Water Utilities Community Facilities District - Regular Meeting

Gotta echo him.

I'd like

to great. Yeah. I'd like to call Apache Junction Water District meeting of 03/18/2025 to order and request all cell phones be put on silent. Roll call.

Chairperson Wilson.

Here.

Vice Chairperson Schroeder.

Present.

Board member Cross.

Here.

Board member Heck.

Here.

Board Member Johnson?

Here.

Board Member Nesser? Present. Board Member Solar?

Here.

You have a quorum, your honor.

Thank you. Approval of minutes for 01/21/2025 meeting. Mr. Chair? Yes.

I move that the minutes of the

meeting of 01/21/2025 be approved.

Second. Moved and seconded. Roll call.

Board Member Cross.

Yes.

Board Member Heck.

Yes.

Board Member Johnson.

Yes.

Vice Chair Schroeder.

Yes.

Board Member Nesser.

Yes.

Board Member Soloway.

Yes.

Chairperson Wilson?

Yes.

Motion passes.

Thank you. Presentation, discussion, consideration of professional service agreement with Clear Creek Associates. Mike.

Good evening, Chairman Wilson. Our second agenda item we're going to discuss, we would like to hire Clear Creek and Associates to do a design and bid for a new well to the south so we can keep up with our water demands and all the buildings we have going on down there. So we're looking to hire Clear Creek for $11.17 dollars Actually, they'll be designing the well as it goes in, and then also keeping track of the well driller to make sure the hole's straight, right size, what what the the aquifer looks like down there, if it's gravel, if it's sands. And they'll be analyzing all that so they can give us a true well design in the end so that hopefully we'll get a large producing well here in Apache Junction with nice clean water. So we're looking to hire them and bring them on to do these services for us to drill the new well.

The well, in the end, when we hire a contractor after we bid it out, will be roughly between 1,500,000.0 to $2,000,000 So to poke a hole in the ground is pretty expensive these days, so we want to make sure that we get it correct.

Your honor? Do I have a motion?

No. For clarification, can you state the cost of that again?

1,500,000.0 to $2,000,000

No, for the consultant, please.

Roughly $117,000 That's approximate. It's more direct on when you guys go to approve it.

On the record, you had stated just $117 You forgot the $1,000

part. Oh, sorry.

We're all in on the $117

I missed a few zeros. I apologize for that. No worries. Kind of give you guys an idea of what we're looking at here, would they be putting together something like this for us. What we typically do is they'll do a borehole to start with about 12 inches, drill down. From that, we'll go down, and we'll actually put some pipe in the ground. And then we'll airlift water out of there so we can see what kind of water quality we have. Typically, we'll do between five to seven zones. So we can see if it's high in arsenic, high in fluorides, high in TDS. And we'll go through a whole sample set that they'll look at.

Then they'll also take and do radiograph tests and all kinds of other gamma tests that show if it's rock formations, if it's sand, if it's clays, resistivity tests. And they do all this. And then they come up and they come back to us with recommendations like, here's where I would screen it off where I'd take that water in if it's good quality. Here's where I would put a blank casing if I'm going to put in either I don't want that water quality or I'm going to put a pump in that area so it's not pulling as hard on the aquifer in that area. And they'll give these recommendations.

And then, currently, the way our well designs, we do stainless steel below water, so it lasts a little longer here because some of it's corrosive. And then above the water table, do high strength low alloy. So a little bit cheaper once we get out of the water, but it's not doesn't deteriorate as fast when it's not in the water. So this would be something we'd do. This was our well number nine that the developer did for us. This is how they designed it. And this one here, we've got a great well. It produces around 2,000 gallons a minute, which is almost four times as much as we get from our existing wells. So we're lucky here. So we're hoping to drill in this area and get another well that produces about that amount of water. So about 3,000,000 gallons a day. So that's about 6,000 homes that we can service off that.

Mr. Chair?

Any idea?

Yes. If I could ask, Mr. Loggins, if you could explain to the board how the district gets permission to dig a well. So we have

to go to the Arizona Department of Water Resources. We have to file for an application with them. We file for an application in an area. We have to show if there's any wells that we're going to be affecting in the area. And then we have to prove to them that we will not be drawing that down. If it's a domestic well or an individual, we can't affect them either. Or another city's well that's nearby us or another private water company well that would be around this area. Once you do that analyzation, you can tell them how much water you can produce. This one, that's why we can produce so much water here. It's a new well.

It's on state land to the south. There's no wells around it. So we're able to pump that 2,000 gallons a minute without having any drawdown issues around with the neighboring wells. Plus, it was a great producer to start with. So kind of benefit there. So once we get through that process, we'll do all these. We'll go through the drill logs. We have to turn that all into the Department of Water Resources. And then when we do the final completion, we'll do a design like this, and we'll turn that in. Depends upon what they require.

Some wells, if they're in an area where there's known subsidence, they'll have us monitor that well annually. So we'll get a set point from our GIS system or an elevation set on the base of that pump so we can see if we're going down. You probably heard some in the news where some wells sink over time or that land in that area can go down an inch, two foot. Typically, we're looking at a quarter of an inch to see if we can see anything happening. So we're just monitoring that to make sure nothing's happening from the water that we're pulling out of the ground.

So they'll require us to do that. And then once we get through that, once the well is done, we'll also pump the well. And then we have to go to the Arizona Department of Environmental Quality to get a new source sample to prove that it's drinking water standards or what we need to treat it for at that point in time. Okay?

Once you put a new well in, how long does that last?

Typically, a well is going to last you about thirty years on average. We'll be doing well will last about thirty years, the casing and everything. We'll be in it probably about every five to ten years to pull that pump out, to do maintenance on that pump if it fails. Or we go in there and we'll brush it. Or we'll go and bail out some dirt that may have came in over time. So kind of just doing maintenance on a well, we'll be doing that every five to ten years. But typically, a well could last thirty years. This one in particular, when we're looking at drilling, we're going be looking at an aquifer storage and recovery well. So what does that really mean for us? Currently, you know, we have roughly almost 5,000 acre feet of CAP water.

We're using about 2,000 of it currently. We're taking the other 3,000 and we're providing it to Roosevelt Irrigation District, and they're giving us paper water credits at this point in time so that we can pump that out the ground in the future. Unfortunately, Roosevelt Irrigation District is not in our service area. They're west of here where the water is flowing and going away from us. So instead of providing that to a different party in earning those credits, we're going to take our potable water at our plant, and we're going put it down on the ground.

And we're going put it here in Apache Junction, not in some other area, Mesa or Chandler or Tonopah or wherever else it is in the Phoenix AMA. It's going to be done here in Apache Junction. So we'll take that physical water while we have it available over the next five to ten years. We'll put it in the ground, earn those credits ourselves, and then we're able to pump it back out. When we do it off-site again, we lose 10% because it's cut through the aquifer. So that's loss. When we do it and we're within a mile where we pumped it into the ground and pumped back out, we get zero loss. So we get 100% of our water at that point in time. Again, a bonus to us here in Apache Junction. It's not going somewhere else in the aquifer.

So these are things we're trying to do to keep us moving forward and keep the water here in Apache Junction and not send it somewhere else. So as you can see here, this would be like our CAP canal going by. We take it out right at our treatment plant. We treat the water, send it to our distribution system or tank, and then we take it out of there. We push it down in the well over time for the next five, ten years. And then we'll earn those credits, and then we can pump them right back out of that well into our tank because it's potable water at that point

in time.

Mr. Shah? Yes.

Mike, is there any limit to how much water we can store underground there?

Yeah, so that's part of the transmissivity test and all the Department of Water Resources. We have to get a recharge permit. So this is also something that Clare Creek and Associates will be doing for us. They go in and say, Okay, this well can produce this amount of water. How much can we push back into the aquifer? So we get a permit that allows us I think we're looking at 2,500 gallons per minute to put back in the aquifer so we can start storing that over time. So we'll be doing that. And they'll issue a permit. We had to get one for each well that we'll be doing this at. It's kind of

like

our sister company, our friends, our district, they have a recharge facility. But they do well. So there's shallow wells. They're only about 100 feet down. They don't go down to the drinking water table where we get our water from. This will actually go all the way down to that table where we get our water from, and then we can bring it back out. So this would be look like in the end here. Let me go back, sorry. So again, we pump it back out, pump back distribution system, and service our customers. And then this is a well that's fully complete, so this is coming from their distribution system.

The water can come in through here and then go down into the well, which we have to let it slowly drain into the ground. Otherwise, we'd just be forcing it too hard and blow apart our casing, which we don't want to do that. So we're going to either use a pressure valve that releases it slowly, or we can actually utilize the pump to slowly turn backwards and slowly let it go into the aquifer. So we're working on that design with Clear Creek and Associates also. So it goes down into the ground from here, and then after time when we're ready to pump it back out, or even if it's wintertime where we have excess water because we don't have as much demand because irrigation is going on, in the summertime when we have those bigger demands, we can turn this well back on, and we can pump that potable back out, potable water back out.

It would discharge a little bit to clean it up, and then it'd go right back to the distribution system here. But there's a lot of valve controls, as you can see here, that controls the water going into the well and then coming back out of the well. Any questions on that?

Yeah. Sure. How deep do you think you're going to have to go?

Typically, we'll go anywhere between 1,000 to 1,200 feet here in Apache Junction. We have done went deeper, but when we drilled the last well, we went 1,200 feet. We had about 600 feet of aquifer that was underwater. So we thought we were good at that point in time. Typically, in farmed areas, the upper aquifer is high in nitrates, which we don't have that issue here in Apache Junction. The lower level, the lower you get, you have naturally occurring arsenic or fluorides. So you might want to make sure you stay out of that so that we don't have to treat the water, which then would cost you more money to treat that water when it comes out of the ground. So we try staying in that sweet spot. And roughly, it's between 2,200 feet currently.

Very good. Thank you. Mr. Chairman? Yes. What's the security for this facility?

So most facilities, we're just going have an eight foot high fence with razor wire on top that you can't see. It's more I don't know if you've seen SRPs where you have some pokey things up there. It's not as like a jail. So it's a little nicer than that. But it's an eight foot block wall fence. Currently, we haven't put cameras at our sites, but I think moving forward to protect some of the things that we're doing out there, we'll have cameras at all of our sites. At the end of this year, we'll only have three out of seven that don't have them. We'll be working with Homeland Security and trying to get grants to cover some of these. But as a new site would come online, I would imagine we would be installing cameras.

Yeah, because that's a big infrastructure. Very easy to destroy.

I assume that's closed valve system or closed cell system. I mean, it's really

it

would be very difficult to introduce chemical into it. JAMES Well, we're going

be introducing chemicals, so it's not unheard of. But it is closed loop, but you could if you wanted to get in there. You'd be amazed what people do. When copper was up ten years ago, they actually would come out and cut the copper out of live wells that are four eighty volt. People are when they're desperate, they're desperate, and they will get into anything they need to.

So best thing to do is set up cameras, set up alarm systems. Most of this stuff will be alarmed on our SCADA. So if we know if the chemical dosing something's happened, or if we know if something's got into the control panel, or something's going on out there, we'll be aware of that. But then it's also, to catch them in the end, we need some videos to see what's going on. And hopefully, we can bring on the real time crime center that would help the police chase them down as part of this, which they would be tied into that so the police have access to our cameras.

Thank you. Do

I have a motion?

Your honor.

Yes. I move that the professional service agreement between Water Utilities Community Facilities District and Clear Creek Associates for Superstition Vista's well number 10 in the amount not to exceed $116,773 be approved. Second.

Moved and seconded. Roll call.

Board Member Solar.

Yes.

Vice Chairperson Schroeder.

Yes.

Board Member Nesser. Yes. Board Member Cross.

Yes.

Board Member Heck.

Yes.

Board Member Johnson.

Yes.

Chairperson Wilson. Yes. Motion passes.

Presentation, discussion, consideration of construction agreement with Garney Companies.

Mike. All right. Next presentation, this is our direct potable reuse or pure water trailer that we're looking to do. So it's our pilot program. ADEQ, which is Arizona Department of Environmental Quality, approved the use of water reuse approximately two to three years ago.

They've been working on all their requirements for that. Mid this year, they should be coming out. So we're getting closer to actually doing direct potable reuse or water purification, as we're looking at here. But we want to get a pilot trailer going. This pilot trailer is to actually put the processes in place that we have designed with Corollo engineers to show that we can take that effluent from the sewer district and actually turn it into potable water.

Currently, we take that potable water that we'd make and put it into our reuse system and deliver it to irrigation currently. But over time, we want to make sure that it meets the standards and we can prove to Arizona Department of Quality Environmental Quality that we're on track for this. The reason why we're making it a trailer rather than a building out there is we'd like to take it to Lost Dutchman days. We want to take it to Bruised and Bruised, you know, take it out to the public. Because the biggest thing is not building this infrastructure anymore. The technology is there. We can do it. It's convincing the public that you can actually drink it. That is our biggest hurdle over this. It's nothing to do with you can't treat this water drinking water standard.

It's all about getting it past public perception. So our biggest thing here is we want to build this trailer, show everybody how it works. It's physical. People can walk through it, see how the treatment processes all work. And then in the end, it turns potable water. Like we discussed before, we'd love to get some micro brewing company, some distillery to make something. If people don't want to drink the water, maybe they'd have a sample cup of beer, something to start getting them feeling comfortable that actually consume this in the end. So we're working through that process, but this is the first step. The city of Scottsdale did this probably about fifteen years ago at their sewer plant, but it stays there. And you can actually take a sample of their water that they went through this, But now we actually want to make this so it's mobile, we can show it to people, so people start understanding the technology.

Kind of give you an idea what we're looking at, Arizona Water Association did a trailer roughly about five years ago on the same subject and produced water. They did a brewing contest with some vendors around the state, had it at our annual conference. But actually, as you can see here, you can actually look in the trailer. You can physically see the treatment processes, taking data down, going through everything that you would do to make this compliance Arizona Department of Environmental Quality. So big steps, but again, it's just training the public.

The technology's here, trust in it, in the end, we can still meet the drinking water standard. So I know it's a big cost here, but we're also looking for that next bucket of water, too, right? We always can't go back to Salt River Project. We can't go to CAP and get that next bucket. We have this water here in Apache Junction. It's always going to be here. It goes through our system. It goes to Arizona Water Company system, goes to our sewer plant. Now we can re utilize it again, use it in the most efficient way. So working through that process.

Mr. Chairman? Yes. I went to the Arizona State Morrison Institute a year ago. We were talking about this. And it is the biggest hurdle is the educational part. And I like this. I think this is the way to bring the public in and let them see how this is done and that it is safe. When we were at our league's annual conference, Scottsdale had beer there made by it. I tried it. It was great. I'm not afraid. I mean, this is probably more pure water than what you're getting out of your faucet right now. So the educational part and that's what I brought up at the Morrison Institute. I said the biggest hurdle is getting people to understand this isn't your toilet water.

This is completely treated, completely clean, and the process works. And I like this. I like this a lot. Get it out to the public.

Yes. What is our build time frame? JOSHUA Approximately a year is what they're telling us. Give us a schedule with a cost. Hopefully, can shorten that up. I'm hoping that we can have it up for Lost Dutchman days next year in the spring here and start hitting some of those. And then, again, it just depends upon our water demands. And when we need that next bucket of water, It could be two years. It could be ten years before this. But again, just educating the public it can be done and keep

working Okay. It. So during the time frame, JOSHUA I mean, if any of the technology updates as we're going through the build because every day, they're making more advances. So by the time that this gets built, if there is some major change that we need to incorporate, will we be able to do that in the build? Yes.

So this is kind of a custom trailers. We don't have them out there. It's not something you do. So we're actually buying little pieces so that we can scale them up later. So we're working through that process with all the vendors where we add different technologies. We may even one technology may not work as good as another one kind of the gold standard right now is reverse osmosis California is doing this but here in Arizona it creates a brine solution now what do you do with that waste that it's creating so we're going to use a micro filtration process and do the same thing. So in the end, five years from now, yes, it could be, well, this process doesn't work. We'd like to add another process. Or there's another constituent that we're looking at that we need to treat for. Let's add that to this to make sure that it becomes potable water in the end.

Mike, we have a constituent that regularly talks about forever chemicals and just regular pharmaceuticals. The claim is that those cannot be filtered out, that they're forever in there. What's your answer to that?

They can be filtered out. And that's what the product process is. We're actually adding some of that process to our treatment plant currently. It's activated carbon that will actually tie to those chemicals. They get removed. They attach to the carbon. And you have to replace that carbon over time. So yes, you can treat for these forever chemicals. They'll still be there forever, but not in the water. We're going to take those out, and then we'll discharge them. They take them to incineration plants to get rid of the carbon, or they regenerate that carbon to get rid of those constituents that's in there. So aren't forever in the water. They're forever chemical that can be taken

out. And eventually completely destroyed. Correct. Okay. Thank you.

Mr. Chair?

Yes. So

like for years, we have been all answering the questions about our water supply, building all these houses down south. And our answers based on these meetings, 100 worth of water. We've got plenty. Don't worry about it. We took the CAP, or we took the watershed tour. Yeah, no, we're good. It's how it's managed. What would we do to stop the idea that presenting something like this may give the impression that we have to do this?

So you're correct. We are not hurting for these water supplies. This is for future development if we need to. Again, this is a drought contingency. If we lose our CAP water because there's not enough behind the dam, this is a process we could use just in case that happens. Today, no, we're not hurting for water. Are we in a drought? Yes. Could we be hurting for water in the next ten, twenty years? Yes. Will we be out of water? No. But this will just get us past that point of if there's a drought that continues and continues, this is a process we can use. So the script,

I'll say, of, no, we couldn't build these houses without one hundred years worth of water. It is now you're saying that in ten years, we might have to actually use this.

GREGORY Our existing customers and the ones we've already dedicated those water to, we have one hundred year assured water supply. Sure. This is again

Those are the people who are those are the people why we're getting those questions asked Right. To

The future developments, if we want to develop more in the city, will need more water supply. So this will help out with part of that. Again, I can't predict the future. I can tell you we have the one hundred year short water supply. And if it stays constant of where the average rainfall has been for the last one hundred years, we're not going to have a problem. But if we continue to drop and drop and drop, I can't guarantee 100 of water supply at that point in time. So we have to work through that process. And I understand there's some concerns, but that's why we're doing some of these other things, too. We're adding our aquifer storage and recovery wells. We're putting water back in the ground. We're trying to utilize, again, this water to the most efficient way. And we're not allocating out 100% of our water so we have that for the future, or if we need it in case there are emergencies, so we can make sure that we can make that 100, too. Okay.

I just want to have an answer to these people when they say, you see? Look what we're doing now. We told you we didn't have enough water. You said, don't worry about it. We're going to build 10,000 homes.

And now we're spending 1,000,000 on something like So either we lied to them, which I don't think we did. Obviously, I know why we're doing this. But that's the message we've got to get out there to the public is we're not doing this because we're at DEF CON four or anything. We're doing this for future development down the road. So I was just wondering, this sort of because this is kind of like a tutorial on how it works for people to come see. Can part of this tutorial kind of put their mind at ease that this is more of contingency as opposed to necessity?

I think that's all part of the education process that we're going to have to get out there. Again, we're not the only city looking at this. Again, as we go through this, that's why we're looking at other supplies. If we thought we were great for the next one hundred thousand years here, we wouldn't be looking at SRP today, would we? We wouldn't be looking at using our groundwater or putting it in the ground. We're trying again to do the best we can. Again, it's an education, and we're using this trailer for educational purposes. I think as part of that, we explain to him, hey, here's a source. If we have issues with one hundred years of water supply, here's an opportunity. We're not ready to use it today. We may never be able to ready to use it. But if we don't educate people today and we So try

this technology could sit on the shelf?

Yeah. These are treatment processes. And Chairman Wilson will explain to you he was in the military. They've had this. Astronauts have been going up in space for the last fifty years, right? They don't bring a bunch of water with them. They retreat it, and they drink what they produce themselves. So this technology hasn't changed. Its treatment process has been going on for a long time. The military's used it. Astronauts have used it. We're just now trying to get out to public again. It's an education to get them past the yuck factor.

Right, right, right. Chairman?

Yes. I kind of look at it this way. Twelve, fifteen years ago, we bought water credits from the reservation for $100,000 for the water credits we bought. And did we need it then? No.

But we were looking to the future. That's what this is. This is looking beyond one hundred years.

I understand that. But I'm just wondering, is it fiscally responsible DELL: to spend $1,000,000 right here and now when we just were told that this thing could sit on the shelf for the next twenty years?

I guess the big thing

is So your honor, I need to

kind of speak up

it's going and when it's going. Excuse me, Brian. I'm sorry. GREGORY I just wanted to know where it's going, how it's going. And if we're just putting money into something like this that's not even on the table to be used, is this the right time to spend that money? I mean, we're all sitting up here talking about our taxes, talking about the budget cuts, talking about all kinds of things. Hell, we even got something going on this evening about how we can try to fight our legislators from even pulling these things on them. But yet, here we go. Here's $1,000,000 for something that we might not even use.

So your honor To me,

it just seems like a very double standard. That's all. Either we're running out of money and we need to do everything we can to save it, or we're going to spend money on something we might not use for twenty years. Let's just I'll just leave it at that.

So a couple of thoughts,

Your Honor. Your Honor. Yes.

Let me just talk a little bit about the way the Water District is set up in terms of fund accounting and how this is totally separate than what we're going to talk about in an hour or a half hour regarding

I get that.

Yeah, yeah.

But, I just want to make sure that we put on the record that this is and when we describe water planning, if we were not if we were to have if somebody was to come in economic development and desire to build the tax base today, our allocation of a one hundred year water supply to support new development, if we aren't seeking continually new buckets that Mike talked about, whether it's SRP this has been our strategy for many years. If we don't have those, because not all of them are available all the time, then that may be the case that we may have something and we will lose we won't have the ability to react to the say, we can provide that water. So for example, Queen Creek, Buckeye, and the territories that are underneath the Arizona Water Company District, they don't have that same one hundred year water supply and they've lost that. And so when companies or when economic development comes, they're not able to react on and have for your ability to grow or to grow in the way you want to grow. This to me is where we were ten years ago when we decided to get that ability, so that we could even have a chance to annex.

And why is this important? Had we not made those decisions back then, not having that vision, the people I were talking to were going to ask Mesa to annex under us. And we would have been done. And so if we want I'm just saying

I completely understand. This is the equipment. This is equipment that might be, in twenty years, irrelevant, that might be broken. This isn't just give us some water from SRP or whatever. That's all I'm saying. This is physical nuts and bolts. I understand the concept behind it. And I'm not against it. I'm really not. I'm just trying to figure out whether we're doing it because everybody else is doing it, or are we doing it because we feel like we need to do this to save ourselves from ourselves in the future. Yeah, I know.

Mr. Chairman?

Yeah. Yes.

Again, I was at the ASU Morrison Institute. And this technology is here. You can run this thing right now and make water. Their whole thing was educating the public at that meeting. Because everybody thinks it's poop water. Let's just be honest. And you've got to educate the public that, yes, it is reclaimed water, but it has been highly cleaned and it is purer than most waters that you drink today. They were hammering the education part because even in Scottsdale, there's still some kickback from their residents because they think it's poop water. It's not. So we invest in it today to teach our public.

So down in the future, if we need it, it's there. Hopefully, if we can get it up and running, we can make water and put it back in the ground.

JAMES Correct.

JAMES

M. M. Mike, how many gallons a day can this setup do? And a second question after that.

So we're just doing a small this is a pilot program. So it's only going do five to 10 gallons a minute. So super small, again, just to show that this stuff works and to get people interested in it, get our youth interested in it. I don't know if I convince a 70, 80 year old that this is the way to go, but if I start training those 10 year olds in ten years from now, when they're 20, they'll be like, Hey, this is a good process. They decided a good thing ten years ago. This is the way we should have went. But I've to educate those people first. I can't train them after, you know, you can't train an old dog new tricks, right? So we've to educate those people over time, and hopefully it grows, and we have something that we can utilize in the future for either additional water supplies or even to back up our existing water supplies. This is only going to help us.

Okay. The next question I have is kind of towards Bryant and Joel. Apartment complexes aren't required to have one hundred year guaranteed water supply. Now is that a state mandate or can a city require any apartment complex being put in to come up with one hundred year water supply.

My understanding is that is a state requirement or loophole in the law and that the state

We can't supersede it.

I don't think we can.

And we are preempted from even trying to do that.

Yes, let me answer your question on that. So a non designated provider like Arizona Water Company, when you plat a subdivision, they have to get one hundred year assured water supply. So the multi families that are not platted do not have to do that. That's their loophole currently. We're a designated provider, right? So when, at the end of the year, we show the actual production, so those apartment complexes, those commercial centers, as a designated provider, do not get away with not bringing one hundred years of water supply because the city's providing that to them or the district. So it's slightly different. It depends upon how you are with the Arizona Department of Water Resources. So it is calculated when you're designated. But as a non designated provider, it's not calculated. You don't have to get that one hundred year assured water supply.

One last thing. Price wise on this thing, for all that equipment in there, it's hard to imagine it costing $800,000 if this is the picture that we see, the amount of equipment that's in there. I guess there must be some very, very sophisticated and very limited production equipment that forces the price to be so high, supply and demand, in other words.

Some of the equipment is specialized, so to scale it down. It's, again, this is kind of a unique situation. It's a customized trailer. You don't have these out there. This is we're trying to, again, show it in a way that we can educate people at the same time. So, yes, some of the stuff we're using, we're not going to use, you know, gray PVC. We're going to use clear plastic PVC. We're going use this process so that people can actually see it, physically touch it, understand what's going on, and to train them as part of it. Yes, it's expensive to get there, and I understand that. But all the processes put together, we're talking at five to six different processes to get this clean water.

So as you add each one of those up, you know, it may be $50,000 for each one. You're talking at $600,000 just for the equipment alone, and now you have to have somebody construct it, purchase that trailer. So it slowly adds up. It looks like just a bunch of PVC and plastic. But as you get all these treatment processes together, that's why it's

so expensive.

Mr. Chair?

Two questions. That $800,000 includes the 200 or $300,000 just for this bus, right? Correct.

And

the other is, after this is built, how long is this going to be an educational tool? How many? Five years, ten years, fifty years?

As long as we can keep it going and just keeping it back out there. We're going to try keeping it going just like our normal plants do, make sure ADQ is good with it. And then we'll have to see where we're at with water supplies. Do we need to transition to a full blown plant eventually at some point in time? Or is this something we just keep educating the public about out in the field and making

sure No, no, no. What I meant, though, is by building it, I mean, it going to have a lifespan of twenty years and then it's you'd have to rebuild it again?

Typically, our equipment's probably ten to fifteen years is what we're looking at. Okay.

Your honor, one question. I know we've to move on to other things. Is it on your radar right now at all to build an actual facility to do this? If you were to say a timeline, 2027, 2028.

I really couldn't answer that question for you today.

So there's nothing on the horizon to say we're breaking ground

and building this facility? I guess when's State Land going to sell the next parcel? When is the next developer going to come in and ask me for more water? I can't answer those questions here today. I don't know that answer today. I know where we're going. But if I don't educate people today, I won't have it for the future either.

Okay. Sorry. One last thing. Where's the money coming from?

So this is coming from our water resource acquisition fees. So this is that bucket that we're trying to collect from our developers to go find that next bucket of water to find this. So this is not coming from our existing rate payers. This is being funded through our water acquisition fees.

Okay.

Mr. Chairman?

Yes. Are you ready for a motion?

Yes.

I move that the construction agreement for the Pure Water demonstration trailer between Water Utilities Communities Facility District and Garner's Company, Inc. Using the corporation portion of the City Of Scottsdale's job order contract 20Twenty-fiftySix-COS in the amount of 741,798 I'm sorry, I'm reading the wrong dang thing. Let me get the actual No, think it's

You were right.

Oh, was that right?

No, okay.

You just rounded up the number.

Plus 10% contingency in the amount of $74,179.8 for a total amount not to exceed 815,977.77 be approved.

Second.

Moved and seconded. Roll call.

Vice Chairperson Schroeder.

This doesn't have to be unanimous, does it? Yes, go ahead and build this thing, I guess.

Board Member Nesser? Yes. Board Member Heck?

Yes.

Board Member Solar?

Yes.

Board Member Johnson?

Yes.

Board Member Cross?

Yes.

Chairperson Wilson?

Yes.

Motion passes unanimously.

Thank you. District manager's report. I have no report, your honor. District director's report.

So some quick updates on our Verde River sediment mitigation study update. Approximately two weeks ago, we met with SRP. They did a reanalysis of what the funding is going to be. It's going up in costs. Any price of construction has been up in the last four years. They are still working on the final numbers, but they did tell us that their cost of $1,400,000,000 will be going up at some point, so they can let us know what those water costs will be. But they're just giving us a heads up. It's not the same it was four years ago. We are also still waiting on the Bureau of Reclamation for their water request. We've been told that it would be in December.

We told it would be early January. We had a new president come in. He stopped everything that was done with the Secretary of Interior, so everything was put on hold. So we're still waiting for those numbers to come in. Hopefully, it gets started here pretty soon. The same thing with our NEPA process, which is National Environmental Policy Act. We have to do this study to show how it's going to affect the environment and go through the whole process. And that's usually a two to three year process. But again, that's been put on hold right now because he stopped everything for all the business on Department of Interior right now. Hopefully, he'll release it, we can get started on this again. But project hasn't stopped moving forward. It's just halted for right now because he's put stops on

the budget for everybody.

So they're working through that process. But I just want to keep you guys informed of where we were at on that. Any questions on that one? I'll kind of give you an update. Kind of we were talking about water supplies earlier with doing some different things with these ASR wells, direct potable reuse. Here's where we were, as you can see, in 2020, 2021. We're moving around at a normal clip here each month. And then as soon as development started in 2023, we quickly jump up each month. And then in 2024, we're on track above that also. So roughly in those few years, we went up 15,000,000 gallons over the entire month in August or July when our highest demands are.

This gives you an idea of month by month, and you can see it's new development that's causing that. Here's a better picture of where we were from 2010. This is the annual production now. This is by month. So we were roughly, back in the day, around five fifty million gallons annually. Moving along, everything's been fine, very little development here in the district. And then all of sudden in 2023, as you can see, we start taking off. We go from that five fifty million gallons a year to almost 700,000,000 gallons this past Again, new customers, new growth happening. These are why we need additional water supplies. We can see this headed in that direction. We want

to get ahead of it before it catches up to us.

Okay? Any questions on those that kind of quick report on

water supplies and where we're at?

Okay. We have our annual water festival coming up on April 24. If you guys have time off during that day, we'd love to have you out there from one to 03:00. This is when we have all the fourth graders here in Apache Junction and Superior and one school in the Sea Of Mesa come out to Prospector Park. We educate them on water resources, water conservation, all different kinds of things.

So love to have you guys out. I know the mayor's been out there a few times over the years. We've been having this for probably the past fifteen years here in Apache Junction, again, just educating our youth so they understand how to conserve water and how to use it the best way and where the water actually comes from. So it's all part of their science lessons that they learn, and then we provide this education service to them. It's a one day event. It's great to have the kids out there. At the end of the day, we have the fire truck come out there and hose them off and cool them off because sometimes it's hot at the April, and other times in the past, we've actually had snow up on the mountains in April. So great event. Know a lot of you guys have attended in the past, I'd love to have you guys out there. If you'd like to attend, let us know ahead of time.

If there's more than four of you, we'll have to make it a meeting, but just let us know so that we're aware of what's going on. Again, you guys are invited out there. Last thing I wanted to go over tonight is Arizona Water Association. We were nominated for customer service professionals of year for all the work that staff has done by implementing our new utility billing system, the new portal, interactive IVR, so you can call and you can make payment over the phone, work order program that we worked on, outsourcing our vendors, our print vendor. And also, we've been working on e lockbox, where you it's electronically transferring your money rather than doing a paper check between banks.

That has been done in the past. And then we're doing a new bill layout, listening to our customers on what they didn't like about our bills. The print was too small. That will be coming out here in the next month or so. But all these things, all of the staff in the office and the field have been working on over time.

We were nominated. We'll be accepting this award next month at the annual conference. So pretty amazing. So really proud, you know, that Apache Junction Water utility customer service team is a model of exception, customer service, teamwork, and industrial leadership, the ability to implement innovative solutions, support customers with compassion, and contribute to the broader broader, wider industry makes them highly deserving of the customer service team year award. So it's really great for the district to earn some of these things as they see that we're implementing all these new technologies to keep up with what's happening out there. So really proud of this, so really hands off to the team to put it together that's in the office and the field, so just wanna let you guys know that was happening.

Okay? Congratulations.

Good job. Thanks. Good job. Team.

Customer service.

That's all I had for tonight.

Any questions? District treasurer's report.

No report.

Thank you. Therefore, I'll no further discussion. I will adjourn the meeting.