Austin Water Oversight Committee (AWOC) Transcript – 10/19/2022 Title: ATXN-1 (24hr) Channel: 1 - ATXN-1 Recorded On: 10/19/2022 6:00:00 AM Original Air Date: 10/19/2022 Transcript Generated by SnapStream Please note that the following transcript is for reference purposes and does not constitute the official record of actions taken during the meeting. For the official record of actions of the meeting, please refer to the Approved Minutes. [1:31:59 PM] >> Mayor pro tem, can you turn on your camera for just a few seconds, please, as I call the meeting to order? Thank you. Good afternoon, colleagues. First item on our agenda is to call the meeting to order. I will call this meeting of the Austin water overinvite committee at 1:32 P.M. We have our mayor pro tem alter on line and councilmember pool and vice chair kitchen should be joining shortly. We not have anyone signed up for public communication at this time, correct? Thank you. And the next item is the approval of the minutes from August 24th, 2022, regular called meeting. Is there a motion for approval? Motion by councilmember pool, seconded by mayor pro tem. All in favor? Passes unanimously. Thank you. Now we're moving on to item number 2 which is the 2023 [1:32:59 PM] Austin water oversight committee meeting schedule. You should have that in your backup. For next year the committee meetings will continue to be quarterly and they will follow -- we'll have audit and finance committee meeting in the morning followed by Austin water oversight in the afternoon with a start time of 1:30 P.M. I now see vice chair kitchen has joined us. We're discussing item number 2, our proposed meeting schedule for 2023. Are there any concerns or feedback on the proposed schedule? Councilmember pool. >> Pool: Mayor pro tem had her hand up. I was going to make a motion to approve but she may want to do that. >> Alter: I just want to flag for the August meeting we may need to be moving the audit and finance meeting because we may end moving the council meeting which is currently scheduled right immediately after budget. [1:34:00 PM] But we can pass this for now. I just wanted to flag for folks. I don't think we want to have an audit and finance on Austin water on the he can would of council if we do change the schedule. But we won't do that until January. >> Fuentes: We'll put an asterisk by the meeting subject to change on council meeting schedule. Expect moves to approve the schedule. Is there a second? Mayor pro tem. All in favor? Passes unanimously. Thank you. Next up is item number 3 which is a briefing from Austin watershed on the update to the rain to river, a strategic plan to protect Austin's creeks and communities. We'll be joined by director morales. >> Good afternoon, chair and councilmembers. My name is Jorge morales, director of the watershed protection department. [1:35:00 PM] I wanted to highlight the update on the strategic plan. This is a major undertaking to reevaluate how we prioritize our department based on feedback from the community. I want to introduce our team and we're going to turn it over to Katie coin and Aaron wood. We'll be here for the presentation. Thank you. >> Thank you. Good afternoon. May name is Katie coin, assistant director of watershed protection over planning, monitoring and compliance. Couldn't be more excited about rain to river. This is the first time in 20 years we've done a major overhaul as a department. It's past time to include items such as climate justice, environmental justice, and more holistic environmental thinking into the way we drive the work of the department and that's exactly what we're trying to do. With that, I'll keep it short and hand it off to Ron Witt. Thanks. >> Good afternoon. [1:36:01 PM] Thanks for having me. My name is Erin wood, acting watershed planning manager in our planning division. I'm so excited to be here today to talk to you more about we've been doing on rain to river, a strategic plan to ptect Austin's creeks and communities. Next slide. So just a brief reminder, especially for folks watching at home, the watershed protection department, our mission is protect the lives, property and environment of our community by reducing impacts of flooding, erosion and water pollution. And so this is something we definitely have been talking to the community when we've been out is the differences being here at the Austin water oversight committee today, the differences between watershed protection and the work of Austin water. The differences between rain to water and water forward. We picked the name, one, because we didn't want to [1:37:02 PM] introduce water into the name and cause confusion between the water forward initiative, but also it was challenging to find a name that really encompassed the broad scope of work our department does, not just the natural infrastructure but our vast built infrastructure network of storm drains and engineered channels and tunnels and that sort of thing. So we found rain to river was a way to encompass all that from where the rain falls down to where it's leading our city. And so our water forward is focused on water supply and management, the health of waterways and the safety of community from the impacts of flooding erosion. We've been out in the community talking because we hear a lot of I need to talk to you about my water utility bill. So we've been talking about how our departments are are [1:38:03 PM] different but how we work and collaborate together. Next slide. What is our strategic plan? We talk about it being the blueprint for our department. It guides the work and priorities for years to come so it sets our goals, talks about how we prioritize our problems and evaluate our solutions. It helps us figure out how we're going to measure our success over time. How are the various solutions in or portfolio working and performing and making things better for the community.it helps explain our work and priorities both to our own staff, to city executives and policymakers and to the Austin community. Next slide. So as Katie mentioned, the original plan was adopted back in 2001, so over 20 careers ago. At the time it was called the watershed protection [1:39:03 PM] master plan. We're moving away from that terminology because of the negative connotations with the racist and harmful 1928 master plan. We've shifted to strategic plan and rain to river. In 2001, comninity engagement looked pretty standard for the time. There was a telephone survey and citizen advisory group and public meetings, but we know talking with staff involved that effort didn't prioritize gathering input from the F diversity of Austin's residents. So S that time, there have been revisions to the plan. You see the one up here from 2015,ut they've been more technical and ad hoc as E had some changes to the way that we prioritize data over time. And there hasn't been public input associated with that other than presenting at the environmental commission. And so we have --t't's been 20 years and a lot has [1:40:04 PM] changed in 20 years. So we recognize that we are long past overdue for an update, that we need to address major challenges ke climate change, population growth, racial inequities. Over 20 years our department has gained a lot of knowledge and experience in what works and what doesn't. We just had the trash in creek study that came out with cutting edge data always and new solutions to explore. Also being 20 years old, the plan doesn't reflect the findings and recommendations of other city plans. Like water forward, the climate equity plan, so there's a lot of great overlap with those other plans we can pull into this new initiative. And then one of our challenges with the current plan as well is that it doesn't set time specific targets. It shows the community how we're making progress over time when the goal or objective is just get [1:41:05 PM] everyone out of the floodplain and that's not something that we can show demonstrable progress from year to year. Next slide. So our goals for this update, first and foremost, the community is at the heart of this comprehensive overall and so we want to really make sure we're reflecting the values and knowledge of experience of the community. As we're embarking on this plan. We also want to make S that we're grounding this plan in equity and climate resilience and centering is needs of those most vulnerable to watershed impacts both in terms of exposure and ability to recover. I mentioned this being a communication tool and so one of our goals is really for Thissen Mr. To be accessible and informative. If you check out our current plan, it's about 400 pages long. It's got a lot of technical jargon, so we really want [1:42:05 PM] this to be something more visually compelling that folks can interact with and really have a good understanding of the work of our department. Next slide. So I talked a little about what community engagement looked like in 2001. Rolling into rain to river, we really wanted to take a deep look how we were doing community engagement. We did some benchmarking with other departments that had done recent engagement efforts, water forward being one of them, the climate equity plan, the as and P. And really learning what worked and what didn't work and their efforts and trying to draw from their strategies that were most successful. Also did benchmarking around the country with Seattle and Portland and Philadelphia and some other cities to see how they werepproaching community engagement and pulled that into a robust [1:43:06 PM] and inclusive engagement plan. These are our main goals for community engagement. We want to make it easy and enjoyable for people to contribute. We want to be really clear what we're asking and make Su T there's always a direct connection to the decisions being made. We want to tailor our approach and strong for the different groups and make sure we're adapting strategies over time, seeing what's working and being it rated and checking back in with the community as we go forward. Collaborating with different organizations and departments. And then this last one is really key and came out of the equity action planning that our deparent has done is that really this isn't just kind of a transactional, let's do some engagement and check the box and go back to work. We want this to be focused on long-term relationships and building trust with the community so that as we start implementing rain to river we still have those connections going forward. So sending up the systems to [1:44:07 PM] succeed in the years to come. Next slide. So one thing we did as part of that community engagement plan was go through some mapping of our different stakeholders. We organized those into ree deficiency groups. We wanted to center means folks who were vulnerable and historically excluded from past planning protest. Those groups are under served groups, people more likely to experience negative quality of life outcomes. So communities of color, low-income communities, seniors, youth, lgbtq+ and so we went through and mapped out those and networks and where we had relationships and where we don't. We also want to focus on impactive groups, people who have experienced or risk of experiencing negative watershed outcomes. And organizations with relevant experience. And this is another one [1:45:07 PM] where we really tried to push out of our kind of comfort zone and in addition to our more traditional environmental stakeholders, really starting teaching with folks who work on community health or language access or safety or a broader realm of community exert sees. And log at the intersection of these three groups and are there organizations working with under served or impacted groups across the city. That really helps us figure out knowing we have limited resources in our department as far as staffing and funding where we're really focusing or time and energy and resources as we're doing engagement. That last point, making sure we still have a broad range of strategies so we're able to reach everyone and a representative sample of the entire Austin community. Next slide. We've got three phases. Right now we're in full listening mode. [1:46:07 PM] So we're in phase 1. We're gathering community input, we're going out, and I'll walk through our progress a little more in a second. We're going out and listening to the community, gathering input. Next year, 2023, is starting to translate that into content and continuing to go out to the community as we develop content to ask did we get it right, did we hear you correctly, did we miss something. And starting as we are identifying strategies to meet community needs and goals, what the priorities are among those identified issues and strategies. And then 2024 is when we would anticipate bringing forward the draft plan again to the community and gathering more input and then bringing that forward for review and adoption ultimately by city council. Next slide. [1:47:09 PM] I will mention on that time line, we know that three years is a long time. And we definitely, you know, want to emphasize our department will continue to do the work that we do and explore new strategies and do, you know, kind of our bread and butter work out in our community of programs and projects. We're not hitting pause for three years while we're doing our work and continuing to find ways to pull what we're learning from the community through this process into our current operations. >> Fuentes: Real quick, when did you all launch rain to river this year? >> We did what we call a soft launch in January of the more relationship building and meeting with community organizations. And then the official launch was in April of when we put the website up and released the sy and had our kickoff meeting. >> Fuentes: Thank you. >> Yeah, that's a great transition into our pros on phase 1. And so we had that soft [1:48:11 PM] launch of starting to build connections and meet with organizations from January through March. Then we launched our website in April, rain to river, atx.com. We have had over 26,000 views. And since then promoting ra the river across social media platforms. We've reached out to over 120 different organizations around town to make new connections and work on building those relationships. Then we launched our community vision survey and map for people to share their experiences. Next slide. So this is our website. You can go there and folks can learn more about rain to river. What our department does and why we're updating the plan. We share some input that we've heard in the past because, you know, we haven't done comprehensive [1:49:12 PM] community engagement and our planning process since 2001, but we've done a lot of engage. Trying to make sure we're including there from what we heard from the flood mitigation task force and the green infrastructure work group and the people's plan iegegrate egg that into what we've heard section for community input. We also have some informational videos on the website and the dashboard where folks can look at watershed solutions that have been completed or planned. Next slide. So this is the survey tool. We use social pinpoint, which is the same thing atx walk-back roll has been using and found it a cool way for the public to interact with the survey because we have on the left the more traditional te-b-based survey that's a little more abstract about people's vision and their values around natural spaces and waterways. But we also have the map where folks can go in and talk about the places they [1:50:13 PM] love and why they love them, problems they are having around town and suggestions for making things better. And so it kind of brings things down and makes it a little more tangible for people to share how they interact with our waterways. We have almost 1500 survey responses to date and about 800 map points. Actually one more click on this slide. Yeah. So a range of problem points and favorite places and ideas. We also have a Spanish version available online of the survey. We have paper copies translated into six additional languages. There's also if you look at that button in the top right, you are able to auto translate the survey into about 100 languages using Google translate. This survey is still live, anticipate it being up through the rest of the year. We're also working through a citywide contract on conducting a statistically [1:51:14 PM] valid version of the survey for randomly representative sample of Austin so that we can validate those results and compare what we're seeing in the online survey to the statistically valid. Next slide. So this is a really busy slide. But basically I just wanted to share kind ofn I talk about doing a lot of traditional and social media promotion of rain to river, we've been out there in a number of different ways. We've had our social media presence as well as different city departments, community partners, actually one of our community ambassadors that I'll talk about a little later told us they heard about the opportunity from your Twitter feed, councilmember Fuentes, so thank you for that. We've had some interviews with local media. We've had, you know, next door and Austin comment, different newsletters to push out and get the word [1:52:16 PM] out. We've also had in the top right is our postcard that went out to over -- or about 100,000 addresses around town for folks that were either in the floodplain or near local flood reportareas to reach more folks directly impacted by watershed outcomes. Next slide. So we had that virtual kickoff event in April. For people to learn more about rain to river and how to share their input. Since then we've really been taking what we call a meet people where they are approach. This is something we heard a lot in our community engagement benchmarking. It's something our east Austin environmental initiative and watershed has been doing for years. So rather than hosting public meetings and asking people to come join us, we've been trying to get out in the community to existing events and set up tables or do canvassing and connect with folks, so we've been at -- these are some of the [1:53:18 PM] big ones we've been at, Earth day, rainbow on the creek, juneteenth, several back-to-school bashes around town and recently viva Mexico. We've leveraged engagement opportunities so we have participated in some events with Austin youth river watch or poder to get out in the community when they are already hosting events. And then so we anticipate continuing to attend community events for the rest of the year. We've got a dashboard that our gis staff had built to look at where we're seeing gaps in representation from our demographic and survey and trying to make sure we're focusing staff time on attending events in areas of town that are still under represented. Nextlilide. So these are just a few pictures of our staff out attending events. [1:54:19 PM] And so I mentioned we still have some coming up. We're going to hope fest in the St. John's area this weekend. We'll be at the -- several Halloween events down in dove springs. We're going to a trick-or- treat at several rec centers coming up, roots and wings festival. We've still got some great things coming up especially now that's cooling off a little and folks are wanting to be outdoors more. Next slide. And then yeah, we've been looking for kind of unique opportunities to engage with people and our partners. Up top is the Austin community mosaic project that poder and raisin in the sun to built this cool tile mosaic project. At the same time we've been out at Austin nature day. We've also been focusing on city of Austin employee network events to try and connect with folks from all across the city. [1:55:19 PM] Next slide. Anen we've been trying to find creative ways to interact with youth. And so our staff worked with a couple departments to put on some field trips at blazer elementary, went to the austinure and science center, spring break camps. We've done some online work sessions with Austin youth climate equity council and eco rise, Austin river watch and we've been out at youth focused events like the back- to-school bash. Next slide. So one take-away as we were going through and doing the benchmarking on community engagement was that if we really want to ask people's time in a more significant way than taking a five-minute survey we need to do find ways to [1:56:19 PM] compensate them. We've been navigating the procurement process to make that happen, but we've found ways to bring in the community and compensate them for the work they are able to do over several months. We've hired, modeled off the office of sustainability, climate ambassador program and hired ten ambassadors from rain to river, out gathering stories and perspectives from that their communities. We've worked with measure, a local back owned non-profit that are both designed by and centered on historically excluded communities. Late breaking within the last week or two we awarded $5,000 mini grants to six different community organizations that can help further our goals for community engagement and representation and really get out and use their networks to get a deeper level of engagement. So we'll be doing a press release on those soon, but we just got the word from [1:57:21 PM] all the organizations yesterday that they were good with us publicly announcing their participation. So we've got the film harvest foundation, del valle community coalition, dove springs proud, the indigenous cultures institute, queer Topia, and red salmon arts. So we're super excited to have those organizations on board and they will be doing work the next couple months to further our community engagement even more. Next slide. So this is a photo from one of our recent community ambassador gatherings where folks get together and share Carolina of what's been working and -- kind of what's been working and how they've been doing engagement in the community. That is a coming soon screen shot from the report fro measure that goes through what they learned from the [1:58:22 PM] five focus groups they conducted. They are finalizing that right now but when released it will be made publicly available. Next slide. So next steps. Like I mentioned, we're ilill in listing modes, wrapping up that phase 1 of community engagement. We're in the middle of work on an rfp to bring a consultant on board to help with the synthesis of input and developing content. One thing that the city of Seattle in their shape our water plan that they are working on, they are about a year ahead of us so we've been able to learn from them as they go a little bit, is one way they've grappled with this issue of, you know, a plan taking three years to develop and adopt is that they are actually scoped and irked a community vision and goals statement in the middle of it. So they are able to put that out and use that to inform their work and decisions and [1:59:22 PM] then move into more of the implementation phase and looking at strategies and objectives and metrics, but have something that we can share with the community a little sooner on and that could inform planning initiatives that come up in the interim like sd28 or potentially bond development. So we've got that working. We have contracted with Dr. Ward who worked with the office of sustainability and some other departments through their planning processes to conduct an equity grounding training for watershed staff that are working on rain to river as they begin DIV into content. And helping us develop an accountability framework and making sure that we're finding ways to embed equity into the plan. And speaking of that, we'll be very soon providing a memo to mayor and council per the resolution that passed back in June on how equity is being incorporated into rain to river. [2:00:24 PM] Next slide. And with that, that was all I have so I'm happy to open it up to questions or comments. >> Fuentes: Thank you. That's wonderful, really great information. Very thorough. Colleagues, any questions? Vice chair kitchen? >> Kitchen: Yes. I wanted to ask you some questions about flooding. I think -- I think I've had some conversations already that, you know, flooding will be one aspect of what you're looking at. And I'm thinking specifically about flood safety for neighborhoods. [2:01:34 PM] Is that something that y'all have already been doing? >> We have. But I agree we could continue to do more. So we had the postcard mailing that went out specifically to people within the floodplain. For the focus groups that measure conducted, they tried to recruit at least for two or three the focus groups to focus on people who had experienced flooding. And so they had people who -- you know, went through one or both Halloween events. I think they even had somebody from the memorial day flood back in 1981. They've done some of that focus. Our community ambassadors have been collecting a lot of stories from communities that have been impacted by flooding. >> Kitchen: I would -- that's really good a I appreciate that. I would recommend that you also reach out to -- to [2:02:35 PM] neighborhood associations or hoas in some of those communities. I'll just give you one example. And then you can meet with them as a community. So I'll just give you one example and others may have examples from their parts of town. But the onion creek hoa has been very involved over the years since the flooding that they've experienced. And on an ongoing basis they continue to talk as a community about being prepared for flooding. I think they would appreciate at least the opportunity to, you know, to have a meeting that they can host in their community specifically about this issue. So I would recommend something like that. I don't know other parts of the -- if other parts of the city would like to do something similar, but that way you're actually having a focused conversation with a community about the specific flooding in that area. Not instead of what you're doing because what you're [2:03:36 PM] doing is very important, I think, but I think this would give you another dimension if you did it like this. And if that's something that you all can do, I would be happy to provide some contact information at least for the district 5 areas. >> I just wanted to say we're happy to do that. I'm a member at onion creek so I'm happy to coordinate. >> Kitchen: So you knew that, then. >> Yeah, I agree that's a fantastic suggestion. We've been a little understaffed in recent months with some folks going to new positions so going more actively to neighborhood organizations across the city has been on our list and something we've been looking to do in the fall. That's a great suggestion to start those neighborhood meetings. >> Kitchen: Yeah, and you can always in terms of, you [2:04:36 PM] know, y'all's time and everything, which, of course, I get that. You can put it on them to organize. And it's also on them -- it's an offer. They may or may not want to take yp on it. But, you know, but if they do, then they can be responsible for organizing their community to limit the amount of, you know, the time that y'all have put into organizing. So thank you very much for thinking about that. >> Fuentes: Thank you. Mayor pro tem? >> Alter: Thank you. This is a really great overview and I'm really pleased to see you putting together a strategic plan and some of the guiding vision for it. I wanted to better understand how you were working with some of the conservancy operating in our watersheds. Or in our waterways. [2:05:38 PM] A great question. So we've done some presentations. We've met shoal creek conservancy a couple times, partnered with the trail foundation on one of their events. So I didn't actually mention this in the presentation, but we have a separate community organization survey that we sent out to a lot of those organizations that's a little more open-ended and free form for them to go through and give more content. And so we'll have a staff member following up on those. The completed surveys, but also from the organizations that we sent the survey that we didn't hear from to do kind of a series of interviews over the fall. And so meeting with, you know, an organization like Waterloo greenway that we work with pretty extensively and asking what they think is working well, what's not, what their vision is or making sure that we capture that. I think we envisioned even [2:06:38 PM] having a stand-alone report from what we're hearing from community organizations as part of our summarizing the community engagement process. >> Alter: Thank you. I think I would just encourage to take advantage of that resource both in terms of their feedback, but also, you know, shoal creek or conservancy or Pease park, they have a lot of events where a lot of people come to them. And I know they are not necessarily in your target areas forxtra engagement, but I think that a lot of people from all over the city enjoy those spaces and you would capture, I think, a water of opinions in those situations. >> Absolutely. >> Alter: The other thing that I wanted to ask is, you know, I'm not familiar with the 2001 plan, but I'm wondering if at this stage you have any sense of, like, the things you would not be doing. Because you've added a lot [2:07:38 PM] of big goals that I appreciate and that do follow with other plans, but are there any things that at this point you would stop doing? Part of being strategic is deciding what you are not going to do as the watershed department. >> I think it's probably a little early in our process to think about what we wouldn't be doing, but I think, you know, we have a lot of programs that are pretty far reaching. And so shifting the way that we prioritize would probably be, so different things might come to the top based on climate resilience or equity. We've seen, you know, in the feedback we've gotten so far, a lot of emphasis on accessibility to natural spaces, impacts of trash, which you all have heard [2:08:39 PM] about recently with the trash in creek study. So I think just taking a fresh look at the needs and values of the community and how that alliance with the way we're allocating our resources. >> Alter: Thank you. >> Fuentes: Thank you. Again, I just want to say how impressed I am at the level of engagement. It truly is a standard we should see in all of our departments, the way you've gone out to our community, been part of the community events, the postcard, the social media, the ambassadors and providing stipends for the ambassadors are next level. I want to share my gratitude and appreciation and I'm excited for the grants going out to the community. That will really help especially for our southeast area to get more participation. I did pull up the survey and saw there is still a lot of work that needs to be done for our eastside communities to get them to participate in the survey. And so I guess one of the questions I had is based on [2:09:42 PM] the respondents we've had thus far, where have you all identified the gaps? Because I know you are bringing on a consultant to come look at the data at some point, but I want to know what does it look like right now for those who have already participated so that we can best engage. My second question would be how can us in council offices and districts help support this effort? >> Great questions. So yeah, like we definitely are not at a demographically representative sample for our survey. And so part of that is continuing to try and focus our engagement and outreach over the next couple months that the survey is still open on closing those gaps. We still have a large gap with the latinx and Spanish speaking community. And so continuing to work on that. But also finding ways, you know, in something we want to work with the consultant [2:10:45 PM] on is as we have the reports coming from the ambassadors and the many grant organizations and the focus groups of finding ways to amplify those voices and kind of knit that together with what we're hearing from the survey. >> Fuentes: The mini grant organizations, will they also as part of that funding be providing stipends for those who participate in their sessions? >> That was a big component of our evaluation criteria was how much of that $5,000 the organizations were proposing to turn around and put back into the community. So they will be providing incentives or stipends for folks that participate. We also, our community bodies in addition to paying them for their time, we gave them a resource budget to help them provide gift cards or food or things like that for people they were interviewing so that they were able to pass along that compensation as well. >> Fuentes: Oh, good. I hope they were able to provide that to every person [2:11:46 PM] that participates and it's not just a raffle for every ten people that participate. Just wanted to though that out there. And along those lines, one thing you mentioned was the procurement process. At this point have things -- are they underway or are we waiting for anything on procurement? >> We are just start the procurement process for the mini grant organizations. It's definitely as we've been exploring some of those more innovative strategies, we've met a lot with departments that have done it already. With the office of sustainability and comparing notes and lessons learned on doing something like the ambassador program or the mini grants. Every time we do it we make a little more progress and make it a little more streamlined and efficient for the next department to take it on. But it's definitely been a bit of a challenge from a city procurement perspective to figure out how to fund [2:12:47 PM] some of these more innovative solutions in a way that's quick and efficient and doesn't burn trust with community members or organizations, where is my check, it's been a month and a half. >> Fuentes: Thank you for commenting. That's a theme bubbling up from the community is just the process the city's procurement office has and how long it takes. I'll be meeting with them next week or early next week so this is good feedback for that meeting. All right. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you. >> Thank you so much for your time. I would like to give a shoutout for all our staff in watershed protection who have been doing incredible work on this project. >> Fuentes: Thank you so much. Next is item number 4. This is a report on state [2:13:48 PM] and regional flood planning efforts. >> Good afternoon. My name is Matt Holland. I work with Austin water, but I'm going to be kind of representing the city in this next presentation talking about a lot of good work by both watershed protection and Austin water on the regional flood plan. Let's see. I'm going to talk about two different things because there's kind of the big picture thing and the smaller more focused deal. That's the Texas state flood [2:14:49 PM] plan. So a few years ago the Texas state legislature voted in in 2019, they voted in -- said we need a a process to create a state flood plan. No such plan was in place at the time. As you recall, that was not very long after hurricane Harvey, which was not the first giant flood in Texas. And so there were billions of dollars in damage, all kinds of losses and fatalities. So Texas realized we needed to do something a lot more proactive. So the state legislature kicked off alood planning process. It's really similar to a 20- something year ago process for water planning. We're a part of region K water planning. This is the -- this is the flood equivalent or book end to that work. So they are really focusing on protecting against losses of life and property and [2:15:49 PM] plng ahead to make sure those things don't happen. You can see the time line on this slide is pretty long. We started in 2020. The fall of that year. So about two years ago. We've held 30-something meetings as a regional plan. In a second I'll show you this slide shows there are 15 regional flood plans in this state. Let's go ahead and proceed. We're right there, shows August 1st, that's when the technical consultant put together the draft plan kind of on the books now that folks can see on the web. And then by this coming January 10th we're going to be coming into -- into the finish line on the regional process and handing that off to the Texas water board staff and they will take all 15 regional plans and mash them together into [2:16:50 PM] one giant statewide plan which will be available about two years from now, September 1st, 2024. Let's go to the next slide. So this is a cool slide because it shows all 15 regional plans. Texas is obviously a gigantic state. It's got many different river basins. Some are split like ours, upper and lower Colorado river. Upper brazos, lower brazos. They are very different. You can imagine in west Texas there's not a lot of rain. Pretty different characteristics than, say, Houston or Austin. We are in region 10. It's actually three -- in a second I'll show you, but there are three rivers involved in ours. The Colorado river is the main one, but also the lavaca river and San Bernard rivers as well. I myself am a representative in this group. We have 12 members representing 11 interests. And I represent municipalities. So I just don't represent [2:17:51 PM] Austin, I represent the interests of cities and towns across this region. Actually a lot of you know Frances Acuna. She is on this group as well and she is the public representative right below in the bullets there. She's been a big contributor as well. Let's go to the next slide. And so this has been a really -- it's been really an honor to be involved in this process and we've had all kinds of good discussions. In a second I'll show you kind of the content that we've gone through, but I've had a lot of help. So as a municipal rep I've got Kevin, he's our floodplain administrator for the city of Austin from watershed protection. Jorge morales, director, of course, of watershed. So they've been behind me the whole time. I was conferring with Kevin quite frequently, pretty much every meeting and going over some things and making [2:18:52 PM] sure -- they were making sure I was able to accurately contribute the content that we needed from an Austin perspective. And then actually Charles is here from Austin water and he was a key contributor and there's some very important Austin water projects included in our planning recommendations. So here we are. We've got these three river base science, Colorado river, [lapse in audio] Hammered by hugs and so forth. Austin is right there in the middle and we' got quite a large watershed above us and contributing. As you know, we're on flash flood alley and have a lot of flash flood issues. The basin has about 1.9 million people at present. Austin almost has half of that population already in our area. There are disproportionate [2:19:53 PM] concerns in Austin. Let's go to the next slide. I have combined a whole lot into this one slide. Basically it just -- it gives the highlights of the different parts of the plan that most affect Austin. The plan really wanted to look at hazard mapping, basically floodplain mapping. We're looking at very large scale flooding here. All levels of flooding are really important and I know your constituents are going to be saying, hey, look, I don't care if I'm flooded, a little street flooding or house flooding from my storm drain versus creek flooding. Our department, the watershed protection department looks at that really closely so there's this whole range of things. This plan doesn't get down to that level of detail. It's looking at one square mile and greater water systems. It's more what watershed protection would call creek flooding in that. But they are looking at hazard mapping and most floodplain maps stayed are looking at that -- stayed [2:20:55 PM] are -- statewide are looking at that. What are the assets at risk, the people and buildings and so forth at risk in those areas. So what are the needs. Then we looked at -- and then the plan looked at management practices all around the whole basin. And actually I was pretty inspired to see that most of the basin is in pretty good shape. People are complying with the national flood insurance program, nfip standards and so forthoss virtually almost all of the population much this basin and most of the land area is using those standards, which is good, it's a good baseline. We want to go above and beyond and I'm happy to say Austin does go above and beyond that in a number of ways. A number of you listening here considered and voted on the atlas 14 floodplain ordinance back in 2019, and that was a big deal, changing our flood regulations and making sure we're up with the times, as [2:21:57 PM] it were, with rainfall intensities and so forth. So we -- and this plan looks at that and there are a number of communities that are not quite yet getting up to speed with atlas 14 and that was an important recommendation. But happily Austin is in good shape on that one as we're actively -- we've already taken preventive steps there and actively working on the new maps, the new floodplains. Let's go to the next slide. Tons of iormation on this slide. All these communities were asked do you have issues, problems, do you have things you need to study or do you already have projects ready to go you might want to fund. This slide summarizes that and so they ended up with 151 flood studies were proposed. There were actually more, but we winnowed down a few that didn't meet the [2:22:57 PM] standard needed. And then 54 projects were included. So down at the very bottom you can see we submitted and in a second I'll show you what they are. They call them flood mitigation evaluations, which is wonky so we just say study. And flood mitigation projects or fmps. So we did add in our share. Let's go to the slide. This shows the one study and the five projects that we asked to be included in the plan. This was a lot of hard work to make sure we had the right information and they wanted quite a bit of information. If you go to the draft plan and interested in seeing additional information, you can see it shows a summary and what it is, how big the drainage area is and what's at risk, so forth. So that first study is really a key thing. [2:23:58 PM] You hear -- I mentioned the local drainage wasn't the focus of the study, but we were able to put in this as a key ask. This is over $10 million modeling study which would basically eventually model every single storm drain system in down. Right now we do them on ad hoc basis based on what's been reported by 311 calls and so forth, so that's a pretty good system. So that's a big deal. So we would love to get funding help for that. In a second I'll tal more what funding is a you will B on the project side we have these five major projects. South Austin regional, wastewater treatment plan/sand hill electric center, so it's electric power station right next to one of our very major wastewater treatment plants, that's just north of the [2:24:59 PM] river down near sh130. And so that's actually where onion creek and Colorado river kind of come together. You can seehere's a photo of the plantht there in that shot. And so that is -- actually Charles is doing a follow-up presentation on sar, we call it south Austin regional or sar, so he can answer more detailed questions if you have them. That's a crucial project. So we have that in the plan. We also put in two major storm drain improvement projects, two of the biggest once on our five-year plan on the watershed protection side. So those are many tens of millions of dollars each. And we've got those in the plan. We also have the other major wastewater treatment plan, walnut creek also is doing a study, it has conducted a Y of what it would need to build in order to protect itself from flooding. And so that's on the list. [2:26:00 PM] And that's just -- I'm sorry, sar is south of the river. Walnut is north of the river. Dalton lane is a key water crossing, I think that's in district 2, maybe 3. That's another major project that relatively expensive. So the common denominator is not this is everything in town that needs to get fixed. We could have had a way longer list if we wanted to put in everything. We wanted to focus on really huge projects if we could get funding help from the state or maybe federal government, that's going to take a lot of pressure off our collective multiple-department cip projects. There's projects all over town that need flood assistance. If we can get some funding help for these, that would be absolutely fabulous from a funding standpoint. [2:27:00 PM] Let's go to the next slide. So, you know, basin-wide we had over $400 million worth of proposed funding needed. Honestly, you know, a goodly chunk of that is simply the city of Austin, which has half the population. That's kind of expected. This is a big budget. And we're just one of 15 regions. Some of the other ones in west Texas, they don't anticipate they will have the same level of needs, but you can imagine Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Fort Worth, et cetera metro areas are going to come in with big line items too. There's going to be a lot of money asked from the state in these plans and this kind of gives a slice what that's going to look like. Let's go to the next to last inside. >> Fuentes: If you remind us how much the state has in funding? >> I don't know the answer to that. I'm not sure anybody knows the answer. The plan has such a long [2:28:01 PM] time line, it will be 2024 by the time they actually finish up the plan. At that point I'm hoping the state legislature is weighing in on this and realizing, wow, we've got a big deal here. You know, let's -- here's the new reality check that everybody submitted. And then they will look at that and consider that when th do their state budgeting. There's also -- I think the twdp is a conduit of some of the federal money. I'm not as up on those numbers. There are some flood funds now through some previous kinds of systems that our grant folks are looking at right now. What I'm talking about is this flood plan which I think -- I'm speculating. I think it's going to show that the state -- it's Gooding to show the state leaders and that's what they are asking for, here's the level of need that we have for flooding. [2:29:01 PM] All right. This ishe last slide. It's a big deal we have a state floodplain at all. -- Flood plan. The group of us have taken it seriously, the technical consultants have done a terrific job getting information together. We're hearing the different regions around the state are doing the I'm. So that's going to be exciting to see this come together and see what the big picture looks like. Again, just to remind everybody, we'll be handing in our regional plan information in January. There's only about three more meetings so we're almost to the finish line. And then the state plan will be finalized a little under two years after that. All in all, Austin's preparedness and prevention as shown in the plan and discussed with other communities is outstanding, we're doing really well. We're plea venting new problems -- preventing new problems. We're preparing for floods. [2:30:01 PM] What we still do have is we still have a lot of legacy needs from these older developments that were put in place well before our modern regulations and protections. We along with many other communities are asking for help through the plan. We have five major Austin projects and one major study. Again, this is not nearly attempting to catalog everything we need all across the city. We're just trying to put in some of the most, the biggest projects. Then we do anticipate that the state is not going to say oh, you need $400 million, here you go. We're hopeful we will be prepared to make -- maybe we could pay for a portion. We want to be in position to be in good shape when the plan comes out. Since it is a long time from now, the various departments that have flooding issues going ahead with projects. We're not waiting for the plan to finish, but we want [2:31:02 PM] to be ready in case we have money. Just to tie into the previous presentation, Austin's rain to river strategic plan is a great way for folks who are thinking, wow, here's a state flood plan, here's our plan, how do these overlap. We think the rain to river project is a great way for community to weigh in on this, use that mapping exercise. Whereas the state flood plan is much higher level. Not as -- just not as effective way of offering that, kind of more targeted input. I just went ahead and put in the website for the regional plan inhehere too. So that's it for my presentation. I would be happy to answer any questions. >> Fuentes: Thank you. Colleagues? Questions? Thumbs up from councilmember pool. Yes, mayor pro tem. >> Alter: Thank you. [2:32:03 PM] And thank you for your work on this. It's really interesting, important work. It looks like the regional plan will be finalized in time for a session at the legislature, but the state plan will be after that or for the next session. Do we have any sense of urgency at the state level where they may put some funding in this session? They do have a $25 million lus at this point. >> I don't know the answer to that. That would probably be our intergovernmental office, right? That's a fantastic question. I don't know how much the state is going to be looking at this, but the information will be available and people will be able to look at it and talk to the legislature, I suppose. It's not our job, but that's -- >> Alter: I can't see if the intergovernmental relations office is there, [2:33:05 PM] but I know as a legislator and we just had a conversation about it this morning, it's very frustrating when something comes to us like just after we've done budget or comes off cycle in such a way that we can't make the investments that we spent all this time identifying. So I think it would be useful, you know, to share this information with our legislative delegation so it can be on their radars, because it may be we need to plant seeds for it for next session in some ways. But if they are not aware of the needs that we've identified, that may be challenging. Or there may be some -- there may be some piece of legislation that something could be added to or I just think this might be something to keep front and center as part of that legislative process. [2:34:06 PM] >> That's a great point. I don't know if it was intentional, but the end point is September of 2024 would be, you know, some three or four months before the ledge -- the odd year legislation would open up in 2025. So that would be kind of the logical place to talk about it at this point. >> Alter: Yeah, I would just encourage starting those conversations somehow earlier so that folks are socialized to the magnitude of the need. And, you know, they do happen to have a surplus this session, don't know whether they will have one in two years, and the longer we wait to do this work, the more consequences there are of not doing it. >> Very good. Thank you. >> Fuentes: Thank you. Thank you again for this really good information, similar to what the mayor pro tem shared. [2:35:06 PM] I got a note from staff, may have committed over 3 million to fund statewide projects. As part of that funding, the fifth, I don't know if that's how you call it. >> Yeah. >> Fuentes: But that there is an appropriatation of nearly 800 million in that fund, so opportunity to advocate. It would make sense for us to have a strong legislative push on this effort. >> My understanding is they have allocated a fair amount of that money already, back in 2019. But we can -- we're actively working with the Texas water development board staff to Tokyo about what's remaining. Look at this. >> Kevin, just a quick thing on the fifth funds, we did get a four and a half million dollar grant to do floodplain study citywide. We're doing that work now. >> Fuentes: Awesome. Thank you. The question I had was around the storm drain [2:36:06 PM] dealing. I've had several conversations with director morales about a storm drain inlet in my district and I saw in the rain to river map it also showed up there as an issue that a constituent flagged for watershed. So I'm really particularly interested in the storm drain modeling project. How much would that cost and are you all prioritizing that mapping for local funding and for local efforts as well? Yeah, so the map commented on the fact that there are obviously the projects you saw on this list well as others in the department and we're not waiting around to see if there will be funding about of we start. We've started that process of some modeling program, whether that be getting a consultant to help us, getting internal staff to do modeling, that process is ongoing, it's going right now. And the end of that effort will be identifying flood risks citywide through storm [2:37:07 PM] drain modeling, not just creek flood modeling. >> Fuentes: Any time line when we would have that type information available? >> It's going to be a ways out, at least a couple years. >> Fuentes: I would be curious understanding how much it would cost to have th- the fully funded model. But, of course, any interim, like, localized solution for consideration of our bond efforts, you know, upcoming bond packages, that would be a project that I would be super in support of. Knowing the importance of it. >> The price tag at present that we put in the plan is $12.6 million is how much that full local flood citywide modeling project would cost. Any time we have a local flood project that gets a model, just each one, one by one. But this would be the larger scale. If there's something in any of the districts now going on that are storm drain improvement projects, they have a model, all the data needed. But this is going to take it [2:38:09 PM] to the next level so we're going to do more planning. >> Fuentes: Right. And I appreciate you mentioning not just relying on the 311 calls, the complaints. Not everyone knows about 311 and we're trying to push it out there the importance of filing complaints. But so the extent we could get some citywide modeling, that would be helpful. >> We very much agree. >> We've talked about this before. Just to give -- it's a great question. Like Kevin said, we've been modeling storm pipe for many years. As a matter of fact, before I became director, my previous stint at watershed, I was the supervisor that managed that program so since 2010, 2012. Out of the 1200 miles of storm pipe, we've created models for six, 700 miles. As you imagine software changes updates are needed and some of the older models are outdated. We even have done two dimensional models to [2:39:10 PM] evaluate areas that maybe don't have the complaints, but we can model and determine where the risk is. We created flood risk maps many years ago. We're reevaluating that and this program being proposed would help augment what we're doing. Watershed went through a major reorganization last year and we're trying to reemphasis on prioritization, the strategic plan is going to help us with that but we are continuing to do that. We received models from the consultants when we redevelop, we incorporate it into a system. There's a lot of things we're doing. We have an inspection program we look at conditions. Our asset management programs has done a lot of great work in the last four or five years, but something citywide similar to the creek, we don't have that. We'll get there sooner but later, but any potential funds from the state or federal, that's why it was put in there so we can take advantage. We're going to continue to do work on that and we'll continue to provide updates. [2:40:10 PM] >> Fuentes: Good deal. Thank you. Appreciate the context. I see no further questions. We will move on to item number 5. Thank you. Next up is a briefing from Austin water staff on the south Austin regional wastewater treatment plant, plant. This is a capital improvement project. >> Good afternoon. I am Shea rollson assistant director at Austin water for engineering services. And I have with me here today Charles, our managing engineer over our facility engineering division. And we're going to talk to you about our cip plans out at south Austin regional. >> Thank you, Charles solaro. Shea mentioned our group handles -- >> Fuentes: Is your mic on? >> Can you hear me now? >> Fuentes: Not yet. [2:41:12 PM] >> Is that better? >> Fuentes: Almost. >> Is that better? >> Fuentes: Perfect. >> Division manager over facilities engineering and we do theroject sponsor of capital improvement projects for water and wastewater projects. Next slide, please. As Matt just got done with his presentation, the south Austin regional, sar, wastewater treatment plan, floodplain issues are included in the state flood plan. What I'm showing here is what occurred also mentioned in 2013 and 2015 flood is that the onion creek river, which is on the south side of the bottom of the page, overflowed, top its banks and flowed into the Colorado river. That's kind of depicted by the red arrows. And between this flood and the new atlas 14 rainfall, the south Austin regional plant noted there sar, sand hill power plant and onion [2:42:14 PM] creek substation are in the 100-year floodplain now. That's what we're exencing now. Next slide, please. Our options to remedy the situation has been already started. Under the capital renewal project. The first phase of that project is the realignment of Falwell lane. That relocates the Falwell lane from state highway 30 up to onion creek substation and follows the existing alignment. We have to main access to the substation as well as the power plant, the wastewater treatment plant as well as there's a private property as well. The second phase is the flood wall, which is in the -- Matt indicated wasn the state flood plan. [2:43:15 PM] It's noted there as ay and flood wall. It's kind of a built-up earthen berm. It would protect both facilities from the 100-year floodplain and not allowing onion creek river to overflow into the Colorado. This project is in preliminary phase. We're still seeking funding grant opportunities. In addition to state flood plan, we have submitted this to various federal programs, and most recently emergency management asked us to go after covid funding as well. Next slide, please. I've got two capital improvement projects we're going over today at south Austin regional. I did want to give you a plant layout overview. We have three trains, which we call train a, build in [2:44:17 PM] '86, train B in '88, and thenrain C was built in early 2,000s. Each train has a capacity of 25 million gallons a day and overall plant has a 75 million-gallon day capacity. Next slide, please. These are just a couple of fact sheets for us for train a and B improvements. It's about a $116 million project, just recently bid. We hope to start construction early 2023 and complete if four years. Request for council action will be coming in November for that. This project is to replace the aging and infrastructure within the two trains. Both mechanical as well as electrical. Electrical is also having serviceability issues because it's so old they don't make the parts anymore, so we're having a hard time finding parts. The next one is the [2:45:17 PM] electrical substation, number 1 replacement. And we put this in here as an example of one of our electrical resiliency projects. Next slide, please. On this I highlighted in green kind of the areas of improvements that we're going to be doing. Yellow is just to kind of highlight the specific slide I was going to talk about. The first one is the preliminary buildings, the head works of the plant. This is where when the water is pumped to the facility we have screen to go remove the large debris floating solids in the wastewater stream, as well as remove grit, which is sand and gravel, egg shells, those kind of things. The improvements we're doing there is improving the bar screens which catches that large debris. The grit classifiers, pumps and blowers remove the sand and gravel material. Monorail is a type of crane to help us maintain equipment, and we're going to remove the electrical [2:46:18 PM] equipment within that building. Next slide. The next step is the primary clarifiers. This is the first settling basin within the treatment process. A large suspended solids are by graft go -- gravity settings at the bottom. They are collected at the bottom of the clarifier and that particular solids is pumped over to Hornsby bend biomanagement plant for further treatment. In this area, these four primary clarifiers, we're going the remove the whole mechanical equipment which includes the drive which turns the equipment. The rake which scrapes is solids off the bottom. The troughs or the way the water flows out of the clarifiers belong to the perimeter along the circle and goes into a trough. It's above grade, but it structurely has some compromise and leaks occurring. We're going to remove and [2:47:19 PM] replace the troughnd at the same time go ahead and replace the wares which control the flow. Another process efficiency imprent is we're moving the scum collection from the primary building closer to the clarifiers to provide better efficiency at removing the scum. Next slide, please. The aeration basin is an area where we go ahead and add wastewater into the wastewater stream and provide aerobic digestion for the nutrients. We're doing some crack repair as well as slide Gates need to be replaced. They've exceeded their useful life. Next slide, please. The next one is the secondary treatment building. This O houses the pumps and mechanical equipment so move the solids from the bottom of the clarifiers as well as the electrical [2:48:21 PM] improvemen the electrical improvements will be removed from that building and will provide some replacement of pumps as well as the meters for the flow. Next slide, please. The final clarifiers, the next one on the list, the final settling basin. Actually the suspended solids are much smaller there and they do the same thing. The solids will by gravity settle. Again, we're doing the same thing here with the exception we're not removing the troughs but doing the same as the primary, the clarifier drives and new wears. Part of therocess treatment is the disinfection of the effluent and we provide that by injecting chlorine for 20 minutes. We're going to do a process improvement by removing the clarifyier mercantilism and [2:49:21 PM] install baffles to increase the disinfection process in that basin. Next slide. An integral part of this one is the new electrical. We're replacing the electricals through the processing areas, the areas where there's potential for corrosive gas. The controls and the network all into new elevated electrical buildings. So the train a and B will have new electrical gear once we complete this project. Next slide. The last one we're going to mention was the replacement of the electrical substation number 1. The existing is over on the left side of the screen, it's an outdoor facility. I put the dimensions there just to note how what difference it is now. You can see the bottom outdoors are kind of rusted. The slide to the left is the [2:50:23 PM] current construction project. As you can see during -- actively in construction. We're actually putting the equipment inside a building to have a condition space hopeful to add to the longevity of the equipment. It's about twice the size and about three times the square foot age. As we bring in, we use primary voltage which is 12,500. The space requirements significantly different now so we need more space. This is a representation in the new electrical codes that we have to deal with today. With that, I'll take any questions. >> Fuentes: Thank you. That's exciting to see all the updates that are going to take place. Colleagues, any questions? All right. That was a very thorough presentation. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Fuentes: Thanks. [2:51:25 PM] Okay. So next up item number 6 a discussion on future agenda items. Earlier we voted on the schedule for 2023. So our next meeting will take place and will be February 15, 2023. This is our last scheduled meeting for this year, however, I do want to point out that the audit and finance committee will be meeting to discuss the Austin water audit that will be coming back to our committee and then to council later this year. I think that's in December. Please correct me if I am wrong, mayor pro tem. But any -- barring any special called meetings, our next committee meeting as the Austin water oversight committee will be in February of next year. Any discussion on potential topics for that meeting? Okay. All right. If no further business, before I journey just want [2:52:26 PM] to thank our staff, watershed, Austin water for all your hard work this year. It's been incredible for me personally as a first year member of the committee -- or second year member of the committee, first time chair, to learn all about our utility and the incredible work you all are doing. Innovating and providing really great communication to the public. Appreciate all of your work. It is now 2:52 P.M. And we'll adjourn the Austin water oversight committee. Thank you.