Envision San José 2040

The task force for the new San José master plan met tonight at City Hall. On the agenda was water: water quality, water supply and floodplain management. The City’s Environmental Services Department gave an excellent presentation on watershed protection, then followed basically the same presentation on water supply as I saw at Thursday’s joint City-District meeting. Finally, the deputy director for public works gave the flood protection segment.

The first presentation was especially inspiring, in urging denser, infill development with more opportunities for stormwater to be absorbed into the ground on-site. The city also reiterated its commitment to recycled water, and heard from the task force that purple pipe should be extended to residential development. So far, the State Department of Health does not allow that, although it is now possible to use dual plumbing in condominiums, in addition to apartments. In the time for public comments, I said that the city should also support residential grey-water systems.

But, in their comments after the presentations, it was clear that the task force members are unhappy with the high ratio of presentations to discussion that they have had for the past seven months. The discussion they did have focused on this issue of process, and not on how water or watersheds would figure into the new master plan. Future meetings, perhaps even the next one on 27 May, should provide more scope for the task force to start talking about the new master plan itself.

I also have to say that the audiovisual problems in conference room W118 would be funny if they weren’t so annoying. I hope the City Hall staff get them straightened out soon.