Public Amenities Committee - Regular Meeting

Welcome back to this biweekly meeting of the South Platte River Committee of Denver City Council. Join us for the discussion as the South Platte River Committee starts now.

Okay, I usually wait till it focuses on the chair, but I'm assuming we're being heard on Channel 8 now. Welcome everyone to the Wednesday, June 10, 2026 meeting of the Denver City Council's South Platte River Committee. I am Councilman Kevin Flynn. I represent Council District 2, which borders part of the Platte River. And we have one briefing today, no action items, and what item on consent that will go forward at the end of the meeting. Let's have introductions from folks at the table. I don't see anybody online yet, but I'll keep checking. Let me start to my left.

Thank you, committee chair. Committee chair? Vice chair. Committee chair. Vice chair. Committee vice chair. Interim chair. General Watson, I'm honored to serve the residents of Define District 9.

Laura Alvidrez with Lucky District 7.

Good afternoon. Chris Hines, Denver's Perfect Ten.

Thank you. And I understand we have been joined by another member. If you'd like to make an introduction.

Good afternoon. Diana Romero-Campbell, Southeast Denver, District 4.

Welcome, thank you. Let's just move right into the briefing, and we have the DDPHE, Department of Public Health and Environment briefing on our water quality program. John, introduce yourself and take it away.

Yeah, thank you. My name is John Novick. I'm a senior environmental programs administrator with the Department of Public Health and Environment's Environmental Quality Division, and I'm here to talk to you about our water quality programs. I'd like to start off by thanking the committee for inviting me here and to tell you about the work that we do and give you a chance to learn a little bit more about what we know about water quality in our streams and lakes. So, DDPHE's water quality programs cover a number of topics. The main one is water quality monitoring. I'll spend most of my time talking about that work that we do there in this presentation, but I wanted to give you a little bit of an overview of some of the other work that we do. Our water quality program has been collecting surface water and sediment samples from the streams and lakes in Denver since the 1960s. The program was established after the South Platte flooded in 1965, and it was initially intended to identify and remove illicit discharges from the storm sewer system. But over the years it's evolved based on changes to technology needs and the development of best practices and I'll get more into that as we move through the presentation. We're also responsible for the city's mosquito control program so if you've seen information from our comms office or articles for for newsletters that comes that information and those come from our our staff. We also review capital infrastructure and development projects for potential impacts to water quality and We respond to emergencies and concerns that relate to either water quality or mosquitoes. We have an education and outreach program and we work on city policy as well as act as stakeholders for the city on state and federal policy issues. We work with a long list of partners, collaborators, and customers, including many other city agencies, and hopefully that'll come out in this presentation. We also work with watershed groups, nonprofits, universities, and community colleges. from manufacturers and state and other local and federal government agencies. So a lot of partners. And those partners include the South Platte River Urban Waters Partnership, who you heard from, I believe, back in March. So our water quality monitoring programs cover a lot of ground. We sample the streams, many of the streams and lakes in Denver. We also look at algae in city lakes. We look at aquatic insects. Both of those help us understand water quality and habitat for aquatic organisms a little better. We work with DOTI's Division of Green Infrastructure to study their green infrastructure for stormwater facilities to help demonstrate the effectiveness of those facilities as well as to help them improve designs for future facilities. So the work that the Water Quality Program does is important to the Department of Public Health and Environment's mission of advancing health equity and outcomes. There's evidence showing that environmental determinants like water quality have a greater influence on overall health outcomes than genetics or healthcare access alone. Having access to clean water through healthy streams and lakes can significantly improve health equity by ensuring communities, especially socially and economically disadvantaged communities, benefit from safe environments. Safe, free, accessible open spaces offer opportunities for recreation, physical activity, and stress reduction, which are tied to improved mental and physical health. Having access to these spaces also strengthens community engagement, builds local stewardship, and fosters stronger social bonds. Community engagement conducted during development of DPHE's community health assessment revealed that residents rank a clean environment such as air and water quality highly both for personal and community well-being. That input led the community health assessment to identify water quality as an upstream factor that shapes health outcomes in Denver. Water quality in the city streams and lakes is specifically tied to two of DPHE's strategic priorities, which are environmental health and justice, and systemic racism, because it supports improved outcomes for mental and physical health. So one of the Water Quality Program's main focuses is to prevent public health exposure to water and vector-borne diseases. So we know on the left side of the slide, we know that there are all these pollutant sources present. And those pollutant sources present public health risks through different pathways. exposure to chemical and microbial contamination that may be in the water, harmful algal blooms, as well as vector-borne diseases. Some of the key interventions that we use include surveillance for mosquitoes in particular and enhanced water quality monitoring efforts. We also post public advisories when we know that there's an issue that's occurring, and we conduct public education and outreach to help the public understand what some of the issues that our waterways face. So overall, our water quality monitoring program goals, I've already touched on evaluation of health risks at sites. In particular, we focus on sites that have active recreation, so that would be places like Confluence Park or Berkeley or Sloan's Lakes. We're looking to understand long-term trends in water quality. This helps the city to get ahead of compliance issues and allows us to work collaboratively on efforts that can prevent future enforcement by the state. We also assess effectiveness of interventions to improve and protect water quality. I mentioned that we work with the Division of Green Infrastructure to assess the effectiveness of their facilities. We're also working with the water project team to assess the impacts of changes to Weir Gulch and future changes to South Platte River on overall water quality, as well as aquatic habitat in those streams. We're also working actively to increase awareness of public health issues and water quality issues. And we try to get the word out to folks through various means about actions that they can take to protect water quality. And I'll touch a little bit more on that at the end of the presentation. This map shows our stream sampling network. As you can see from looking at the slide, it's pretty heavily focused on South Platte River, Cherry Creek, and Bear Creek. It's a little hard to tell from this slide, but we also sample most of the small tributaries that come into the South Platte River and Cherry Creek. We're also sampling between 14 and 16 lakes in city parks around the city, as well as we do some sampling in some of the mountain parks. Many of these sites we've been sampling for 20 years or longer, so we have a really long period of record that allows us to analyze the data that we have in really interesting and meaningful ways that tell a really compelling story about what's going on with water quality in our streams and lakes. So I want to talk a little bit about pollutant sources because I think there's some common misconceptions in this space. When you talk about pollution in a river, most people think, oh yeah, it's from industrial sources, wastewater treatment plants, and other big dischargers. But the reality is that All of those dischargers are required to have discharge permits from the state of Colorado. Their discharge permits contain requirements for what they are allowed to dump into the rivers and lakes, and it also provides specific activities that they have to take to try and keep their discharges down below those levels. So that's not to say that there are no pollutants coming from those discharges. They are just limited and not as significant as most people think. Stormwater, on the other hand, is a different story. This is a graphic from the city of Wilmington, North Carolina. I really like it because it does a really great job of showing what happens to stormwater runoff when it rains. Rainfall lands on roofs of buildings, on people's yards and parks and other vegetated areas. It also hits people's driveways and streets. And as it moves across those areas, it picks up all kinds of pollutants. It encounters pet waste, fertilizers. If your car is leaking motor oil or other fluids, it picks up all of that. any trash or sediment that's in the street, it all gets washed away and it goes to a storm drain and then directly into the receiving stream or lake. That generally happens without any treatment at all. So any pollution that's picked up by stormwater runoff goes directly into a surface water body. Division of Green Infrastructure, they are currently building facilities throughout the city to try and treat some of that water. However, there's still a lot of ground that hasn't been, where they haven't installed their facilities. So there's a lot of work to be done in that space. Okay, now I want to kind of change tracks and talk a little bit about what we do with the data that we collect. So this is actually a visual representation of a water quality index that we have created. Each slice of the pie chart reflects a suite of pollutants with standards that are intended to be protective of a specific use of water in a stream or lake. We create a score for each of these uses, looking at each pollutant in that suite. The score is based on how many times the stream exceeds water quality standards and by how much it exceeds them. We then color code it and use it to build this pie chart. This is an example from the South Platte River. Just to help you understand what you're looking at here, we determine a stream is safe by looking at the presence of human pathogens in the water. We also look at levels of metals which bioaccumulate in fish to see if the water is safe for fishing. So in this example, this chart is telling us that the South Platte River is not safe for direct contact due to high levels of human pathogens, but that it is safe for fishing because metals levels that accumulate in fish are low. So we've created these charts for most of the streams in Denver, and what they reveal is that with the exception of E. coli, water quality in Denver streams is generally pretty good, especially considering that they're streams in an urban setting. This is another example of what we do with the data that we collect. Let me orient you to this graph a little bit. This is a chart that shows phosphorus levels in the South Platte River at Spear Boulevard. It represents about represents about 10 years of data collected monthly. If you look at the lower axis, you'll see that the data are broken down by month. The blue line shows the average flow in the South Platte River. for each month. The boxes show kind of the spread of phosphorus levels in the water, and then the blue points and the gray line that join them are the average phosphorus level in the river. So if you look closely at this chart, the story that it's telling you is that at high flows, phosphorus levels are very low. But at lower flows, they are higher. We see this type of relationship with many of the pollutants that we sample for. And we're able to use this information to infer what might happen to water quality during a drought. Councilman Flynn, I know when Sam was here presenting for the South Platte River Urban Waters Partnership, you had asked some questions about water quality and drought. So just to give you kind of an idea of what could potentially happen if the drought that we have that we have now continues. In streams, the drought's likely to reduce in stream flows, which will result in higher in stream temperatures and pollutant levels. That's bad for both recreation and aquatic life. The impact on lakes is potentially even greater. We know there's going to be less water in the lakes. We're already seeing this in some of the lakes in the city. That's especially true in ditches that are fed by, sorry, lakes that are fed by ditches. Lower water levels translate to higher water temperatures and increased levels of nitrogen and phosphorus. These are nutrients that algae use to grow. So those factors mean that we can expect more algae, including harmful algal blooms, and there's a greater potential for fish die-offs later in the year. I know that we have one lake already that's dry, Houston Lake, And there's the potential that if we don't get more moisture, we may see more city parks, the lakes and more city parks dry up. For mosquitoes, I bring mosquitoes in just because we get a lot of calls from the public about concerns. We also communicate sometimes with council members offices about you know, messaging and helping to help the communities. It's hard to say what's gonna happen with drought. If we do have extended periods of dry weather, it could reduce mosquito activity, but if there's a moisture followed by hot weather, kind of like what we're seeing right now, it could be a challenging year for both nuisance and disease-bearing mosquitoes. Only time will tell on that. Okay, so I want to talk a little bit about what the city is doing to address some of the more common pollutants we see in our streams and lakes. I'm highlighting here E. coli, nitrogen and phosphorus, sediment and trash. Those are by far the pollutants that we see in our waterways that are most problematic. In fact, The city's stormwater discharge permit includes requirements to address most of these pollutants. I do want to make a point that all of these pollutants are commonly found in urban streams, and they're present in Denver streams at levels that are similar to what most other cities see. So we're no worse or better than most cities in the country. Most of the other pollutants that we sample for, they're either not present or they're present at levels that are low enough to not be of concern to the public or to the health of aquatic organisms. So a lot of focus is on these pollutants. I'm going to save you the misery of having me read everything out here, but there are a few takeaways that I want you to get from this slide. There's a lot of work. being done by the city to try and address water quality problems in our streams and lakes. And it's not all falling on DOTI. There are other city agencies that are actively engaged. Parks is one in particular. DPHE also works, and we also work with other stakeholders, such as the Mile High Flood District. We work with a number of nonprofits that are active in the space. And our local wastewater treatment plants, including Metro Water Recovery and South Platte Renew, do a lot to try and prevent degradation of water quality due to the discharges coming out of their plants. These efforts have generally yielded really positive results. If you were to go back and look at water quality 15, 20 years ago, you'd see that in many cases it's vastly improved, but we still have a lot of work to do. So most of what the water quality program does is focused on monitoring and assessment and providing other agencies with information that they can use to design or improve designs for improvements that they're making. um that doesn't mean that we're not trying to innovate and get better data and do more a couple of things that we have going on right now we are installing continuous monitoring stations at a few locations around the city we have two of these in place right now One is in Bear Creek Park, the swing hole down there that a lot of people like to use. There's also one up by the CSU Spur campus. I think that's a great opportunity to partner with the experts up at CSU on education and outreach efforts. And next week we will be installing a station at Confluence Park. So another spot where there's a lot of people using the water there. We're also working on automating our data analysis and reporting so we can get information out to the public in a quicker manner so that they can make better decisions. And that is also partly what these continuous monitoring stations are about. We will eventually develop public-facing dashboards that people can look at. if they are thinking about going and getting in the water and they can get a sense for what water quality conditions are and use that information to make hopefully smart decisions about whether they go down to Confluence Park or go to their rec center and get in a pool. Okay, lastly, I wanted to talk about some of the communication strategies that we use. We do issue a seasonal weekly water quality email. This email goes out. It's primarily internal. to city staff like park rangers, parks adaptive, and recreational programs. And we also send it out to some nonprofits that bring kids down to the water. The email generally, we start sending it out in late April and run it through October. Generally, that's what we consider the recreational season. And if any of you are interested in getting on the mailing list that goes out to, just reach out to me and let me know and we can get you subscribed to it. We also do community messaging through social media, through our webpage, and we also create short newsletter items that folks can insert into their newsletters. I know some of the council people have used those over the years. We issue annual reports, which are available on our website, and we also go to quite a few community events. We're up at CSU Hydro building once a month. We're getting ready to start going to Denver Animal Protection, the shelter down there at Central Platte Campus. We've been to, we usually go to the Greenway Foundations Cross Currents event every year. And we try to get out to other parts of the city when there are events that make sense for us to attend. So that's all I have for you. If anyone has questions, I'm more than happy to try and answer. Thank you, John.

That's not all we have for you. We have a couple people in the queue. Let me start with Councilwoman Alvidrez.

Thank you so much. Thank you for all the great information on the work that you all are doing at DDPHE. It's great to hear. One of the things that I am curious about is just what are we going to do when and if mosquitoes infected with things like West Nile virus, which is Coming to Arizona happens here in Denver.

Oh, well, we do have West now virus here.

Okay.

Um, we, um, so we try to proactively keep mosquito populations down by, um, we use, uh, so it's actually a. treatment that kills the mosquito larvae before they become adults. We're also working with DDPHE's epidemiology and disease intervention teams to try and get a handle on early warning signs, whether it's cases that occur in Denver. And we're looking for... Crows and ravens and birds that are in that similar family are early indicators and we're looking at ways that we could leverage reports of sick or dying birds to help us pinpoint in neighborhoods where there might be problems with West Nile. We would use that information to target educational resources to let people know, you know, Empty out any standing water around your house. Use bug spray or cover up. Don't go out at dusk and dawn. So we're trying to target our messaging into neighborhoods where there's a problem to reduce the number of cases that could potentially occur.

Okay, and then the larvae side, is there an environmental impact to that? And what does that process?

Yeah, no, it's actually a bacteria that attacks the guts. Yeah. And so it is, it's harmless. It's widely used across the US. So we have, we have staff as well as a contractor that goes out weekly and does surveillance in areas that we know there's mosquito habitat. They will take a little dipper out there and basically look to see if there are any larvae in the water. And if there are, they'll do a treatment right then.

Great. Awesome. Well, I'm glad you guys are taking care of us in that way. Another question I have, you talked about a lot of the contaminants. What I didn't see was testing for PFAS, microplastics, and pharmaceuticals. Are those part of that?

No, those are not part of our routine sampling. The PFAS It's very expensive, and right now, we don't feel like there's a need. I hate to say it this way, but if we look for it, we're probably gonna find it. The microplastics is kind of a new and emerging field. We worked with a doctoral student at School of Mines last summer, and earlier this summer, she was out sampling South Platte. at several locations collecting microplastic samples and we'll learn more about what she found hopefully soon. And so the pharmaceuticals and personal care products, that's another big area of concern. We worked with EPA several years ago. They did some assessments. And I believe they found kind of the typical things you would expect to find, antidepressants, some illicit drugs, caffeine, as well as some other things. There's not really a lot of movement towards addressing that. The general consensus has been that So most of this is coming from wastewater, so that goes through a wastewater treatment plant. And if wastewater treatment plants are able to hold that water long enough, it does a pretty good job of treating for those. Yeah. So that was one of those things that was kind of a, we really need to understand this. And there were a lot of resources put into it. And then the next thing came up and then PFAS and microplastics. So people's focus has really shifted over the years.

Is there a reason why not PFAS? I know it's a carcinogen. I know it has an impact. Is it seen as less of a danger or what is the reason? Well, I mean, obviously, cost, you mentioned.

Yeah, I mean, cost is a big one. Other than that, I don't think we really have a good reason. I mean, it's very much the case that if you look for stuff like that and find it, you put yourself at risk. of having to do something about it. And I'm not that knowledgeable about PFAS. There are other folks who I work with who are. But my sense is it could be a very expensive

Proposition to deal with and there are there are areas where the city is focusing on PFAS primarily in groundwater But the surface water hasn't been a specific area of focus My last question is just appreciate that you're testing the water so often and I'm curious why it's an internal Mailer and why we don't have any kind of public facing dashboard that's showing what these results

Yeah, so the internal email is primarily because the way it's presented is not user-friendly, and we're trying to get the information to people who really know what it means and can take specific actions. We are working on a public-facing dashboard. We've had one in the past. that we took down because there were some problems with it. The new dashboard, I don't want to promise when it's going to be ready, but it's pretty close. And when it's ready, that'll go up on our website.

Great. I hope it'll be ready sooner than later. I appreciate it. I know the public would love to see the work that you're doing. Thank you so much. Thank you, Committee Chair.

Thank you. Next up is Councilman Watson.

Thank you, Committee Chair. Thank you once again for the presentation. 1st, of all, most curious on the plot to Park Hill stormwater process. You described the impact of stormwater going directly into the plot. Can you share a little bit of from the any. Assessment, or even initial review of the impacts of that enhanced stormwater drainage on East side. Yeah, that you saw from that or any improvements what was coming into the store?

Yeah, so so we're actually not monitoring that. It's considered to be part of the stormwater drainage system and the, the city's stormwater folks, Brad Cox and Dottie would probably be able to answer that question better. I will say that. I mean, you daylighted city daylight and, um, a storm sort of pipe and turned it into a stream. And so, you know, that right there is a vast improvement. Um, I will. Point to Westerly Creek over in the Central Park neighborhood is kind of a analogy. Um, the, the water quality there, um, since they daylighted, um. Westerly Creek has made the improvements to the stream. It's gotten vastly better in the past 15 to 20 years.

So, anecdotally, some of this stuff you're seeing from. The improvements the city is made up, obviously, that's stormwater and Dottie and other folks are leading that not not your team, but yeah, I totally you're seeing an improvement.

Yeah. And there is a. I mean, there's a lot of vegetation there which provides treatments. There's also, for low flows, there's DOTI. I don't know if it's still functional, but they had installed an ultraviolet light system that was intended to treat for E. coli. And I know when it was working, it was very effective. But like I said, I don't know if it's still functional. Again, Brad with Donnie can answer those questions.

I think my second question, you're going to direct me to those folks, but I'll put it on the record a little bit just so folks know the good work that the city as a whole, maybe specifically your department, but the city as a whole are working on. In five points, we've been engaging with the SWPPP implementation of green infrastructure project. Are you familiar with that project and is your team engaged in that as well?

Yeah, I don't know if we are specifically monitoring sites in the city sites. Yeah, we are looking to. I apologize for this. They've gone from, you know. Calling facilities stormwater planters to level of green, you know, and I get a little confused in their terminology, but we are monitoring many of those facilities. Um, uh, we, uh, for sure they've improved, um, uh, neighborhood flooding. We've got. Plenty of evidence showing that benefit the water quality piece is a little bit more complicated, but specifically for those cities that they've installed in 5 points. I don't know what we're doing there. I think those are relatively new. We are planning our. Our work for this year for the green infrastructure monitoring program, and I'm sure we could get somebody out there to look at those facilities.

That'll be awesome. My team will just do a reminder on that. Um, maybe in the 4th quarter or something like that. I was also curious you brought up. Colorado State University, Hydro Building, and some of the work you're doing in Globeville. Can you share a little bit specifically what body of water you all are collaborating with out there, and if it's just simply an overarching collaboration with CSU and the good work that they're doing?

Yeah, well, it's kind of an overarching collaboration with them. We're working on many different topics, but the, let me go back to that slide. This, the picture that's kind of got the purple border around it, that's actually one of our continuous monitoring stations. And behind the truck, you can see a building there. That's actually the hydro building. Okay, so this is in the South Platte River right at the Hydro Building.

All right, those are my questions.

Thank you, Councilman. I have a couple. John, maybe to start with on the map of the monitoring stations. The one at the very east end of Bear Creek looks to me like it's at the outfall, the mouth of Bear Creek into the Platte, which is actually in the city of Sheridan. So that leads me to wonder, do we have cooperative agreements with surrounding jurisdictions that border the river? And that would be a Denver monitor?

Yeah, so these are just grab samples. I think pretty much anybody can go into the river and collect samples, but we do coordinate our monitoring efforts with a group called the South Platte Coalition for Urban River Evaluation. That's a number of wastewater treatment plants, municipalities, up and down the river throughout the watershed. And the Eagle Woods is just downstream from there. where Sheridan's is. Yeah, Englewood has some sites down there. The South Labrador does a lot of their work for them. Sheridan doesn't really have the resources to do this type of work. So we... There's a couple of reasons we have a site there. The first one is to kind of get a better feel for what's happening after the Bear Creek leaves Denver. But also, it's an important data point because it helps us to understand what Bear Creek's potential impact on the South High River is.

So these are just location. We have nothing permanent there. That's just where we will go to take a sample.

The only sites where we have permanent installations are the... Are those three? Those three, yeah.

Okay, so that leads me to ask, do... You say Sheridan doesn't really have the resources. Does Englewood, does Littleton, does Adams County and their jurisdictions through which the plat flows, do they monitor what we're sending downstream? Yeah. And are we all working together?

Yes. So that's South Platte Cure is what they call themselves. So there's a coordinated effort between basically communities starting at Chatfield Dam going All the way down to Brighton, out into Aurora, and everybody samples the same suite of analytes, and they sample on the same days of the month. And share the data. Yeah, and they share the data, and it's actually... Really really interesting to see when they put that data together what happens to water quality and in the streams in the in the metro area as they travel through the urbanized parts of the area.

Thank you for that. And my other question is related to drought, and you did address it in the presentation. But I'm wondering if we see any, with the lack of rainfall and significant runoff, I'm wondering what the impact is on E. coli levels, because we don't have the dog poop and other things flowing into the wastewater. system as we used to. So in some ways, the lack of rain falling on people's lawns where their dogs do their business, that means it's not getting into the creek. I would rather it be raining, but I'm just wondering if there's an offset there.

Yeah, that's a really good question. E. coli is a really challenging pollutant to deal with. Most pollutants that we're looking at, they're chemicals. You add some to the water and it gets worse. You take it away, it gets better. With E. coli, since it's a living organism, it can kind of hunker down in sediment in the streams and lakes. and wait for the right conditions for it to grow. Warmer water is definitely one of those. So it's kind of a, you know, six of one, half a dozen of the other. When we have lower flows, there's less E. coli coming in, but the E. coli that's already there, the conditions are more favorable. So I don't think we'll see Much in the way of improvements. In fact, it's entirely possible. It could be worse here for equal. And here we have more water.

Sounds like a trailer for a horror movie.

Yeah, I mean, it is a very common issue in most urban areas. Yeah. And, you know, once it's there, it's really, really hard to get rid of it.

I know that it's been a problem in Bear Creek, and I know that Bear Creek has been posted. I don't know if it's currently posted, but we've asked people not to let their children wade in the creek. And are those signs still there?

So we have the—I don't have a picture of one of our signs, but we do have those signs that are— there's one by the picnic shelter in Bear Creek Park that kind of says— don't swim. It's also installed way too high for most people to see anyway. The only other time we would put a posting on a creek would be if there was a spill that affected water quality. In general, The guidance that we provide is, is it's just those educational signs. And the reason for that is because if somebody wants to get in, we can't really enforce. There's nothing we can do. The city's park rangers and the police are not going to go out there and haul people out of the water. It's just not a good use of their limited amount of time.

Thank you.

Any other questions, folks? I just was going to say, I didn't see Shane right when we first started. So Compliance Colorado and all the nonprofits that provide kind of additional support to the good work you're doing, I just want to say thanks to you all for the work that you do.

Yeah, and I'd like to echo that. We've got a lot of great partnerships with our local nonprofits, and most of them are doing really great work that really complements what we're doing.

Thank you. With no other questions and only one consent item going forward without objection, we'll send that to the floor. And thank you, John, for being here.