the system. Al said 68 million gallons with everything running. When we get to 55 million, we start having problems keeping the reservoirs full. The Board’s protocol has reduced the capacity. If it got a little low on a hot day, we kept on pumping with an average of 32 to 33 million gallons per day. Jon asked if we’re comfortable with those levels. George asked when and how it’s applicable, and if we should look at time of day. Larry said we’re always encouraged not to water during hot times of the day. Lauren said she would be in favor of looking at that. Al said in 2007 there were three days over 50 million, none consecutive. Jeff said education is important with municipal ordinances, and putting together what is happening across the state; doing that may help in the debate. George said for the 2009 season, time of day water use should be proposed to the Council. Greg said for two or three years, have it voluntary and after that, mandatory. Lauren said she thinks this could be priority number one, time of day use. Larry said there will be exceptions. Jon said Greg suggests holding off on numbers for three years and then making it mandatory if usage exceeds a certain amount for so many days. Jon said these are goals to look at. On Priority 6, George would like to add time of day water use restrictions in time to be presented to the Common Council and implemented in 2009. Michael thinks we need to do more research. Larry wants a trigger point put in it by summer. You’d have to put out an announcement similar to our snow days. We would ask for voluntary restrictions first, and we’d have to put out the notice daily. Michael said he’d like to strike “two consecutive days.” George said mandatory is no water of lawns, or every other day. Larry likes it two days to have time to get this stuff out. After 2 days, we reach the trigger point. Jon said time of day but nothing else added at this time. These numbers will be subject to change based on the PSC report. Jon said if we withdraw the plan the PSC has seen, is there any possibility we won’t get a rate increase. Jeff Ripp said he doesn’t think so, that he doesn’t see this having any effect. The Commission won’t nit-pick what you put in your plan. Providing more information to PSC on a rate case is a good thing. Jon asked if we could add this to what we’ve already given them. Robin said it hasn’t been submitted as part of the rate case yet. Jeff said the PSC hasn’t asked for utilities to submit a conservation plan yet. He thinks a well thought out document with vision, goals and how you plan to achieve this would be good. Michael said being mindful that this required Common Council approval, don’t jump the gun. We need a strategic document that outlines where we want to go with this. Jon said we need a motion to accept this document with a friendly amendment and forward it to the PSC as part of our rate case. George Meyer made a motion to accept this with the friendly amendment. Lauren Cnare seconded; unanimously passed. Michael said he wanted to make sure on how to proceed with this, to make sure we have everything covered. George said in terms of cost items, he doesn’t see this being different from things where we ask the PSC for other infrastructure. He views it as the same. As far as Priority No. 6, we have to do it as an ordinance subject to Council approval. Lauren said the worse case scenario would be if the PSC made a decision based on this and it didn’t come true. Dan said his only reservation is the card under Priority No. 3—he doesn’t see the need for mailing cards to customers; he doesn’t see the value of it. He said a lot of municipalities are going to Real Time Smart Meters. His intuition tells him that that is the way we should be thinking about going. You could, right on your lap top, see what your water usage was that morning. Jon said to Dan you’re just weighing in on that and I think we’ve got it covered. Jon called a vote—all in favor, passes unanimously. Jon said the second part of this agenda item—we’ve agreed to put this in our rate request, and the second part is the existing document conservation plan, whether we’re going to pull it back to the Plan Commission or whether we’re going to wait until a revised version is done. At some point we’ll go to the Plan Commission with the next rate case or maybe this one. Joel Crestwell is one of the original citizen authors of that plan and present. Jon asked Joel if he thinks we should have a revised version and not send this to the Plan Commission, or do you think we should send this with the proviso that a more refined version would go in the future. Joel said he feels that it is still a work in progress, that it still needs rewriting. It’s a document that was written by a group of people and it still reads that way. He said he thinks there are a lot of loose ends that need to be tied up. As various members of the Board have commented on the document, both at this meeting and previous written comments of the committee, he thinks it would benefit from further rewriting and tightening up of language, being fine-tuned. Robin said there are some parts of that that could be improved. At the last committee design team discussion, we intentionally set out to put together a plan that didn’t have all the little details filled in. We wanted to allow ourselves some room to be able to add better ideas and to take into account our hiring of a PIO/Conservation person and get input from that person. The intention was, when putting this document together, to get something down on paper to get us started. One of the board’s goals was water conservation plan and we wanted to get started on that, to have something to work from, especially with the rate case we’re in the middle of. Jon said there is a lot of good stuff in it. It’s a good document as it stands and there are things that need to be added to it yet. Joe Grande said he agrees with Joel, that it can be tightened up yet. These priorities will probably change over time in that we’ll go down a path and decide that path didn’t work out the way we anticipated, or we’ll find something that was better. He thinks we have a document that lays the general framework and offer quite a bit of vision. Joe said he supports putting this document forth to the PSC at this time, as this will be an ongoing process. Dan said if we would submit this as part of our rate case, so it would be available electronically to the Commissioners, and let’s say a rewritten version comes back to the July 22 board meeting, or would the PSC be looking for something sooner. Jeff said there is no requirement to submit any plan at all to the PSC, so that would certainly work fine. He said whenever the board and Water Utility is comfortable with the plan, that is the point where you need to submit it. If you want the draft in place as a work in progress, he thinks that would be fine too. Michael said his is an editorial and he can go either way. His personal preference however is getting a report done that addresses the key elements, a clear vision to outsiders. When an outsider who has not seen the report before, will the mission come through clearly. What’s the knowledge behind it, the data, then what are we trying to achieve with that. How to motivate others and resources for us and users to use, and saying here are the next steps for the coming years. He thinks we should run through this one more time. Jon said we’ve hired a PIO (Public Information Officer) who has to the skills to do these types of repairs. George asked Robin asked when he thinks the rate case will go. Robin said under the timeline he’s been given by the PSC, we probably won’t have a final decision until end of September, early October, so he doesn’t think it will happen in July. Jeff said on the issue of timing, with the rebate in there, we will take that and add a month of time for processing. He thinks six months would be the outside. That is an issue we will take before the PSC for an open meeting. Gail Gawenda, PIO, said she will work on this if she gets her resources. Jon said the motion we’re looking for is to forward the existing document to the PSC. We need a motion to forward it. Michael Schumacher made a motion to forward the draft document. George Meyer seconded. Lauren said she thinks it premature and she will probably vote no. Michael Schumacher then withdrew his motion and George Meyer also withdrew his motion to second it. Dan said we’ve already decided to submit this to the PSC as part of our rate case. Michael Schumacher made a motion to reaffirm referring this document to the July meeting. Dan Melton seconded; unanimously passed. Pass
Notes:

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