655 John Muir Drive,  #411, San Francisco, CA    [email protected]     (415) 334-0465

 

 

 

                                                                                                May 3, 2007

 

Ryan L. Brooks, President

Ann Moller Caen, Vice-president

E. Dennis Normandy, member

Adam Werbach, member

Ambassador Richard Sklar, member

all c/o

Mike Housh, Secretary

Public Utilities Commission

1155 Market Street, 11^th floor

San Francisco, California 94103

 

Michael Carlin, Assistant General Manager

Water Enterprise

Public Utilities Commission

1155 Market Street, 11^th floor

San Francisco, California 94103

 

Dear members of the Commission and Mr. Carlin:

 

Lakewood Tenants Association represents tenant members at a property of 721 residential units on John Muir Drive facing Lake Merced. Lakewood Tenants Association is a member of the Lake Merced Task Force (LMTF). However, this communication is intended to represent the views of Lakewood Tenants Association only, which may or may not reflect the views of other LMTF member organizations or the LMTF as a whole. The officers of Lakewood Tenants Association are unpaid volunteers and, as such, we believe, are not lobbyists as defined by the San Francisco Lobbyist Ordinance.

 

We do not believe that the PUC has provided the public with sufficient time to review and comment on your staff's selection of Harding Road as the site for a recycled water plant. To our knowledge, the first time any of the members of the LMTF, other than the PUC itself, were informed of PUC's interest in Harding Road as a site for a recycled water treatment plant was at a PUC presentation on April 4^th at PUC offices to a select group of invites on the unrelated topic of recreation. Our organization did not receive an invitation to that meeting despite being on the roster of the LMTF. PUC's interest in the Harding Road site for a recycled water treatment plant was disclosed and briefly discussed near the end of the LMTF quarterly meeting of April 11^th. We also attended the PUC presentation related to the Lake Merced Watershed Plan on April 24^th at the Sunset Playground. At that time we were asked to break into small groups to indicate our preferences for the locations of several kinds of facilities at Lake Merced, including a recycled water treatment plant. The groups applied stickers to a diagram of the lake to indicate preferred site selection. However, we believe that such diagrams will be misleading because (a) there was a presumption that the recycled water treatment plant was to be sited somewhere within the Lake Merced watershed, a presumption that we object to and (b) each organization was not provided with its own set of stickers. Instead, one set of stickers was provided to each group. The latter fact resulted in negotiation within each group as to where to place the stickers. We do not believe that that process will fairly allow each individual organization to indicate its own preferences. Nor do we believe that the small number of participants at the April 24^th meeting can fairly be construed as public participation.

 

We also attended the LMTF Water Committee meeting hosted at PUC's offices on April 25^th. At that meeting Lakewood Tenants Association suggested that PUC has "the cart before the horse" in proceeding to invest resources into the Harding Road site design before the PUC report detailing the site selection process is even finalized and issued to the public for review and comment. The LMTF representative for Cal Trout specifically asked PUC to not proceed to invest in the Harding Road site until we all had time to review PUC's report. At least one other member expressed the desire that the site selection be done right.

 

The undersigned believe that PUC staff is determined to locate the recycled water plant at Harding Road regardless of public sentiment and that investing resources into that site selection before disclosure of the details of the site selection evaluations is just a way to make that site selection a fait accompli. Therefore, on behalf of the members of Lakewood Tenants Association, we are requesting that no further investment of resources be made into the Harding Road site selection until the site selection report has been finalized and distributed to the public and public hearings have been conducted by the Commission, allowing full public participation, leading to a final site selection at the Commission level.

 

Thank you.

 

                                                                                                Sincerely,

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                Mona Cereghino, President

 

 

 

 

 

                                                                                                Ross Wilkinson, Vice-president

 

CC:         members, Lakewood Tenants Association

               members, Lake Merced Task Force

               Sean Elsbernd, member, Board of Supervisors