The Santa Fe Irrigation District board will hold a special workshop Tuesday, Sept. 29, to hear a staff presentation on artificial intelligence and machine learning and begin shaping a formal AI use policy for the Rancho Santa Fe water utility.

The 8:30 a.m. session at the district's Safety Center, 5920 Linea del Cielo, has a single agenda item: the AI presentation followed by early discussion of a district AI Use Policy staff plan to draft for future board approval.

No vote is scheduled.

Staff are asking the board to hear the presentation and offer direction on the policy's development.

The workshop board report, prepared by Assistant General Manager Seth Gates and IT Manager Roma Kogan, lays out why the district is acting now. AI is already embedded in products the district uses or plans to buy, the report states, including office software, customer information systems, advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) analytics and asset management platforms. Staff and individual employees are also using AI tools on their own.

The district's Sept. 17 meeting agenda included a related procurement: a contract to select SEW.Ai for an AMI customer-facing portal. The outcome of that vote has not been confirmed.

The presentation covers four areas: AI terminology, business applications, risks and guardrails, and policy next steps. Potential uses identified in the report span leak and anomaly detection through metering data, demand forecasting, predictive maintenance, drafting correspondence, comparing procurement proposals and translating public outreach materials.

The report also flags risks. Generative AI can produce information that sounds authoritative but is fabricated, including false citations and legal references, the staff report warns. All AI-assisted work must be reviewed by staff before use. Employees are barred from entering customer personal information, personnel matters, confidential legal advice, closed-session material or sensitive infrastructure data into unapproved AI tools. AI inputs and outputs used in district business may qualify as public records subject to disclosure.

The report states that responsibility for any work product or decision stays with district staff and the board, regardless of whether AI assisted in its preparation.

Board President Michael T. Hogan first flagged AI's relevance to the district after attending a presentation on AI in the water industry at the Association of California Water Agencies conference in December 2025. According to the district's April 16 meeting minutes, an earlier AI workshop date was repurposed for a special board meeting on the district's administrative facilities.

Staff plan to bring a draft AI Use Policy to a future board meeting. That draft would establish approved and prohibited uses, data protection requirements, human review expectations, records compliance and vendor cybersecurity standards. No date for that presentation has been set.

The Tuesday workshop is open to the public in person or via Zoom (Webinar ID: 861 3371 5448, Passcode: 906841). Written comments must be submitted to Board Secretary Celina McDowell by 7:30 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 29.