City Council - Regular Meeting

City of Buckeye Council Workshop for June 16th, 2026. We have a roll call, please.

Council Member Yonker?

Here.

Council Member Berry? Here. Council Member Hagestad? Here. Council Member Beard? Here.

Council Member Justus?

Here. Vice Mayor Goodwin? Present.

Mayor Orsborn?

Present.

Thank you very much.

The first item is a 2A presentation and discussion of the 2026 Intelligent Transportation System Network Strategic Plan. We have about 45 minutes for this. And Mr. Willett, you're going to present. I just want to preface this by saying I heard from somebody that said this wasn't going to be as exciting as I think it's going to be. So pressure is on you to make sure this is an exciting presentation. I think it's going to be awesome. And I'm really looking forward to it.

Good afternoon, mayor, council members. So this presentation is about intelligent transportation systems and our strategic plan update. The short version is this connects to our students. Any questions? We only seem to have four to five minutes. I hope less than 30 minutes. I'm trying to get there. All right, I'll keep going. So what is ITS? It's kind of in the name, Intelligent Transportation Systems. I do my best part by not being involved in this at all, so the intelligence stays in it. I default to my caller friend, Bruce and Alan behind me. They are the experts. They bring a lot of experience from their work in different jurisdictions, so that is what they do way better than I do. Purpose, this allows us to connect to our traffic signals, function and benefit, what is all those. We can talk to them, we can see them operate at any time. And we can make changes at any time. And I'll go through a little bit of that during this presentation. And you can see what the benefit is and how great this is for us. So if those of you on the council may recall, about eight years ago, council approved an earlier version of this. It was actually prepared through MAG as a grant, outside consultant. The goals of that 2018 version was to create some relationship with both internal and external partners. That's been done. What can we do to help the existing transportation network work better? Working on that, starting to install some fiber, cameras, emergency vehicle detection, that's been happening. And build the traffic management center. If you've been to the landing, we've shown you that. And Bruce will do autographs later. You saw the video of him talking about our DMC. He is more than welcome to do some autograph signing later. So where are we today? As of June this month, we have 44 signals. Actually, a week from today, Lost Creek will go in flash mode. And a week later, it'll be operational. So that'll put us at 45. We actually have an agreement with ADA. We will take over the Verado I-10 signal in the next couple of months. So that'll actually put us at 46. The 44 we have today, we can actually talk to. So I can reach out and touch the signals remotely. And why is that important? I'll go through that, and you'll understand why. And a lot of developments have occurred on Miller-Watts and Obrado needing to move traffic up and down those corridors, so kind of important.

John, while you're figuring out the technology, will you go through some of that stuff individually, like Obrado Interchange, and is that later on in your presentation? A little bit.

So several roadways have been widened. They're more than just the two-lane roads they used to be. Mainly Miller, Watson, Verado, and Jackrabbit Trail. In the next two years, we think we're gonna have 30 more traffic signals, either in final part of design, in some part of construction, or actually operation. That'll bring us up to 75 signals. long way from where we started 2018 when I first got here. So having the ability to talk to these is really important. So this is our TOC. TMC, depending on who you talk to, some call it a Traffic Operations Center, some call it a Traffic Management Center. It's the same thing. It allows us to watch our signals and do whatever we think we need to do. The key thing is on the left is a list of all our traffic signals. One thing in the middle is four big screens that allows our guys to actually put up nine different intersections. They can see nine different intersections at one time. Well, you can't go, well, what's the deal about seeing that? Well, we needed to route traffic down Yuma, for example, when they were at the closure on I-10 about three months ago at Verrado, and they routed everyone down Watson, then down Yuma, then back up Verrado. Alan was able to bring up enough screens that he could actually monitor all the signals he needed to change operation and he could see them all. And he could make the timing on the fly to flush people through the system. And that's through the system through the Buckeye Railway Network. And so it allows us to see multiple intersections at one time when he's doing things. AZ mapping, that's a statewide system. We can look at intersections by themselves and then we can look at see which signals are actually operational. Sometimes right now we lose connection and it pops up yellow, then it goes back green, means it's active. So what is our strategic plan looking to do? The four key components are infrastructure, system, staffing, and partnering. The top of it shows we have 350 to 400 signals when the city's built out. Why the range? A lot depends on the final developments that occur and whether signals may or may not be in those developments. So we have a lot coming still. This sets really a great foundation, groundwork, whatever term you want to use, as a starting process to get there. Infrastructure. In 2018, we looked at Miller, Watson, Southern Monroe, and Apache. 2016, we have a whole bunch more priority corridors. We now have Indian School, Jackrad, Buma, Dean, getting to and from the freeway, getting commercial developments built up along those. We need to move traffic. The picture you see in the middle of the pole box, that allows the connection of the wires. It's the fiber that allows us to talk to the signal. And the picture on the bottom left is what we call our seven-way micro duct. And there's seven, it's a conduit with seven smaller conduits in it. And the thing you see sticking out of it is a microfiber and they actually blow that through there nowadays. The old days you had to pull it. And when you had to pull it, you could only pull it about 300 feet. So you had a pull box like every 300 feet. Now you can blow it in a half mile in like 15 seconds. And so the technology is phenomenal of how quickly it can be installed and operational. Another reason for updating the plan now is because of new technology. So staffing, go ahead.

Can you go back? Maybe. There you go. Is SR 85 not up there? It's not up there yet, it's eight hours. Okay, so when? When are those signals coming in?

So the signals are coming in on 85. ADOT's going to maintain them. During the concept of design of SR-85, we asked, hey, can we take those? And they hemmed and hawed and came back about a month later and says, no. Since it's still basically not a freeway, it's a highway with their road, they're going to maintain them. When it ultimately goes to the freeway, like that 10 crossovers, then we will take over the signals on the crossroad at that time. But we're working to make sure the seven-way stuff is installed.

We'd be able to have, we could view them like we would view our own signals, right?

That, we need to work out a group with ADOT that we can see it. You guys shaking this? both came from adot they have the context they can work out the agreements behind closed doors so to speak to say yeah we'll let you guys see them you can't touch them you can't change them but you can see them systems and staffing so the key both top bullet is pd you can see this stuff as well as us both of us can see the same intersections at the same time The bottom bullet is kind of the most important, the KISS. It's a program we acquired last fall. And right now, without this program, Bruce and Alan could be in the TMC and watch the signals. KISS allows them to do it from home. They can pull it up right here on their phone and make a signal change right here. This program allows us to do this. So you might go, well, why is this important? Well, we don't have to 24 hour 7 maintain the TMC now. If an incident happens on the weekend, and ADOT closes and routes traffic down, we would get notified. They'd pull it up, go, yeah, OK, the route traffic down Watson, and we've got to take it all the way down to Broadway, over to Jackrabbit, and back up, because you know, Broadway's closed. They could do that remotely. And if they need to come in, then they would drive in and work in the TMC. So this program is awesome. It allows us to do all this. the last two things is staffing as we get more and more its we need specialized people who are just actually staffed who can monitor maintain make sure all the fiber is connected doing what it needs to do that's more of amy's world in our world we'll need a person who can actually just sit there all day and just analyze and make sure the signal corridors are working their best as i've told the mayor i've directed my staff they know what his truck looks like every time they see on the court

I thought you were going to put her in a sub and give us access to that so we can just change it as we go.

Well, that is an option. We can work out a deal where you guys have a button and put it on your phone. It's an app. Just put it on your phone, call Greenlight, just hit the button and it turns the signal green. No, we don't have that. Our program does not exist. So some of our partnerships, we've worked with many of the departments in the city, and the reason for this is they will to put in basically a 288 fiber well for signals we don't need to use all those fibers so working with it they can use a lot of those extra fibers to provide connections to parks fire stations police stations water campuses for terry whoever so a lot of that other stuff will also be in this core or these fiber networks so it kind of helps the city get to a fully connected electronic Private sector, we've been working with folks. When they put stuff in, we ask them to put some conduit in for us so we don't have to put it in later. And then we've been working with ADOT, MCDOT, MAG. We changed through MAG funding grants to help cover the cost. It's not cheap to put this in, but we try to get as much money from other sources to help us minimize our cost. And then Goodyear and Surprise. So we actually had an agreement with Goodyear that never got finalized. They were actually going to be able to look at our signals and maintain them during the weekends. But by the time we got to that point where we were almost going to do it, we were all connected to do it already. We said, well, we don't get to screen anymore. So we just kind of canceled it. But we do work with Goodyear and Surprise to share information when it gets to the point where we're actually having our signals really close together and talking. So conclusion, basically this is like a dynamic working document. It was done eight years ago. We're doing it again now. We're probably going to update it again in the future. And you ask why? Well, technology changes and developments occur throughout the city. So our focus areas may shift depending on what development's occurring. That's why it allows us to be dynamic. It aligns our infrastructure, technology, and agency partnerships, supports of all our transportation needs, that what we need to do to help people get around the city, put corridors working well so they don't hit as many red lights, and then get them as green as often as possible, and then to remain effective and relevant. the valley has a version of this. Ours will be the latest because we just adopted it in a few weeks. So that's actually on the next slide. Next steps, like I mentioned, revisit this every five to seven years. Right now it's in a 30-day comment period and so far we've received like not a single comment from the general public. here, or it's written so well that they have no comment. Can we go to the latter? That it's written so well. And then we do ask that you guys in three weeks from today to form the document. And with that, I'll answer your questions. I think less than 50.

Great job. I thought that was pretty exciting. I'll confer with who I've talked to previously and see what their thoughts are. Councilman Huston.

Do you or have and the lights here, the older lights downtown here. I mean, is that controlled by your system? Have you been able to get the electronic network to include those?

Yes, we can see them, we can talk to them, we can make changes. We actually have an ADOT, a project we're going to design, it's going to go through ADOT, it's going to advertise it for construction, that will actually put the fiber in the ground. So right now we're talking to them remotely, but we're going to have a separate project that puts fiber all the way down Miller from I-10 to Monroe, and then Monroe over to Easton Signal. It'll be physically hardwired connected. But right now we can still, I can still reach out and talk to it, I just can't talk to it by wire.

Okay, meaning talk to her. You can catch the controller as of right now. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions?

Well, like the Miller and Watson, at some point you can set timing on those, so like during heavy traffic times there's better flow.

Yes, Vice Mayor, we can do that. One of the challenges we have in Buckeye, unlike other jurisdictions, Camelback Road in Phoenix from 24th Street to 32nd Street, or 24th Street to 44th Street. That corridor is pretty much built out. The traffic patterns pretty much aren't going to change. Since we have a lot of parts of Miller, Jackrab, and Watson still developing, volume will be changing, but what we do have the ability, we can make single-time long answers, say we can do it today, that works with today's volumes, and as things change, Alan and Bruce and our future CIP analyst, our ITS analyst, will make changes to do that. So we can move traffic north, south, A and P into the way we see those best.

Eventually, once we take ownership of those that were on O and I-10, it will be a little easier to get on and get off of that?

As easier as they can get under the current intersection configuration, yes.

So I've experienced Miller. There's certain times when I can come off the freeway. If I hit that light right at the posted speed limits, I can make it through and then I am green lights all the way down to... my first stop being at the stop sign at baseline. So even though we're maybe not perfect on it yet, more often than not, I'm maybe one red light that I'm stopping at for just a short period of time. So congrats on that and thank you for lining that up all the way down. I know that's not just Eric's truck that's going through there, so that's what's happening. It's not at all. I am looking for the preemption device. But that's exciting and it makes traffic flow so much better through there. I think it's super important that we're keeping up with the, I guess, the smart signal technology. And there's times when you pull up to a signal and it is in default mode and you can tell because left turn is queued or is green and there is no one in the left turn. So I think there's definitely maintenance that happens, and thank you for continuing to do that throughout the entire city of Buckeye. Whatever happens that throws it back into default, you can tell that it's not too long you guys are out taking care of it and making sure. And actually, I think what I'm hearing from you is you can take it out of default from your phone at home or from the office. Is that correct?

Mayor, that's correct. We're trying to make sure every signal works perfect. it's hard to get everyone perfect, and every now and then you're gonna get that left turn arrow, and you go, why is the arrow here, there's no one making a left. We try to make it so it doesn't do that, but it does happen now and then. What we always, and I talk to all the Reds, if I see them in public, if you see that, let us know, then we'll look at it, because as much as we try to monitor every signal, Alan and Bruce can't sit there and watch 44 signals all day long, and catch every one. And if it's happened repeatedly, we would like to know. I was in Flagstaff and got pulled to the side by someone who lives off of Pine in Valencia and says, hey, north-south southern Apache only gets two cars. Can you look at that? I'm like, on it. And we were already correcting it when and then somebody forwards an e-mail, hey, a resident called to say the same, a different resident, the same thing, but we were already on it.

Yeah. I appreciate that. And the, it's major steps getting away from a stop sign intersection to a signal, and then there are major steps getting from just the standard signal and default to a signal that is logical and makes sense, you know, quick grain to get one car through you're sensing if there is anybody if there's not then then it's cycling right back and I think I know I really appreciate that I think our residents really appreciate being able to move at a much quicker pace through some of the intersections here so thank you for all of that work You mentioned partnering with businesses. I know there's existing businesses that have difficulty letting folks out because it's a They employ 1500 people in three different shifts so there's a number of people that are coming out of a specific location. We're going to have more of those as we move. Do we partner with them on their end of shift times in trying to figure out Maybe give them a little bit longer green if they do have a signal coming out and then also all of the signals working their way north.

Yes, exactly. That's what we can do. For example, we want off of Southern Watson. Yeah. They have the signal at 233rd Avenue. We know when their shifts end. We can set it up that the signal timing for that particular 30 minutes or 45 minutes changes and gives more green time to the northbound movement. flushes people out of there, flushes them through Watson Southern, and then half an hour later or 45 minutes later, it goes back to normal operation.

And once we have Watson and Broadway, the signal in, which is, remind me what the schedule time is?

So for that project, we are starting, the contractor was selected, and then the work's starting. When the signal's going to get installed, I can't give you a time because it depends on how the contractors schedule and how he's paying to do the work. That's when it's going to actually occur. Within the next 10 years.

I was going to say within the next year. I'm assuming that within the next year that intersection will be complete and so you'll have now signalized intersections on both Miller Road to and from and then Watson to and from. which will clean up a lot of the traffic headaches in the major population areas. And then Verrado and I-10, we now have control of, or soon we'll have control of that intersection.

Yeah, so Mayor, Verrado and I-10, you all approved the IGA, and it was something with Ada that allowed us to take over the maintenance operation. We are working with them because the wiring that's in there was installed when the TI was first built. It needs to be updated. And so we're asking ADOT, do you please, do you need to update this before we take it? Okay. It causes challenges because it's not updated. Okay. So we're always waiting for them to do that. They're trying to figure out on their end how quickly they can get that taken care of and then we'll just physically take it.

Yeah, that'll be another important one. There's some of these pinch points that we have throughout the community, and the signals are working optimally. The pain that the residents and the commuters are feeling is much, much less than what it would be if it's just the standard. If this green light goes on, it stays for this amount of time. There's little tweaks that I know you guys are going to make in that to make traffic flow so much more efficient than it does right now. Yes, sir. So it makes a two-lane road feel maybe more like a three-lane road. You just get so much more capacity out of it.

That's correct. The traffic signal cuts the capacity of a road in half because you have to give half the time to the intersecting road. Okay. So the best we can do to minimize the shifting back and forth, the more people we can move up and down the corridors. Okay.

Okay, great. Any other questions from council? One more. Yes, Bill. Can you explain why we would want control and maintenance over those things rather than leaving with what they know is that they don't work as hard and flow as we do?

So, Councilman Hagenstad, the best example I can give you was before I came here working the private side and my old boss used to joke that he called I-17, as far as traffic coordination, the Great Wall. Because you can move traffic down IE Indian School through Phoenix, and once you hit the ADOT, it had to reset. Because ADOT had their signal timing on a completely different timing pattern, and you couldn't move traffic across I-17 continuously. So it had to go there, reset, and then go again. So they would happen on Verado. We might move it up to Verado, to I-10, and then we may, not to really bore you too much, we may run signals on a 90-second cycle, and ADOT runs it on a 120. So every now and then it'll match up, most of the time it won't. So our northbound traffic, our southbound traffic would physically stop at Verrado, at I-10, get pushed with the interchange, and then start over again, progressing. So by us having the interchange, we can actually time it better so we can move traffic north past Van Buren, Roosevelt. Cross I-10, Market Street, McDowell, as best as possible. Okay, so the answer is yes, we feel like we can do a better job coordinating it through our city for our residents.

Yes, I'm sorry, short answer is yes, we can do a better job. Thank you. Okay, all right. John, thank you. You're welcome. Thank you for letting me know. And thank you for all you guys do in the traffic center.

Remember, white Ram, three lights, three lights. Very good. Yes, thank you.

All right, item two B is the Colorado River uptake by Central Arizona Water Conservation District. CAWCD Board President Terry Goddard, an introduction to proposed citywide water policies by Water Resources Director Terry Lowe. About an hour for this. He's yielding 10 minutes of time to you, Terry.

Mayor, members of the council, Terry and Terry show these things I can answer. I'm going to set up the presentation that Terry got the presidency of the board. Thank you.

Mayor, members of the council. Pleasure to be here in a way, although I don't have much good news. So I hope the expectations weren't that high. It's more of a reality check, and I think you're well aware of what is happening on the river. But let me go through the details. It'll be about a 20-slide show, but I'll go through it quickly because I don't think there's much here except the very last few of the current state of discussions with the Department of Interior that probably aren't well known to you already. But I'm happy to take, obviously, any questions and very much look forward to hearing what Buckeye's doing in terms of your water future because it's kind of every person, every city for themselves at this point. There are very different plans being hatched across Maricopa, Pinal, and Pima counties, which is what CAP represents, as you know. So let me click through this, the first item We'll come back to the supply, but Arizona's supply is about one-third, just a little over one-third Colorado River water dependent, and that's what we're going to be talking about primarily. The rest of it, groundwater, you're well aware of, and that includes a lot of what runs through the saltwater project, but that's the other side of that. And here's how it gets used. And this is statewide. This is not just CAP. And there's, I think, a lesson and maybe some promise in the way these numbers shake out. 72, 75% is ag. And you have some of that here in your bailiwick. Most of it's on the river. Most of it's in Yuma and La Paz and Mojave counties. But ag is a huge user of Colorado River water. And as we start talking about The reductions, that's where perhaps our supply is going to be in the future. But that's a thorny legal and financial matter that has to be reckoned with. Industrial and municipal is a total of 38%, as you can see. That's not the majority users of our water. And that's, again, that's not just calling it river water. That's the whole picture. Buckeye has done, I think, a very good job of looking at different sources. uh you've been very aggressive they're unlike crazy so we're we select you for salute you for that but my message if i have one is that first if i have a prominent one is that first point about the 2,000 plus, almost 2,000, no, 2,000 acre feet from the Colorado River. That's what's in jeopardy right now. Next year, we'll be able to deliver that this year, but next year is very questionable. And so your planning, hopefully, is already taking account of that lack of supply or diminishing of the supply. I don't think it'll go away, but it's certainly gonna be smaller, because the Colorado River is much smaller. Here's the basin. I think you know this, but I'll skip through it. There are seven states that share the river, and Mexico. The upper basin is in green. The lower basin is in yellow. That's Arizona, California, and Nevada. New Mexico, surprisingly, is upper basin, because they basically get their water from the San Juan, which is a tributary of Colorado. But we've been in efforts. There's a proud tradition. in this basin of doing the agreements between the states, not having the federal government intervene. That goes back to 1922 when the original compact tried to divide the water in the river. This year may break that tradition because the states have been unable to come to a conclusion. The CAP, as you probably know well, is in the backyard, eventually. It brings water from Parker and the Colorado River all the way to south of Tucson. 336 miles of canal, and the thing that always astonishes me, almost 3,000 feet of elevation. So it's a river, but it's a river that runs uphill, unlike most rivers, most old-fashioned rivers, if you will. But that also... means that we're dependent on one source, and that is the Colorado River, so we'll talk a little about that. We're in a drought, they call it a millennial drought, because it started in the year 2000, it's still going on in the year 2026, and, sorry, it started, yeah, it's the year 2000, so we've got 26 years of severe drought, and when we look at the tree rate studies and the hydrologic studies and back as far as we can go, The last one of similar consequence was over a thousand years ago. So it's a serious problem. You can see from this, one of the big things that's happened has been because of the increased temperature in the forests and basically the Rockies in Colorado. If you look on the left, you see the snowpack, a percent of normal. On the right is runoff. That's what gets to Lake Powell and gets into our system. And the striking figure here is, for instance, last year, 92%, almost 100% of normal precipitation resulted in 50% of runoff based on the normal for the last 50 years. So the water's getting caught. It's not by us. It's being caught by thirsty ground. One of the reasons that we've had such a deluge of wildfires has been that the forests are tender dry. And when it does rain or it does snow, and that's less too, the ground is absorbing it. It's not getting down to Lake Powell where we could use it. This year is not on this chart. 2026 is the worst on record since 2002. And I'll talk a little more about that in a minute. But it is around just about 30% of normal in terms of flow into Lake Powell. very, very serious reductions. This graph shows inflow into Lake Powell. You see on the far left, well, right in the middle, actually, is 2002. You see that sort of gap-to smile there in the middle? And what it looks like is that that low is going to be matched by this year. The water year ends in September, so it's kind of an odd year that they use. And so we're almost there, and it's very clear that it's about three million acre feet that are coming into Lake Powell. That is so far below average that it's in a class by itself. And that's what we're dealing with right now. Here are the reservoirs at CAP. We get this little, we call it the bucket chart. We get it every month, and it's been a, We're thinking about firing the entire staff because they can't come up with a decent bucket chart where he actually shows the numbers going up instead of down. So it's their fault. Don't blame me. But a couple of key things here. One, you'll notice that the little buckets up in the northern part of what we call the upper basin are pretty full. And that's become one of the things that the Interior Department has been draining, has been calling upon in this time of serious scarcity. The second one is, you see the elevations and the percent of capacity. You see that it's, what is it, 29% for Lake Mead, 25% for Lake Powell. But that's not a real number. because there's something, and I hate to even use the term, there's something called dead pool. These lakes eventually get to a point where you can't get water out of them anymore. And they were not designed to be at this level. And when they get down, there's still four or five minute acre feet of reserve capacity that we can't touch. So that 29% includes the dead pool. So it's really about half of that. that we actually have that we can use to service customers downstream. When they were full, and they were full back in 2000, you can see that Lake Mead had a capacity of 26 million acre feet. Lake Powell, 23 million. They're the largest reservoirs in the country by a big margin. And they've given us the ability to run the river as we have in the past since 1985. The first water got to Harpahala and then on to the city of Phoenix. I was mayor at the time and got a little bucket with a little thing like this. It said it was the lifeline from the CAP. I put it in the windowsill. I'm going to link to this. I forgot about it and two years later it turned green. But it was real water and it was from the canal and it was our lifeline. It was from 1985 until 2022. CAP was able to deliver 1.5 million acres of food every year to central Arizona. We're proud of that. It created a tremendous amount of the economic explosion that has happened in the West Valley for sure. And that's something that we're now struggling to protect. Now here's where we are today. One of the reasons this year is so critical is that back in 2007, the states got together and voluntarily put together what they called, using incredible naming foresight, they called it the 2007 Guidelines. And they decided at that point it would last for 20 years. And of course the deadline is this year, and it's the end of September of this year. And so states have been trying to come up with a new way to determine how to handle the river between themselves, and they have not been successful. Two and a half years of almost constant discussion and negotiation between the upper and the lower basin. And the lower basin is hung together, and the upper basin is hung together, and they cannot agree. on something which basically arranges to share the most extreme shortages. What the upper and lower basin has proposed is some pretty significant cuts, 1.5 million acre feet from what we were getting before. And then another potential of another million acre feet that would come out of our normal flow from the Colorado River. And the idea was that would carry us through all, based on our hydrology, based on our projections, that would carry us through almost every year in the next 20, except for about three or four, where we project that it would be a deficit that even the 2.5 million acres we could put on the table would not be able to cover. And we've asked the upper basin to split it evenly with us, and they've consistently refused. They've basically taken the position that you've been able to get this water out of the reservoirs in good years and bad, and we only get what the river flows when it goes by us, as the tributaries come through their territory. And that means we've had to struggle every year And you guys have been able to basically take savings out of the bank and keep the same delivery schedule that you've always had until recently. There's some truth to that. But at the same time, we have a much depleting river. And I think the bottom line that we're standing by in the lower basin is that we need to share the scarcity when and if it comes. And it probably will come in the next 20 years. I pulled this out of some old files of the Arizona Republic. This is a Benson cartoon from many years ago where he crosses out Mighty Colorado and says Midget Colorado and shows the faucet going dry. Well, it's not quite the situation, but it helps to focus our attention. It is bad. It is really bad. And we're working with the Department of Interior now. This is their schedule. We missed every deadline so far. So I'm not sure that these have a whole lot of treats to them. The only one that really counts is that on October 1st, they're going to put out the new contracts for water users in the lower basin. And that will be a decision point for the Bureau of Reclamation that will affect us all. And right now, they're not telling us what's going to be in those contracts. They're not telling us what to expect. We expect a couple of things. They've had a draft environmental impact statement out there for a while. We didn't like any of the six alternatives that they put forward. All of them would have required what we consider to be devastating cuts to the lower basin. Several of them required the COP to go dry. And that's just not a feasible future. So we've objected. They are saying, well, we're going to take those objections into consideration. So far, the upper basin has not put anything on the table in terms of sacrifices that they would make. So we don't have a deal. And at the same time, the Interior Department has not been sort of squeezing both sides to say, you better get a deal. We want to see something happen. They got about $400 million from what we call the Inflation Reduction Act. It's at their disposal, but they haven't told us how they're going to spend it. So that's the kind of situation we're in now as the deadline is rapidly approaching. So I'm going to talk a little about what the lower basin has proposed, because it may come to pass, although it hasn't been accepted by the Department of Interior. Basically, we propose 1.25 million acre fee as an annual adjustment from what we were getting before. That would be shared, as you see, Arizona 760, California 440, and Nevada 50. Now, that looks like Arizona's taken the lion's share, and we are. But that's because when the CAP was passed, there was a deal struck in order to get the California votes. They had 35 representative members in Congress. We had three. So in order to get through the House of Representatives, we had to have their help. And so in exchange for getting that help, they basically said, well, if it ever comes, push comes to shove, if it ever comes to a point where there's a shortage on the river, California will get its whole 4.4, which was what was allocated to them under the Boulder Canyon Act, even if it means that Arizona's CEP would not get any. Well, they relented on that, that basically that 4.4 is a very significant play, 10% of the total California entitlement, I guess you could call it, although that's not the word we use. And so we think it's important to have them at the table. They've been a good partner. I was raised in a household that believed that California was the root of all evil. And especially in the area of water, they had to be watched very carefully. I still have bits of that concern in the back of my mind. But so far, I just came back from a trip to the California Delta, where we were looking at the way that Los Angeles gets its water. And it's a multifaceted program. And what I came away with was a conviction that we're in this together. Because there are years that the Delta is dry. There are years when the Colorado is dry. California is able to balance those pretty well. But they want to have storage capacity in the Colorado when they've got good years coming out of the Delta. And that's something that is on the table right now for negotiation. And we're supporting them in that effort. What we have here is a proposal that's been put out. It's complicated. I just have the high points of it here. It involves a floating pool in Lake Mead, which would be for tribal use. That's to get them some of their legal entitlements taken care of. It would have some trigger points as to when Lake Mead might Lake Powell, which usually gets to particular levels. Some levels, frankly, they're not getting any water out of Lake Powell. And so we've got to really, we need to keep it above that level. But we're very close to it now. We're 30 feet away from the first sticking point in Lake Powell, which is when they can't get power generated anymore the tubes that go to the turbines to produce hydropower would cease to be served and the interior certainly said well that's the label that we're going to protect and that's why they're now on the road to get remember you saw in the bucket chart that there were some reservoirs up north it's about four million feet in those reservoirs three million of it is in roaring ford So they've said, Terrier said they're going to take a million acre feet out of Roaring Fork over the next six to nine months to keep Lake Powell at a level where it would still produce hyper power. There are a lot of other issues involved there, but one of the biggest ones for us is that they said, oh, and by the way, we're going to cut the lower basin service from what we promised them this year, which was 7.48 million acre feet, we're going to cut it to six. So we're already taking a million and a half acre feet in the chops right now. And now they're saying the guidelines, the lower part of this slide, basically is where interior seems to be staying, which is it's all price on a range. And the first range is there on the chart, and that's the one that scares me. It says that the total releases from Lake Powell could go as low as five million acre feet. That means major cuts all across the board, even to very high-priority wire users. The rest of it, frankly, they haven't agreed to, so we still have a lot of talking to do over the next couple of months to see if we can get that done. A little bit of patting ourselves on the back. Arizona has, in the past 12 years, saved 8.5 million acre-feet, and like me, That's amazing. This crisis would have hit long ago had we not done that. A big part of that has come from CDP. We took a 512,000-acre-foot cut back in the early part of this decade. And that was uncompensated. It basically meant that Pinotti Farming went away. And that has helped to sort of keep the Colorado River flowing. But now we're at the end of that goodwill. So what's next? First, Mayor, you and cities throughout Arizona have signed up for protecting Arizona's lifeline. And that's a robust statement by cities way beyond the ones directly served by the C.O.P. of Buckeye. And basically saying that this is critical. but one of the most important economies in the United States. It's an economy that's still robust. It's growing well. It's producing critical resources, both in national defense and in the whole area of semiconductor production. We're important to this country. And don't forget that when you're looking at the water allocations. And I've been personally able to make that pitch to the Secretary of Interior. Some of our Congress people have been present. I don't know what kind of impact they've had, but I know they've made it. So every mayor has joined this program, every city that's part of our program and beyond, and many of the business coalitions have joined. We're asking on our website, we're asking individual citizens to join as well. So we're trying to make this a mass movement, because people need to be aware of how important this water supply is to our future. Here are some of the things that I know you've been involved in, but I'll just go through them quickly. I think I've dealt with the pathetic negotiations on the Colorado River. They haven't gotten us anywhere. All we know is we've got an entrenched opponent in the upper base. Augmentation, new water supplies, that's what the WIFO organization was trying to do. Many cities have been out looking. That's tough. because new water literally does not grow on trees. Finding new supplies are extremely difficult. That's why we met recently in San Diego and looked at the possibility of getting some of their desalved water. It's expensive water, but it's one of the possibilities that's out there. They also, the Metropolitan Water, The organization does a very significant piece of wastewater reclamation. They're basically putting the offer out on the table and it's got a ways to go and probably some years to mature. It basically says, you help us fund this huge waste treatment plant and you could take a percentage of the water that we would otherwise get off the Colorado ground. That's the kind of deal that we're beginning to see mature. I mentioned the delta. There's some issues in the Delta where Arizona might be able to be one of the investors in order to increase the flow down to Los Angeles and thereby be able to take water from the Colorado River. I'm speaking very hypothetically here, but that's the kind of regional cooperation that I think we're looking at under the augmentation. Conservation efficiency, obviously everybody's now involved in getting rid of what we call ornamental or non-essential turf, making sure that our our homeowners and our municipal organizations are being as mean as possible. And we've done a great job. One of the stories that hasn't been told in this discussion is how well Arizona cities have been doing in saving water. The upper basins, their mantra is that we're a bunch of wastrels, that all we do is sort of pour it out in the desert for the joy of watching it disappear. And we've got a few There are a few things in Arizona that we probably shouldn't have done. The fountain over there on the east side is one. I can't go into fountains these days. I'm not welcome. But darn it, why you would have something as a landmark that goes up in the air in the summertime, and I don't think much of it comes back down. It's just not the right image for us. Our golf courses are getting very stingy in the way they use water. Artificial lakes are a thing of the past. We're doing a much better job. Back when I was mayor, unfortunately, we were still doing artificial lakes, and I'm not proud of that. But we've gone a long way from there. Reuse, I mentioned that. Recycling is part of a regional effort. I know Buckeye already does a lot of recycling, which you put back in the ground. That's part of the key to the future. And recovery, we've stored a lot of water, and now we've gotta get it back. And that's certainly gonna be The program for the next few years is going to be putting the infrastructure in place to get groundwater that's stored water back into productive use. I started with this slide and I'll end with it. Reminding everybody that there's, Mo Udall used to say that there's plenty of water in Arizona, it's just in the wrong places and comes at the wrong time. There's a lot of wisdom in those words. So we're going to have to be talking seriously to agricultural interests. about exactly how, in the future, in times of extreme distress, we can work with them. There are different crop choices that can be made that save a lot of water. In some years, fouling is a possibility. I hate to use that word, and I know the ag interests hate it. But Los Angeles has already gone that way. They've got some very positive, I think, mutually beneficial agreements with some of the ag districts, Calabria in particular. which allow them in times of maximum distress to make a call, essentially, and voluntary on the ag measures. If they want to join, they can. If they don't, they won't. The crisis has already been established, and that's the kind of discussion we have to have in Arizona, but it hasn't happened yet, so that's something in the future. Stay informed. We've got a lot of options out there. You probably know about Know Your Water News. It's on the CAP website. CAP University, that I have the privilege of teaching about every quarter, basically is a way to get down in the nuts and bolts of how water gets delivered to Arizona and how we conserve it. And I want to thank you very much for your time and attention. I can't believe that there would be anything that I haven't covered. But if there is, I'd be delighted to go back. But I'd be very interested to see what Buckeye's doing and your aggressive efforts to try to diversify your waters. Because you're at the head of the class when it comes to doing it.

I appreciate that. I think we're all too depressed to ask questions at this point. I should have brought cake or something. But we didn't have the water to cook. How about Councilman Eustace?

went there did you see yet one-third of the colorado river it's you know it's less than one-third it's total of

2,200 acre feet in a delivery contract. So you have some, and I'm sure the expert here will go into it, but you have a more diversified supply than that. You've got alcohol water, you've got recharge water and groundwater.

And 72% of the Colorado River water is used for agriculture?

That's statewide. It's not just Colorado. So that includes... water directly from the Colorado River and Yuma and Mojave counties. And then CIP does not provide any agricultural water anymore. It may get directly to agriculture through some of the tribes, but we don't have direct contract with irrigation districts that serve ag anymore. That stopped in 2022.

I had some things a while back and then I heard on the news within the last week that there was a proposal or thoughts about supporting the expansion of the D cell out in the Pacific Park, San Diego. And that if they expand that, they could cut some of their usage off of Colorado, and then we could bring some of that to the east. And just for the first time, I actually heard some of you, Seth and myself, make a comment about that. And I wonder if there's any factual hopes along that direction, since it's in the news now.

Well, as they say, hope is not an action plan. There are lots of hopes. The WIFA group here in Arizona has been studying the feasibility of desalination in the Gulf of Cortez, a little closer to us than San Diego. But it's another country, and it creates its own set of problems. That's long range at their very best. What I think desal does, and it's important, is it helps to establish what the maximum price might be. Because it's better than $3,000 an acre foot right now. That's what San Diego is paying. That's probably, if we started doing desal in Mexico, that's probably what it would cost. There's water available at less than that. Buckeye's sitting on 80,000 acre foot a year. brackish water stream that I've always thought was one of the great possible, and you know better than I do, there are legal issues about tapping that into that water, but it's much easier to purify than salt water. So there's potential right here underneath this community. And that's important. We need to look at every possible supply. We need to raise part of the dam. Salt River's looking at that. And that would provide 100,000 acre feet to folks who invest in it. We're looking at interchange with the Salt River Project and CAP because in times that there's floods on the Salt and La Verde, there have been a few beauties. We're unable to capture that and put it into serving some of the downstream users on the CAP. I think that's got great potential. So we're looking at sort of a, what I believe is important right now is Arizona needs to look at an all of the above set of options. look at whatever will generate any additional wet water for our communities. And it's not going to be a single unit. I think there's been a misperception, and Governor Ducey sort of played into that when he said, we're going to put a billion dollars into getting peace solved in Mexico. Well, he hadn't read the numbers very carefully because the cheapest that I've seen is five million, and it takes almost 10 years to get done. And it would only provide 200,000 acre feet, and that won't solve our problem. So we've got to find as many different approaches, and I think that's where the other terrorists are going to go in a few minutes, in order to solve our thirst. And that's an important objective. I don't think we're in a point of despair, but we are at a point where we have to look very aggressively at whatever alternatives there are.

I grew up in St. Louis.

You had a river.

Yes, exactly where my point is. The Missouri and the Mississippi. And I've heard comments either way on pulling water. You know, we run an oil pipeline from, what, Alaska all the way down? Didn't we build a pipeline for a while to come all the way down from Alaska? Now, that pays for itself in a lot of ways. But aren't there some prospects of ways you could pull off of either the Missouri or the Mississippi?

As I recall, and you would know personally, my family comes from Missouri, too. It's not the show me state for nothing. I mean, they don't want to partner with anything that they feel is theirs. And as soon as the CAP was passed, the folks up in Washington and Oregon immediately got a bill through Congress that prohibited us to even look at the Columbia and the Willamette for any possible importation. So the multi-state issue is real. I was the convener of a session at the annual water conference in Las Vegas on alternative supplies. The guy from Kansas spoke to us, and he had a, they had done the engineering to take water from the Missouri across Kansas to Colorado. And they can do it, and Kansas is flat as a board, so there's no heavy lift involved, unlike the CAP. But he hadn't run any of the political approvals, What looked very viable was about $500 an acre foot of total infrastructure costs to get it across Kansas. But nobody in Kansas had approved it. So that was the last we heard of that idea. The states around the Great Lakes have all gotten together and said, even though we have a historic lake rise, we're going to share because it might go down again. So we've got a serious interstate problem. That's why we basically focused on the basin, and we don't have agreement there either. So we're looking at all the different options. What you just described was a recent memorandum of understanding that was struck between a lot of the California interests and Salt River, CAP, Arizona, AMWA, and I believe I'm sorry, Resolution Copper, I'm pretty sure, was the last Arizona entity that they were there. But they all signed an agreement to take a hard look at the surplus water that San Diego has produced. San Diego is the first city to go and actually fund a desal organization. They did it, and it raised the prices so much that their customers conserved so much that they now don't need the water that they're getting from the ocean. So that's why they're in the market to sell it to us. I think it's one of the things that needs to be explored.

So it's not just dollars, it's also politics.

Imagine that. Yeah. That's all I can say. All right, thank you, council member.

Any other questions over here? No?

No more? So all discussions occur about both power and water nowadays. And they are totally connected. Yeah, they absolutely are. There's that nexus. The water order for Buckeye, that 2,500 or 2,300 foot, I think it was. Terry, you'll get into the details of what that order is and where that water goes. Is that part of our recharge CAGRD obligation?

We currently got two kinds. which is a really small one, and the other one is a non-Indian ag. And as Terry kind of mentioned, a lot of that has already been cut. In prior years, when we would take that, we did recharge that in one of the cap recharge facilities, and that went to actually do a little small amount of offset of member lands fees. So when we recharge, we could, because we don't have the facility to take .

You had mentioned also the $400 million. Is that part of the $4 billion that was set aside? I learned, so I asked our lobbyist actually about that the other day, what happened to that $4 billion, and was incredibly disappointed to hear some of the... the action plans with that and what we actually spent. It wasn't, and my thought would be you would take that four billion and go build four-fifths of the desal plant or build some other water augmentation, but we didn't. We kind of band-aided and said just don't farm here for a little bit and that'll save money in the aquifer. Probably this part.

Mayor, you're so much on track. Almost two billion dollars went to farmers short-term supplies to shortly. So they used the money to buy some time. And it did that, but we got no permanent augmentation out of it. So a little history, it's probably irrelevant now, but when the CMP was passed in 1968, It was very controversial. Most people didn't think it would get through. Arizona did an extraordinary patrick of pulling it out of Congress and getting the authorization done. And the chairman, who's from Colorado, of the Subcommittee on Interior Affairs, who had to get the bill and ultimately put it on the floor, and it passed. And both John Rhodes and Morris Udall were members of that committee, so it was stacked for Arizona, and we were able, but Wayne Aspinall was the chairman, and he was Colorado. And he went on the record, after the CAP was passed, and said, we have a commitment, along with the ranking minority member of the committee, Representative Saylor from Pennsylvania, who'd been an opponent of the CAP from the beginning, they went on the record and said, We in Congress have an obligation to find at least two million acre feet of additional water for the basement. And we're gonna put that on hold for the next couple of years, but we'll come back and you can trust us and we'll take care of it. Here we are, it's never been done.

And that two billion now is many, many billion. It would be. Tens of billions.

Yeah, it was, history is replete with promises that haven't been kept. But yes, what's left of, and there's some argument about how much is left, but they've admitted to 450 million. They could be used in the basin, was earmarked for that purpose, and could be used to help us come to an agreement, but Interior has not been willing to put forward their plan. They keep sort of saying, okay, come to us with money. Well, it's been very hard for the basic states to come with a plan, which necessarily is going to involve some of that $450 million. But they don't know how it's going to be used. So it has been almost a dodge walk in Washington. And Interior's not come to any firm commitments. The money's still there. It's got to be committed by September, or it goes away. There's a lot of time pressure on all the discussions that we're having here today.

I sure appreciate you being here. You mentioned one of the maybe participation in some infrastructure in California offsetting, not only the desal stuff, but I think maybe creating reclaimed water. Is that out of the Hyperion wastewater treatment plant?

What I've seen is, I don't know my period, but maybe there's a- Long Beach right out on the- No, it isn't. No, this would be a new facility to serve the 19 million customers in the plus areas. Okay. And it's metropolitan, the collaboration of I think it's 30 cities that make up that. And they would be the primary driver. It's in the feasibility stage right now. Salt River and, no I'm sorry, CAP and Arizona Department of Water Resources have put some study money on the table. So we're at the table. Whether we end up being part of the ultimate decision depends a lot on costs. A lot of their costs are transportation costs, which we should have no part of. I'm willing to play for supply, but I'm not going to want to pay to send it to the outskirts of Los Angeles. And it would be a trade-off. In other words, we would trade investment in their purification for a share of their water from the column.

Yeah, I think, as Councilman Eustace was saying, we've been talking about that for a long time, thinking that's probably a pretty reasonable path forward. But this is, we're all tied together. This isn't a Buckeye problem or a state of Arizona problem. It's an entire Southwest. So it's actually further than that going up in the northern basin. And it was never as clear for me as, we talked about our CAP and I think it occurred to me, California probably has some, essentially the same thing. And seeing the infrastructure that they put in, which is actually, decades before ours, is exactly a CAP. I think more pipe, but there's clues of that as you go across. You're flying across the I-10 toward California, and you can look that up and see the entire plan that they have on that side. We talked about this idea of investing over there, and somehow a clip came up where Nevada has this great idea to do exactly the same thing. We're all chasing after the same water and trying to figure it out. I think the quicker we can get to partnering with our neighboring states and then figuring out how the federal government plays a role in that, the quicker we'll be through this and have that. It's probably, like you said, no one silver bullet, but many different buckets of water we put in this big portfolio that fuels the growth for the next 50 years here in Metro Phoenix.

Yes, exactly right. And just my last week, we had a C&P tour of the Delta, as I mentioned, and a few in Sacramento, and basically went through all the different water waters that serve the area in the South. I had never quite so clearly understood that their ability to move water from Northern California to Southern is directly impacting our interests in the region. And if we can help them do that, frankly, that's helping the region, and it would be very beneficial. They've been, from the Sacramento and the San Jacinto, they've been about 10 million feet into the Gulf. Now, I was ready to cut the entire Delta free. There's a huge subsidy in fresh water that keeps those farms alive. And part of the future of water in the West is going to be there are some uses that frankly are not economic or they've been around for a while. In California, you can't say that. In Arizona, you might be able to say, hey, why don't we take that 10 million and move it south? The seawater will then come into the Delta. Unfortunately, that ends an agricultural area in California. It's got to be considered at some point because the cost we're all paying to keep that very dry is incredible. Fair enough.

Well, we could probably talk all day about water. The other Terry wants to. The other Terry needs to talk.

It's much more relevant.

They are interconnected. Right. This is a really good reminder, I think, for all of us. We appreciate the report. We appreciate our partnership with the CAT.

Just look at my last slide. That's a picture of the CAT canal right near Picacha Peak, as you probably recognize. And you can make your own conclusions whether the sun's rising or setting. So hopefully it's rising. Mayor, would you mind if I listened to the next part of your presentation? Because I'm very interested in what Buckeye's doing.

We may end up with some more questions for you.

Thank you. Thank you, sir. Mayor, members of the council. Tonight's presentation is... truncated one from what I had before, and that other one was a lot drier, but in light of what we just heard, I shortened it up, and it would be a little bit wetter, I think. But it, wah-wah, had fun. But ultimately, this is really just a short presentation to introduce you. I think we talked about where we're going with policies. In the past, it's been quite a bit of time in the past, but ultimately just to say, look, we're moving steadily forward and there's more stuff to come as it relates to policies and really, again, The purpose of establishing our policy is to memorialize our position on water. And so what we've settled on is five specific areas related to water. I'll go into them a little bit. A little bit deeper there. There are other communities that have similar policies, and then what our next step should be. So there will be several meetings beyond this after we get involved with some stakeholders and some other folks. But ultimately, I think everyone knows what's the purpose of the policy. It's to lay the ground rules. and establish the framework by which the city is going to operate. In this case, it's in relation to water. It helps provide the roadmap for us as staff when dealing with our sister agencies as well as development. The city level council believes that in those five areas, this is how Green Plains is going to be used. This is how we are going to operate. Establishing the policies is one of those levels of sophistication that we are ready to do. Update our integrated water master plan. We've adopted multi-year rates. We have planning efforts continually underway. And so the policies themselves, again, just really set the groundwork for how we operate in the water world in specific areas. And so just briefly, in the center is obviously our long-term goals and these five areas are those pillars that support our long-term goals. Strategic water planning is kind of a catch-all in a sense that it says how is the city going to prepare for the future? What are some of those steps we're going to do? Obviously after this meeting you will In the near future, you'll receive copies of these so I can get your feedback as well. But ultimately, the strategic water planning is one of those steps in there is to maintain an integrated water master plan every five years to ensure that we update our codes properly. It's a very forward-looking approach in the sense that, you know, how do we support these efforts in bringing new businesses here as well as establishing the groundwork of what is a good business with respect to its water use and what is a business that, because of its water use, we probably don't want to entertain it. So there's steps by which we support each other and bring in the best businesses for the city. Going around water acquisition and plumbing. A few, I'd say probably about 12 months ago or so, we talked briefly about the what water assets were out there. And that policy goes and defines the different types of water. You've got wet water coming from Colorado. You've got reclaimed water. You've got long-term storage grants. The value of those different assets, how those different assets would be used towards providing the service. And that policy just outlines what would be the best possible funding sources for new acquisition of water. Colorado is a tough source and tough supply right now to acquire water from, but should CAP develop a relationship and build a project of such magnitude with California or south of the border, that would be a significant, significant investment by the city. And so what would be the course by which we invest in that? Mainly everyone's going to run the bonding and that's probably what we do. Similar to what we do with Hartford Hill. But what that policy says, it says clearly use rate payers. Revenues for credit acquisition, we use bonding for, it's a match game essentially for the different water assets. Explore and what is the funding opportunity for water allocations in designated areas. This is a little bit of a newer policy that we did not have when we last spoke about this. half ways and processes and hurdles that we may have to go through. What this does is as the city grows and as we choose to designate some part of the city, there's going to be demands that will already be put in place and so how do we make sure that we are meeting those needs of the current customer base as well as putting a framework by which new customers will have water within the designated area. Water conservation policy is a very high level document that brings together ordinances that the mayor and council have already approved as well as our as well as our conservation plan. And then finally, the use of reclaimed water. That policy will identify what are those best and highest uses of reclaimed water. Obviously, we're a groundwater source utility. The goal would be recharge, recharge, recharge. But at the same time, looking at our strategic water policy, if there's an opportunity where an economic prospect would utilize reclaimed water, that has a greater and higher uh better purpose for than recharge then uh then we go that route um and so the the goal is again to establish framework and guidelines but also to be flexible similar to integrated water mass springs we want to be want to be rigid but able or not to sway so that's in other things in the best interest Some of our sister cities that have similar policies, Peoria. Peoria and Flagstaff, they call it the exact same thing because he was the same consultant, just for seven years apart. The city of Surprise is very similar because I think another guy did those. Goodyear has some similar policies as well, Scottsdale and Tucson. And so our next steps is between now and your recess, we'll get some stakeholders together, someone who really, really would be able to match the plan, home builders, landowners, developers, et cetera, get some feedback from them as it relates to the policies, incorporate feedback, come back to council in a workshop session. By then, you'll have seen the policies. We'll also have feedback from internal stakeholders as well. And sometime in the fall, we'll see council of the policies themselves. And with that, I'll pass it to Sagar.

Okay. Any questions for the council? Councilman Hustis.

Terry, you know, you say you're going to redo policy, what did you say, every five years?

The policies themselves we would establish unless there's something that needs to change. I can't remember if that would be set. Integrated water master plan, probably look at it.

I was just thinking that, you know, instead of setting a number that high, that you might need to, because the changes seem to be coming so fast. to do this and this week that we might need to set a policy or something. Maybe we do this every two years and come back and look at this more seriously or every three years. I think I know in your case, you're constantly following. So it's more of an official statement that you do it for council or for management every certain amount of years. But I'm sure you probably yourself are updating and working on this thing just about daily. So wouldn't it be a better policy to say, say, we do it for 72 years instead of making it five years?

Well, you know, we are constantly looking at the temperature of the water market, so to speak, and is it something that we, it's not as if we put something together and chill it. availability of water and supplies of water, who's in the market, who's on the market with supplies and resources available to us. So, not to say that we couldn't come over, but we want to make sure that for the most part, five years long enough time, but also short enough time that we are staying up on the pulse of what's going on in the water market. But we're constantly being medicated. We are, as Terry mentioned, the Bartlett Dam Project is something that's being talked, We're at those meetings. We're a stakeholder in that. There's quite a bit of on-river farmers that are marketing your water. And I want to be careful not to say that we're in the market for everything, but we are currently keeping an eye on everything because of what we need for water.

Thank you. Okay.

Mayor Wright, I jump in on a couple of things. Yes. That the other chair just said. The first one, I think, is very wise and very necessary, and that is that some businesses are simply not appropriate in a water-constrained environment. And Arizona Department of Economic Development, in particular, has not been very conscious of that. And so the cities are picking up the slack and basically saying, what are you going to need, and how can we provide it? And we need to know that before the other investments we make. The other part is the councilman's question, which is, I think, emphasizes there are, water assets are now, have to be divided into what's available now, what's available in a couple years, what requires our continued application and may come around in 10 years. And most water projects take a lot of time. I mean, it's everything from the financing to the environmental approvals, and right now, I'm not saying we didn't expect the Colorado shortage, but I think a lot of people ignored it because Mother Nature has taken care of us fast. The years have evened out. And now we're at a point where it just didn't happen. And so we're going to need immediate supplies, and those are going to be expensive. Brent Larson, who's a professor of water law, but basically professionalizing water, you've probably heard him speak. He made the point at a recent conference that he said that Arizona is not running out of water. We're running out of cheap water. And I think that, in a nutshell, pretty much says everything about our current situation. And it's something that we're going to have to find some very innovative ways out of. And innovative is another word for expensive.

Yeah, agreed. I know from an economic development perspective, we talked about some of those heavy water users that maybe don't have the most benefit to the city. typically shied away from like the water bottling plants or something that makes absolutely no sense in our location here. Data centers for the longest time have been heavy water users, now not so much. Now that creates a power issue which we're all trying to solve for, but I think we've done a pretty good job here in the Buckeye area. And as more technology comes on we figure out how to reuse the water and close loops and things like that. I think there's a lot of opportunity for that economic development to happen and invest in some of that infrastructure we need to develop some of those water resources that are sitting around the 80,000 acre per year that's up new. So, I think, isn't it? Yeah. That takes legislation. It does.

And that all takes time.

Right. Yeah, none of this moves fast. Thought it occurred, I meant to ask this earlier, Mother Nature has taken care of us on this. There's an El Nino now, and it feels like this, yeah, right, we're all praying for rain. It feels like monsoon has started significantly earlier than it has in the past few years anyway. And I know CAP has a bunch of really smart weather guys and future tellers and all that fun stuff. What is CAQ's thought on El Nino?

I've been asking that question for about three months. We do have some pretty smart engineers in the... Let me just say, my main fight with them is with the cloud city, which I don't think creates any additional supplies. It just changes where the rain comes. But they refuse to make any predictions about it. You've seen the news. It's all over the place. This will be the biggest one. But does that mean more rain? They're unclear about that. And if it is more rain, where is it going to fall? I'm afraid a lot of it's going to fall in California, because they're sort of the front lines of this, and not get to the Rocky Mountains, which is where we need it. But I'm hopeful. I thought yesterday it was going to rain. I gather Glendale got some rain, did you? I know the west side got a little more than we did in downtown Phoenix.

So there you go, it's beginning to break. It's smelling like rain.

It's smelling like in our windshields back there. I love that smell. The desert is just fabulous when it starts to get wet. That really is not, I guess my pitch is I hope and pray that Mother Nature builds us out this year. four or five years of really above normal in the basin to get us even close to a operating standard where we can get back to normal, because we've drawn it down that far. And so that's a reality. And I guess the fundamental thing, and your water plan here I think recognizes it, I can mention for you, is that we're in a time of long-term water resource conservation I think you would say we're going to be looking at it in a far more well look at the time from 1985 until 2022 when CAP delivered 1.5 million acre feet a year like clockwork and cities were able to put it underground when they couldn't use it all that is in the rearview mirror today I don't think we're going to see that back. We may get NIA water back. We may get some of it anyway. But that's by no means guaranteed. It would take a lot of recovery to get to that point. So our watchword has got to be what we've talked about here today, looking at a variety. Every place you can save water or find a new supply needs to be seriously considered. And then it's up to you to balance what what appears to be the most cost effective. And I think the job of the gentleman on my left here is going to be to give you a set of options. And they're not going to be cheap options, but I think they're going to be valid options that we can look at. The problem, we have been in denial, I think, for a little too long in this state. We still pegged that the CAP and others would continue to produce like they always had. And this is a new reality. and we're having a little trouble adjusting to it. For instance, California did the ag contracts 10 years ago. And that was a model, and it still could be a model, but we haven't even started the discussions in Arizona yet. And that's gotta be a win-win. The farmers have gotta be at the table, and they're not right now. Because the longer they wait, they figure, well, it's gonna get more and more intense, so why would we wanna strike a deal when the price might go up? But as mentioned, there's some, efforts underway now where I think there are some willing sellers there that for the right of ice are willing to talk and in the short term let me just emphasize one asset that we need to focus on and that is anybody who's got Colorado River rights because that doesn't require a new purification it doesn't require any hardware that water can be moved into the CAP canal from the river and then delivered to customers upstream And that's a very important advantage in the short term.

Easy. I know we've talked, there are people that approach it all the time with ideas about training water from the Midwest. Somebody was going to drag an iceberg down off California's coast and let that melt.

Are there some of the... Well, if I were you, I wouldn't be investing in any icebergs.

No, no, no.

I'm sure you're not. The one that intrigues me, let me just throw it out, because nothing should be... Without careful examination, I don't think any idea, however crazy it may seem. The one that takes the water out of the air, apparently, has been pretty well disproven. That's not going to produce any volume. But Reclamation, many years ago, did a study of, and it's back to the Columbia Willamette, there's a million acre feet No, 100 millimetre feet that goes into the Sound every year. Now that's not anybody's, except maybe the sea lions and the salmon. That's not water that has any claim on it. And they did a study, apparently the Pacific Shelf runs all the way down to Bon California. And it has only one major interruption, and it's the one I was talking about where the California Delta interrupts the shelf and there's a canyon that would have to be bridged. But the thing I love about that is, wow, first there's 100 million acre feet coming in every year that nobody's claiming. Second, it's pure, it's fresh water. And it doesn't involve any interstate issues. If it's feasible from an engineering perspective, maybe that's something that ought to be looked at. Because then California could take some of that water, and then that would relieve the pressure on the Colorado River. It's probably way out of the frame of reality. And I throw it out only for your amusement. But it's the kind of thing that I think we need to talk about.

Because Arizona's always had a long view on water futures.

The Salt River Project was the first one. CAP was the second one. What's our third? And I think we need to think not only what are we going to do to sway our thirst today, but what do we do 15, 20 years from now? Hopefully we've kept the growth going, but we need to have some new more permanent supplies.

Yeah. Great. Well, thank you for coming and sharing with us. We appreciate that. Terry, thank you also. Terry Lowe, thank you also for your presentation. Okay. Thank you, Mayor. Thank you, council members. We appreciate your time. Item number three is, with nothing else on the agenda,