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.

Hello, everyone. Welcome to the South Platte Committee. I'm Councilwoman Jamie Torres. I represent West Denver District 3. Thank you for joining us. We'll start with introductions in the room. I'll start to my right.

Good afternoon, Madam Chair.

Chris Hines, Denver City Council, District 10.

Good afternoon, Flora Alvarez, Lucky District 7. And do we have anyone online? Perfect.

Yes, Madam Chair, Kevin Flynn, Southwest Denver's District 2. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you so much. And we will turn it over to our presentation today, if you wouldn't mind introducing yourselves.

Thank you, Council Chair Torres. I'm Elena McWhorter. I'm DOTI's legislative liaison, joined by my colleague Jennifer Williams, who will introduce herself and really drive our presentation today. We are here to provide an update on our wastewater enterprise fund and how the department invests in sanitary and stormwater infrastructure.

So Jennifer, go ahead and take it away. Hi, guys. I'm Jennifer Williams. I'm an engineer at Dottie. I think I talk to a lot of you guys more about bridges, but this is actually my one true love, Sanitary Sewer. I'll also be talking about Storm, but just wanted you guys to know. First time that's ever been said. I hear that a lot. But I'm very excited about that, very excited to be here. Thank you for inviting us to present, and I'm so excited to share a little bit about what I love. So I'm going to give an overview of the Enterprise Fund. I'm going to talk about three of our main investment areas where we spend a lot of our dollars, and then kind of round things out with a little bit of the budget and opportunities, what we see the future looking like. And you'll see on the right the Montbello Channels project that we just completed. It's a fabulous project that I'm going to kind of be weaving through the presentation as well. So I'll talk about that more as we walk along. So the Enterprise Fund was established in 1966. And you can see the purpose has been defined for us in the Denver Revised Municipal Code, and it's to protect, preserve, and promote the health and safety and welfare of our residents. And that's through to prevent water and stream pollution. And so how do we do that within DOTI? We do that by managing storm water, maintaining our system, by keeping our waterways clean and resilient, and by implementing green infrastructure strategies. And we also do it through our safe sanitary management. So our purpose and our mission is pretty well defined from the DRMC, but we truly believe that when we have a system that works, a storm system, a sanitary system that works, then Denver's a better place. Denver will be more vibrant. So I'm gonna kind of talk to the right about our goals, what we think is important, and how this enterprise fund really makes life better. So our key goals are to reduce flood risk to property. We do that again by keeping our system well maintained. We do that by improving our infrastructure. And we do that by keeping our waterways clean. We protect and improve our water quality. And again, that's both on the storm side and the sanitary side, right? Anything, any sort of contaminants in our storm or, you know, the sanitary... collection system itself is protecting our residents as well. So by doing that, we are protecting our residents and we are creating resilient, vibrant infrastructure on both our waterway side, our storm infrastructure side, our green infrastructure, all of these components. All together, what they do is just really improve our quality of life as residents. Some of it is unseen, some of it's under our roads and our alleys. It's not always the most glamorous stuff, but as I mentioned, definitely my passion. And it spurs economic vitality. Like in the example of our waterway project, not only is it a space for water, but it's a space for people too. So these projects often have a lot of co-benefits that really make our city better. We are part of the urban water cycle, right? We're storm and sanitary. And so as part of that, we were really one of the drivers behind the original One Water Plan that was completed in 2021. We take the overarching goals from the plan and we incorporate them into what we do, into our vision. And again, you're gonna see kind of throughout the presentation how these goals drive what we do. So we promote institutional collaboration. You're gonna hear me talk about Mile High Flood District, like our Uvalde Channel Project, Montbello Channel Project, it was with Mile High Flood District. We do a lot of work with Metro Water Recovery, which I'm going to be talking about later. We partner with other internal agencies with Parks and Rec to create just projects that meet the second goal, which is multi-benefit projects. We foster community support at all levels. We work with CPD and neighborhood planning initiatives to ensure that they're looking at storm and sanitary. We look at kind of that basin level, look, for instance, in Globeville and Upper Montclair, we've done education and outreach, like very specific targeted outreach to help community understand and look for improvement opportunities. And then we also do project level work where we're working with the community as well as if there is emergencies, right? Like if there is a sanitary sewer backup or if there is a small localized drainage issue, we also work with the community in those spaces as well. So we're kind of working through all of the spaces to reach our community. We increase resilience and climate change preparedness. Again, these are the projects that we do. And finally, goal number five is kind of my favorite, but it's implementing integrated water management solutions. And that's kind of that bigger picture of when we start coordinating with Denver Water with Metro Water Recovery to kind of look at holistically the urban water cycle. And gold standards are things like the lead line reduction that Denver Water is recently incorporated, or heat recovery. Great examples of that next level integrated collaboration. So, as I mentioned, we are part of the urban water cycle. So, which part is the enterprise fund specifically? So we are storm water system, which is the series of inlets and pipes that collect our runoff from rain events or from snow events. And that is going to go directly into our South river. We are, which also includes our waterways. The sanitary system is that system that's collecting, you know, the toilets, sinks, those types of things, faucets, laundry, all those types of things. It's collecting that infrastructure or the runoff and that is going to go to our wastewater treatment plant. and where the water is going to be cleaned, resources are going to be recovered, and then it will be returned to the South Platte River. So, and I'm going to be talking a little bit about, in a couple slides, about the difference between DOTI and our roles and responsibilities and Metro Water Recovery and their roles and responsibilities. So, just to clarify, because I know a lot of my neighbors don't even really understand the difference between what we do versus what they do. Oh, and when I talk about that too, I want everyone to keep in mind on the right hand side are assets. So we have 1,000 miles of pipe that we're maintaining and keeping track of. We have 50 miles of waterway. We also, when we think about sanitary, we do own and operate a huge system ourselves. So we have 1,500 miles of pipe and 35,000 manholes and seven lift stations. So that's kind of our Dottie responsibility. You can also see in the middle there all of our other core functions. We do a lot. We are doing the plan design and implementation of projects. Those are the things that you see in your neighborhoods, but we're also doing a lot of operations and maintenance as well and support for development services when folks are redeveloping their parcels. So a great opportunity to talk again about something that maybe we don't often talk about, which is the operations and maintenance component of the Wastewater Enterprise Fund and how important that is. Our city, our system is old, right? We're over 100 years old. So that alone in and of itself is hard to keep moving, keep going, right? We have to maintain it. So we have folks boots on the ground every day working on the system to clean it, to CCTV it to make sure it's working properly, to work before storms to get out there and clean spaces that we know are problems, to get during storms to protect, you know, clean out inlets if they have to, to get their after storms to do emergency response. Sanitary, same thing. On a day-to-day basis, we're responding to folks having issues in their homes. We're the first call they make, so we have to go out and see what the issue is. And a lot of times it's a home issue, but we're there to support them. We're doing street sweeping, maintaining our system, right? Because the best line of defense we can do is if we want to keep stuff out of our rivers and out of our wastewater treatment plant, we keep it out of our systems, right? So when we're thinking about all the different angles, we're trying to keep it out so we don't have to worry about cleaning it later. So this is gonna keep us in good standing with the federal government and it's just super important what they do and I can't say enough about the team. There is a great group of guys and gals who do this work on a daily basis. And probably don't get enough of the credit, right? Secondly, I wanted to kind of talk a little bit more detail about much our water recovery and kind of the roles and responsibility. So I think about your house or our business or whatever, that sanitary flow is gonna likely go into an alley, it's gonna go into progressively larger pipes. And all those pipes that are serving our Denver residents, those are DOTI's responsibility. So we're operating, maintaining them, making sure that they keep working. So then there's going to be a point where maybe our flow combines with Aurora or another community, a local nearby jurisdiction. And then at that point, it becomes Metro Water Recovery's responsibility. So then they take over and they are responsible from that point on, getting it to the two wastewater treatment plants and then cleaning the water and recovering resources. So we at DOTI are a connector to Metro Water Recovery. So, you know, just an Important point of clarification, but we're a great partner. We're always working with them. And of course, it's all the same flow and water. On the right hand side, you will see the billings for the last decade or so of what we've been billed by Metro Water Recovery. And so next year, we will be paying just shy of $80 million for our sanitary services. We are billed based on flow and loading, so the quantity of water that goes there, and then what's the constituents within the water. And the last big thing that I wanna talk about, and this is some of the stuff that we talked about in the 2026 work plan, the DOTI work plan, but we also do a large amount of capital investment to improve our system. So that's the capital maintenance, and that's all of the other large infrastructure projects that we do as well. We have kind of split into three buckets here. We have our storm, our sanitary and our green infrastructure. So what are the types of things we typically do on any given year? We're doing that master planning work and all the different categories. We're looking at storm nuisance. And so that's, like perhaps we get a drainage complaint, right? We had a big storm event, we're looking at the drainage complaint, looking at the system, seeing if there's a small bandaid fix, maybe it's regrading an alley, maybe it's adding an inlet. Maybe the pipes are too big and we need a bigger system. So looking at those things to figure out if there's a small fix or if we can do all the way to a large fix. And that large fix kind of gets in that storm pipe cap capacity upsizing category where we're doing bigger improvements. And one thing to consider on the storm side of things is that we're building from downstream to upstream. So sometimes it can seem like a small issue, but you need that full system to really solve the problem. A seemingly small issue could have a really large dollar amount associated with it. On the sanitary side of things, it's a little bit cleaner, maybe that's why I love it so much, but you gotta keep it in the pipe, right? There's no other option. So maintaining our sanitary system, keeping it up to date, improving our lift stations, these are just have-to-haves. This is non-negotiable, right? And finally, green infrastructure. We're looking for opportunities to keep growing that program, keep creating and implementing resilient infrastructure. Gray is always gonna be a part of the solution. There's always gonna be times where we need pipes, but looking for opportunities to make it be resilient and have less costs over the long period of the project and life cycle, things we're always thinking about. This again, 2026 capital projects. So these are the projects that we're working on this year. They are storm and waterway projects. Weir Gulch is a great project. It's starting to help. We've got several hundred folks in the floodplain there. And it's going to be part of one of several phases that are going to help mitigate flood risk. We've got our Globeville Levee and 48th Avenue Greenway. A great example of, you know, starting at the outfall, working upstream to get to issues. Sanitary, we've got Tower Road Rehabilitation, an old pipe that was originally constructed as part of the airport project that is in need of some assistance. And just citywide lining. It's just a cheap way. We're not digging up the pipes. We're just lining the pipes to give them structural and to keep the sanitary in and everything else out, which is always great. Finally, green infrastructure, we're continuing to work on those. There is small implementation of green infrastructure, the SWIFT implementation. You can see an example there of one that was recently done taking some turf grass and replacing it with something better. So just really exciting projects that the team is working on that are making a big difference for our residents. So we work from a six-year capital plan. Like I mentioned, a lot of these projects have multiple phases, take a big dollar value. So we don't have enough money to do them in one year or in one tranche. So we're trying to make our way strategically up to the issues. We're currently in year five of our six-year plan, and any subsequent plan, we're kind of working on it right now, but we would be continuing to do what we do now, which is invest in our capital maintenance, keep our system moving and safe. Regulatory compliance of sanitary lift stations is gonna be huge. There's gonna be a lot around that. A lot of our lift stations are just at the end of their life, and they need replaced, so we're working on that. completing ongoing storm drainage projects, and then leveraging partnership opportunities where we can with Mile High Flood District with other partners as well.

Jennifer, do you mind, for anyone who's like me and doesn't know what a lift station is, what is the purpose of that?

Yeah, so, and on our sanitary system, we have lift stations. So sanitary is fabulous because we use gravity to get a number of water. They pump everything around, right? But sanitary works by gravity, so it goes downhill. But sometimes it gets too deep. And then what you do is you lift it up and then you keep it moving. So it's just like a quick way to get it from one space to another. Maybe there's a hill, maybe we've just gotten too deep, but it's just a way to transfer the flow. Does that make sense? Okay, yeah. So a quick overview of sources. Most of the money comes from our storm fee and our sanitary fee. $150 million comes from sanitary, generally speaking. And then storm is $95 million. And so what does that mean for a resident? Or maybe I'm sure my daughter, I'm sure, is skipping class and watching this right now and wants to know about how I pay our bills. but we have our storm fee and that's two times a year. And for a typical house, a typical residence, it's about $200 a year. I'm a little bit less than that, but it's based on your actual footprint and your actual impervious area on your parcel. So same for businesses. Sanitary fee, that is actually billed by Denver Water monthly through their bill. And how we do that is we look at kind of the winter usage. And why we do that is because in the summer, you know, you're watering your vegetables and your plants in your garden. So we don't wanna include that because that's not technically getting into the sanitary system. So we're trying to get a more realistic look at how much you're actually putting into the system. So on average, it's about 30 bucks a month. for a resident and then it can depend from there. And lastly, just one note, something that you might hear from constituents that are redeveloping, they may have a tap fee from Denver Water, or for Metro Water Recovery and from us, and that's the sanitary availability fee, and it's just a one-time connection fee, and it's to have them pay their part because there is a fully functioning system that they're buying into, essentially. I think there was one more thing I wanted to say about that, but I'll try and remember what it was. It's good for now, I guess. So this is our 2026 budget. And again, you can kind of see the buckets that I kind of walked through. We have our capital budget, which was the third bucket that I talked about, which was about $64 million in expenses. We have our operating, which is part of the operations and maintenance bucket. And then I kind of pulled out just so you can understand that the Metro fee on the right hand side, which will be about $80 million next year. So moving forward, goals and priorities. I think this slide is pretty exciting. It talks about what we do and why the enterprise fund is so important. It's protecting system performance, thinking about, again, our system is old and we've got to keep it moving, keep it maintained, keep it in good operating condition. We are going to continue to modernize our infrastructure. Like I also mentioned, you know, we will have gray infrastructure, but looking for opportunities to be more resilient, have a green strategy symbol incorporated into our program is really important. Reducing flood risk, 5,000 structures citywide are in the floodplain. So a lot of those are on Weir Gulch, about under 500 on Weir Gulch. We have Harvard Gulch besides that over 1,200. We have the South Platte River floodplain, which is why we're doing the levy project to try and protect Waterville. So just continuing to work on that and reducing flood risk for our residents. And we also have localized flood risk in Upper Montclair. Building resilience. Some of our systems were built a long time ago. In the case of Upper Montclair, we covered a waterway. There's not a drainage way there. And it's the biggest, it's almost 10 square miles without an open waterway. So continuing to build resilience for the community in those areas. And finally, all of these together, we're trying to improve quality of life, right? That's our ultimate goal. I think I kind of just mentioned most of these, but these are some of our key flood risk reduction priorities, and they're not little Band-Aid fixes that we can just quickly do. They're things that are gonna be long-term investments. We have our levy to protect Globeville. We have Weir Gulch and Harvard Gulch, which just had updated floodplains a few years ago now, but it added a lot of structures into the floodplain, so protecting those folks is definitely top of mind. And then again, Upper Montclair is also localized flooding, it doesn't have a FEMA floodplain, but it is local flooding that the community experiences. I did want to just briefly throw up some wastewater quick links that could be referred to later. We have our storm drainage master plan. We have flood safety info and resources, which are great for community members who have maybe an issue and want to learn about flood proofing or reaching out to the city and how do we come out and see what their issue is. There are also residents are also welcome to call 311 with storm drainage issues and complaints as well. Happy to, you know, reach out and follow up with them on that. And then finally, for development, there is a website and an email address there for for information around that as well. I could probably talk about this all day, but I will stop talking and see if we can answer some questions.

Love it. Thank you so much, and welcome, Director Ford, in case there are other questions for you as well. Welcome to the meeting, Councilwoman Sandoval and Councilman Watson, and we'll start in the queue with Councilwoman Alvarez.

Thank you so much, Committee Chair. I appreciate all of this information. It's definitely been... a big topic in District 7. There has been a lot of flooding in the last couple rains. And I'm a little confused as to why the Valverde outfall isn't mentioned in here or Sanderson Gulch.

Yeah, yeah. Omission is not because they are not important. We definitely have the Sanderson Gulch project that's coming up from Florida to Arkansas. Right? And so a great project that has multiple funding partners. So definitely. An important area as well, and we've also been making investments in Sanderson Gulch as well over the past decade ish, but we upgraded the outfall as well. And then for Val Verde, we are working on Val Verde. We're working with my high flood district right now on the outfall systems plan. And so that's kind of that 1st, the 1st, look at, like, what the needs are. And it's very similar to upper Montclair and to global. That's kind of where we started with things. We started with that. Like. kind of boring technical study, if you will, with Mile 55 flood district to understand the needs first. And then that gives us the information so then we can start to reach out to community and kind of figure out what the right scale and what the opportunities are from there.

I guess the part that is confusing for me and I'm sure the public as well is that we just did the Val Verde Basin Outfall System outreach and then the plan. So now you're saying we need another plan?

So we are working with Mile High Flood District right now Okay, I'm pretty sure on it.

I would love to get a more detailed update.

I can get an update for you. What I know, I think maybe two months ago is that they were identifying some improvements that they would then be able to take back for phase two of community engagement. So basically phase one was hearing the community and hearing the concerns. Now they're kind of putting pencil to paper to come up with a plan to present back out to community in a second phase.

Okay, I'd definitely love to hear more because there was a finalized plan and it was never marketed as a phase one, but that's great. I'm glad that we're looking into that. I think one of my questions is just how do you know when areas are flooding if people don't call? Because I think a lot of times people don't know who to call and they may not be reporting flooding. Is there a way that you know or tracking flooding? And what is, is it just a 311 call or who are they supposed to call?

Yeah, yeah, another great question. So we do have our storm drainage master plan. So that's where we take a look at the whole city holistically to kind of identify what is flooding from a technical sense, right? We drop rain on a map and then figure out where it's going to see like what the impact is. So it's very technical. And then we also layer that in with listening to community to going out to hearing what they are seeing in the fields and how that correlates. So we would take that through 311. We have

Thank you.

As long as I've been at the city, which is over a decade, we have maintained a database where we keep track of flooding complaints from residents as well. So we know those hot spots as well. And yeah, there's also a link on the website where you can also report flooding that way. So multiple different ways, but we are proactively trying to look at the engineering component of it so we know where to expect flooding, as well as taking in that information from community who's actually out there seeing what happens during rain events.

That's helpful to know. I definitely have been especially with these last couple rains since we haven't had a lot but we have gotten flooding even with the little rain that we've gotten so I'm curious like on my personal street out when I it was a drain that went nowhere. Do we know where there's drains that go nowhere? It was eventually closed because there was enough complaints that they closed off the drain.

I would love to take a look at it and get more information. Sometimes we have siphons in the system, so they kind of feel like they're pipes to nowhere that go underneath a street. And so in that case, they can be nuisance problems because they can be smelly and gross, but they are working as part of the system. We do have a program internally where we're trying to get rid of siphons Just because they are maintenance issues, but happy to take a look at that specific spot and, you know, go into more detail. That's great.

And then lastly, I'll just say that with the Sanderson Gulch, we have been getting concerned about beavers. And how are we planning on interacting with the wildlife and nature as we start that project? Can you speak to that?

I can start and say that we're working closely with Denver Parks and Recreation to receive guidance on how to handle habitat in our construction areas. And we have reached out to them specifically on Sanderson Gulch. Bruce, do you want to come talk specifically about what our mitigation plan is there?

Hi, good afternoon. on the Sanderson Gulch. I believe it's the Ruby Hill RNO. We want to meet with them directly with our parks department to understand what are the goals of this project, flood mitigation, trees, environment, versus what disruptions there may be to habitat. And so how do we kind of find compromises, meet in the middle, sort of achieve all those goals. So I think there is a meeting pending soon with the RNO to discuss the project and all those goals.

Great, because we haven't seen that and we would love to make see that happen and be a partner and we can happen. Thank you so much. Thank you committee chair. Thank you.

I will go online to councilman.

Thank you. I just have a quick question unrelated to all the great projects you're doing, but. The stormwater fee that folks pay twice a year. Is build along with the sidewalk fee. Is that correct?

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes. I mean, I knew the answer was yes. And so what I'm wondering is, if a person does not pay the full amount for one reason or another, how is it Does it become a lien? Do we pay the stormwater first and apply any remainder to the sidewalk fee? Because I know either one can become a lien on a property. I'm asking because I have some constituents who do have liens on their property that's designated as stormwater. So I'm wondering, is it stormwater or is it sidewalk?

Good afternoon. I'm Peter Spanford. I'm the Director of Accounting for Dottie. The way we apply the payments is we apply it first to the stormwater bill just because there's outstanding bonds with stormwater and there's not on the sidewalk portion of it. So that's the reason we apply it that way. and then with our new billing system too that's going to come online we're also looking at you know different ways to apply it where you know we might be able to do it and you know allocate it across different funds but yeah that's how it's currently set up.

That's perfect. That's what I would assume would be the case. I appreciate that. Do we have any sense of how many folks are interviewees under stormwater or sidewalk? but I don't see a public account here.

Yeah, we do. We have a, we call it accounts receivable aging analysis where we look at all our bills and put them into buckets as far as who's within 0 to 30 days, you know, 30 to 60 days, etc. So yeah, we definitely monitor that. I don't know the number of, off the top of my head, the number of customers who are in arrears. But yeah, we monitor that and then that's also what would trigger the, we have thresholds for leaning customers, so they have to be a balance of more than, I think it's $200, if I remember correctly, and more than 90 days past due. And that's what would trigger the lien process. So we monitor those receivables and we do outreach to customers to try to make sure they're aware of their bills and avoid liens as much as we can.

Perfect. That makes total sense. I really appreciate it. Thank you very much, Madam Chair. That's all I have.

Thank you. Back in the room, Councilwoman Sandoval. Thank you.

So for the stormwater master plan, when was that adopted? It was adopted, was it this year or last year? Five? 20, 25. OK. And then does that have, I haven't read through the copy. Did we finish most of the work from the first one that was adopted? How often do they come through?

So the Denver revised municipal code is supposed to be adopted every five years. And so it's like the huge look at the system, right? So it's all of the needs. So it's several billion dollars. So we would never be able to achieve everything within the plan within a given five-year plan. So it's more of just like updating things that have changed, incorporating projects that have been built, and seeing what's remaining. Things change overall in like engineering and best practices. So incorporating whatever the newest and latest best practices are as well.

So that's why we do it every five years. Okay. And so for with the stormwater master plan, there was tons of work that was done at our city park golf course to be able to have it be a water basin, right? There was tons of work done along Sand Creek, tons of work along down in Rhino. I can't remember what the outfall was called. I haven't looked at the document, but was that all incorporated within the new updated plan? Right.

All those projects were incorporated, and then the results are updated based on those projects.

Okay. And then for Councilwoman Alvidrez's question for flooding, you all, when you do these plans, you do look at 311 data, right, to figure out where we've seen flooding, because that's at least the last time I remember looking at it, because Northwest Denver, 38th Avenue, underneath 38th Avenue, it always floods, and it's like cost prohibitive to fix. So there's a joke that we put a sign up that says don't go under the bridge when it's raining, because your car might flood. But it's not a joke, because it really does. Um, so we still have those hotspots within that plan?

Yes. Yep. Yep.

Okay. And then for some of the fees, um, have we ever taken a look at the fees to see if they need to be updated and how, when was the last time any of our fees were updated?

Um, do, Peter, do you want to?

So in the municipal code, we update our fees annually based on consumer price index. So that's, we do that every year. The last time we did a full fee study was about 2015.

I don't mean that fee. I know that fee because my predecessor was here. I will belabor the council process that went into the middle of the night because city council approved that.

Yes.

I meant the fee, like the impact fee. So impact fee. Impact fee, yes. Not the fee that we all pay if we live in Denver. I understand consumer price index. I won't belabor that. I meant the impact fee from like the developers and all of the other fees that we have that are associated with wastewater. Yes, we have the last time those have been updated.

They have not been updated for decades. I think 1996, I think was the last time we updated that safety. So it is definitely on our radar. We're having conversations with the Department of Finance on that. And we know that's something that we're going to look at closely and have conversations with you all on that going forward.

The one thing that I find interesting is when, so rewind 10 years ago, when city council had to make the decision for the consumer price fee, right? Because it used to have to come to city council all the time. And then city council at that time, in 2015, got rid of that and paired it with consumer price. What concerns me is that we've never done that on our impact fee. So we are charging, we made this decision, deliberate decision, not you all, I mean the collective we, made this decision in 2015 to have it tied to something for us to pay, meaning the residents of Denver. Yet we don't do that with our development fees and our impact fees, and I don't understand why. Like if our, like our, I won't, it's not this committee, but our vacation fee, our right-of-way vacation fee, basically you can buy, get land from the City and County of Denver to vacate for 1,600 bucks. $1,000 for a survey and $600 application fee and then it becomes fee simple. Then all of a sudden you own it and you take over it and it becomes yours and I have a major issue with that. So I really encourage you all to take on this impact fee because I just don't understand how 10 years ago we tied it to consumer price index, but at the same time, all of the developers in the city and county of Denver have been paying prices since 1996. And DOTI is notorious for not updating their fees. I've been talking about this since I started Citi 14 years ago, and I've never made progress on this. I don't understand why, but yet we can say to the average resident, we're going to tie it to consumer price indexing. It makes sense. It raises, which it should. But we're stuck in 19. I graduated from high school in 1997, and we've never raised our prices in that? I mean, that's just ridiculous. So I would really encourage Dottie to take that seriously and look at the impact because there is an impact to, like what you just said, we base our fee to the big, on our flow, right? So we have created the whole entire Rhino District. We are creating Burnham Yards. We are creating the stadium, the women's soccer stadium. The whole entire Stapleton community or Central Park has been built out and yet we've never raised our impact fee, that doesn't even make sense because we're still having to pay more. So I think that there's some type of analysis goes on and I hope that you all bring us some fee schedule updates in 2027.

I'm glad to hear you support that. We're fully behind it. And Metro updates their impact fee and Denver Water just updated theirs. So we know.

And we're literally the only one that doesn't, but we do have to pay it, but we're still not doing the impact fee. It just doesn't even make sense to me. All right, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair.

Thank you. My sense is that Dottie would love to say that it's been above their level, that it's been delayed. So thank you. Councilman Watson.

Uh, thank you so much, uh, Committee Chair. I gotta say, I've never met anyone that's so excited to speak about, uh, the, the condition of stormwater or sanitary drainage. What was the term that I think you just perked up and I was gonna say it here. I thought that was just hilarious, um, when you just got all excited. Yeah, it was the sanitary lift station. I think that is just great that you so love the work that you do and the things you are excited about are things none of us talk about on a regular basis. No resident talks about it, but if it's not done, then we talk about it. Smell it, we see it. It's harmful to community health, so I'm so glad that you're excited. I wanted to start with some thank yous first. Plot to Park Hill that Councilwoman Sandoval spoke to, thank you for that work. That flooding that used to happen on 26th Avenue where all the five points connect between Washington and Welton, that flooding has not persisted after that work was done. Using evidence-based data and your criteria for forecasting where stormwater drainage occurs, that used to be a lake. You had to swim through it when it rained. We've had several large storms, and that has decreased a lot. I think the SWIFT implementation for green infrastructure that we did in Five Points also, CIGIE acronym, that was fantastic as well because that was a targeted plan for standing non-permeable surfaces in the Five Points corridor that was holding water. And so with the green infrastructure that you all put through, it's very small impact. for small businesses, residents. I think that was extremely unique. Curious if you wanted to share just a little bit. I know that this is a larger discussion. Do not want you to go into minutiae on the Gloville levy, but speak to kind of where you all are at on that process. I know there's something on consent. I'm not asking for any more details than that, but just at a high level, kind of where your work is at and kind of that collaborative process that you're doing.

Yeah, and I do want to say, thanks. I'll make sure Bruce and I take that back to the team, the green infrastructure team and our and our other staff who did the design and the delivery of those projects. It's really exciting. I'll make sure they hear that. Thank you. So, thank you for that. And then for Bruce, do you want to talk about the update on mobile?

High level, high level, all right. So Bruce Jernick again, nice to see everyone. So Globeville Levee started as a project around 2016 when we did talk to Park Hill. We said we need to do something in Globeville too. And we started building maybe three or four years later, but it's had to be done in phases. So I think we're about 50% done. We started on the north half. We're still in construction. You can see that one of those pictures in there showed all that great work. And now we've got to do more design and kind of do that south half. that's out there by Ringsby Court, kind of figure that out, work with the community, work with the developers around there and just say, how is this gonna look? When's it gonna happen? How do we kind of get through that? How do we pay for it? And that could be through the sort of the annual wastewater budget cycle and through the capital program.

And you're thinking a timeline of?

I think- I know it's a forecast. No, I think we probably have another two or three years of construction to go.

Thank you so much. No other questions, but I appreciate that good work. Thank you, committee chair.

Thank you. Councilman Hines. Thank you, committee chair. Thank you for the presentation. You know, I'm used to talking to you about another topic, but I guess it's all water under the bridge. It's a touch on both topics at the same time. Yeah. I'm feeling silly today. So speaking of water and stormwater, what happens when we have a vendor that comes into our streets? I mean, it's pretty insane. As someone who's not a city planner, how much is happening below the surface of our right of way? There's storm water, waste water, there's fresh water, there's gas, there's electric, fiber, telecom. But sometimes those vendors come and they are creating improvements for their kind of utility, but then break the curb and gutter system. So like Denver Water and XL are both at work on the 1100 block of Acoma and Golden Triangle and now we have a bunch of pooling that, you know, in each of the last two major storms that it's just not draining properly. So and I'm not saying we need to immediately go fix it because we've already got a big project, you know, $15 million project that's about to start in that process, but still, I'm curious. 19th and Logan would flood all the time for years, and I don't know if it was ever intentionally fixed, but there were just spots where there'd be a lake any time there was a rain. I wonder, who's responsible if a utility digs it up and impacts our drainage?

That is a great question, and I always think of it more from the under underneath side of things. Like, when we have somebody accidentally born to 1 of our. Our pipes, and in that case, you know, we would try and hold. Excel or whoever did it the work responsible. I know we've had some instances where things like this have come up and we've had some issues with Denver water or others impacting our right away. And so I think. maybe best practice is that I would say we would try and work with our partners to get the fixes done. And it sounds like maybe that hasn't always happened. So I can definitely take that back with the team and make sure that we're working on it and addressing that.

Thank you. And sometimes the reason why we have floods after big droughts is that the ground just becomes so dry it can't suck up the water. And just this morning, Denver Water voted, the Board of Water Commissioners voted to restrict any lawn watering after September 30th because of our drought. which then would allow our surface, not our concrete surface, but our natural surface to then get even drier, which will make a bigger issue when we do have a lot of rain and a little bit of time. I wonder, we are responding to a historic drought. We're responding to a warming planet. And so I just wonder if, Uh, this is yet another issue that, uh, that you and all your study with water under the bridge full, um, will approach or I mean, is that something that's on your radar?

It sounds like a definite 1 water, um, issue or consideration. I'll say opportunity. Uh, try and be positive there, but, um, you know, that multi jurisdictional collaboration to look at, like, how 1 1 jurisdictions impact may impact another another team. So, looking at some of those things, I think it. You know, it could be an opportunity to look at how we can address it. Because you are right. I mean, we've all seen it at our own homes, right? And the other one that's always great is when it hails first and clogs all the inlets and then our pipes can't do what they were intended to do. So, you know, thinking through things like that, I think, is always top of mind for, like, how do we create resilient spaces and use what we have to help us further our mission to reduce flood reduction. Have flood reduction for our residents, so I think it's a great and I put it down, took a note and yeah, I would definitely follow up on that as well.

Thank you. And I'm not trying to discount the commissioner's decision. I think it's the right decision, which, you know, as as any decision happens, there are consequences that we, you know, that. There's an equal and opposite reaction for every action, and so we want to make sure that we're thinking about that before it comes too late. Thank you.

I'll take the opportunity to just add, and Jennifer can correct me. It's why doing our SIGGY, the Swift Implementation of Green Infrastructure, is so important, because it helps slow down that water as it's going to do runoff, and it does get the soil quality better to absorb the water as it moves. So definitely a key. key strategy there.

Thank you so much. I'll chime in with a couple questions and then we'll get back into Q for second round. Councilwoman Alvarez started with my first question, which was an update on Val Verde and what those neighbors can expect as the next phase of that project. So I'll look forward to that same update. Slide 8, if you can go to that. Just a quick question on the red bar graphic. Maybe it was 8, the one before that. Yes. The jump from 2024 to 2025, would I be reading that correctly to say that might be population increase or development increase? What's driving kind of that jump from 2024 to 2025?

So with COVID and kind of in the years around COVID, Metro Water Recovery and the Board of Directors kind of took a few years and kind of paused a little bit because communities were having so many other issues to deal with. So I think they kind of kept the rate increases a little bit lower and actually went on the Board of Directors as well. And so that was kind of one of the things there to just, it was kind of like a help to help the community.

We're not going to raise your rates at this point in time. That's super helpful for me to understand that. Thank you. And then maybe your next, the slide that mentions We're Gulch and some of the upcoming work is like orange slides. Maybe one more. It was orange. That one. That 1 right there. Yes. So, and I've had this conversation with the waterway resiliency when we describe the work that has to happen, or the benefit often the reaction that I get from community about language, like, removes 300 structures from the mapped floodplain sounds like we're actually physically raising 300 houses. and that's not what this is describing. This is saying we need a fix that actually relieves 300 properties from being in the floodplain. So there is, I think the next kind of phases of Weir Gulch and that particular reach are about options and what kind of impacts they might have because everybody does end up talking about how many properties would be needed to be removed physically removed in order to do the widening or the kind of the work on that Gulch. And I don't want anybody to come away from this thinking we're planning to remove 300 homes. That's not the plan.

Thank you for finding that. I actually noticed that this morning. I think it's like my engineer brain says the same thing over and over again. So definitely apologize for that language. I should have said, you know, a reduction in flood risk. So we have about, in all of our gulch, we have about five, just under 500 structures that are in the floodplain. And so like with all of our gulches, we're looking at opportunities to reduce flood risk. Sometimes, you know, there are things that happen, but reducing flood risk is our primary goal.

And it's amazing when we do see that gulch fill and it doesn't take a lot of time for continuous rain to really build it up and it's wild because some of those culverts are big enough to walk through and yet you get rain for a certain period of time and it's coming up the banks and so it's amazing just the the The difference, and how quickly that can change for folks to realize well, like, the risk is real. We did a clean up just recently with our, some of our neighbors of work. The debris that flows through that gulch is one of the other major problems. I think that if it's clogging one of the pipes or one of the bridge areas, like the domino effect that that has. And there are a lot of areas along that gulch that just see encampments a lot and that those volunteers will end up pulling, you name it, out of that waterway system. So there is, I think, so much that contributes to, I think, the risk that we see. But thank you for all this information. I know it's, especially as an enterprise, one of the harder to really wrap our arms around when we're dealing with issues in our district for how the system operates and how operationally it is DOTI or Mile High Flood District or every other partner that touches this. So thank you so much. It's such an important part of what we're covering when we cover topics here in the Platte Committee. So really appreciate it. I want to make sure I get Councilman Alvarez's question back in

Thank you. I'm looking forward to also just having conversations as we get ready for budget at the budget presentation on what exactly is planned for 27. I think. It's interesting to hear how much we're mentioning parks department and so it sounds like you work really closely together and I hope so because. these things do go hand in hand. And one of the things that recently happened in District 7 was that there's the Salisbury lateral that broke and then was fixed, but caused a lake in an underserved neighborhood to dry out, Houston Lake. And so I'm curious, As we have conversations around the lakes in the city, I know Sloan's Lake has been a hot topic, which the neighbors around Houston Lake have been looking to what they're doing over there to try and preserve their lake, of how you're thinking about how do our parks and the lakes in our parks correlate with this work?

Yeah, and I think it probably differs for different lakes because some have like some stormwater component, which is kind of when we get integrated when they're used for stormwater detention. So yeah, we're always happy to work. I know that the team has been working behind the scenes with parks on Houston Lake, so definitely happy to follow up with parks and have them follow up with you as well.

Yeah, what we're trying, so the neighbors have now created a work group for Friends of Houston Lake and so we're planning to have a town hall about it so it'd be great to have you all there to participate in that discussion and be able to answer some questions. I do believe that is a lake that's fed by stormwater, correct? I will have to follow up with you.

I'd rather wait and have a very accurate answer.

And I know that, you know, Education is such an important part of this. So for example, there are storm drains that go into the lake and they have a filter system and people think that the filter system's clogged, but then I've been told that that clog is actually the filtration system that prevents too much sediment from getting into the lake. So I would just really love to have you guys be a part of that conversation and learn more together. I think as Councilman Hines mentioned with climate change, and the change of how we secure water, save water, and how important it is that we are the head water protectors for water for many other places in the country and outside of this country, and how we are good stewards of that water is incredibly important, and how we can have things like recreation as well and take care of our beavers and all the things. So I know it's a lot of work that you all are doing and very complex, but I would love to just I feel like one of my jobs as a council member is to help my constituents understand the answers to their questions that are deeper than just, I'm sorry that the lake is empty, but being able to kind of have that conversation. So thank you.

Thank you, council president. Thank you so much.

I mean, council chair, committee chair.

You're welcome. Thank you very much. This has been so great. Can we drop the presentation real quick as we wrap up? OK, perfect. This has been so great. Thank you so much for illuminating and we have one item on consent. This is not an action item. Just really appreciate the briefing and getting a chance to talk about this. And I think we definitely would like to see a follow up on the developer impact fee. I feel like that feels like really low hanging fruit that is long overdue. So, thank you everyone. One item on consent moves forward. Unless there are any questions, please see me or Alyssa. Thank you. Thanks everyone. We're adjourned.