Prescott Council Confronts $68 Million PFAS Crisis With Inadequate Settlement Recovery and Unexamined Contamination Sources

Good afternoon. Today is October 5th already 2026 and this is Prescuit City Council. This is a study session. Roll call, please. Mayor Rousing, here. Mayor Prom Fworth, here. Councilwoman Frederickson, here. Councilman Gambboji, I am here. Councilman Garing here. Councilman Grady here. And I will note uh if and when Councilman Ruby arrives for the meeting. Thank you. Our item for discussion is presentation and discussion regarding the PAS roadmap draft final report. Good afternoon. Is this on?

Hello. Oh, good. Okay, there we go. Good afternoon. I'm Steve Olers. I'm your uh utilities manager. I uh we're bringing you this afternoon uh a report that we've been working on for quite some time. This is the report uh of a PAS roadmap project and essentially we're the the team we've put together here is going to explain to you uh what our plans are, what we'd like to see happen with this POS uh situation and to come in compliance.

Just as a reminder, our compliance date is 2029 with the possibility of having a compliance date of 2031, but that's kind of still up in the air. So, we have uh kind of a quick turnaround on some of these things, but we got we going to give you some options and some ideas of the direction we're looking to go. So, firstly, just as a quick uh summary, today we're going to be looking at three different studies. The first one is for the airport wellfield.

So how are we going to treat POS at the airport wellfield? Then we are going to look at one from the Chino wellfield. Uh then there's going to be a priority uh projects of how we've come to our uh how the how we plan on rolling these projects out. And lastly, a special one of a small community water systems uh addition to our system possibly. So, this is something the that we've been working on, like I said, for quite a bit. So, let's just get to the meat of the matter here.

This is what the numbers look like for the costs associated with each one of these uh priorities. We we're going to have four priorities associated with this. And this will come at your pleasure, at your discretion as to how we want to roll these out. But uh Mike with Dibble is here with me and um he's going to introduce his team in just a bit. But the first priority is taking a look at the airport individual treatment. So well five at the airport.

This was our main focus was trying to get well five back in operation. And so this is where uh our focus has been for quite a while. Uh through this study we learned that our chino wellfield is close to being problematic with its uh levels of POS. Right now we're able to maintain a below level of four MC of the MCL at the Chino site but that's danger that's quickly becoming impossible for us because our wells are are continuing to increase in their concentration.

Priority three is it we'll we'll talk a little bit more about that and priority four is adding Chino wells one and two into the uh the treatment process. So like I said um oh and the last one we'll we'll get to it's a it's kind of a different direction but we'll be getting there. So, I'm gonna introduce Mike uh Logan with Dibble, and he's going to introduce his team and uh I'll talk to you in just a couple minutes. Thanks, Steve. [clears throat] Hi, I'm Mike Logan with Dibble.

Is that close enough for you? Can you guys hear that? Okay, cool. Um we've been running with this project. Um we have a teaming partner here, Hazen. Um we've been working with them. So, Nicole's going to do a little bit of talking um first. So, she is the national director of water treatment for Hazen. Um, so if you have questions about POS or treatment, she will answer all of them. I encourage you guys to try to stump her if you can. She knows POS like crazy.

Um, [clears throat] so like I said, we teamed with her. So we did a lot of the hydraulics and a lot of the sight specific things. So if you start asking some sight specific questions for uh towards her, you might get some blank looks. That just wasn't what um she took care of in this project. Likewise, if you ask me about some POS questions, you're going to get a lot of blank looks, and I'll direct you to Nicole.

So, Nicole is going to come talk about POS and some of the treatment um options that we have here. Good afternoon. Thank you for having us today. Oh, there we go. Okay, so we thought we'd start off just really quickly with a POS overview. I'm sure you've heard a lot about POS um over the years.

Um but POS chemicals, also known as forever chemicals, um are they're in our environment from a lot of different sources, predominantly from firefighting foams, um from consumer products, uh from wastewater treatment that comes from a lot of those products. Um you'll see it in everything from your wrappers from fast food.

um anything that really um like Gortex products, things like that, things that are meant to prevent water from coming into it or prevent oils from coming into it as well because it has a really good property of um being able to repel both water and oil. And that's what makes it very effective. But unfortunately, it's also not easily biodegraded um or broken down our in our environment.

And that's where the real challenge comes because it's just circulated amongst um in in the water and then it gets into the groundwater and that's where we are today. Um the the mo the pas compounds there are about 4,000 pas compounds. The one that is um most significant for you is called pifoa peruro per floroctinoic acid. Um, and it's basically a carbon chain molecule that has eight carbons um and fluorides that come off of each of the chlor of of the carbons.

Um, so POA is your main product main issue of concern. Um, the key takeaways for for the from this slide um number one is that there's changing regulations. We now have a new regulation um on POS and we'll talk about that in the next slide. And there's also moving deadlines. So again, it's a forever chemical. Yes. Madame Mayor, may I ask a question? Yes. Ted, in your previous slide, you talked about household items, food packaging. Uh you say clothing. Well, some clothing's okay.

So, if I bought cotton or wool, I'd be all right. But if I bought polyester, that would be a contributor, right? Some polyesters have been treated with POS. So, that can be a or uh frying pan with teflon. Yes. Has there been any education effort to direct people to not buy polyester clothes or use teflon pans? Because I mean long term you can keep treating this but if it it grows in usage then we're fighting a losing battle.

So what education efforts are there to identify specifically what clothes, what rappers, what uh um treatment like teflon so that consumers can make some more rational judgments in the marketplace and reduce the input of POS.

It's a great question because there are a lot of sources um of PAS compounds um and we're actually also seeing the industry as one gets you know gets banned or is under scrutiny from a regulatory perspective moving to other ones um and replacing it and then causing other issues. So there are some um nonprofit organizations that do provide information um that's available and we'd be happy to to share some of those those sources with you.

Um, you know, I I look at those regularly when I'm deciding, you know, between ceramic pans and Yeah. Yeah. So, we can share that certainly. Yeah. All right. So, um, a couple other things about POS compounds. They're persistent in the environment. They do bioaccumulate in humans um, and animals. And they, um, in small amounts, they're linked to adverse health effects. So, we're talking about parts per trillion levels, PPT.

Um, a lot of other compounds like arsenic, for example, is is we think about it in parts per parts per um billion. So, it's a thousand times less um concentration. And there's a picture of what these compounds look like. The the purple is the fluoride and the the backbone there are the uh the gray the gray ones are the carbons. Um and then what may what differentiates each of the um different compounds is kind of that end end piece that aren't in this case it's the the red and the white. Okay.

So from a regulatory perspective um in April of 2024 um the US EPA did release the final rule to regulate POS in drinking water. Um and the rule included these compounds.

So POA which I mentioned the perfluoroctinoic acid um and there's two different columns here the MLG and the MCL MCL is the enforcable level the maximum contaminant level um and then the MLG is set as it's the goal um that if we were not taking economics into account if we weren't taking technical feasibility into account that's the level at which we would try to strive um from a health perspective.

And so for carcinogenic compounds like these um we're striving for zero parts per trillion and that's just the the regulation. Um so all of these add up to POS. Yes. So all of them together would be POS PFAS compounds. Yeah. Yeah. So but they're regulated individually. Um, so we have POA, POS, and there's confusion about POS versus POS but some people say POS. Um, but I call it POS. Um, there's PFNA, which um, so those those first two are the ones that have the most information about them.

Those are the eight chain molecule, eight chain carbon molecules. Um, those have an MCL of four parts per trillion. um PFNA, PFHXS, and Gen X all have limits of 10 parts per trillion. And then there's this last one which is a hazard index calculation. So they take the concentration um of PFNA, PFHX, PF HF, P HPFO, DA, and PFBS. um and they put the concentration over the um individual health um regulatory level.

And so if for example PFBS has a a limit for health that's um of concern of 500 parts per trillion for example, if it was 500 parts per trillion in your water, then that would be one, right? So you just basically like it's it's sort of a normalized value. Um do each of these have different contributors? They do. Yeah. Some are present in multiple like there's multiple in a particular product. Um but there are different cont different contributions from different products. Yeah.

Um, so those last ones, the last four listed here, the PFNA and down, um, in May of 2025, EPA announced the intent to change those regulations and to eliminate those. So, they have not finalized that yet. They've just announced an intent. But that being said, PO and POS will remain the same. And those, the one that is major of concern to Prescuit is the POA, which won't change. Um, and so currently, um, the we're in compliant we're in compliance for all of these compounds.

Um, but we'll see as we go through when you look at the plots of the concentrations over time and the wells that you're using. Um, it's not a a sustainable long-term solution. [snorts] Any other questions before I move on from this one? Uh, yes. I would just like to comment that, uh, this isn't unique just to prescuit.

This is a national worldwide issue and uh I think that uh there's a lot of wells that just haven't been tested and I think if we test more wells we'll find out that this is uh a pretty unfortunately common issue across the country. Exactly. It's very common. Mary, thank you. You mentioned earlier, and I've heard it from other sources as well, that firefighting foam is like the big dog in the contributor category.

Isn't the industry, the firefighter industry moving away or moving to other formulations that don't contribute, at least not as much as the old style? Yes, they are.

Well, so with that, if the main contributor is is being sequenced away, uh is there hope in that regard as far as meeting maybe if not meeting the um unrealistic goal of zero, but at least getting under the the four parts per trillion just by the fact that firefighting foam is not going to continue to be the big contributor that it has been in the past. It is a possibility. Yes. Yeah.

And um you know it's it's a new enough regulation and new enough interest in the issue um that we have not at this point seen a lot of concentration starting to come down yet.

Um because a lot of what happened with the firefighting foams for example is that um a lot of times they they were the firefight the fire agencies um when they do their training protocols um they'll set something on fire and then they'll practice um and so a lot of times before this um became known as an issue nobody knew and so it was just done on like unconfined aquifer and so it just got into the ground was washed into the ground and it doesn't take a lot to get parts s per trillion levels.

So that's that's our biggest challenge. And then you can also get it can really stick to some of the um the soils as well. So it's not just moving through like a salt for example. It can actually like reside there for a while. So you can have kind of lingering effects over time. Thank you. Yeah, Lois. Yeah, you just touched on the beginnings of what my my question was because um Holar did, you know, announce we don't have POS in our firefighting foams anymore in the city of Prescat.

But um but the question is how does this compound move? If we were doing a bunch of training at the airport and that is leading to our problems, does it do we know how it moves, how it transfers, how it dissipates? Do we know the chemistry of this chemical in that regard? It's an active area of research um at this point. And um something that we we are just starting to see there's been some work on this is like the the hydrogeeological modeling of the transport of the plumes underground too.

Um so we see we have in a lot of places we have much more um uh we know a lot more about the like the stickiness of the compounds to the to the aquifer grains um what mobilizes it etc and um it's kind of at the beginning stages of our understanding. Yeah. So we won't know enough to be able to help with this timeline with recommendations and priorities. [laughter] Exactly. We just got to go. Okay. Yes. But hopefully there's a point in which you can turn this off eventually um these systems.

All right. Okay. So, moving into what do we do about this uh the treatment technology evaluation. So, when the EPA sets an MCL, they do establish what they call best of mobile technology or BATS. Um and there are four for um removing POS including granular activated carbon which is like in your brida filters um or your pure filter on your on your um your sink. Um we have annion exchange uh which is what you see in like softening resins that you might use in your house.

Uh nanoiltration and reverse osmosis are membrane um solutions. And so what we really focused on in this in this um project were the GAC and the ion exchange um because the nanopiltration and the reverse osmosis um result in a lot of waste. So for reverse osmosis for example you can get 15 to 25% water loss. So that much water is actually rejected um and has concentrated POS in it which is not a great solution in the west um where water is precious.

And also then you have the the the water the reverse osmosis concentrate that has six to seven times as much POS to deal with on the back end. And so as I mentioned it's not biodegraded, it's not easily removed. Um so we really focused on the technologies that are more controllable by you um where you can remove it, concentrate it and then dispose of it properly offsite. Any questions about those those technologies?

Mary uh as I was going through the materials to the extent that I could I could um both the uh GAC and the ion exchange uh the diagram ended [clears throat] with and then was disposed of the waste material but I didn't see anything in here to show us what how yeah how do you dispose of that concentrated waste that is at the other end of the process. Sure, I can talk about that. So, for GAC, um we usually what you do is you uh heat it up to about 2,000 degrees um Fahrenheit.

And so, you basically like remove it that way. Um and it gets concentrated as a a liquid product as a result. Um so, they're actually for GAC you can either dispose of it in a landfill um and so they put it into line landfills. Um at this point, it's not hazardous. Uh but it's something that we're watching for in the future. Will they say, "Oh, that's that is hazardous now." So it's something we're kind of keeping an eye on. How would it not be hazardous?

Is that superheating changing it in some way that No, it's the concentration that is not significant enough um when you're disposing of the solid. So you have just a batch of the carbon and you're disposing of it in a landfill. But if you are removing it um you're either if you're doing the the in the um regeneration and it's the really high temperature then you actually can break apart those bonds. So you can actually that's the destructive part of it.

Um for an exchange what's usually done is that it is um incinerated or disposed of in landfills as well under the same kind of idea of the superheating concentrating. Yeah. It's no longer free flowing into the system. Exactly. Yeah. Is you mentioned that there's research still ongoing. Are we certain enough on that score?

Um it's a good question and and we don't recommend like if you're disposing into a landfill of putting into an online landfill for example, you want to make sure that there's the proper protocol. So because otherwise you'll have the liability associated with that. Um so it's something to really be aware of. But one thing that is also um for GAC is advantageous is the you can do regeneration.

Um so there are regeneration processes again it's using a high temperature but um then getting back your carbon. So yeah thank you. Sure. Okay. So a treatment train um so one question uh that I've heard before is what what is a treatment train? And that's when you have to put multiple things in line um in a process to do different things. So for GAC, we'll walk through each GAC and then exchange for GAC. Um so here we have a picture of the well.

Um for some systems, we might have to do pH balancing because uh the water might be too hard. Um and so you have to add a little bit of acid so that you don't solidify your media essentially. Um we then have cartridge filters that remove any you know we're pulling water from the ground.

there can be sand in there and silts um and you don't want to clog up your GAC and so we have cartridge filters that basically just filter the water uh and then we send the water through GAC vessels um from the top the water goes through uh the filter and removes the POS through that um for GAC we have to have the ability to backwash so occasionally the the head losses get too great there's the some particles will get through some of the GAC will break down um and so you'll wind up with the pressure is too high to be able to pump through and so you have to send water from the bottom um up through there kind of get rid of those particles um and then you have to keep capture that water the backwash water we call it um so that's not something that we have with ion exchange so just a little um preview there so our pas absorbs onto the GAC surface the GAC is a carbon molecule um and so the carbonarbon um bonds uh form and and so you actually just remove it by the process of absorption um which is a little different than the iron exchange.

So are the media replaced um and disposed of uh it says here as hazardous but it's actually not hazardous at this point um once it's exhausted. Um excuse me I think Mr. Garing has a comment of course. Uh, thank you, mayor. Question [clears throat] on the backwash water. Yes, I assume it's going to be high in POS. Um, it's usually not actually. Um, because it is mostly it's mostly water. Um, and then you wind up with some particles. A lot of times you're not ending up with the carbon molecules.

Um, it's like the part like the sands and the silts. Um but you wind up with this backwash water uh that is mostly water. It goes into a tank because in most cases in some cases you can send it straight to the sewer. Um in most cases you the sewers can't take that kind of a flow rate that's required because you have to have be at a higher flow rate than your normal GAC process. Um and so you put it into a tank and then the particles settle.

And so the backwash water is usually uh does not have POS. It's detectable for the uh POS levels in prescat wells typically. [clears throat] Uh what would be the POS level in the backwash water then? Um it would most likely be non-detect um yeah. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Okay. We'll move on to the next slide, please. Oh, that's me. [laughter] That's me. Hey, I'm in charge of this. Um, ion exchange. So, ion exchange is very similar.

Um, as I mentioned before, we might have that pH balancing. That's something that would be determined in design whether that's necessary or not. Um, for now, we put it in just to make sure we're covering all bases. Um, cartridge filters um are especially necessary for for ion exchange because we send the water through the ion exchange and because ion exchange resin is very um it's almost the same density of water and so you can't really backwash it because you'll backwash all of it out the top.

Um and so instead you forward flush it when you get a new bed of it. Um and so you you really don't want particles to build up in that resin. And a lot of these these resins and the GAC can last for years potentially. Um so you get very long life out of them. So you really want to make sure that your cartridge filters are adequate. Um so what's happening with with the ion exchange media is that we are exchanging the ion exchange the POS onto the the res the beads.

They're essentially like little plastic beads um that have a counter ion in this case chloride. And so it's replacing that chloride that's less um strongly bound with the POS molecule and then the POS stays on that resin surface. Um so again it's the same idea where the media is replaced once you um reach a um a certain breakthrough point. So now we'll show you a couple pictures. What does this look like at full scale um scale that that we're talking about here?

This is what the cartridge filters look like. You can get them either these kind of horizontal ones that operators tend to like because um so we're showing a picture there. I'm going to try the screen. Oh, there [clears throat] we go. Oh, look at that. That's pretty cool. Um so this is the cartridge filter.

Um if you've if you have in Home Depot like you might have one of these on your house where there's like a cartridge that has a little um like wound cotton type of thing that goes inside a filter. Um that's essentially what this is. Uh so it's basically removing particles that are greater than five micron in size. Um so these all go into those slots, those circular slots that are there. Um and they fill up the the vessel. Um, so the operators change those periodically.

Usually depending on your well, you know, usually this is somewhere between three months and six months of time. Um, and you can get them like this. You can get them in configuration that's from the top. We tend to like them like this so you don't have to build another structure. Um, so that so that your operators have to stand on top of something to be able to reach it. This is what the the vessels the GAC or the ion exchange vessels look like. Um for GAC those are shown on the left there.

They tend to be a little bit taller um because you have to have a greater um empty bed contact time. How long the water is in contact with the media. Um it's usually about 9 to 10 minutes versus ion exchange which is more like 2 to 3 minutes. So you can have a lot shorter bed um a lot you know shorter uh vessels as a result. So you can you can see that right here. And then for GAC, I mentioned we we often have a backwash tank. And you might think to yourself, well, how big is this backwash tank?

Um, potentially, and it's usually in the ballpark of 70 to 100,000 gallons. Um, so it's a pretty decently sized tank. Um, and this shows you one example of what that might look like. So the bottom line when we did the evaluation of the two different approaches of GAC and ion exchange is that ion exchange was the recommended treatment technology. Um I'll show you a couple of the um the different things that we looked at. So we considered the media volume.

So again we showed you the large vessels versus the shorter vessels. And to show you an example for AP5, um, GAC, you need 1,000 cubic feet of media versus 378 cubic feet of ion exchange. So you need a lot less, but that's countered by the fact that the iron exchange media is more expensive. So a lot of times the cost winds up being pretty equitable between the two um on a life cycle basis, but the the GAC costs more to install in the beginning.

Um the footprint of GAC is a lot bigger because you need that extra time that's associated with it. Plus you need the backwash handling as well that you don't need with the ion exchange vessels. So for GAC we need three trains um or six vessels. For ion exchange it's two trains or four vessels. And a train is like lead lag. So we send the water through one vessel which is the lead vessel. We send the water then goes through a lag vessel and that gives us a longer time.

It allows us to run the first one past breakthrough so that you're not just changing it out right when you start to see but when when you start to see the POS breaking through but you can actually run it a little farther get more media life on your first one. That's why we run lead lag. So a train is a series of treatments. Yes. Exactly. Yeah. It's actually used in two different ways. We can use it as the entire treatment train. We can use it as a lead lag train as well.

So that's a little confusing. Um, backwashing again for GAC, it's necessary to have that. You need to do it when you first put the GAC in. So, you have to have those capabilities. For ion exchange, we avoid it. So, you don't want to lose that ion exchange media out the top. Um, we need to have a backwash tank uh for GAC. We don't need that for ion exchange. Um, media can be regenerated for GAC, but it's not regenerated for ion exchange. For ion exchange, it's a once through technology.

Now there are some um there's some motion in the field here because so many agencies are agencies and cities are affected by PAS. We're expecting to see some you know they might come up with a a future regeneration scheme for ion exchange media. There's definitely some research going on into things like this. Um in terms of operations and maintenance, uh GAC is more complicated because you have that backwashing. Um iron exchange is is simpler.

But the the main points of why um these were selected is that the capital and the on andm were lower overall when we did the analysis for your wells uh for ion exchange. Less equipment was necessary and they resulted in a smaller footprint on the site. All right. [clears throat] Thank you. She's walking away. So if you have any other questions, let her know. Okay. Um she can come up. Oh snap. Okay. Um, [clears throat] so taking a little bit of a step back, we talked about the treatment.

Now, how does it apply to the wells here? Um, both in airport and Chino. So, we'll start with airport um with kind of an overall thing. Uh, somebody I forgot who had a question about how does this move through the groundwater. Like she said, we kind of don't know how it moves through the groundwater. Um but we had Matrix New World who does a lot of groundwater modeling. Um look at where the water has been um moving over time especially as you have all these wells in the area pulling water.

Um [clears throat] so looking at it you can kind of see that outline the border that kind of shows roughly the limits um in Prescuit of where um where producable wells are, where wells that get good production are. Um, and you can kind of see the arrows of where the water has slowly been migrating over time as these wells have been active and pulling water towards them. Um, and so what we see here is that likely this is also the where POS has been slowly getting to.

And so what you can kind of see here is we were hoping that there might be a place we could drill a new well to avoid the POS. And so that's what we were really hoping for with this. And the results of this came back that it's it's most likely not likely that you would drill a well without POS. And even if you did find a spot that didn't have POS, it would likely show up pretty soon. Um, thank you.

Thank you for saying that because that was one of my questions because on page 447 of your report, you say that uh that's one of the options um for airport uh five, airport well number five is to drill airport well number six. So, but you're saying that's probably not an option. So it's not an option for POS free water.

Um the assumption with a future and that's a buildout condition is if we drilled a a another well adjacent to AP5 is that we would expand the treatment capacity at AP5 to handle the treatment for AP6. So you don't think uh maybe just drilling a few test wells, you know, maybe off to the east there might be helpful? So we can do it and we might get something. Um, Prescuit Valley has a number of wells just to the east of that boundary. Um, and some of them have hit POS um, as well.

So, yeah, it's kind of a shot in the dark. It's something that we can try and if we get it free now, that's not a guarantee that it won't show up in a year or five years. Sounds like there's no escaping. Yeah, it doesn't go anywhere unless we pull it out and treat it. It Okay, thank you. Um, one thing if you'll note here at these red dots, I'll see how my how accurate my hand is here. Um, of these red dots, this well right there is AP5.

And so you can kind of see that the water um slowly gets pulled to Chino. Um, having AP5 there and assuming we install treatment and turn that back on, it has a pretty high flow rate. And so it may have the effect of pulling it out and and since we're pulling POS out of the aquifer, it can improve conditions as the water migrates towards Chino wells, the Chino Wells. Not saying it's going to improve the situation, but well, it'll improve it. Not saying it'll lower the POS.

It might slow the growth of POS towards Chino. So just a kind of an added benefit there as you think about that. Try not to knock around these remotes too much. Um, so what we did, we started Go ahead, Jim. Oh, thank you. Yeah, before you leave that last slide, I think I thought I might share with the council an experience in reducing groundwater contaminants.

In uh 1987, we built a nitrate removal plant for Growover Beach because our shallow wells were at 160 mg per liter and the maximum contaminant level was 45. So after running the nitrate plant up through about 2020, so 33 years, today the nitrate levels in Grover Beach water shallow wells is below the maximum contaminant level. So that's what I'm hearing could happen here. We probably won't get that great of results, but the same kind of thing. Yeah.

So what we started with here was was the airport wells and specifically AP5. When we started this um study, AP5 was well over the MCL and it was the only one that was that was really giving the city issues. And so we we focused on that. We looked at airport wells two and three, but the focus was on AP5. And the goal for this was how do we bring back AP5 online with its full flow. Um so if you go to the if I go to the next slide um what [clears throat] this is let me I'll walk you through.

So that horizontal red line is the MCL the maximum contaminant level that Nicole was talking about. Um per the EPA that's that's the allowable amount of um POS that you can have. Um this specifically is POA. It's the POA concentration. That's the one that's giving uh you guys the the most headache. So at that top that gray line up at the top this shows how the POS concentration in AP5 has changed over time. So it starts out I think this one's in 22. So in 22 it was pretty high.

It was around 15 parts per trillion. And it it's trending slightly lower over time but it's mostly hovering well above the MCL. Um you can see these ones down here. This light green and this darker green are AP2 and AP3. And you can see that when we started this study a few years back, they were well below the MCL and they've slowly started trending upwards. Um the flow rates, that little table on the right hand side shows you what how much flow each well produces.

So AP2 and AP3 are the only active wells in the airport zone. Um when you guys started testing AP5 and found it above the MCL, you shut it off so you're not running it. You got a question? Do we know why well five has so much POS and the other two don't? We have guesses just based on where wells have been pulling water that maybe they're just downstream of wherever the POS is is kind of most heavily concentrated, but we don't know. I can't replicate Senator John Kennedy's southern accent.

But if I were to use John Kennedy's logic, it's like we have too many houses burning down, so we need to hire more fire trucks. And I get back to the first question I ask here. What what's the root cause and what can we do? Because we could be chasing this forever. You can and it's a good question and it's something it's a larger question than I think what what prescuit what we can answer here. Um our choices here don't um don't completely eliminate the POS.

Um but we at the source of it but what we can do is we can ensure that we provide clean water to to people who drink the prescuit water. Lois, building on Ted's question, do we have any information in our city records regarding where training, fire training with PAS and those kind of things may have happened around the campus, around the area. I I understand why it's moving following the water up up to Chino, but I'm just trying to understand why like it went offline. I'm just seeing you.

It went offline and it had already been growing, but airport 2, which is well south of that all of a sudden started. And it's like, are we pulling the water that where the training fields were, airport 5 is not offline. Are we pulling it upstream to to get it now? Possible. And I think that'd be something interesting to find out if the fire department could go through records to see were they training everywhere, then we're in there's no problem. We're in trouble.

But if they were training in a concentrated area, that would be helpful to know even down the road if we if ever anyone ever comes up with a way of treating the dirt. Um, yeah. If I could add to that, do we track where any spills are with fire retardant near the airport? I don't think the city does because [clears throat] that could be a source point.

And if that happen like sometimes, you know, you're flying in and the wind has kept something in there and then it drops out that could cause an increase. It's a good question and I think it's an answer that societyy's going to have to deal with here because it's not going away and we're still producing it. So, it's going to be a step at some point that we're going to have to address.

Do do we have any capacity to monitor that going forward through our connections at the airport when we have because we service a lot of fire emergencies that are beyond the area. I don't know how our air I don't think our airport guys are here, but that to me would be potentially useful information. Yeah. And I think, correct me if I'm wrong, I think I heard that Prescuit doesn't use any uh firefighting foams that are contaminated with POS anymore. Is that right? Did I hear that right? Okay.

That's what our fire chief said in a public meeting two weeks ago. He said, "We're not using it anymore." Mhm. So, so the question is, is are is anyone else who's coming to use our facilities still using it? And should we stop that behavior as well? Good question. Yeah. Well, many years ago, we had a hanger for Alice, the electrical uh plane that was being researched and it caught on fire and they had to use foam and it was probably before we changed. That's just my guess.

And filled the hanger up with foam to stop it from spreading. So, that probably didn't help. But, I was going to ask um probably Steve knows this.

Isn't airport 5 the closest to where we uh recharge and inject treated influent which is contaminated with uh POS anyway and Steve's uh utilities manager the AP5 is downstream uh of the uh what we see in the water flow of the aquifer but also being that it's been off all the other wells two and three have been operating and so they're going to pull that POS to them as well.

So we have a general idea of what the water flow is underground but otherwise um we're just kind of in the dark as to source but yes it is downstream from the uh retention ponds. Yeah. Okay. That's what I thought. Thank you Mayor. Yes, Jim. Steve, don't go too far away. [clears throat] Um, I'm concerned that our wastewater treatment plant effluent that's being used for recharge is high in POS. Is is that being looked at at all? Presently, we have not done any tests on our effluent yet.

We've been really focusing our efforts on trying to clean up the aquifer in the wells. Um, EPA hasn't come forth with any new regulations yet. Uh but I understand they're they're working on and I'll look at Sarah from ADQ that they're I believe that they are working on doing uh having treatment within the wastewater treatment train. Yes. So it does seem to me that we're we're missing something that we need to look into if ephilent being used for recharging the aquifer is high in POS.

If it is, what do we do about it? That's a great question and that's what we're hoping our researchers will be able to find. All right. Thank you. So, one thing to point out as we're looking at the airport system, um AP2 and AP3 are the only active wells in the airport zone and they produce about 1,700 gallons per minute. Um and that's enough to feed um the airport zones. Um, airport 5 all by itself has a capacity for 2200 gpm. Um, and in the future it has the capacity to go to increase.

That well has um some good hydraulic capacity in it. Right now it's outfitted for 2200 gpm but in the future if that needs to increase that well has the capacity to do so. Um, so bringing AP5 backline you can see why it's kind of critical to bring that back on. It it by itself outproduces the other two wells in the system. Let me ask you this. In the POS levels, we're tested at the wellhead, right? Yes. We're not testing anything at the tap. Uh, not that I'm aware of. Okay. Okay.

Because I was just when I was reading through this, um, you know, a lot of our water delivery systems still have PVC pipes and, uh, I was just wondering if that would contribute to the POS levels, too. Nicole is nodding no. Shaking no. What do you do? You shake. No. She's shaking. No. She says she doesn't think PVC is the source. Could you get a little closer to the microphone? I'm asking this on behalf of Jim Garing. [laughter] That's very kind of you. Is that close enough? Is that better?

Okay. If I start scooting away from it again. Pretty loud. So, [clears throat] give them microphones at the office. just throw something at me if I get quiet again. Um, so this real quick, this is AP5, um, as it stands. So AP5 has one building. Um, the wellhead is in there and then, um, the electrical equipment, the the chlorine equipment. Um, adding ion exchange would be that orange box. So we we put a separate building there. It gets enclosed in the building. Thank you.

It gets enclosed in a building for weather concerns. Um, and we just have to shift the retention basin north. Um, the city owns land to the north, so there's no property acquisition or anything involved with this. We just shift the fence a little bit. Just kind of wanted to show you that the ion exchange treatment doesn't require additional property acquisition, anything like that. You guys can do it all within the sites that you have. So uh we talked about the goal.

So one downside with adding um treatment really any treatment but with POS it's it's a problem as well is you have a lot of pressure loss downstream of the treatment um so the issue is how do we restore that pressure and keep it within acceptable limits normally we like water to come out of taps when we turn it on that's kind of our goal um with this so looking at that um to restore that pressure loss at least for AP5 what it would require in addition to the POS treatment is adding a storage tank and booster pump station.

Um I know it's [clears throat] just two bullet points, but those are um they carry um some decent cost implications. Uh together with the the treatment, the storage tank, and the booster pump station uh for design and construction, um we're looking at around $28 million for that. Those costs are for 2028. So targeting kind of like fiscal year 29 um cost. That's how those costs are indexed. So not cheap. This isn't um it's not easy to treat.

Um it's and it's not just the treatment that's difficult. It's what you have to do to restore pressures as well. Lois, so that's the one-time cost. And then what's the ongoing cost to maintain just this? Oh, that's a question. You're testing my memory. I want to see if Kylie flip through and find it. It's in the packet. I've seen it. I didn't bother going into the bowels of page 800, but thank you for doing so. It's probably page 674.

[laughter] By the way, whoever referenced page 400 and something, this lady who read it, I we'll get a candy bar for you afterwards or something. That was she gets the gold star for the meeting. I think it was like a million a year, something like that. And it it varies. We've looked at so much of it that I can't I don't have it off the top of Well, when you finish digging for it over there, just feel free to shout it out. Thank you. Thank you. Um, okay. We'll come back to that when she gets it.

So, it was at this point where this was the the part of the study where um as we were [clears throat] doing it, we thought, man, this is getting more expensive than even we thought it would. And and we had looked at an option for treating at AP3 and it was kind of expensive and we thought, wow, AP3 is really close to AP5. What if we just piped the water from AP3 to AP5 and treated it there so that we could treat both AP3 and AP5? um AP3 isn't as urgent. It's not um above the MCL right now.

So, it's not needed now, but we looked at it is is could we do it and how would that affect the treatment at AP5? Um and it actually works in really well. You don't have to exp you don't have to add any more treatment vessels at AP5. There's enough capacity to treat the well water from AP3. So, really the bulk of this is just transporting the water from AP3 to AP5. It's about a mile and a half of water mane. Um some other miscellaneous improvements to to be able to direct the flow.

Um this was also the part where um ADQ stepped in. So up till now um you guys were funding this study. Prescuit stepped in and they said, "Hey, we'd like to help out with some of this. Um we know POS is an issue. We'd like to help out and fund some of this." So this is actually where Sarah from ADQ is here. Um she was kind enough to lend some funding for us to look at some other options. So this option was one that ADQ um helped us look at.

Um, and we'll talk about Chino, which was also funded um by ADQ. I I got a question for you. Yep. I'm not following this. So, 28 mil for well five. Yes. Now, later in your presentation, you get into all this combined treatment stuff. Yes. And you were, if I remember correctly, you're looking at treatment per well um here in airport. Well, at times, yeah. for so airport Yes. Well, airport 5 we're treating at the well, right? Um, do do you expect to treat the other two at the well? AP2 and AP3.

Yeah. No, we'd like to treat AP3 at AP5. So, we'd like to combine the flows from AP. So, you're going to run a pipe from AP3 to AP5. Yes. And then treat everything that comes out of AP5. Yes. So, that's 28 + 5. Yes. Thank you. Yep. And we we're going to talk about each of these and then we're going to break in towards the end. And some of you as you're as I'm listening to this, you might be thinking, "Hold on, that's not the number at the end of the report." We'll get there.

When we get to the end of the report, that's when we try to start breaking it out and saying, "Okay, what do you have to do now? What can you push off a little bit?" Um, so we we'll talk about that at the end, too. If you're thinking some of these numbers don't make sense, uh, we'll try at the end to make them make sense. Kylie, did you get the number? Yes. So, the annual for just about half a million to $600,000. Did you guys hear that? Okay. No. Could you come?

She needs to Can you come up to the microphone please? Uh the annual O andM for [laughter] and I need your name too for the minute. Sorry. Uh Kylie Dystra Dibble. Um so the annual O andM for the ion exchange at AP5 for just treating AP5 um is about half a million um between $500 and $600,000 a year for that media change out. Um and then for the combined treatment um for AP5 and AP3 um that would add an additional.7 million 7.7 you said.7 million 700,000. Yes. Okay.

Additional an additional so it's that would be combined. Sorry. So additional 100,000. Sorry. Okay. um you're just treating a bit additional flow when you add AP3 and AP5 together. And that was based on the water quality um of the city uh that was submitted to different vendor vendors and they came back and gave estimates based on pressed specific water quality um and how long they would expect their media to last. So yeah thanks. Thanks Kylie.

Um, I think this is the last slide that I have on the airport system. I'm about to jump to Chino. So, if you have any questions, go for it, Lois. And I don't know if this is for you or this is for Steve. So, and if you don't want to answer it right now, that's fine. I'll just give it to Steve now. Okay. If we're going to if we were going to do the combined treatment Yeah. and we add airport five, we really could punt handling airport 2 and take it offline for quite a while, couldn't we?

We could. We could afford to do that. Yes, that's correct. That one of the things that we're going to talk about in just a little bit is prioritization. Okay. When we need to roll these out to to become in compliant and and then some of them are just a preference. Got it. When we roll them out. Thank you. Yep. That's a good question. [clears throat] Any others on the airport system? We'll circle back at the end on it, but right now we're going to shift to Chino.

Seeing a lot of excitement for for Chino here. Um, so this is the I sorry I shouldn't joke. Um, this is the the Chino system. So the same graph that we looked at for airport with just more lines. So your Chino well system has five active wells. Chino wells one through five. um you will see well here I guess I'll explain why there's more than four more than five lines.

So you have the red line the horizontal line that's the the maximum contaminant level and then each well has its own line where where the city's been measuring POS um over the last few years and you can see that most of them are trending above the MCL line especially um the more current readings. Your Chino wells function a little bit differently than your airport wells do. So airport wells um they draw water from the aquifer and they um inject it straight into the distribution system.

Um so each well becomes its own compliant point compliance point. When we talk about what the MCL is and what the the POS levels are in a certain well we're measuring that right before it enters the distribution system. Your chino wells don't pump directly to the distribution system. They pump to a storage tank where all the water from all five wells blend together. after that tank is when they enter the distribution system. That's your compliance point.

So, it's okay to have certain wells above the MCL. I mean, it's not great, but it's okay for some of them to be above the MCL because the line you can't see or probably don't see very well, the the blue line at the very bottom that's flat, that's Chinowell 4. Chino 4 is your biggest producer. It produces 3,300 gallons per minute. So almost a third of the entire chino well system and right now it's non detect. We haven't been able to detect any POS in it.

So even though your other four wells are above the MCL because it blends with Chino well 4 and Chino well 4 doesn't have any yet we've stayed under the MCL. That's the good news. The bad news is you can see the trend line and it doesn't look great. So which line is the blended line? Y the arrow the arrow is out in the middle of nowhere. There we go. Uh yeah, that's unfortunate. That did move. The line that it's closest to is the one that it should be.

The dark red line, this line right there, that's the blended concentration. Okay, thank you. Yep, that's a good question. Is that marked with EPD5011? Yes, EPDS stands for entry point to the distribution system. Engineers love acronyms. Sorry. They also fit a lot easier on a legend like that. Um, that's a good question. [clears throat] So, right now you're below the MCL. You're compliant. Um, but trending it doesn't look promising. It looks like we might need to do something soon. Yeah.

I would just like to comment that our um little chino aquafer levels are dropping every year. Foot, foot and a half, maybe two. And I think that as the levels drop, the POS levels increase because they're being concentrated. So that might explain this. Yeah, that's possible. So same thing we looked at at Chino. How do we treat Chino? And then importantly, how do we restore that pressure? Um, so the treatment is kind of what Nicole already talked about. It would be ion exchange.

Um, it would go in a treatment building just like the at AP5. Um so the the question becomes how do we restore the pressure loss again? Um here you have a couple different options um that we don't for AP5. Um option one is just adding a booster pump station. Kind of the same thing that we did at AP5. So all the water comes together at the um at the Chino tanks and we boost that that pressure back up. Um and that you can see there that roughly costs about 34 million is is what we're looking at.

Alternative two, the pressures are low enough in the chino well system that we have the option to just upsize each individual well head so that each well kind of boosts its pressure before it gets to treatment. So by the time it gets through the the the treatment process, it's within an acceptable pressure range. Um that's cheaper. It comes in at about 27 million if you do all of them at the same time.

Um, so we went with the option to or we would recommend going with the option to increase each each well size. Um, adding a booster pump station, it would work. It's as effective. It just adds another site to maintain. It's more um electricity power getting to the site that we have to coordinate um with the utility provider. It it's just more O andM headaches. So upsizing each well at an existing well site is easier for the operators and it's cheaper for your capital costs. Go for it. Question.

Well four is really close to wells three and five, but it's further quote unquote downstream. Yeah. And that's our least contaminated well. Absolutely. Is well four in the aluvial plane or in the basalt like Oh, it's in the it's in the basalt layer. Okay. The same layer as the others and they're all in the basalt then. And you're asking why there's nothing detected at Gino 4. I'm curious about that. Yes. Yeah. Us too. We don't know.

And at this point, we're trying not to look at gift horse in the mouth. By what we know, it should have detections. We don't know why it doesn't. And we're trying not to complain too loudly for fear that the aquifer might hear us. I wish I had a better answer for you. It should. By by what we know of the aquifer and where it's moving, it should it likely will, but we don't know because once we show concentrations, should that happen in well four, the mixing option changes. Yeah.

Like it's going to be harder to blend and stay below the red line. Yeah. Steve's job gets a lot harder when you start having detecting at Chino 4. Very true. Uh yeah, those are good questions. Um so here we come down to this really busy road map. I'll try to walk you through it because there's a lot going on and I'll try to stay close to the microphone while I do it. Um so the big blue strip kind of across the top 27 through 2031, those are fiscal years.

So if you're wondering why some of the years don't line up, it's because some of them are in calendar years because why not make this as confusing as possible? So if you look towards the top, we'll start at the top. Whoop. Right here. These dates along the top are the com bless you. Are the compliance deadlines. So you can ignore this one. This one's just the monitoring deadline. You guys are already monitoring. This doesn't change anything that you're doing. Come across over here.

2029 in April um is when you it's the compliance point. If Prescuit is over the MCL at that point, that's where penalties start coming into play and Steve has to write letters and and do that kind of fun stuff. Bless you. Um 2031 is the EPA proposed deadline. That's where they talked about, well, maybe we can delay this to give um agencies a little more time to comply with this. That's not final. Um it's still a proposed deadline and it's not even a deadline extension.

It's not an automatic extension. You have to apply for an extension. They haven't said what the criteria will be for an extension. And we're still not even sure that it can be extended to 2031. So, ADQ, I'm looking at Sarah to make sure this hasn't changed, is still advising people to not plan on the 2031 deadline. Um, yeah. So with that in mind, if we come down here, we've prioritized some of these um some of these projects. So we walked through what you need to do for these whole systems.

Now we walked through well which ones do you need to do right now? Which ones can you punt a little bit? Um so looking at this what we call priority one right there is airport 5 individual treatment. That's the 28 million that gets airport 5 back online and providing that 2200 GPM to the airport system. That one's important. You do that, it allows you to turn off AP2 and AP3 or at least run them much less frequently.

Um, it buys you time for the whole airport system to kind of get its feet, maybe stop drawing that POS towards it if that's what it's doing and maybe start drawing that POS towards AP5 and treating it. Um, priority two. And so one thing to note with this, the gray bar that goes across that turns into a red bar, those are design and construction durations. POS has a lot of long lead items.

We call long lead items that once you order it, it's not Amazon, it's not two-day delivery, it's two-year delivery. It's it's customordered things that take a long time to get here. And everybody's ordering the same pieces of equipment at the same time. Tempe, Phoenix, San Diego, everybody's ordering them. Is there any chance because these items are being ordered with such volume that they'll be more available as we proceed forward and the timelines will shorten up? I'm looking to Nicole.

Hope she's coming up. They have gotten shorter. Um especially like the vessels. Um those have they used to be really backordered. Um and now we're finding that they're um they're pretty quick. So, and other vendors have come to the marketplace as well um because there's a lot of demand. The things that we're really seeing are delaying things are the electrical switch gear and some of the other components um which really have long lead time that can be up to two years. Yeah.

Are these components being made in America? Are we importing them from China? Probably both. Um, so if if you're looking at it, even if you start design, we say in fiscal year 28, which would be July of 27 calendar year, you're not looking to bring that online until after the EPA deadline, uh, the enforceable deadline. So even though it seems like we have time, 2029's years away, it's not as much time to make a decision, um, which is not ideal.

Are there any economies of scale of doing well five and three at the same time? So there can be the problem is you start running into issues with how much work can a contractor handle at one time. Um and so by giving them more work at a time, sure you get a cheaper price, but then you also potentially get a longer schedule. Um because they just can't they can only do so much. Here's a question I've been wanting to ask. I'll ask it now. Mhm. Does this analysis assume a condition of Cetus parabus?

Excuse me. Now, pardon. Eeterus. Ceterus Parabus. Everything else held constant. Um, we're getting back to input and output. Mhm. So, if if this analysis is based on today's input of POS Yep. So if we don't do anything and POS concentrations increase, Yep. then we're we're going to be behind the curve. No, all it will do is it'll reduce the length of your media life. It'll reduce the the media life. So you have to change out your media more frequently. So the capital investment stays the same.

You just have to change out the filters. Yeah. I think our main priority here is to get AP5 up and running as quickly as we can because it's been it's our big producer and having that shut down the last couple of years uh has uh caused us uh a lot of worry because we've been in a drought and during the summer our use increases. So, I think it's important that we get AP5 up and running first and then in the meantime, you know, we can work on building that pipeline to get uh airport 3 treated.

Yeah. And it and to be clear, when you do AP5, you do the treatment there, you don't have to turn off AP2 and AP3. Those are both still under the MCL. Um, so assuming that doesn't change too much, you can still use AP3 and AP2 without adding treatment. Um, so yeah, that's a good point. Um, the second Thank you. I'm sorry. Um, you said each of these sections is the start of a fiscal year. So, is there anything we could do?

I don't know how much the cost of the priority one design is for airport while 5 treatment. Is there how much is the cost for the design effort?

Is there any way of us pulling it forward sooner because I'm so worried about this April 29 ballpark the rule of thumb if you're looking at cost is roughly 10% of construction cost is design that varies based on complexity and and what you need but just a the city I'm sure needs to answer that but it's roughly 10% so if we're looking at 28 million design would be around 3 million so the question I think that I think that's something Don for us to look at what can we do to start getting going sooner so we have something operating not in the middle of construction with the EPA deadline.

That's my biggest fear is we got nothing. We got nothing producing by the deadline. And [laughter] our goal is to obviously meet that deadline, but you can see the restraints that we have budgetary restraints. We we don't have any money for design in this fiscal year. We intend to start the design in FY28, which would be in July of That's why I'm saying we have we have a 311 million budget. Correct. Maybe we need to find some creative ways and postpone some other decisions that other people had.

I don't want to be not in compliance and being fined by the EPA. So that's definitely something that please something for us to look at and bring bring finance in and let's see what we can do even reaching across departments to try and figure out how do we get going sooner. Thank you. And Stephen, would all of that design cost need to be upfront or could some of that be allocated within the process?

Could like, for example, could one and a half million of that come within the next few months and the other one and a half million in July of 28 to minimize the kind of transference? In general, I'm going to look at look at capital, but in general, uh I understand that we pay over time. We allocate the money or encumber the money and then pay it over time. So it may not need to be an immediate 3 million allocation. That's my understanding. Yeah. Yes. No. Okay. If I can jump in, Patrick.

So, um, with this financial impact and the fact that it's a national crisis, are there any federal funds out there for us to potentially deal with or low interest financing from WIFA or that kind of thing? Actually, we'll be getting to that I think the next slide, right? Yeah. Soon after here. Um, so those are great questions. So, jump into priority 2. What we call priority 2 um is the Chino Well system. And I'll try. There we go. Right there.

So, you don't have to treat all five wells at the same time. Chino Wells three through five are your biggest producers in that area. So if you bring those three, if you bring treatment online for those three, you upsize the wells for those three, the blended concentration will remain below the MCL. And that gives you time to delay bringing Chino Wells one and two online. Um that's also nice because Chino Wells 3 through 5 have recently been rehabilitated.

Um they're older wells that you guys stripped down to to the bones and built it back up. So they're essentially new wells, as new as they can be. Um Chino Wells one and two have not been rehabilitated yet. So, we'd rather not I would imagine you guys would rather not spend money upsizing those wells to then come back and rehabilitate them later.

Um, so if you can buy yourselves time to kind of to get through this and then bring wells one and two back online to rehabilitate them at the same time that you upsize them. Um, that would be most economical for those two. Doing wells one and two, that's actually priority four. Um, so sorry I skipped priority three. Priority three is is adding that well the pipeline from well three AP well three to AP well 5. Um both priorities three and four don't have a hard deadline to them.

We put them in here just so they'd fit on the picture but really they get done whenever they need to get done um or whenever you want to do them. Um priority three and priority 4 don't need to happen unless your um contaminant levels keep rising beyond what you can handle with priorities one and two. Um, but hopefully we have a little bit of heads up based on where things are trending and we have time to forecast that decision. Questions on this? I know that's a lot to throw at you.

I have a question, Patrick. So, um, I got confused at that last one. So we've got airport well five is priority one then and then now priority three is airport wells three and five. Uh it's bringing airport well three to AP5 and centralizing it. Um yeah I guess we could have written that a little bit clearer. Yeah. Yep. So so airport 5 once you bring priority one online airport 5 stays online and then priority 3 is just adding airport well three to it. Yeah, that's a good clarification. Thanks.

I want to this this this may be more for Steve. I'm I'm seeing a lot of solution and I'm I'm not seeing a lot of root cause analysis. So, let me ask the question that comes to mind when you think about being up to your ears and alligators and draining the swamp. Have we tested the POS and Big Chino? Not at this time, no sir. What's the cost to test a POS in the Big Chino?

Well, that's that's a question that is is a little bit more complex because the the wells that are in the Big Chino currently drilled will will not be production wells. We would have to drill our own test monitoring wells to be able to get to the use well that's there and and take the water out and check it for POS. It would not be representative of what we might pump out of that system. Okay. Thank you. We're about to kind of jump into the funding that Steve talked about.

I think that's the next slide. So, if you guys are [clears throat] okay with it, I'm going to hit this button. And Steve, I think you're up. I'll just go right here. Okay. Oh, I lied. This is still mine. Yep. Sorry. [laughter] Um, so this is just a breakdown of those priorities. Um, similar to the slide you saw earlier, this is just a breakdown on on how much each priority would cost. Keep in mind those are all fiscal year 29 costs.

So even though priority 3 and priority four wouldn't happen in those times. I don't have a crystal ball and I don't want to even guess what inflation is going to look like when that happens. Lois, I was just about to ask you. So what's the math to do the fiscal n year 29 cost from current increase? Right now we assume I it's I think it's three or 4% is what we assume. Three 3%. Thank you. Sorry. 3% per year or 3% total? 3% per year. Now, you ready? I teased you, Steve. I apologize.

Um, as Mike mentioned, ADQ uh funded two of the studies, the phase two study and the the study we have not talked about yet, which is coming up. But we've also been doing a lot of research trying to find some additional funding at this date. As you recall, the the city was a a party to the the settlement with 3M and I think it was 3M and I can't remember the other one, but at that point at this point in time, we've received about just over $3 million from that settlement.

Part of that money was used for our phase one funding. So we had so really we're we didn't use city funds. We used the funds that came from these folks and those continue to increase uh over time. I I don't have the time period. Mr. Young, do you have an idea of the time period with that? First of all, the other major party was DuPont. Um and having said that, there's about 20 other smaller uh companies that are part of that settlement. It will continue on for 20 years. Okay.

So that'll continue growing as well. We're also looking um pardon me for pardon [clears throat] me for a second. What goes on for 20 years? The settlement pro proceeds will continue for a 20-year period. Does that mean we get 3 million every year? No. What do we get? 3 million. [laughter] We'll probably get around five to six million total. Spread it out. Yeah. So the 3M settlement was front-loaded and and this is irrelevant.

We talked a lot we've talked a lot about the opioid settlement that is backloaded. The this settlement the 3M1 was frontloaded and it will taper off over this longer period. Um but part of this part of the reason I can't give you a specific answer is because claims are ongoing. There's a certain pool and it'll be allocated as it goes on. I we estimate it'll be around 5 to 6 million, but we don't know that. Does that I can answer more questions on that. We're not anywhere close.

We're not anywhere close to recovering. I mean, if you're saying it cost $68 million to fix this at this point in time, that doesn't include if we don't stop PIFA and it continues to increase that we got to change the whatever you call them, the filters. So, we're getting three million. We're we're 5% of our total cost. The math works out for me. [snorts] Yeah. The settlement is not based on how much it's going to cost us.

The settlement was based on how much uh water and how many residents we serve based on what the settlement uh amount was, the total settlement amount was. It became a settlement under a class action. We are a class action litigant. Well, we can't be any different than any other town. I mean, this is a 5% coverage of a problem that DuPont and 3M and somebody else created, right? That's exactly right. I think the lawyers are getting most of it. Not me. [laughter] For the record, except Joe.

The lawyers have a are getting a decent amount. Having said that, the majority is going to the litigants. um lawyers got a decent amount and so did a lot of people, but there was sort of a a reality of these are businesses. We're talking billions and billions of dollars as part of the settlement. At some point, there just isn't enough pockets or money to handle this problem in one litigation. I have a question. Yeah, Louis, I think it's two-part. So, the first one is back to you.

now that we have a better handle on what we're going to have to do to mediate it, how much it's going to cost. I don't understand these smaller settlement agreements. Um, and and you know, we we won't be the only screaming community in Arizona, let alone the entire country. So, so then I come back to my friends at ADQ and ask, "How can we possibly meet these timelines at these kind of costs all over the country, especially in Arizona?

And what are you doing to help us with the federal government? What do we need to do to get more help for this versus other things that are being funded?" Well, ADQ has been quite generous. Uh, again, they've assisted us with these with these studies. That's I'm just I'm not saying that they haven't been generous. I'm just saying that unto ourselves. We won't be able to solve this. We'll stop we'll stop paving roads.

We'll stop doing all sorts of stuff that we have to do in order to generate funds to to do this. This is ADQ has offered uh around $5 million to assist us with this construction. So there's that additional funds and plus we have the WIFA funds and other funding opportunities that we're continuing to look at. But we but funds have to be paid back. All they are is loans, financing loans. So So we're we're back to the citizens.

the citizens of the city, the citizens of the state, the citizens of the country are going to pay for this. That's accurate. Correct. Wow. I'll throw in too, this is another reason to be pursuing federal um lobbyists right?

um to have not only a voice in DC who is helping to make sure we're heard on topics like this at the EPA and other organizations, but also to be then combing through all of what's possible in terms of federal funding and finding opportunities we wouldn't find on our own and bringing those dollars back to Prescuit so that we can do these projects that the federal government's requiring us to do.

Just to follow up on that, it is highly likely that getting this type of support is going to be competitive. I would think so. Yes, sir. And you know, Steve, I think I hope I speak on behalf of the entire council. Uh I want to thank you for being preemptive and putting this analysis together. Maybe we're ahead of other cities in the country. Uh but but you know if if my house burns down, god forbid, I don't get 5% from the insurance company.

If there's a I spent time in product liability, we don't pay 5% on a damage. I I I I'm at a loss to understand how we getting less than 10% recovery on a problem that we didn't create. I mean, this is a perfect product liability suit and there there's I'm you can see I'm struggling with the math here. So, first of all, thank you for being preemptive and bringing this to us. It's a big pill to swallow. Okay, continuing on uh with with the funding opportunities. Oh, it's Jim.

Uh Steve, before we move on, are all those estimates today dollars n? They're for FY29 through 29. Okay. All right. Thank you. So, as I was saying before, ADQ has offered to pay give us $5 million for design andor design would be what that money would be used for. And additional funding sources are out there, not only WIFFA, but other funding sources that we've been exploring.

So, yeah, it's a lot of money and we're really working hard to try to find those funds that will assist us in getting this completed. [snorts] So, the last study that we uh that ADQ funded, they asked us to take a look at some of the small communities that have that are near our system that also have POS issues. These three water systems, the yellow, uh, the pink, and the I don't know, I get purple are all around the Willow Lake area, they're very small systems, private systems.

The Acme Dell's Water Company, the Granite Dell's Water Company, and the Lakeside Water Company also have POS issues. So, ADQ asked us to consider if we could bring those systems into our into our system so they don't have to treat individually. As you can see, capital cost, it doesn't matter how much PIOS you have, capital costs are expensive. And when you have 170 customers, as one of these systems do, they're going to get saddled with that entire cost as well.

So, ADQ asked us to take a look at this. We asked for vulner for a uh an assessment to see how we could do this process. And so what we found is that mo all three of these systems could be brought onto our system. But I'll let Mike uh talk a little bit more about that because this was also part of their process. Yeah, thanks Steve.

[clears throat] So, some of the your guys' uh um public works department, your utilities department asked us to to look through a few things um to see if it's viable to bring them online. Um one of the biggest questions is if if the city provided these three water companies water, what would happen to your guys' water credits? Would you guys be using your water credits to fund them? Would you get their water credits back?

Um it wasn't quite that simple, but talking through ADWR, I'm going to look to make sure as I say this that I don't say this wrong. that we don't get their water credits, but the water that we provide to them doesn't come out of the city's water credits. Okay, good. Um, so it's okay to provide them water. You guys don't lose any of your water allocations or anything like that. Um, so then the other questions were just it's a matter of viability.

How easy is it and and what would it cost to connect these small systems into the preskit system? Um, you guys have do you guys do have water manes nearby? Um but in order to connect them per city code um it would require these these three systems are just outside of Prescuit um city limits.

So we'd need to annex them into the city first and then to comply with city standards we'd have to build water manes um through all of the streets and then sewer to collect all of that sewer and return it back to the city. Um, these are small systems, but they're spread out just enough with a lot of streets to where it's a lot more water main and sewer main than you would think would be needed.

Um, and also because of the topography, you would need up to three sewer lift stations to pump that sewer back up to get it into the sewer um the city sewer mains. So, it's a little more expensive um than you would think with water systems this small. So, I'm going to jump to the next slide. So, we looked at three options for how to connect it to the city. first is is by the book water manes to all the houses, sewer mains collecting gravity from all the houses.

Right now, most of them are on septic. Um so we'd have to convert them all. Um and then those three sewer lift stations. That's option 1A and that looks to be about $15 million um design and construction. Um one thing to note is ADQ um has offered funding on this as as part of the funding um that they've been offering. Um, I don't think Sarah's allowed to commit to a dollar figure, but the maximum amount they can contribute is $5 million. Um, 5 million.

So, option 1 A would leave 10 million on the table for somebody else to cover, which is a lot of money. So, what we did is we looked at option 1B. Well, what if we instead of running water manes to every house, what if we set up a master meter so that these um water companies can buy water for you essentially at the water man and then it's it's still on them to distribute the water to their customers. Um that eliminates a lot of water mane um that needs to be built as part of this.

That's option 1B. Um that still collects all the sewer, but it's still around $10 million, which still is isn't enough to cover all of it. Um so then what we did is we looked at at the barebones option 1C. What if we just set up this master meter where the water companies essentially collect the water right from a water mane um and then they distribute it to their company or their uh their connections. Um and we don't build any sewer. So no more sewer is returned to the city.

And why do we want to do this? Um I don't know. It's a question why do you want to? Um the city at So these are three small companies that are dealing with the same POS issue. So all three of these welds have POS. Yep. Okay. And so they're in the same boat you are where and they're less sophisticated in their treatment um than you are in that they don't have treatment. They just have wells that they chlorinate and distribute to their their customers.

Um adding POS treatment is pretty complex if you've seen it requires a complex set of skills to maintain it to to forecast revenue in order to pay for it. So it gets pretty complicated. So ADQ on their behalf reached out to to the city to see is there anything you guys can do to help these these people out. Um so yes, Jim. Uh thank you uh Mike. I notice that uh Acme Water and Lakeside Water, they have four wells together that would be abandoned if we supplied them with water.

And then uh Granite Dills has two that would be abandoned. And so the question would be it looks to me like Acme and Lakeside Wells are most probably recharged by Willow Lake. I don't know about Granite Dells, but has it has anybody looked into a potential benefit to the city from red from stopping that pumping which has an effect on likely effect on Willow Lake? Their pumping rates are pretty low. So, you probably wouldn't notice any different.

Um, even if their water credits were transferred to the city, they're so insignificant that you guys wouldn't notice a difference. I'd like to interrupt. If you go to page 579, uh you get the final report where everything is pretty condensed in a nice uh nice way, makes it easy to understand. Um, for example, the uh lake, what is it called? Uh Lakeside Water Company is already hooked up to sewer. They are. and it's one of the smallest ones.

But what I found interesting is most of these uh people that are hooked up are RVs. It's an RV park. It's a commercial operation. So theoretically, you know, if you're in an RV, you know, you come around and have a wall water hauler can come around and uh fill up your tanks, you know, once a week. So my question is, why would we spend all this money? we could just carve out the RV parks, which is a commercial operation to and just just serve the the homes. So, that's an option.

A couple things to note. So, ADQ is offered to pay um up to 5 million for this. So, if option 1C was pursued, it wouldn't cost the city anything. Um the second one is the the master meter solution is kind of what you're talking about. Um except instead of hauling the water, it's really just connecting it to their system and they distribute it. So instead of distributing it through a truck and a water hauler, they're distributing it through their existing distribution system. Yeah.

Um we've been taking over a lot of uh water water systems. Uh especially like out Iron Springs Roads, their their water districts. Um the boards got too old. Nobody could do anything. So we had them do some improvements. Um but in this case when we have three small water companies, would it be beneficial to form a water district and have the people uh on board like we did with Mountain Club? We took over another outfit that was in another community that was in the county.

And uh I think it's working pretty well. And another thing we'd have to do is uh somehow find leaks and have them fix the leaks in their system because these are aging water manes that are going to probably be have a lot of leaks and a lot of water loss. Are we going to do any of that? So option 1 C, they maintain their own water systems. So really the only thing the city's on the hook for is selling them the water.

um that option because they're outside the city, it would require you to wave city code 2-1.8. Yes. Um so they still maintain their system. All the water leaks, the aging infrastructure, it's still their responsibility to maintain it. It's their responsibility to distribute the water to their customers. Um they would just be paying you for the water at the at the water man. It would be very similar to what we do with Mountain Club.

We put in uh we put in the master meters and we bill from those master meters and then they would be responsible for billing their own customers. This is the same concept putting a master meter in the front though and all the systems are already connected. So we wouldn't have to spend much money on on the new pipelines. It would just be providing them water and billing them at the county rate with 30% search charge as we do with Mountain Club. I I should say we didn't take over Mountain Club.

Mountain Club was a previously existing entity on its own. We worked with them as they converted from a previous entity and essentially a unorganized HOA into a domestic water improvement district. Um but we didn't take over. Our role sort of remained the same. We actually took a step back as they created their own district. Yeah. Thank you for that uh correction. And I'd like to thank uh Sandy ADQ for stepping up and helping out these this uh area.

Um they they contribute to the city even though they're in this in the county. They work here, they shop here, they volunteer here, and they're uh members of the community. And you know, water is essential. And uh it's I think it's our moral obligation to uh help people out if we can. Lois, what are the P5 level in these three wells? So, they vary. Lakeside is actually just under the MCL. If you're going to ask specific numbers, I'm gonna look for Kylie again.

Um, but Granite Dells and Acme Dells, I think, are in the fours and fives. Sevens. And the MCL's four. Which one is seven? Both granite and both granite and acmeell's and the other one's four. It's just under four. Is it three? [clears throat] Go ahead. Puzzle me this. Mhm. You have a well. You took water from the well and you measured POS. Mhm. So why can't we measure water from the big chino wells that are already there? Because those wells already exist.

The ch big chino wells don't exist at this point where we would be pumping out of the appropriate aquifer. So we would have to drill monitoring wells at the big chino to be able to take samples. Okay. It's my Steve I think it's my understanding that those irrigation wells are pretty shallow and so they draw from from a a surface aquifer whereas the production wells that we would need for a city are much deeper and they're in a different aquifer.

So, it's you got to drill a lot deeper to get to that water. Patrick, thank you. So, um I'm assuming that it's a little too early in the process, but have we analyzed on behalf of neighborhood X, Y, and Z what the individual cost may be to an individual homeowner depending on whether we put in 15 million or 2 million. I I believe that the homeowners would have no liability because the systems are private and so they pay their water bill just like everybody else.

Um the the money that the ADQ is is offering would would supplement that would supplement our construction and design costs associated with that. Okay, for now thanks Lois. So, um, my concern in just coming back to Mountain Club is, you know, there was the reason we got involved in working on that is because there was so much water being wasted and water is so precious and now water that is under the MCL is even much more precious now that I'm seeing all these numbers.

So, so my concern is these communities, you know, how do we know they're not wasting water? you know, it's not their pipes are if they're using pipes, etc. that we're we're not wasting water. And if and if they are wasting water, then you know what what between the community themselves, the county, the the company, what can they do to fix that before we start taking very expensive treated water and throwing it down holes? That's an excellent question.

And we make the assumptions that they are operating a a good system and maintaining their system much like we do. Um we other than that it would just be um providing the water and allowing them to operate as normal. Yeah. Because we haven't accepted any any other systems from the county until they got their system until they got up to our standard so we're not wasting water. Correct.

So that would be my biggest concern right now, you know, is is what would what would they do these all these entities involved to make sure our water's going to get more expensive with these kind of treatments? It's going to get more expensive and then they're going to add 30% on top. That water had better not be wasted every bit of that. So that's that's my first concern. And I don't know who do we work with? Do we work with the companies? Do we work with the HOAs? Do we work with ADQ?

You know, how do we make sure that this preciously treated water, if we if we adopt them, and I'm saying adopt, I'm not saying annex. Um, if we adopt them, that it will be handled properly. Well, this is this is a first step in a in a long process. Obviously, just seeing if there was a a way that we could serve them. We haven't del delve too deeply into the water.

You're doing a conceptual pitch and I think you know conceptually any human is going to be like yeah we don't want to have them drinking bad water. But we just got really a slap in the face a bucket of water tossed on us about how expensive water is about to get. Yes [snorts] ma'am. I think Sandy wants to speak. Excuse me. Um hold that down. [clears throat] Uh good afternoon. I'm Sarah Conrad with ATQ.

Um, and just to answer the question of water loss, uh, two of those three systems are regulated by the Arizona Corporation Commission, which requires them to keep their water loss, I believe, under 10% for their size, and they are, uh, complying with that requirement. So, their water loss is less than 10%. As as ACC regulated systems and yeah, and with the master meter situation, they would remain ACC regulated systems and so they would need to continue complying with that requirement.

What about the other one? Uh the other one is the small mobile home park. Um they're just bringing it over in a truck and we have a well system and a sewer. He said they have a well. Just if you couldn't hear him. I'm sorry. Well, [clears throat] we have a pump house and a well. Sir, if you're gonna sir, if you're going to address the council, you need to come up to the microphone, please. Apologies. I've never been to one of these before. Rich Hillman from Lakeside. How are you? Lakeside.

Um, you're with Lakeside? Yes, I'm the property man. That's the smallest one. And you are hooked up to sewer, it looks like. Yes. Yes. Nice. Um, yeah. I mean, we're just basically going by our numbers of what's coming in and what's coming out is as much as I know about it. And excuse my ignorance for not knowing too much. I'm happy to supply whatever information I do know. I've been looking at our numbers over the years and they actually have been going down. Sorry.

Um just I don't really know why they're going down, but I also know what's coming in and what is going out. The numbers are, you know, very close like less than half a percent difference and you are contributing to the recharge. Uh yes. Yes. Yes. We're hooked up to the source. It's been a few years. It always has been. I don't think they were ever on septic.

And I've noticed that with the rise of the cost of housing, our mobile home parks and RV parks are becoming uh affordable housing for a lot of our workforce. Yeah, it is. We have 15 living units, whether it's studio apartments or a couple double wides or, you know, med smaller apartments in there and 30 RV sites and hardly any grass. I mean, there's there's not a lot of watering or anything that's going on.

And you know, we monitor that and you know, we're we're very our we just passed our AD deck in inspection. I know that with our pump um the pump house and everything, everything was fine and we want to do what's right, mayor. Thank you, um Mary. Thank you. Um I haven't heard anybody say this, so maybe everybody else knows and I just don't. Uh but this is county land, county residences.

I haven't heard any mention of anybody going to the county as I'm just talking funding, not obviously the county can't provide water. We would provide the water, but as far as the funding goes, does anybody speak to the county to say these are your people, how about kicking in? Not at this time, no, but that is certainly something that we can look into. Yeah, Jim. Uh, thank you, mayor.

So, a question and a concern I have basically for the council is what do you do about future redevelopment, future growth in these areas when they've got all the water they need that will supply it? Well, that's a that's a good question. You know, they may, you know, there's a lot of raw land out there and what if they decide they want to hook up a subdivision. Are we going to do it? That's correct. That's something that we needs to be considered. We need to have an agreement analysis. Yeah.

Yeah. We need That's why I think we need to have a a water improvement district involving all three of these uh entities. Brian. Absolutely. Hi, Brian Reese, water resources manager for the city. I just want to make sure it's um it's clear they're they're a small community water system, so they're regulated through um their commission and they have to report their water use to ADWR. After all said and done, they would still be their own small water community system.

they would still be responsible for all their regulation, for all their con uh conservation requirements, all requirements through that they have to um they have to maintain for their um in order to be a small community system. What we would be doing is we'd be what they're called wheeling water. So, we have a couple of examples of this. Highland Pines and I think it's called Holiday Hills are two um communities that are outside the city limits.

And in the past, the city when they started having problems, the city uh provides them water in a wheeling agreement. And um and what it does is is basically instead of them pumping from their own wells, this they're pumping from the city wells, but they're pumping the water that is under their community agreement and to serve their customers and they're contracting through the city.

So when I asked um ADWR about this um potential of not impacting the city's water supply if we bring them onto the system um we didn't want to impact the city's ability to have um to affect our future supplies needs. Right? So um AD ADWR said yes you could you know I gave the example like Holiday Hills and like um Highland Pines. They said yes this is theoretically possible to bring them onto the system.

you would have an interlocal contract that the excuse me an inter interconnect contract with with this new group um that would defined all the the ways that we're going to contractly bring them the water all the terms and conditions and everything else. So um if you decide that this is something that you want to pursue, we will need to do that interconnect contract and with that contract there will be opportunities to put some terms and conditions that will protect the city.

Um that has to be mutually agreed upon by both of the both of the parties. So there's that opportunity I want to make sure that you're aware of. And then I just wanted to make sure that you understood nothing would change in terms of them being a small community system. They would still have all their regulatory requirements. they would still have to do their reporting and everything else. We would be willing water from our wells to them. It would not um impact our assured water supply.

Our groundwater supply would would be uh whatever we supply to them is subtracted out before we report on our annual report. So, I just want to make sure that that's that was clear. Um Mr. Ruby. Yeah. When I see this, I go, if we don't do this, what is going to happen to the real estate values in those three places? Like it's going to plummet because people will know there you have a higher concentration of PIFAs there.

So for me this ends up being actually like a financing problem like is there and the benefit that the city would be providing to the people there needs to be calculated in any type of deal or water supply that's there. It's like in a way that's a leverage point. Either you find a way to help pay for the cost of this or you're going to see your property values decrease. And so I think if we do a water improvement district or some type of deal that needs to be taken into consideration.

I'd also like to add that um since their wells are above the MCL or going to be above the MCL in one case um you know m instead of making it priority number five couldn't we still proceed at the same time because we've already got the funding and we can start proceeding to take care of the uh Granite Dell's area as as as long and then we can proceed with our airport five when we get the uh the budget. Correct. This would be completely separate from any of the any of the work we would do.

So we wouldn't delay and wait keep it at the end. Correct. You can proceed with that. We can pursue the anytime we're prepared for that. Okay. And it would be to your point ADQ has offered to fund this. So there wouldn't be any money out of pocket from the city. And in the meantime, you know, maybe educate them that uh you know, they they could buy filters and do inhome filtering tap water at their taps. In the meantime, um I assume they know they've been notified.

At this time, there are no filters for POS. None of them are they they advertise filters, but they are not accredited to remove POS to the levels in which the MCL is at. Well, I'm sad to hear that. Uh Patrick, so to the one of the last points that was made, I I think it was you that said you've got five million, but that not entirely true, right? I mean, maybe towards 1A, but are they I don't hear anybody had said that they would provide any funding for 1B or 1 C. They would.

So 1B and 1 C are both um what eligible for full funding uh except 1B. 1B has part that isn't right. Exactly. Yeah. So ADQ has uh sufficient funding certainly to cover the cost of 1 C. Um 1 A and 1B. We we don't have enough money per project there. So we would uh need Yeah. The cap is is uh per project. It's it's a Yeah. And I'm sorry if I called you Sandy for some reason. I I heard your name. I thought it was Sandy, not Sarah. Sorry. Do we have any public comment? Anybody here?

I do not have any cards, mayor. Okay, Lois. Yeah, I have one more question because we've already had and it might have been you. I I think you're looking familiar to me, a little area called Forbine Park. And I'm starting to get the sense that we're going to be the the family of adopting children all over because of PIFA. So, um I you know, we haven't talked about it, but you've already asked us conceptually at WHIS, would we be willing to consider this?

And I again for me this goes back to I think we really need an a big discussion with the county on what's going on here because the numbers we just saw for the first three quarters of this meeting are blowing our minds and that's just to supply the water we have and we need for our community. Add all these other communities and Forbine Park doesn't have their own water.

they're they're they're children that need adopting over there and and we're going to have to take that out of our allocation, let alone the expense of adding all these people. So, I that's what I'm I'm very concerned about between ADWR and ADQ. How are you thinking about this? You're just coming up and asking every community to adopt in a neighborhood or We we have been doing that to be very frank. We've done that in Globe and PAC.

Um we've had conversations in Gino Valley as well um because it simply doesn't make sense to financially to put in a several million dollar PAS treatment system at these tiny places. So whenever we can find a situation like this we we do pursue it. Um to Forbing Park that that's a very different scenario and I have no idea what the answer is going to be for Forbing Park. Yeah, Forbing Park doesn't have a water system in place like these granite dells. They're on wells.

So, so they would have to run their water manes. The only reason I was bringing that up, the question is because she's like, "We have $5 million. You could use all of that and then some to solve for being park a lot because we're talking a lot more infrastructure costs." Absolutely. So, so, so my worry is if we say yes, you know, I like the fact we went with the cheaper solution here, [laughter] but but you're going to run out of money, too. We're getting off topic. Okay. Yeah. Sorry.

No, no worries. Just one quick point if you don't mind. So, Forbing Park is not a public water system. So, right now they're not eligible for this funding. That's kind of the big distinction there. Yeah. All right, [snorts] let's wrap this thing up. There was one more slide, but we've already talked about everything on there. So, you can look at it. You can think, "Wow, that's an awesome slide." and then I'm going to move on because we've already talked about it.

I'm definitely on on board with your recommendation of uh 1C to the uh community. It's reasonable. It's it doesn't make sense to spend $15 million on 140 connections. Yeah. Lois, just Brian, could you come up because you know this stuff off the top of your head when we when we give you approval to wave city code-2-1-8, what exactly does that mean? What are we doing?

Um there's a intergovernmental agreement clause in there um that we can't um that we can't um or that we can't use um uh domestic water uh improvement district. We can't create a contract to serve them water. So, I think that needs to be looked at a little bit before we move forward to make sure that we could actually sign an inter uh interconnect agreement with somebody like um like these three entities. Um uh yeah, I mean time frames of 2.1.8.

That's exactly what it says is that we cannot provide water through an IG with a d a dwid and it was kind of written in response to Springfield. Um, so that's where we're at now. That's where Bound Club also is different because we had been we have been providing them all along and they converted to a DWID and we keep providing to them. But that's what it says.

And plus, we we'd be providing water outside the city limits and also uh hooking them up to water without getting sewer in two of the three cases. So, uh, we had we'd have some work to do to make an exception to the rule, but we can we can do that. You know, there's always exceptions in these cases, right? Um, minor clarification. There is a campground in Acmeell's that does um discharge sewer back to the city.

It's seasonal and I don't think it amounts to up to 75% like that code requires, but you do get a little bit more than just what Lakeside provides. Okay. Any more um comments? I got one more comment. This is very good analysis. I want to thank you for being preemptive as I mentioned earlier and I don't think anybody in Prescuit wants to have POS in their water. However, I don't know that we've examined all the possibilities.

For example, I keep asking the question, what are we doing to stop the input of POS either through education because if you you said earlier you could use the same capital equipment, you just have to change the filters more. But in in an input output analysis, we lose.

And secondly, I'd like to know if the big chino is sitting there on zero because if that's at zero, then that gives us more consideration and the little chino keeps going down every year, that gives us more reason to go after the big chino. Uh I I think this is a very robust analysis, but could use a little more first and root cause analysis. Secondly, I'd like to see what's going on up to Big Chino. I agree.

Um I've been asking uh for a uh analysis some test wells at the big Chino for years, especially if we're going to look at spending what we're going to spend to build the pipeline. And then if we build the pipeline and then find out that there's high POS contamination, that probably uh is something we should know beforehand. So maybe we should start thinking about uh just moving forward and drilling some test wells. It's not really a hard thing to do.

And uh starting to do an analysis and keeping track of are is there pas there? And if there is, is it going up? Is it going down? Because you know that's an old farm and who knows what they were using out there. But uh in summary, I think the public needs to educate themselves about this POS epidemic. We also have surging cancer levels in our young people. Um, we know they're bioaccumulative, which means we don't excrete these chemicals through our kidneys. They accumulate in our bodies.

They're in breast milk. They're in umbilical cord blood. Infants are born with POS levels. And uh, we can educate ourselves. For example, don't drink orange juice out of plastic bottles or cranberry juice or tomato juice. people can do simple things that'll make a make a big difference because they may have POS uh compliant uh levels coming into out of their tap water, but then if they turn around and have a big glass of orange juice every day from a plastic bottle, that probably doesn't help.

So, it's a everyone has to get involved in this and uh be and educate themselves because this is this is um something that uh it's very scary, I think. Thank you very much. Any other comments? Okay. Appreciate all the hard work. Thank you. This meeting is adjourned. Thank you. Thank you.