Correspondence Log — CleanPowerSF Sfpuc Commission, April 9, 2024

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San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
Correspondence Log
March 22, 2024 through March 28, 2024

Date Received From Subject
March 22, 2024 Peter Drekmeier Opportunity for Cheap Water March 23, 2024 Sarah Stevenson Bessie Tam’s CAC Meeting Presentation March 26, 2024 Mission Creek Pierce Street Outfall Budget - Follow Up March 26, 2024 Mission Creek Pierce Street Outfall Budget - Follow Up March 26, 2025
March 27 2024
Eileen White
Sarah Stevenson
Pierce Street Outfall Budget - Follow Up
March 27, 2024 Sarah Stevenson Pierce Street Outfall Budget - Follow Up March 28, 2024 Kieran Farr Community Complaint w/r/t
Noncompliant Agency Response to
SFBRWQCB Cleanup and Abatement
Order R2-2021-0021
Jennifer Vataru Re: Commission meeting public comment

This Message Is From an External Sender
This message came from outside your organization. Report Suspicious From: Peter Drekmeier
To: Commission; [email protected]
Subject: Opportunity for Cheap Water
Date: Friday, March 22, 2024 11:24:49 AM
Attachments: SSJID explores remaking entire delivery system Modesto Bee.pdf To: SFPUC Commissioners and BAWSCA Board Members
From: Peter Drekmeier, Tuolumne River Trust
Re: Collaboration with Irrigation Districts
Dear Commissioners and Board Members;
I wanted to draw your attention to the attached article — "SSJID explores remaking entire delivery system” — also found here,
published in the Modesto Bee on September 8, 2015. It
addresses the potential for much greater efficiency in the delivery of agricultural irrigation water in the South San Joaquin Valley Irrigation District (SSJID), a little to the north of the Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts.

Prior to this article, SSJID initiated a pressurized water system pilot project that found crop yields increased by 30% while water use decreased by 30%.

The attached article includes the following details:
“...the project, which would conserve about a quarter of the Stanislaus River supply, would make sense if the saved water were sold to outside buyers for an average of at least $350 per acre-foot."
"These improvements would cut down on water that evaporates, seeps into the ground or flows out the ends of canals. They have been in place since 2012 on about 3,800 acres in the southwest part of the district, which is looking at expanding them to all 56,000 acres.” "The project would conserve up to 73,110 acre-feet of water per year, consultants said." One would assume similar opportunities exist in the Modesto and Turlock Irrigation Districts.

MID irrigates approximately 60,000 acres (similar to SSJID), and TID about 150,000 acres. $350 per acre-foot is a lot cheaper than $3,000 to $4,000 per acre-foot for alternative water supplies in the Bay Area.

Collaboration with MID and TID is worth exploring.
-Peter
-----------------------
Peter Drekmeier
Policy Director
Tuolumne River Trust
[email protected]
Part of the McClatchy Media Network
NEWS
SSJID explores remaking entire delivery
system

BY JOHN HOLLAND
[email protected]
SEPTEMBER 08, 2015 7:09 PM

MANTECA
Experts ran rough numbers Tuesday on costs and beneﬁts of remaking the delivery system for the South San Joaquin Irrigation District.

They said the project, which would conserve about a quarter of the Stanislaus River supply, would make sense if the saved water were sold to outside buyers for an average of at least $350 per acre-foot.

That is far more than SSJID farmers are paying this year , but not unusual in the water market that has emerged in parts of California hit hard by drought.

The project involves “pressurizing” a system that has relied on gravity for the past century to get water to farmers around Ripon, Manteca and Escalon. Water from the main canal would go into six small reservoirs around the district, then would be pumped into pipelines serving surrounding farmers who use drip lines or microsprinklers to reduce consumption.

These improvements would cut down on water that evaporates, seeps into the ground or ﬂows out the ends of canals. They have been in place since 2012 on about 3,800 acres in the southwest part of the district, which is looking at expanding them to all 56,000 acres.

Consultants briefed the SSJID board Tuesday on the initial estimates for the project, expected to cost about $325 million to plan and build and $8 million a year to operate. Directors will consider whether to move on to detailed design at a future meeting.

The project could require that district farmers pay at least $42 per acre-foot, said Duncan MacEwan, an economist with Era Economics in Davis. This year , most are paying $24 per acre, plus $3 for each acre-foot applied to that land. Customers in the area already pressurized pay more.

In return for the higher rates, farmers would get a state-of-the-art system that allows them to turn on the supply as needed via smartphone or other high-tech means.

They also could reduce their reliance on groundwater , which is expensive to pump and, in some places, high in salts that can damage crops.

The project would conserve up to 73,110 acre-feet of water per year , consultants said.

SSJID has rights to 300,000 acre-feet in years with ample rain and snow.

The conserved water could be attractive even at a high price to, for example, the Westlands Water District, a supplier west of Fresno that has had drastic cutbacks in its federal irrigation allotments. Another option is a nearby supplier , such as the Stockton East Water District.

MacEwen said $350 per acre-foot “is a plausible price, and we think the project is in the realm of economic and ﬁnancial feasibility.”
The SSJID would ﬁnance the project over 30 years. It also is weighing the idea against the cost of maintaining the current system, which has many components more than 60 years old.

Board member Dale Kuil said he was concerned that the saved water , rather than being sold to another district, would be taken by the state to increase ﬂows on the Stanislaus River and downstream.
“(Farmers) are worried about losing the water they are saving,” he said.

Board President Bob Holmes said that by exploring a pressurized system, “we are trying to position ourselves to grow our crops with whatever water is available.” John Holland: 209-578-2385
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News Local Sports Opinion California • Obituaries Jobs/Recruiting Personal Finance Shopping This Message Is From an External Sender
This message came from outside your organization.

Report Suspicious ‌
From: Sarah Stevenson
To: SFPUC Citizens" Advisory Committee; Commission
Cc: Tam, Bessie; Almendral, Desiree D; Liu-Bettencourt, Sharon; Robinson, Stephen D; Prather, Joel; [email protected]
Subject: Re: Bessie Tam"s CAC meeting presentation
Date: Saturday, March 23, 2024 12:36:19 PM
Attachments: image001.png
image002.png
image003.png
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Dear SFPUC Citizens Advisory Committee and Commission members, especially Commissioner Ajami;
I was poking around SFPUC's website looking for budget documents. You can see below the efforts I had to go through. I'm really happy to let you know I did find the budget documents I was looking for on the Commission's agenda! For the public relations staff and citizens advisory committees members, you might be interested to know the budget report I was looking for is at this web page: https://sfpuc.org/sites/default/files/about- us/commission/March%2026%20Agenda%20WEB.pdf, there's a link to the report under Quarterly Report including Southeast Area Major projects. Funny, that doesn't show up in any web searches!
Anyway, for the Commission members, I'd like to first thank Commissioner Ajami for supporting citizen participation! While poking around the commissions agenda I noticed that Peter Drekmeier mentioned this so I found the meeting recording. I'm very proud of San Francisco commission members in keeping public participation open! Which brings up my next issue (I hope you don't mind multiple issues on 1 letter to the commission).

Commissioners:

I'd like to bring to your attention problems I have been having getting documents. This started with my asking for the report Bessie mentioned in her presentation to the CAC. No one was able to find it! I mean, why isn't it just on your SSIP reports page or your PUC reports page or better yet, both locations? I have spent hours searching for the quarterly report that Bessie mentioned, the SSIP web page only shows a few from years ago. Since Commission Ajami brought up the issue of public participation, I'd like to see if she could also start asking the staff to keep this up to date too! I mean why do we have to bug the staff for something instead of just finding it on your website? And even funnier yet, I had to do a public records request for it. When I asked for the next one which is supposed to be out soon, the public relations staff just shrugged. But the good news is I found it! On the Commission Agenda no less! But not on the reports web page. So, Commissioners, Please look into that.

Another topic that come up while I was looking for this was I was looking for information about the baykeeper lawsuit thing. It was in the press recently. I'm interested in Mission Creek and would like to bring this to their attention also! So, since I had to do a public records request to get the now 4 month old quarterly report and the now available quarterly report for march, I figured I'd see what baykeepers complaint is about. So I did a search on the SFPUCs next request webpage. There's nothing there! I had tried to find things there before and found that the sunshine organization didn't even have a list of sunshine requests. duh. Ok, so I put in my own request for the baykeeper request. Its request 24-1762 in case you're interested.

So my next suggestion for the commissions to look into is why the puc tries to hide their next requests? I mean, as I pointed out below, the next request website says The search page says "If you
need San Francisco records that may have been previously released, please search past requests. You may find what you need!". So I searched! nope... nothing. Ok...

Well, these are points the citizens committee folks might also be interested in looking into since it involves citizen involvement.

Thank you for your time! Let me know if this is helpful ok? On Thu, Mar 21, 2024 at 8:21 AM Sarah Stevenson <[email protected]> wrote:

Desiree and others interested:

Please be aware that the City and County of San Francisco's "NextRequest" system has specific wording recommending to the public to search.

As I pointed out below:

The search page says "If you need San Francisco records that may have been previously released, please search past requests. You may find what you need!" Why force the public to wait 10 days for you to paw through tons of documents when we can find it ourselves or in this case it appears Bessie Tam had immediate access to these documents as she referenced in her presentation? Why can't SF PUC simply post them properly as well as provide them for public presentations such as Ms. Tam's presentation to the CAC?
Please do not embarrass yourselves, the SF PUC and the City and County of SF further!

1. Work with the SSIP staff, external affairs and IT to be able to properly post these documents in an appropriate and timely fashion to avoid the appearance of coverup and mis- management.

2. Work with SFPUC IT staff and external affairs to keep the public records request open to the public. Most other City departments follow the City and County's recommendation to keep the public records request public. It appears SF PUC may be alone in hiding these requests.

Thank you for your attention to these details.

On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 3:29 PM Almendral, Desiree D <[email protected] >
wrote:

Hi Sarah,

Thank you for adding your request to NextRequest and following up. I checked the system and your request is there: #24-1724. No worries about looking through previous requests.

We have 10 days to respond to your request, but we will try to forward any responsive records we locate sooner.

Best,
Desiree

From: Sarah Stevenson <[email protected]
>
Sent: Wednesday, March 20, 2024 12:22 PM
To: Almendral, Desiree D <[email protected]>; Tam, Bessie <[email protected]>; SFPUC Citizens' Advisory Committee <[email protected]>; Commission <[email protected]>
Cc: Liu-Bettencourt, Sharon <[email protected]>; Robinson, Stephen D <[email protected]>; Prather, Joel <[email protected]> Subject: Re: Bessie Tam's CAC meeting presentation

CAUTION: This email originated from outside of the organization. Do not click links or open attachments unless you recognize the sender and know the content is safe.

Dear Desiree and others that might be interested:

I've made this request: BLOCKEDsanfrancisco[.]nextrequest[.]com/requests/24-1724BLOCKED I noticed it is not published? why not?
It seems to me someone else might have asked for this, and I could easily search your request system and find the documents without having to bug you. The search page says "If you need San Francisco records that may have been previously released, please search past requests. You may find what you need!". I like that a lot! I'm willing to put some effort in to help reduce your workload!

I did this search and found that there's no PUC requests except 1 to DPW and my own in the last 3 years. I'm sure someone must have tried to ask for documents from PUC? BLOCKEDsanfrancisco[.]nextrequest[.]com/requests?
closed=true&department_ids=4823&open=trueBLOCKED
Only gives 19 requests but the site says:

Explore 24244 requests
If you need San Francisco records that may have been previously released, please search past requests. You may find what you need!

On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 12:12 PM Sarah Stevenson <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear Desiree;
Thank you so much for your kind reply.

I will follow up as you suggest.

Dear CAC staff;
Please post this reply to your CAC general members and your Waste Water committee members as a comment from the general public.

Dear Commission Staff;
Please post this reply to your commission members as a comment from the general public.

Dear CAC and Commission Members:

I would like to register my concern to both Bessie, the SSIP staff, the CAC and commission members.

Bessie did her best presenting budget information but there is always a lot of concern when a large program is presented in overview. Bessie helpfully referred the committee and the members of the public who were in attendance to the SSIP quarterly reports for more details. When looking for these reports, I found they do not appear to be available through the SFPUC nor SSIP web pages. It would be very helpful if these were kept up to date, especially to prevent embarrassing situations such as Bessie was inadvertently drawn into. I recommend a discussion with your IT staff to get their input on how to make these and other public documents available so that Bessie's job could be a lot easier!

It would also be wonderful if you could update project information, for example, the most recent document for the Folsom Flood Improvement Project (or whatever you call it) is Apr 2017 and May 2018. I'm sure a lot has changed since then! I've had several people in the neighborhood asking about how its going to affect their businesses and I'm sure you'll want to provide the neighbors with the latest information possible to avoid them voicing their concerns hysterically in public meetings with little or no recent information.

Thank you all so much for all the good work you do!

Sarah

On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 11:51 AM Almendral, Desiree D <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi Sarah,

Thank you for sending in your request for information (original email pasted below).

I am part of the SFPUC Public Records team and we are working on gathering the information. Meanwhile, please submit your request through our Public Records request system- NextRequest – the link is provided below. When entering your request, please choose PUC under “*Departments”. We will provide any responsive records we find through the NextRequest system.

Online requests: sanfrancisco.nextrequest.com
Please let me know if you have any questions.

Best,
Desiree

------------------

On Wed, Mar 20, 2024 at 9:23 AM Sarah Stevenson <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear CAC staff and Commission Secretary;
Please forward to Ms. Tam

Dear Ms. Tam;
Thank you for your presentation last night at the CAC meeting. I was looking for the SSIP and other WWE capital program quarterly reports but have been unable to find them. On the SSIP reports page at:BLOCKEDsfpuc[.]org/construction-contracts/sewer-system-improvement-programBLOCKED I could only find last years reports (see below) and the SF PUC reports page at:BLOCKEDsfpuc[.]org/about- us/reportsBLOCKED there was nothing that appeared relevant.

Could you please forward the quarterly reports for FY 2023-2024? I believe at this time there should be 2 and a 3rd one coming out soon. You might want to update the SSIP page also.

Thank you for your presentation and for your help.

Sarah

Desiree Almendral

San Francisco Public Utilities Commission
External Affairs Bureau | Strategy, Planning and Innovation Email: [email protected]

This Message Is From an External Sender
This message came from outside your organization.

Report Suspicious ‌
From: Mission Creek <[email protected]> Date: March 26, 2024 at 5:15:56 PM PDT
To: Sarah Stevenson <[email protected]>, Jen Vataru <[email protected]>, Commission <[email protected]> Cc: [email protected], "Robinson, Stephen D" <[email protected]>, The Marina 94123 <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], Sam Plummer <[email protected]>, Daniel Kostek <[email protected]>, SFPUC Citizens' Advisory Committee <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], Neighbors Against Flooding <[email protected]>, [email protected], "Peskin, Aaron (BOS)" <[email protected]>, "Safai, Ahsha (BOS)" <[email protected]>, "Stefani, Catherine (BOS)" <[email protected]>, Jessica Wolfrom <[email protected]>, [email protected], St John Barned-Smith <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], Alex Mullaney <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], Dan Brekke <[email protected]>, Ezra David Romero <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], Lorien Fono <[email protected]>, [email protected], Jeff Ruch <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], "Ko, Albert (DPW)" <[email protected]>, Save SF Marina Green <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], "Prather, Joel" <[email protected]>, "Chastain, Amy" <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: Pierce Street Outfall Budget - Follow Up
‌
To all; Sarah was very upset today by the treatment of Jennifer Vataru at the end of the commission meeting. Sarah has been working to get documents for studying the sewage discharged into Mission Creek with us. She's also familiar with ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerStart
ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerEnd
To all;
Sarah was very upset today by the treatment of Jennifer

Vataru at the end of the commission meeting. Sarah has been working to get documents for studying the sewage discharged into Mission Creek with us.

She's also familiar with the efforts of trying to get documents from SFPUC Public Records Request, etc. In this case, it appears that Jen Vataru, one of the 45-50 residents of the Marina area affected by flooding, had asked for information (see bottom of this email) based on Stephen Robinsons statements to the Commission.

It appears that Dennis Herrera made somewhat insulting remarks about Jen. If so, I must apologize to Jen, she doesn't deserve this. There will be a video out tomorrow which you can find at this link:https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=22 Since we didn't see it ourselves we will wait and provide more information about this later. While we wait for the recording to come out, wWe had been working on some comments to the reports provided to the Regional Board by Joel Prather.

we'll go ahead and give you our first analysis of the reports here:

Dear Commission Members, members of the Board of Supervisors and members of the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

We would like to take this opportunity to comment on the 2 reports Mr. Joel Prather has submitted to the San Francisco Bay Area Regional Water Quality Control Board regarding the sewage flooding following the closure of the Pierce St. outfall. These reports have been provided to us by the Board staff via public records requests available on our Google drive at this link:
:

RWQCB TheMarina PRR Feb 2024.You can also follow the
hyperlinks below to read these reports. We appreciate Mr. Prathers efforts in preparing these reports.

According to Mr. Prather's reports, the closure led to the 2 catastrophic flooding events involving 40-50 homes on Marina Blvd including that of Mr. Joe Montana, San Francisco football legend (Fig.1 below). Please remember the elevations shown below appear to be based on the manhole elevation. Many homes in the Marina area have subsided as the sand fill compacts over the years and are now lower than the sewers that were built on piles. Many homes are built at street level and even a couple inches of sewer flooding means their homes will have sewage in them.

Our members have reviewed the 2 reports and would like to commend Mr. Prather for his efforts. There does seem to be some confusion regarding hydrological issues such as "Time of Concentration" however the first report from Oct 2023 does seem to be a frank analysis of the cause of the flooding. Our review raises many concerns with issues raised in his reports and we are preparing a more complete analysis of these reports for the Regional Board to be released shortly. It is likely that costs to correct the problems created by the closure may be considerably less, however we do feel his efforts in this report have been laudatory when faced with the obstacles placed in front of him. Mr Prather correctly reports that in 115 years of history, the Oct. 2021 storm was "the 21st largest". This is interesting as it shows that based on 115 years of history, 21 (or more) storms would have flooded Marina Blvd. This kind of flooding on Marina Blvd. had never been seen before, until 7 months after the completion of the closure of the Pierce St. outfall in March, 2021. It also suggests that sewage flood victims in that area will be subjected to flooding on an incredibly often basis, such as once every 5.47 years on average (115 years/21 storms). With climate change, increasing storm intensity and rising sea levels, this frequency would appear to go up in the future.

Mr. Norby's approval (fig. 3 below) was based on
the report provided to Mr. Norby by Ms. Vi Lam and Ms.Julie Lebonte (Fig. 2 below) .

our June 2023
Pierce Outfall Closure report, we would like to recommend to the Board of Supervisors and the San Francisco Public Utility Commission members to immediately pursue a claim for errors and omissions against the insurance of the engineers that prepared the report and helped Mr. Norby decide to close the outfalls. We agree with Mr. Pather's conclusion that there is no reason to require the ratepayers of San Francisco to have to suffer due to the consequences of that disastrous decision. There will also be many costly payouts in the Joe Montana lawsuit like there was in all the previous flooding lawsuits. The claims are not currently known but are likely to be $4-5 million direct damages for each of the 2 (and any future) floods as well as $25-45 million dollars in lost property values due to City having put these private homes into a sewage flood zone.

leading to the
Clean Water Act citizen lawsuit currently being prepared by Baykeeper to enforce alleged violations of the
discharge permit's prohibitions. This is just one of the many violations in that complaint but based on Mr. Prathers report, it appears it could be the most economically devastating to correct.

As Mr. Prather states: "In order to fund basic sewer system needs outlined in its Capital Improvement Plan, SFPUC will need to implement rate increases that will only increase the financial burdens that San Franciscans— particularly the poor and people of color—face." San Francisco ratepayers are currently having to shoulder the $3.4 billion ($2,673M+$717M) estimated to be required to finish the SFPUC SEP Bayside Solids digester project. Those costs include the project cost necessary to reduce the fine grit before entering the incredibly expensive digesters. We would like to remind the Supervisors and the Commissioners that this project is to provide services to approximately 650,000 SF Bayside residents or $7000 per individual user. This is likely to go down in history as the most expensive single sewer treatment project per user of any medium sized city such as San Francisco.

SFPUC General Manager ED Harrington because of the then escalating cost of the digester project which at that time appears to have gone from $900 million to $1.2 billion. SFPUC attempted to avoid responsibility for the sewer flooding for nearly 10 years leading to many expensive payouts for damages and property values lost due to the sewage flooding. Avoiding fixing the problems caused by the closure of the Pierce St. Outfall are likely to balloon even more if SFPUC commission members are not able to get this problem fixed.

A further detailed report will be prepared and provided to the Regional Board, the Board of Supervisors and the Regional Board shortly. Please feel free to browse the documents we have obtained to prepare these reports on our google drive:

SF Sewer WikiLeaks - Documents Related to sewage discharges in San Francisco On Tue, Mar 26, 2024 at 4:46
PM Sarah Stevenson <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear Eileen White
I had been lisenting to the SFPUC Commission meeting today. At the end of the meeting Commissioner Ajami said that SFPUC had to close the outfall because of the Regional Board.

Is that correct? Did the Regional Board require SFPUC to close the outfall? If so: WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING!?!
They say the sewer boxes provide treatment but it looks like closing the outfall actually made it worse. So they are polluting MORE.... not less by closing the outfall.

Well, I think Commission Ajami was a little confused. I think the Baykeeper lawsuit says SFPUC closed the outfall without written permission? Isn't SFPUC required to get written permission to change their system?
I've been working to try to get some records from SFPUC about this also.

But some of the records we've already gotten seem to show that SFPUC closing the outfall actually made things a LOT WORSE! It looks like they reduced pollution in the SF Marina where all the expensive yachts are. Good for them. I guess it also made it easier to build the new marina with PGE's $220million clean up money (don't clean up the mess, take the money and build a new marina for bigger yatchs... YAY! what's not to like?) I'm trying to figure this out myself, but Solutions not Sandbags has saved a bunch of the documents they've gotten from PUC and you all. I've been going through them and found this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aI35rYRqXUPlL7KqQTt4GZ_Bc_NuKMJ-/view?usp=drive_link

It seems to be a report about water quality. Was this given to you? Notice the blue decreased hours in the picture... the harbor is now free of pollution! Yay! But Crissy Field and Aquatic park... eh, don't look there.

So if the Regional Board made SFPUC dump more pollution into Crissy Field and Aquatic Park to help keep the expensive boats clean... well, I guess that's just how life is right?

Also, I've been trying to get records from SFPUC... yeah, its a joke. Good luck there! Obviously they didn't give this to you when they decided to close the outfall to protect the yatchs.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aI35rYRqXUPlL7KqQTt4GZ_Bc_NuKMJ-/view?usp=drive_link

Dear Mr. Robinson,
I am unclear as to which study you are referencing when you stated in the public meeting:
"...There was an extensive study that looked into the Pierce St. outfall and we did come to the conclusion that it did not contribute to the storm(sic) in that particular case..." So far, all the documents that I have seen appear to imply just the opposite, such as the image shown here. The difference in the area affected and the depth of flooding in the image suggest that except for 1-2 homes, all the homes (including mine) that were damaged in the 2 storms so far would not have had damages if the outfall were not closed. If I am reading this wrong, hopefully you have an extensive study that can show me otherwise so I can correct any misperceptions I have had from the information provided by SFPUC so far.

Under the California Public Records Act, could you please provide me with:

1. All documents, studies and reports provided to you to substantiate that claim. This includes all studies and reports following the Oct 2021 storm, and the Dec 2022 storm and other damages.

2. All emails, meeting minutes, phone logs and other correspondences you have had with City Staff, consultants, politicians and others regarding "Pierce St. Outfall"

3. All emails, meeting minutes, phone logs and other correspondences you have had with City Staff, consultants, politicians and others regarding outfall modifications and closures

As you have referenced this document in a public meeting, it is no longer "a confidential communication". Under California State rules of evidence, this removes any privilege that may have been implied by it having been previously shared with attorneys. Please do not use "Attorney Client Privilege" to hide communications which are no longer "confidential". https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/evidence-code/evid-sect-954/

Thank You
Jennifer Vataru

On Mon, Feb 5, 2024 at 2:17 PM SolutionsNotSandbags San Francisco <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear Commission Members, Regulators and Other Interested Parties:

We've been asked to provide links to some of the items referenced in this email:

All documents obtained by Solutions Not Sandbags and working with TheMarina94123 are available at these google drive locations:SF Sewer WikiLeaks - Documents Related to sewage discharges in San Francisco, Marina Wikileaks

1. PUC Commision Meeting:

Jen's comments are at 1:39:43, in the video of the 1/26/2024 meeting: https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/45285?view_id=22&redirect=true&h=61ccae973bc1ecfd3d79f027c10e12ee Commissioner Ajami's comments at 1:42:17
Mr Robinson’s comments at 1:44:01:
"...There was an extensive study that looked into the Pierce St. outfall and we did come to the conclusion that it did not contribute to the storm(sic) in that particular case however of course we can go back and look at it again..."
[email protected]
past meeting videos are at:https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=22.

PUC commission upcoming meeting schedule and agenda at:Agendas-Minutes-Resolutions-Log

2. Study done after 10/24/2021 storm (note the considerable increase in flood depth and spread with the closure of Pierce St. outfall):10242021 Storm and System Response.pdf This report was provided by SFPUC following 2 Public Record Requests:
a. Email PRA to PUC Marina Outfalls.pdf
b. Request 23-3806 - TheMarina94123 request for Herrera backup material updated july 31.pdf

3. Code of Ethics | National Society of Professional Engineers.

4. Solutions Not Sandbags: 'It's Been a Fight for Our Homes': The Ongoing Saga to Fix San Francisco's Sewers | KQED.

5. Ex Parte Communications: Water Boards Ex Parte Communications Questions and Answers Document

6. SNS Report on Flooding Due to Pierce St. outfall Closure: 1.3-New Report on the Information obtained from SFPUC regarding the consequences of the closure of the Pierce St Outfall.pdf

7. Lawsuits, please note there is no clear report of final cost to settle and in all of the legal cases, no report on cost for City Attorney and legal consultants:
a. 2004 storm (settled in 2007):San Francisco ready to wrap up flooding lawsuit with $1.7M payout b. 2014 storm (and others, settled in 2020) :SF to pay homeowners nearly $4.4M in settlements over raw sewage flooding | Archives | sfexaminer.com c. Currently: Joe Montana played at Candlestick dump. He may live under similar conditions in S.F. d. SFPUC’s attempt to sue EPA to prevent enforcement of Clean Water Act:SF isn’t doing enough to prevent sewage pollution, court rules [email protected]

8. SF Required to fix undersized sewers which caused sewage geyers:
a. Cleanup and Abatement Order from Regional Water Quality Control Board(Regional Board) SFPUC Cleanup and Abatement Order b. SFPUC Cleanup and Abatement Order Public Notice c. Millions of gallons of sewage are spilling into San Francisco Bay

9. Regional Boards Letter to SF to begin investigation into Pierce St. outfall:North Shore 13383 Directive-for signature.pdf

10. Smaller pipes downstream, Manning's equation: Shit Storm: Why won’t SF stop flooding homes with sewage? | Archives | sfweekly.com

11. Protect the yacht harbor:
. Assessment to Decommission Pierce CSD Memo.pdf:
b. 5. UWA Bayside Operations Evaluation Study TM (DRAFT).pdf

Reports and emails provided under the Public Records Act requests specifically state that “Collection system staff request raising the weir…” NOT blocking it entirely. A considerably number of emails express considerable concern about even raising the weir slightly such as Mira Chokshi's concern:RE OF 10 and 13 Backflow Prevention Next Steps - RESPONSE REQUIRED 2017-09-29.pdf

12. SF’s history of engineering:The Sewer System of San Francisco, and a Solution of the Stormwater Flow Problem | Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers | Vol 65, No 4

13. Why were flooding projects removed from the SSIP? Smoking Gun - Harrington Explaining Why Flooding Projects Removed

SOLUTIONS NOT SANDBAGS
Bringing Awareness to SF's Failing Sewer System
Website: SolutionsNotSandbags.org
YouTube I Instagram I Twitter I Facebook

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Gmail - Fwd_ Comments on Draft CSO Guidance1. pdf To all; We're sorry, there are some figures which we referenced and forgot to include in the email. See below. We have also attached comments we have given to the US EPA regarding a draft ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerStart
ZjQcmQRYFpfptBannerEnd
Gmail - Fwd_ Comments on Draft CSO Guidance1.pdf
To all;
We're sorry, there are some figures which we referenced and forgot to include in the email. See below.

We have also attached comments we have given to the US EPA regarding a draft of future regulations of Combined Sewer Overflow systems like San Francisco's. Many Cities are completing their CSO reduction projects and the US EPA is looking at how regulatory agencies such as the Regional Board might work with the cities to maintain and improve their systems going into the future. We feel that San Francisco is a very good example of how things can go so far off the track. It can be a case study of agencies that after completing their long term control plans then ignore their CSO systems and go on to more flashy, vanity projects. We hope to keep working with San Francisco to overcome their history of poor maintenance of the CSO structures and improve on our City's system without spending billions! When systems are properly maintained year after year, they usually should not require massive capital intensive programs. At this time we'd like to encourage San Francisco PUC to greatly improve on their maintenance programs before making massive investments in new systems.

According to Mr. Norby's statements in emails regarding the closure, one reason that The Pierce St. outfall was closed was because SFPUC did not want to maintain it. According to Mr. Norby, the Brannan St. outfall was also not maintained and eventually went into disrepair and has been defacto closed for the last 12 years. As shown in Mr. Prathers reports, closure of the Pierce St. outfall lead to massive flooding as well as increasing pollution as Sarah points out below. Closure of the Brannan and 4th St. South outfalls has lead to increased sewage being discharged through the gates of the Division St. outfall into the Dead-end slough of Mission Creek, something that appears to be explicitly prohibited by the SF Bay basin plan.

The closure of these outfalls has decreased the ability of San Francisco's systems to slow the water down inside of the sewer boxes. Slowing the water down in these big boxes allows the pollution to settle out and the discharge can be considerably less polluted when it finally has to leave the system.

Unfortunately, the gates and the outfall closures defeat this. In the Northshore area, the sewage is being flushed out faster through the fewer remaining outfalls. In Mission Creek, the sewage is going directly from the sewers out the Division St. outfall.

IF SFPUC had just spent a few dollars every couple years inspecting and maintaining these outfalls...

We can do better and we must!

Friends of Mission Creek

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1JStblOD4P_lqhVKEfyEKfQPmCzeZ47Xl/view?usp=drive_link

Fig 1: Table showing increased sewage flooding due to Pierce. Outfall closure:

Fig. 2: Cover sheet of report recommending the closure of the Pierce St. Outfall:

Fig.3: Meeting to decide to decommission outfall:

Fig.4: Alternative Project Cost Chart:

Fig.5: Mr. Prather's Statement:

On Tue, Mar 26, 2024 at 5:15 PM Mission Creek <[email protected]> wrote:

To all;

Sarah was very upset today by the treatment of Jennifer Vataru at the end of the commission meeting. Sarah has been working to get documents for studying the sewage discharged into Mission Creek with us. She's also familiar with the efforts of trying to get documents from SFPUC Public Records Request, etc. In this case, it appears that Jen Vataru, one of the 45-50 residents of the Marina area affected by flooding, had asked for information (see bottom of this email) based on Stephen Robinsons statements to the Commission.

Dear Commission Members, members of the Board of Supervisors and members of the Regional Water Quality Control Board.

These 2 reports were prepared to address the July 2023 "13383" (Water code Section) directive of the Regional Board for information regarding the closure of the Pierce St. Outfall. Solutions Not Sandbags members were on the ground in the neighborhood the day after the Oct 2021 storm talking with neighbors and have been working with them through the neighborhood group The Marina 94123 to help address the flooding caused by the closure of the Pierce St. Outfall. According to Mr. Prather's reports, the closure led to the 2 catastrophic flooding events involving 40-50 homes on Marina Blvd including that of Mr. Joe Montana, San Francisco football legend (Fig.1 below). Please remember the elevations shown below appear to be based on the manhole elevation. Many homes in the Marina area have subsided as the sand fill compacts over the years and are now lower than the sewers that were built on piles. Many homes are built at street level and even a couple inches of sewer flooding means their homes will have sewage in them.

Our members have reviewed the 2 reports and would like to commend Mr. Prather for his efforts.

There does seem to be some confusion regarding hydrological issues such as "Time of Concentration" however the first report from Oct 2023 does seem to be a frank analysis of the cause of the flooding. Our review raises many concerns with issues raised in his reports and we are preparing a more complete analysis of these reports for the Regional Board to be released shortly. It is likely that costs to correct the problems created by the closure may be considerably less, however we do feel his efforts in this report have been laudatory when faced with the obstacles placed in front of him. Mr Prather correctly reports that in 115 years of history, the Oct. 2021 storm was "the 21st largest". This is interesting as it shows that based on 115 years of history, 21 (or more) storms would have flooded Marina Blvd. This kind of flooding on Marina Blvd. had never been seen before, until 7 months after the completion of the closure of the Pierce St. outfall in March, 2021. It also suggests that sewage flood victims in that area will be subjected to flooding on an incredibly often basis, such as once every 5.47 years on average (115 years/21 storms). With climate change, increasing storm intensity and rising sea levels, this frequency would appear to go up in the future.

At this time the most critical issue that was raised by his report is the cost to correct the flooding caused by the closure of the Pierce St. outfall as addressed in the 2nd, Feb 2024 report . The Pierce St.
outfall closure was approved by Mr. Prather's predecessor, Mr. Greg Norby. Mr. Norby's approval (fig. 3 below) was based on the report provided to Mr. Norby by Ms. Vi Lam and Ms.Julie Lebonte (Fig. 2
below) .

According to Mr. Prather's 2nd report, it is likely to cost the City between $450 million and $1.250 billion dollars to correct this mistake. There was no recommended alternative in Mr. Prather's report so at this time it is not clear which was the preferred alternative. As sewer rate payers, we hope the City will select the lower of these figures. According to documents recommending the closure of the outfall discussed in on our June 2023 Pierce Outfall Closure report , we would like to recommend to the Board
of Supervisors and the San Francisco Public Utility Commission members to immediately pursue a claim for errors and omissions against the insurance of the engineers that prepared the report and helped Mr. Norby decide to close the outfalls. We agree with Mr. Pather's conclusion that there is no reason to require the ratepayers of San Francisco to have to suffer due to the consequences of that disastrous decision. There will also be many costly payouts in the Joe Montana lawsuit like there was in all the previous flooding lawsuits. The claims are not currently known but are likely to be $4-5 million direct damages for each of the 2 (and any future) floods as well as $25-45 million dollars in lost property values due to City having put these private homes into a sewage flood zone.

The 2nd report also does not outline what other fines or mitigation may be required by the regulatory agencies or courts if the outfall closure was found to have been done contrary to the NPDES discharge permits prohibition on changes to the treatment and disposal system without written authorization by the Regional Board executive director. We have asked several times for proof of that written approval from both SFPUC and the regional board and we're told there was none. It appears this is also one of the many violations leading to the Clean Water Act citizen lawsuit currently being prepared by Baykeeper to enforce alleged violations of the discharge permit's prohibitions. This is just one of the many violations in that complaint but based on Mr. Prathers report, it appears it could be the most economically devastating to correct.

As Mr. Prather states: "In order to fund basic sewer system needs outlined in its Capital Improvement Plan, SFPUC will need to implement rate increases that will only increase the financial burdens that San Franciscans—particularly the poor and people of color—face." San Francisco ratepayers are currently having to shoulder the $3.4 billion ($2,673M+$717M) estimated to be required to finish the SFPUC SEP Bayside Solids digester project. Those costs include the project cost necessary to reduce the fine grit before entering the incredibly expensive digesters. We would like to remind the Supervisors and the Commissioners that this project is to provide services to approximately 650,000 SF Bayside residents or $7000 per individual user. This is likely to go down in history as the most expensive single sewer treatment project per user of any medium sized city such as San Francisco.

SF ratepayers are also now having to spend $757.5 million on sewage flooding projects, considerably more than was proposed in the 2010 Sewer System Master Plan. These projects have been required by the Regional Board to address sewage discharging from sewers in Wawona, Mission and Bayview/Cayuga. In the 2010 Sewer System Master Plan, these areas and many more were budgeted for $400 million but they were removed from the SFPUC budget by 2012 SFPUC General Manager ED Harrington because of the then escalating cost of the digester project which at that time appears to have gone from $900 million to $1.2 billion. SFPUC attempted to avoid responsibility for the sewer flooding for nearly 10 years leading to many expensive payouts for damages and property values lost due to the sewage flooding. Avoiding fixing the problems caused by the closure of the Pierce St. Outfall are likely to balloon even more if SFPUC commission members are not able to get this problem fixed.

On Tue, Mar 26, 2024 at 4:46 PM Sarah Stevenson <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear Eileen White
I had been lisenting to the SFPUC Commission meeting today. At the end of the meeting Commissioner Ajami said that SFPUC had to close the outfall because of the Regional Board.

Is that correct? Did the Regional Board require SFPUC to close the outfall?

If so: WHAT WHERE YOU THINKING!?!
They say the sewer boxes provide treatment but it looks like closing the outfall actually made it worse. So they are polluting MORE.... not less by closing the outfall.

YAY! what's not to like?)
I'm trying to figure this out myself, but Solutions not Sandbags has saved a bunch of the documents they've gotten from PUC and you all. I've been going through them and found this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aI35rYRqXUPlL7KqQTt4GZ_Bc_NuKMJ-/view?usp=drive_link

So if the Regional Board made SFPUC dump more pollution into Crissy Field and Aquatic Park to help keep the expensive boats clean... well, I guess that's just how life is right?

Also, I've been trying to get records from SFPUC... yeah, its a joke. Good luck there! Obviously they didn't give this to you when they decided to close the outfall to protect the yatchs.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aI35rYRqXUPlL7KqQTt4GZ_Bc_NuKMJ-/view?usp=drive_link

Under the California Public Records Act, could you please provide me with:

1. All documents, studies and reports provided to you to substantiate that claim. This includes all studies and reports following the Oct 2021 storm, and the Dec 2022 storm and other damages.

2. All emails, meeting minutes, phone logs and other correspondences you have had with City Staff, consultants, politicians and others regarding "Pierce St. Outfall"

3. All emails, meeting minutes, phone logs and other correspondences you have had with City Staff, consultants, politicians and others regarding outfall modifications and closures

Thank You
Jennifer Vataru

On Mon, Feb 5, 2024 at 2:17 PM SolutionsNotSandbags San Francisco <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear Commission Members, Regulators and Other Interested Parties:

We've been asked to provide links to some of the items referenced in this email:

1. PUC Commision Meeting:

Jen's comments are at 1:39:43, in the video of the 1/26/2024 meeting:
https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/45285?
view_id=22&redirect=true&h=61ccae973bc1ecfd3d79f027c10e12ee Commissioner Ajami's comments at 1:42:17
Mr Robinson’s comments at 1:44:01:
"...There was an extensive study that looked into the Pierce St. outfall and we did come to the conclusion that it did not contribute to the storm(sic) in that particular case however of course we can go back and look at it again..."
[email protected]
past meeting videos are at:https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php? view_id=22.

PUC commission upcoming meeting schedule and agenda at:Agendas-Minutes- Resolutions-Log

3. Code of Ethics | National Society of Professional Engineers.

4. Solutions Not Sandbags: 'It's Been a Fight for Our Homes': The Ongoing Saga to Fix San Francisco's Sewers | KQED.

5. Ex Parte Communications: Water Boards Ex Parte Communications Questions and Answers Document

6. SNS Report on Flooding Due to Pierce St. outfall Closure: 1.3-New Report on the Information obtained from SFPUC regarding the consequences of the closure of the Pierce St Outfall.pdf

7. Lawsuits, please note there is no clear report of final cost to settle and in all of the legal cases, no report on cost for City Attorney and legal consultants:
a. 2004 storm (settled in 2007):San Francisco ready to wrap up flooding lawsuit with $1.7M payout
b. 2014 storm (and others, settled in 2020) :SF to pay homeowners nearly $4.4M in settlements over raw sewage flooding | Archives | sfexaminer.com
c. Currently: Joe Montana played at Candlestick dump. He may live under similar conditions in S.F.
d. SFPUC’s attempt to sue EPA to prevent enforcement of Clean Water Act:SF isn’t doing enough to prevent sewage pollution, court rules
[email protected]

8. SF Required to fix undersized sewers which caused sewage geyers:
a. Cleanup and Abatement Order from Regional Water Quality Control Board(Regional Board) SFPUC Cleanup and Abatement Order
b. SFPUC Cleanup and Abatement Order Public Notice c. Millions of gallons of sewage are spilling into San Francisco Bay

9. Regional Boards Letter to SF to begin investigation into Pierce St. outfall:North Shore 13383 Directive-for signature.pdf

10. Smaller pipes downstream, Manning's equation: Shit Storm: Why won’t SF stop flooding homes with sewage? | Archives | sfweekly.com

11. Protect the yacht harbor:
a. Assessment to Decommission Pierce CSD Memo.pdf:
b. 5. UWA Bayside Operations Evaluation Study TM (DRAFT).pdf

12. SF’s history of engineering:The Sewer System of San Francisco, and a Solution of the Stormwater Flow Problem | Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers | Vol 65, No 4

13. Why were flooding projects removed from the SSIP? Smoking Gun - Harrington Explaining Why Flooding Projects Removed

SOLUTIONS NOT SANDBAGS
Bringing Awareness to SF's Failing Sewer System
Website: SolutionsNotSandbags.org
YouTube I Instagram I Twitter I Facebook

3/26/24, 5:54 PM Gmail - Comments on Draft CSO Guidance https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=517abc2295&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r-201913722712284523%7Cmsg-a:r2994286350860570… 1/3 Mission Creek <[email protected]>
Comments on Draft CSO Guidance
1 message
Mission Creek <[email protected]> Fri, Mar 22, 2024 at 10:57 AM To: [email protected]
Cc: SF Bay Sierra Club <[email protected]>, [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], [email protected]
Bcc: Kieran Farr <[email protected]>, Peter Drekmeier <[email protected]>, Eric Buescher <[email protected]>, Janet Yap <[email protected]>, J P <[email protected]>, Erin Brighton <[email protected]>, Rubin Goldberg <[email protected]>
Dear Ms. Kazior;
Unfortunately Friends of Mission Creek were slow to become aware of the comment period deadline for the Draft "Guidance: Future National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System Permitting of Combined Sewer Systems". For some reason we had Friday as the deadline. We notice that most of the comments so far have requested additional time. If this is granted, can you please add Friends of Mission Creek to EPA CSO notifications list and also let us know that it has been granted. We would like to formally comment on this upcoming regulatory addition. We have also included other SF Bay area environmental NGOs with similar interest in case they would like to comment, should the comment period be extended.For others included on this email, the notice is at: https://www.regulations.gov/document/EPA-HQ-OW-2023- 0475-0001, the draft guidelines themselves are available at: https://www.epa.gov/npdes/combined-sewer-overflow- control-policy and a direct link to the document is at:https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-02/draft- guidance-for-future-npdes-permitting-of-css.pdf .

Friends of Mission Creek is an informal group of San Francisco citizens who use Mission Creek and the San Francisco Bay for general recreation and aquatic activities including kayaking and swimming. More information is available on our website at: https://www.friendsofmissioncreek.org/. Mission Creek is a dead-end slough connected to San Francisco Bay and is well recognized by baseball fans as the area where boaters and swimmers chase baseballs during SF Giants games. It is also lined with parks, a houseboat community, public access for walking, kayaking and boating and some of its banks have been restored to more natural Bay wetlands nurtured by local community members..

Sadly, it is also the primary point of discharge by San Francisco's combined sewer system, with the "Division St outfall", a large fan shaped combined sewer discharge located at the dead-end of the slough. According to San Francisco's combined sewer operator SFPUC's documents and studies, the "Division St outfall" along with 4 other combined sewer discharge points along Mission Creek discharge almost 1/2 of San Francisco's citywide total of combined sewage on an average or "typical" year, or over 450 million gallons. According to SFPUC statements the combined sewage is 94% storm water and 6% sewage, although in some storms it appears the actual household sewage component may be higher.

Because of the incredible overreliance on our creek for a huge portion of the City's sewage discharges, we are severely impacted by San Francisco's CSO performance and have become familiar with the CSO system's shortcomings. We therefore would like to fully address the proposed guidance to give a view of the actual impacts of the CSO performance on local communities, and long term consequences of the CSO system operators actual performance vs. its glossy PR marketing and rosey colored consultant reports. We feel some of the national polluter organization's complaints about the proposed guidance only reflect the view of agencies who feel their duty is to avoid any environmental responsibility and do not reflect the affected communities actual, lived experiences. We also feel we can help illustrate the importance of the Post Construction Compliance Monitoring (PCCM) program and need to be able to not only continue to monitor the system performance but having a clear program to continue to improve and optimize the large, capital intensive (and disruptive construction) systems. When an agency is able to provide itself with self-critical reviews as well as listen to affected users, and develop an ongoing pattern of continuous improvements, the agency's focus on its systems performance would likely also help prevent the system degradation, backsliding and downright dangerous decisions agency executives might make. Promoting these kinds of agency "best practices" would be critical to the nation's CSO systems long term performance and to achieve the water quality goals.

We also feel that SF's 50 years of attempting to comply with Clean Water Act requirements would be an excellent case study for consideration of the proposed guidance, showing both some of the highlights of benefits of CSO compliance as

3/26/24, 5:54 PM Gmail - Comments on Draft CSO Guidance https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=517abc2295&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r-201913722712284523%7Cmsg-a:r2994286350860570… 2/3 well as the limitations and problems SF's system has shown. This experience is the ultimate example of the "Phase 3" of the CSO national policy and could be used to help other agencies attempt to avoid some of the problems SF has experienced over the last 50 years. Our history suggest SF may be a "first in the nation" and as such could be a good example for others to learn from.

We would like to take more time to adequately address the proposed guidance, during which we can prepare a fully documented report with references to illustrate the problems of agencies which have refused to adequately assess, reassess, maintain and improve their CSO systems. For now, we will summarize our position knowing that these comments may not be included due to tardiness:

San Francisco was one of the earliest cities required to address its CSO pollution soon after the passage of the Clean Water Act in the 1970s. SF officials complained vigorously and resisted any attempt to address these requirements.

From 1974 to 1994 it had several Cease and Desist Orders (CDO) against it with court injunctions leading judges to impose "building bans" if the City continued to stall and not address its pollution. With the help of substantial Federal grants, and state and federal low interest loans, SF worked to compromise with state and federal regulators and started a "Clean Water Program" (CWP) to design and build the improvements required to meet the CDOs.

During that time, SF negotiated approaches to complete its Long Term Control Plan (LTCP) before the US EPA's national CSO policy was formalized. The documents provided by SF to the regulators during these negotiations constitute its version of a "LTCP". The inconsistencies within these documents and limits of individual reports focused on single issues to adequately address overall direct system operation, maintenance and improvements has limited both the regulators and the system operators. Our review of the many documents still available (many have been lost to time) show that SF provided to regulators throughout the program to settle the CDOs, SF had attempted to compromise with regulators by suggesting it would develop a system that would provide some additional treatment to CSO flows that were not handled by its storage and treatment system.

Coming out of these compromises were system design criteria which mandated a level of control which was proposed to meet "beneficial uses" then imagined. At that time, SF officials portrayed Mission Creek as an industrial or "maritime" waterway with limited public recreation. Since that time, all the industrial users along the creek have been replaced with large residential complexes and amenities such as parks, a kayak launch ramp, pedestrian promenade and restored bay marshes. SF officials, during the negotiations to settle the CDOs, also proposed a system that would allow any remaining uncontrolled CSO discharges to receive "equivalent to primary" treatment (or "decanting") which they described as including settling time within the large "Transport Storage" (T/S) boxes (large, inline sewers within the public right of way) and a system of baffles which (according to their proposals) together would capture a substantial portion of the remaining pollutants allowing the remaining excess flows to be discharged in a way that did not negatively impact the surrounding waterways and beneficial uses. This proposal was agreed to by the regulators and SF completed its system by 1996.

Since completion of SF's system in 1996, there appears to have been only 1 serious evaluation of the actual performance of the transport storage system's efficacy to actually remove pollutants before discharge. This study looked at 3 locations in the system which appear to be selected due to their conformity with the proposed design, namely to allow the polluted stormwater a period of quiescence to promote settling, long weirs which allow relatively low velocities over any individual cross section which also improves baffling performance. This review showed that under some circumstances, when discharge rates were low and settling was able to occur, the system performed admirably and as advertised, to the point that an argument could be made suggesting that a fully optimized system would actually prioritize some CSO discharges over running wet weather treatment plants at full speed. However in some storm events, the study shows the performance decreased as discharge rates increased.

When the system's components studied in that report are compared with other discharge locations which are not as fully optimized, such as never actually going through the transport storage boxes, passing perpendicular to them with limited detention and settling time, and/or being discharged at incredibly high rates due to over reliance on fully opened tide gates, especially into Mission Creek, discharges are shown to have large amounts of floatable debris due to the ineffectiveness of the decant at high discharge rates. In some conditions the actual water discharged may have more pollution in it then the sewage in the sewers themselves due to scouring and re-entraining of the previously settled solids through the discharge chambers.

The study itself appears to have not triggered any effort by the agency to increase its self-evaluation and all previous and subsequent annual efficacy reports only give a glowing report on how wonderful the system is, not a serious look at shortcomings nor proposals to correct them. SF engineers who had been concerned about the performance had developed some proposals to improve the performance of the gates discharging into Mission Creek, optimizing the use of the gates to reduce discharge velocities and maximize storage and decant efficiency. These studies appear to have been 3/26/24, 5:54 PM Gmail - Comments on Draft CSO Guidance https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?ik=517abc2295&view=pt&search=all&permthid=thread-a:r-201913722712284523%7Cmsg-a:r2994286350860570… 3/3 tabled and no consideration was made to implement. There were other system wide considerations during and after a "Sewer System Master Plan" from 2008-2010 and subsequent 'Urban Watershed Planning" studies, but except for some very minor "green infrastructure" demonstration projects affecting less than 0.2-3% of the overall area served by the combined system, no serious attempt to improve its performance has been taken.

In fact, serious system failures and mis-management have been exposed by recent SF Baykeeper investigations which suggest that not only has SF's system been failing to meet minimum requirements to protect beneficial uses, but actually have made the quality of the discharges considerably worse. Examples include discharging more sewage faster into the dead-end of the Mission Creek slough due to defacto closure of a large tide gate that discharges outside of the slough due to failure to maintain it properly and the closure of a weir controlled outfall halfway out the slough which if active would allow water to receive improved decant and be discharge into a slightly preferable location. Instead, SF has claimed it has the right to discharge as much sewage as it wants and has essentially thumbed its nose at both the regulators and the public.

Not only has SF allowed it's system to degrade, but it has even modified it's system leading to decreased system performance by closing one of it's largest outfalls, leading to major flooding in a previously unaffected neighborhood. The rationale used was to "protect the bay" however studies done by SF itself show that the only protection and benefit was to a City owned marina. Other areas along the bayfront including "impacted waterways" (CWA section 303.d) where body contact sports are participated in year round and water quality standards have not been met and privately owned marinas, were shown to be considerably worsened. Even with that evidence, SF chose to proceed with the outfall closure without receiving required approval, filling it with cement and now telling the regional regulators it will cost hundreds of millions to fix.

Unfortunately, SFPUC refuses to acknowledge these changing beneficial uses and address these deficiencies voluntarily leading a local environmental NGO, Baykeeper, to file a Clean Water Act Citizen Lawsuit Notification of Intent letter.

Needless to say, this is an ongoing story, but again, we'd like to more fully expand on the observations above to help the EPA address the next phase of the nation's CSO policies.

Thank you for your time and attention to this matter, please feel free to contact Friends of Mission Creek by reply email if additional information and detailed references and footnotes are desired. https://www.regulations.gov/document/EPA-HQ-OW-2023-0475-0001 This Message Is From an External Sender
This message came from outside your organization.

Report Suspicious ‌
From: White, Eileen@Waterboards
To: Sarah Stevenson
Cc: Robinson, Stephen D; The Marina 94123; [email protected]; Johnson, Bill@Waterboards; Eric Magnan; Plummer, Sam@Waterboards; Daniel Kostek; SFPUC Citizens" Advisory Committee; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; Neighbors Against Flooding; [email protected]; Peskin, Aaron (BOS); Safai, Ahsha (BOS); Stefani, Catherine (BOS); Jessica Wolfrom; [email protected]; St John Barned-Smith; [email protected]; [email protected]; Alex Mullaney; [email protected]; [email protected]; Dan Brekke; Ezra David Romero; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; Lorien Fono; [email protected]; Jeff Ruch; [email protected]; [email protected]; Ko, Albert (DPW); Save SF Marina Green; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; Commission; White, Eileen@Waterboards Subject: RE: Pierce Street Outfall Budget - Follow Up
Date: Wednesday, March 27, 2024 10:29:24 AM
Attachments: image001.png
image002.png
image003.png
image004.png
image005.png
R2-2013-0029 - SE Permit.pdf
2017 amendment - att G.pdf
Dear Ms. Stevenson,

Thank you for your email and the documents you included. First, I can assure you that the Water Board did not require that San Francisco decommission the Pierce Street outfall. San Francisco made that decision on its own. Second, I'd like to clarify that, by law, Water Board staff cannot modify any NPDES permit requirement; the Water Board itself must make any changes to NPDES permits. Thus, regardless of whether San Francisco notified the Water Board of its intent to decommission the Pierce Street outfall, the requirements of the 2013 NPDES permit stand unchanged, except for the official amendment the Water Board adopted in 2017. I have attached a copy of the permit and amendment for your reference.

Together, they set forth everything the Water Board has authorized and prohibited.

Eileen
Eileen M. White, P.E.

Executive Officer
San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board
[email protected]
510-622-2314 office
510-325-8080 cell

EXTERNAL:

Dear Eileen White
I had been lisenting to the SFPUC Commission meeting today. At the end of the meeting Commissioner Ajami said that SFPUC had to close the outfall because of the Regional Board.

Is that correct? Did the Regional Board require SFPUC to close the outfall?

Good for them. I guess it also made it easier to build the new marina with PGE's $220million clean up money (don't clean up the mess, take the money and build a new marina for bigger yatchs... YAY! what's not to like?)
I'm trying to figure this out myself, but Solutions not Sandbags has saved a bunch of the documents they've gotten from PUC and you all. I've been going through them and found this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aI35rYRqXUPlL7KqQTt4GZ_Bc_NuKMJ-/view? usp=drive_link

So if the Regional Board made SFPUC dump more pollution into Crissy Field and Aquatic Park to help keep the expensive boats clean... well, I guess that's just how life is right?

Also, I've been trying to get records from SFPUC... yeah, its a joke. Good luck there! Obviously they didn't give this to you when they decided to close the outfall to protect the yatchs.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aI35rYRqXUPlL7KqQTt4GZ_Bc_NuKMJ-/view? usp=drive_link

Dear Mr. Robinson,
I am unclear as to which study you are referencing when you stated in the public meeting:
"...There was an extensive study that looked into the Pierce St. outfall and we did come to the conclusion that it did not contribute to the storm(sic) in that particular case..." So far, all the documents that I have seen appear to imply just the opposite, such as the image shown here. The difference in the area affected and the depth of flooding in the image suggest that except for 1- 2 homes, all the homes (including mine) that were damaged in the 2 storms so far would not have had damages if the outfall were not closed. If I am reading this wrong, hopefully you have an extensive study that can show me otherwise so I can correct any misperceptions I have had from the information provided by SFPUC so far.

Under the California Public Records Act, could you please provide me with:

1. All documents, studies and reports provided to you to substantiate that claim. This includes all studies and reports following the Oct 2021 storm, and the Dec 2022 storm and other damages.

2. All emails, meeting minutes, phone logs and other correspondences you have had with City Staff, consultants, politicians and others regarding "Pierce St. Outfall"

3. All emails, meeting minutes, phone logs and other correspondences you have had with City Staff, consultants, politicians and others regarding outfall modifications and closures

As you have referenced this document in a public meeting, it is no longer "a confidential communication".

Under California State rules of evidence, this removes any privilege that may have been implied by it having been previously shared with attorneys. Please do not use "Attorney Client Privilege" to hide communications which are no longer "confidential".
https://codes.findlaw.com/ca/evidence-code/evid-sect-954/

Thank You
Jennifer Vataru

On Mon, Feb 5, 2024 at 2:17 PM SolutionsNotSandbags San Francisco <[email protected]
> wrote:

Dear Commission Members, Regulators and Other Interested Parties:

We've been asked to provide links to some of the items referenced in this email:

1. PUC Commision Meeting:

Jen's comments are at 1:39:43, in the video of the 1/26/2024 meeting:
https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/player/clip/45285?
view_id=22&redirect=true&h=61ccae973bc1ecfd3d79f027c10e12ee Commissioner Ajami's comments at 1:42:17
Mr Robinson’s comments at 1:44:01:
"...There was an extensive study that looked into the Pierce St. outfall and we did come to the conclusion that it did not contribute to the storm(sic) in that particular case however of course we can go back and look at it again..."
[email protected]
past meeting videos are at:https://sanfrancisco.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=22.

PUC commission upcoming meeting schedule and agenda at:Agendas-Minutes-Resolutions- Log

3. Code of Ethics | National Society of Professional Engineers.

4. Solutions Not Sandbags: 'It's Been a Fight for Our Homes': The Ongoing Saga to Fix San Francisco's Sewers | KQED.

5. Ex Parte Communications: Water Boards Ex Parte Communications Questions and Answers Document

6. SNS Report on Flooding Due to Pierce St. outfall Closure: 1.3-New Report on the Information obtained from SFPUC regarding the consequences of the closure of the Pierce St Outfall.pdf

7. Lawsuits, please note there is no clear report of final cost to settle and in all of the legal cases, no report on cost for City Attorney and legal consultants:
a. 2004 storm (settled in 2007):San Francisco ready to wrap up flooding lawsuit with $1.7M payout b. 2014 storm (and others, settled in 2020) :SF to pay homeowners nearly $4.4M in settlements over raw sewage flooding | Archives | sfexaminer.com
c. Currently: Joe Montana played at Candlestick dump. He may live under similar conditions in S.F.
d. SFPUC’s attempt to sue EPA to prevent enforcement of Clean Water Act:SF isn’t doing enough to prevent sewage pollution, court rules
[email protected]

8. SF Required to fix undersized sewers which caused sewage geyers:
a. Cleanup and Abatement Order from Regional Water Quality Control Board(Regional Board) SFPUC Cleanup and Abatement Order
b. SFPUC Cleanup and Abatement Order Public Notice c. Millions of gallons of sewage are spilling into San Francisco Bay

9. Regional Boards Letter to SF to begin investigation into Pierce St. outfall:North Shore 13383 Directive-for signature.pdf

10. Smaller pipes downstream, Manning's equation: Shit Storm: Why won’t SF stop flooding homes with sewage? | Archives | sfweekly.com

11. Protect the yacht harbor:
a. Assessment to Decommission Pierce CSD Memo.pdf:
b. 5. UWA Bayside Operations Evaluation Study TM (DRAFT).pdf

12. SF’s history of engineering:The Sewer System of San Francisco, and a Solution of the Stormwater Flow Problem | Transactions of the American Society of Civil Engineers | Vol 65, No 4

13. Why were flooding projects removed from the SSIP? Smoking Gun - Harrington Explaining Why Flooding Projects Removed

SOLUTIONS NOT SANDBAGS
Bringing Awareness to SF's Failing Sewer System
Website: SolutionsNotSandbags.org

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From: Sarah Stevenson
To: White, Eileen@Waterboards
Cc: Robinson, Stephen D; The Marina 94123; [email protected]; Johnson, Bill@Waterboards; Eric Magnan; Plummer, Sam@Waterboards; Daniel Kostek; SFPUC Citizens" Advisory Committee; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; Neighbors Against Flooding; [email protected]; Peskin, Aaron (BOS); Safai, Ahsha (BOS); Stefani, Catherine (BOS); Jessica Wolfrom; [email protected]; St John Barned-Smith; [email protected]; [email protected]; Alex Mullaney; [email protected]; [email protected]; Dan Brekke; Ezra David Romero; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; Lorien Fono; [email protected]; Jeff Ruch; [email protected]; [email protected]; Ko, Albert (DPW); Save SF Marina Green; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; Commission
Subject: Re: Pierce Street Outfall Budget - Follow Up
Date: Wednesday, March 27, 2024 11:25:20 AM
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Dear Ms. White
Thank you so much for getting back to me. I was having one of those moments when I was thinking it was me going crazy!
Well, maybe I am going crazy, but at least on this point I wasn't totally wrong! I've been trying to figure this stuff out, I'm also waiting for the PUC to send the documents they provided to Baykeeper to try to figure that out next.
thanks so much for all your good work!

https://www.waterboards.ca.gov/sanfranciscobay/water_issues/programs/npdes/permit_schedule- 02-24.pdf
On Wed, Mar 27, 2024 at 10:27 AM White, Eileen@Waterboards <[email protected]> wrote:

Dear Ms. Stevenson,

Eileen
Eileen M. White, P.E.

Executive Officer
San Francisco Bay Regional Water Quality Control Board
[email protected]
510-622-2314 office
510-325-8080 cell

EXTERNAL:

Dear Eileen White
I had been lisenting to the SFPUC Commission meeting today. At the end of the meeting Commissioner Ajami said that SFPUC had to close the outfall because of the Regional Board.

Is that correct? Did the Regional Board require SFPUC to close the outfall?

I've been working to try to get some records from SFPUC about this also. But some of the records we've already gotten seem to show that SFPUC closing the outfall actually made things a LOT WORSE!
It looks like they reduced pollution in the SF Marina where all the expensive yachts are. Good for them. I guess it also made it easier to build the new marina with PGE's $220million clean up money (don't clean up the mess, take the money and build a new marina for bigger yatchs... YAY! what's not to like?)
I'm trying to figure this out myself, but Solutions not Sandbags has saved a bunch of the documents they've gotten from PUC and you all. I've been going through them and found this:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1aI35rYRqXUPlL7KqQTt4GZ_Bc_NuKMJ-/view? usp=drive_link