1 STAFF REPORT
DAT
E: July 26, 2022
TO: Justin Hess, City Manager
FROM: Dawn Roth Lindell, General Manager, Burbank Water and Power VIA: Richard Wilson, Assistant General Manager, Water Systems BY: Jared Lee, Civil Engineer
SUBJECT: Adoption of a Resolution to Authoriz e Burbank Water and Power to Submit a Grant Application to the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation for the 2023 WaterSmart Water and Energy Effici ency Grants Program and to Execute the Grant Agreement for the Program
RECOMMENDATION
Adopt A RESOLUTION OF THE COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF BURBANK AUTHORIZING
THE SUBMISSION OF A GRANT APPLICATION TO THE UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF THE INTERIOR, BUREAU OF RECLAMATION, FOR THE 2023 WATERSMART WATER AND ENERGY EFFI CIENCY GRANTS PROGRAM; AND TO
AUTHORIZE THE BURBANK WATER A ND POWER GENERAL MANAGER, AS
DESIGNEE OF THE CITY MANAGER, TO EXECUTE A GRANT AGREEMENT (Attachment 1).
BACKGROUND
Burbank Water and Power (BWP) regularly m onitors and researches available grant opportunities to supplement our revenue source s, make internal projects and customer programs more cost-effective, and reduce the impact of costs on customers’ bills.
BWP identified a grant opportunity that will benefit the City’s water supply resiliency: the U.S. Department of the Interior’s 2023 WaterSMART Water and Energy Efficiency Grants (WEEG) Program. The WEEG program provides financial assistance to support projects that result in quantifiable and sustained water savings, implement renewable energy components, and support broader sustainability benefits.
As part of this grant application process, the Bureau of Reclamation (BOR) requires the City Council to adopt a resolution that authorizes an application for, and receipt of, funds from the BOR.
WATER AND
POWER
2 DISCUSSION
During the 2008-2009 drought , the need to monitor water use to increase conservation became an important issue. T he water construction and maintenance section and the water engineering and planning section investigated several options and decided to use a new technology called advanced metering infr astructure (AMI). AMI uses a wireless network system that aut omatically collects meter reads throughout the city and brings them into our billing system. With the addi tion of an add-on system called WaterSmart, AMI provided our customers with leak alerts that saved BWP cu stomers thousands of dollars and provided hourly water use patterns that helped us understand how and when our customers use water.
However, the AMI system did not perform as expected and it gradually began failing within a few years. Now, approximat ely one-fourth of the system has to be read manually and the remaining system is now generations behind the current te chnology, which has advanced by leaps and bounds since 2009. We also did not take full advantage of WaterSmart and relied more on customer messaging.
The stakes are higher now. We are living through an unprecedented drought and experiencing the driest years in recorded hi story. The old view that we need to “get through this drought” until things are normal again is inadequate. Consider this:
Burbank has no water rights; all of our water must be imported; State Water Project (SWP ) supplies are constrained to only providing health and safety needs for SWP-dependent areas;
The Colorado River system will see cutbac ks in water allocations in the coming months due to declining reservoir levels;
Through May 2022, Burbank’s cumulative water reduction goal of 15% from 2020 levels was only 1.9%;
State legislation is expected to require ci ties to meet indoor water use targets of 42 gallons per capita per day and be responsible for meeting their water budgets.
We must adapt to the reality that the changing climate is permanent and therefore, BWP is embarking on a new approach to our vision for water sustainability by ensuring that every home, business, and building has the opportunity to improve water efficiency. AMI will play a leading role in making this vision reality.
Earlier this year, BWP hired MeterSYS, a consulting firm with AMI expertise, to develop the bid documents for a replacement AMI system. MeterSYS worked with BWP to develop the requirements for a robust AMI system that is fully co mpatible with BWP’s billing system and WaterSmart. BWP estimates that a replacement AMI system would cost approximately $8,000,000 and funding for this e ffort is included in the approved fiscal year 2022-2023 budget.
BWP recently hired a project manager to fo cus on combining WaterSmart with data analytics and algorithms to monitor water use and enforce watering restrictions. AMI can also be used to reduce water waste and identif y leaks before they turn into expensive headaches that could cost customers thousands of dollars. 3 The WEEG program is one of t he few grants that considers AMI projects for municipal water systems. The program evaluation heavily ranks water and energy savings, with quantifiable water savings and sustainability benefits making up almost half of the scoring criteria. Other criteria include renewable energy, planni ng and implementation, and additional non-federal funding. The grant program require s a sophisticated and detailed application that is highly competitive. BWP hired Blais & Associates (B&A), a full-service grant management firm with a proven track record of writing successful grant applications that has helped win approximately 75% of all proposals prepared on behalf of their clients.
BWP is also pursuing another grant for this project through the California Department of Water Resources.
By reimplementing AMI for the customers where it has stopped working, BWP estimates that we would save approximately 224 acre-f eet each year, or appr oximately 73 million gallons of water, by putting customers more in tune with their water use. Reducing imports by 224 acre-feet from the State Water Project would result in approximately 740,600 kWH of annual energy savings (and associated greenhouse gas emissions), which is enough to power over 112 single-family homes for a year. In addition, BWP would reduce vehicle emissions by not having to drive around the city to manually read meters where AMI has failed.
BWP requested letters of support from seve ral project stakeholders, including the Metropolitan Water District of Southern Cali fornia, the City of Glendale, Congressman Adam Schiff, Burbank Chamber of Comme rce, the Sustainable Burbank Commission, and the Upper Los Angeles River Area Water Mast er. At the writing of this staff report, four letters have been received and are included in Attachment 2. The letters of support stress the critical need for water conservation in the face of an ongoing drought to protect California’s precious water supplies.
By enlisting the assistance of B&A, providing quantifiable water and energy savings and other sustainability benefits, and obtaining letters of support from interested stakeholders, Burbank will submit a highly competitive grant application.
FISCAL IMPACT
The maximum funding request for the BOR portion of this grant is $5,000,000. The grant requires a minimum local match of 50% of the total project cost of $8,000,000 that can be provided as cash or in-kind. However, ove rmatching by at least 10% will earn additional points in the grant evaluation. Therefore, to provide 60% of the total project cost, BWP will put forward $4,800,000 and will request $3,200,000 in funding from the BOR (40% of total project costs). BWP’s match will come from the approved fi scal year 2022-2023 funds which reside in BWP water division’s engineering cost center (PS51D) budget.
CONCLUSION
Staff recommends that the Burbank City Council approve the resolution to submit a grant application to the U.S. Departm ent of the Interior, Bureau of Reclamation, for the 2023 WaterSMART Water and Energy Efficiency Grants Program and authorize the BWP General Manager, as the City Manager’s designee, to execute grant agreements and other ancillary documents in furtherance thereof.
4 ATTACHMENTS
Attachment 1 – Resolution
Attachment 2 – Letters of Support